May Update

Hey all, another month has come and gone. April was just as much of a whirlwind as March, which was as fast as February, which was... well, you get it. I'm sure part of that has been from how hectic my writing schedule has been thing month, but more on that in a bit. First, website stuff.

There hasn't been much in the way of major updates or technical things, mostly I've just been posting casually to the various blogs. I did start a new series of monthly posts on my gaming blog, "What I've Been Playing!", which is sure to have a new post for May fairly soon. Other than that, I've been trying to use the blogs more like blogs, and less like portfolios. That's not to say I won't be posting more in-depth writing to these blogs, I absolutely want to do more of that, too! I just want to treat them like what they are: blogs. I love blogging, and I want to get more in the habit of making small, bite-sized posts about whatever, in addition to the big stuff.

Now, let's circle back around to writing stuff. This month was pretty hectic, like I said. You can read more about that specifically in the May Monthly Update | Patreon, but to sum up: I didn't release everything I wanted this month, but that means I'm a little ahead of May's plans, so hopefully this will be a solid month! It's leading into June, where I plan to introduce a second story to my monthly release schedule. As for what that is, well, maybe I'll put out a teaser of some kind later this month, we'll see....

Overall things are going smoothly though! I'm really happy with the way the story is proceeding, and I have a lot of other ideas churning, so plenty more to come!

I haven't done much art recently, which makes me a little sad. I really love drawing DS art like I do, or even traditional art in my sketchbook, and I just haven't done much lately. And that's not even to say that I've been trying music again, or doing pixel art, or learning a game engine, or anything like that. Writing has just been eating up so much of my time, and everything else has kept me so busy this month, I haven't gotten around to anything like that. I want to try and squeeze more of that into next month's art cycle, I miss it.

I did add yet another MP3 player to my assortment of devices, this time an iPod Touch 4th gen. I found it at a local used games store that some people I talk to were raving about (it was just okay) and the coolest thing in their display case (also the best priced) was the iPod. I asked if I could check it out, and after powering it up and checking the battery life and storage, I went ahead and took. iTunes is easily the most annoying media management app and I despise the way it works, but also it's got a few good tools and I have to use it to load up the iPod. It's a huge upgrade compared to my childhood iPhone 3GS, going from 240p with 16GB to 720p and 32GB. I've been liveblogging over on Tumblr about my difficulties in encoding my own video files, but anything that's in 720p is basically ready to drag-and-drop (with some exceptions). It's been really great, it's super slim and light, and I've been adoring getting to listen to music from it, as well as watching stuff on a pocket-sized media device.

Obviously the 720p beats out my old 3GS as well as the PSP, so I've been watching a lot more stuff. I never finished Nichijou, so I've been retreading ground to catch back up with myself, ahaha! When I'm done with that, I'll do the same thing with Sakura Trick, another show I never finished. Plus there's plenty of things I've seen a million times and love rewatching: Sparkle on Raven, the 1996 Sonic OVA, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, etc. It turns out I have all of Makoto Shinkai's first three films (5 Centimeters Per Second, The Garden of Words, Your Name) ready to go, so I'll get to relieve the first way I watched all of those movies!

Overall, super happy with the iPod Touch, looking forward to using it for the foreseeable future. Maybe I can finally learn about video encoding and get that down... (;=w=) also it can't even view my website, so what's the point?

Thanks for reading another monthly update, April was such a crazy time, hopefully May calms down even a little, just enough for me to catch me breath. Until next time!

~ Alex Amelia Pine