Currently on art: The coming of summer

Hi everyone!

We’re once again halfway through the quarter, so it’s time for another Currently on art update. This time, it’ll be a short one.

First of all, my massive software project course – which turned out to be basically a working life simulator – is effectively at its end as far as I’m concerned. The integration of a machine translator (in this case DeepL) to the TIM system (under the project name TIMTra, short for TIM Translate) was a success and it’s now in production! It was a massive learning experience (especially since I was wholly unfamiliar with TypeScript and Angular, which I mostly worked with) and I’m proud of the work I did on the user interface. I got to do quality of life improvements and some additions that I’d wanted to be done – exactly the type of user interface changes I actually like. The whole team was awesome too; we worked super well together. There were hiccups along the way but we conquered them and finished the project on time and as the first team of the three that were formed for this spring’s iteration of the course. I also ended up making a couple of origami during the course – a fly and a pigeon – and some artwork and doodles, most importantly the cartoony ant that became our team mascot (and which I silently named TIMTrant – TIM Translate ant).

I’ve had almost a week to ask myself, “now what?” I admit that I faced some withdrawal symptoms of the project on the last Friday of work when I left home early. I’ve gotten so used to the work hours that leaving early felt downright wrong, haha! After the initial shock to my day rhythm it’s been fine, though, in part because I designated this week as a vacation/resting period to be used for things that I couldn’t do when I had to be on campus five days a week. From next week onwards I’m planning to have fixed working hours to keep the remaining courses’ – two game courses I need to finish before July ends – workload sensible and steady (and to avoid working weekends, which fortunately no longer feels as strange as it did in the first weeks of the TIMTra project after 3.5 years of no designated or proper resting days). My plans for summer don’t have much else than that going on, although I am planning not to work on any courses during August. Naturally, I will be taking part in FFM, but otherwise there isn’t really anything else in my plans. Hopefully I’ll also get to resume some projects that have been on hiatus for long while when I’ve got more free time and energy.

What else has been going on between these updates? Not much, really, since my life has been mostly just work. I took part in Damon L. Wakes’s Twinedle competition on April 1st, used a ridiculous amount of time and effort and won myself a glorious unicorn-head-shaped headphone splitter. I haven’t figured out a way to keep it in my bag securely (I don’t want it to get damaged, after all), so for now it sits on my bookshelf next to things like a couple of FFM collections, Ten Little Astronauts and the anodised aluminum necklace I got as a pledge reward for the aforementioned book. Could I have spent that day more productively? Probably. Was it still worth it? Absolutely.

I can’t think of anything else noteworthy to talk about, so let’s see how things are going with my projects, as per my project widget:

• Exceptional Jedi: Chapter 2 of Seeking the Skies is in writing, although it’s progressed very slowly. All writing is at 2154 days. Jedova’s reference has not seen progress since the previous post. I need to make a comic about Valentine Clanker and lots of other drawings. I’ve been creating data on Scrivener to build a wiki of sorts there so that I can flesh things out for writing, although it hasn’t been progressing at all for a good while since I haven’t had the time and energy to deal with it. Revising is still in a standtill.
• The Fate’s Way: Chapter 72 is in writing. I still need to redraw the regular Alyssa and also Alyssa’s friends and family and the other important people, like Matti, someday. I haven’t gotten the chapters waiting for revising revised, but hopefully I’ll be able to work on that next month.
• Off-DA projects: My web coding project has been put on an indefinite hiatus because after the TIMTra project I want a break from web development and I also need to focus on game development for the game courses I need to finish.
• Greenfield: I haven’t edited this at all since everything else has taken most of my time and energy, but hopefully I’ll be able to resume it next month. I’m currently working on editing chapter 3. Read more about the project here.
• Lyokostar: On an indefinite hiatus. I did end up looking at what’s next in translation/reworking and I actually made plans for how to deal with it (it involves so much nuking that you shouldn’t make a drinking game out of how many times my notes say “stupid” or “nuke”). I think I’ll try to resume it once I get the hang of my new schedule. References need to be done.
• A Wandering Aura: I haven’t done anything for this in a good while. Hopefully I’ll be able to work on this more during the summer.
• Gaming: Habitica, Pokémon GO and Pokémon Masters EX keep on going; I ended up dropping Duolingo because I got tired of spamming stories to get enough EXP to get the monthly medals. I’ve started Pokémon Legends: Arceus and Persona 5 Royal (the latter sort of by accident; my boyfriend got the game and I ended up watching him play to the point where I decided I wanted to play it too). I’ve been playing a bit of PC Building Simulator, Wingspan and Surviving Mars too.
• Other stuff: The Prose-ject collection has seen pretty good progress lately. I’m now checking through the stories before I pick a name for the collection and then make the cover art. The progress has been slower than expected but I’m still hoping to be able to release it before FFM. Reading has seen a bit of progress as I did manage to read one Death Note volume, since then it has gone back to a standstill. I’m hoping that it’ll change during the summer. I still haven’t gotten started with IDW’s Transformers comics.
• Personal life: COVID is still going on, as usual, although mask mandates and recommendations have ended. My software project course is effectively over, so I have to figure out what to do with my life now.