Hi everyone!
This quarter is just about at its midpoint, so it’s time for another Currently on my art post! This time, I have exciting news!
First of all, my FFM 2024 collection, Ananas sanana is out! It’s available for free on Smashwords among other places and it is in the process of being published to some other platforms at the time of writing. You can see the list of platforms it is available on via this Universal Book Link: https://books2read.com/u/31aVO7
My second piece of news is that my master’s thesis is finally finished! That’s what allowed me to get Ananas sanana done before the end of the year since now I have much more time in my hands, haha! The grading is still in process at the time of writing but I am certain I will pass. Once the grade is out, I can finally get my master’s degree and be done with studying. Honestly, as terrifying as it was to finally tear my thesis out of my hands and stuff it into the system for grading, it was also a relief to no longer have to work on it. It’s been good to have time to wind down and finally have time for cleaning up, working on projects that have been on the backburner and do other stuff. In fact, I actually got into book scanning since I finally had the time and energy to construct a DIY book scanner, scan some very niche Japanese Shin Megami Tensei media from old magazines for to preserve them and link to them on their respective pages on the Megami Tensei Wiki.
Unfortunately for my book scanning spree, it turned out that I don’t have the space for scanning anywhere except on the floor level, which gave me most unergonomic working conditions ever. My back was very much not happy about that by the time I was done. Hence, I’m going to have to postpone scanning more books until I have a better workspace for it… and maybe also better lighting and/or glass since the opposite page on the spread tended to reflect on the glass panel, which decreased the quality of my scans. Nevertheless, it was still a fun experience; I came across a program called Scantailor which is for post-processing scanned pages (doing stuff like rotating the image, selecting the book’s content and straightening the page) and holy smokes it was a delight to use once I figured out how it works. It’s been a long time since I got a feeling that the software was made with the end user in mind and dewarping (=straightening) the page worked like a charm. It was a lot of manual work (that my wrist did not like all too much) and my workflow does need some improvement but seeing the end result was so worth it.
Enough gushing about that, though. In other news, my projects are moving at varying speeds; The Fate’s Way is, as usual, slow, while I’ll Draw The Stars has been on fire. I’ve broken the 1 million word mark (whoops!)! And there’s plenty more words coming because the reworking phase is far from over! I’ve still for 27 chapters to rework at the time of writing. I’ll hopefully manage to at least halve that number before the end of the year but we’ll see how that goes since it’s going to be all heavy reworking from here on out.
Anyhow, that’s all I have to tell about what’s been happening lately. I’m waiting for a response to my job application to the place I worked at last year so I have nothing to say about work for now. Hopefully I’ll get to go back there but if not, then I have to look for work elsewhere. We’ll see how things are going at the end of the quarter.
Next, let’s see how things are going with my projects, as per my project widget:
- The Fate’s Way: Chapter 86 is in writing. I’m still not particularly close to beating my writer’s block here but I am getting some semi-solid progress. I still need to redraw the regular Alyssa and also Alyssa’s friends and family and the other important people, like Matti, someday. I still haven’t found the time to revise any more chapters.
- Off-DA projects: My master’s thesis has been finished. Woo!
- Lyokostar: The second part of story 7 is still waiting for alphareading, but that’s a thing for once its indefinite hiatus ends. This story is in need of massive reworking, so it’s going to take a long time to finish when I do find the time and energy to resume it. References need to be done.
- A Wandering Aura: On indefinite hiatus.
- I’ll Draw The Stars: I’m reworking to add a considerably big plot bunny into the fic and lots of smaller plot bunnies in the form of the background characters I’ve been researching for my master’s thesis. I’m currently working on chapter 63 out of (currently) 89. I’ve written 104138 words in this quarter so far.
- Gaming: Habitica and Pokémon Masters EX keep on going. I’ve also played Yakuza 0, Humanity Must Perish, Placid Plastic Duck Simulator, Cyber Hook and the demo of ATRI -My Dear Moments-.
- Other stuff: I finished and released my FFM 2024 collection. I’m going to work on my Tribble Month 2020 collection next and be able to get it out before the next FFM (and I’m also working on a secret Tribble Month -related project too, but more about that some other time ;)). I’ve also read the last three volumes of the Death Note manga after a years-long unplanned break. It was good to finally finish that, haha!
- Personal life: Finishing my master’s thesis, scanning niche media, updating my AO3 download script to finally be just about what I want it to be and other miscellaneous stuff. Not that much interesting to tell, really.
That’s for all this update. Thanks for reading and take care!
WindySilver 