Status

After spending a few fridays this sem in the microbiology labs all day my brain feels exhausted. It's fun, but a lot more work than i'm used to doing in undergrad labs. This is still just a taste of what actual research work is like i guess. And also a skill issue on my part probably.

The microbiology units, especially from this particular professor tend to have really well designed practical components and tend to be more interesting and challenging which i like. Where other units tend to be more chill, although some to the point they become kinda boring.

Just did a pathology quiz and i feel like i did pretty good. Although every time i feel like i did well on an assessment i tend to end up doing worse than when i felt like i failed.

I heard somewhere that you feel like you do badly when you do well on an exam because you didn't feel like you got all the information you know down on the page, while you actually did meet the criteria for a good mark; your knowledge ended up exceeding the what was required for the exam yet you feel so you failed to convey it all. This would also explain feeling good after performing badly, because you are naive to the information you should have written, so you felt like you conveyed all the information you knew.

Made kombucha this semester as a bit of a fun microbiology practical and a way to study all the biology that entails (along with the human microbiome). The biology is fun and all but we had to sample it and my batch tasted terrible and turned out extremely acidic with the acetic acid taste overpowering everything (i didn't like kombucha in the first place either ngl). We used lipton tea for the standardised batch along with a few starter cultures and table sugar. We also made another batch with our own ingredients along with the standardised one and a few of them actually tasted alright (surprisingly good considering i don't like kombucha).

I ran out of my normal tea and had some lipton tea bags around the house so i had some, but the taste reminded me of my terrible kombucha batch. I immediately tasted vinegar in my mouth and had to stop drinking.

I've been traumatised lol.

Hopefully this doesn't ruin my tea enjoyment, although luckily i think this is just lipton which i didn't really drink anyway so i'm safe for now.

Practical was still fun tho, and i'm looking forward to identifying the bacteria and fungi.

I've added code highlighting!

I didn't want to use javascript to keep the site light and accessible so i used pygments to generate the html and the catppuccin python package which provides a pygments style.

Here is a hello world example:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    printf("Hello, World!\n");

    return 0;
}

So if i ever need to include code, i have a way now. I've used pygments before to list code in a little web page for a data science assignment but i never really bothered to add it here.

Assessments are finally calming down during this bit of the semester. I can finally catch up on lectures.

Also, i've procrastinated by writing a little python script to insert in a template for a new status post in this document so i don't have to type it out each time. There's probably an easier way to do this but i don't care.

Looking to apply for honours. The different schools at my uni are hosting some honours project showcases soon where a bunch of professors are showing off some honours projects and posters of previous projects. Looking forward to find a supervisor so i can apply and do my honours next year. The events are coming up soon so i'm quite excited :), although still quite nervous bc i'm not used to just straight up approaching people like that but hopefully my desire to actually find a project will grant me enough confidence on the day lol.

There's a bunch that look super interesting, like a few on the pathogenesis of a specific infectious disease and some about antibiotic resistant Acinetobacter baumannii. I wanted to get into research in a while but the closer i get to these opportunities at the end of undergrad i realise it's actually really exciting. I've had fun with more research-style assignments with various units but the prospect of getting into the lab and actually working on a full project sounds fun.

For once i'm excited about next year. I hope i get in.

Been listening to more of em's music and checking out/going back to more aliases. Truxton's music is so fun. Provides some of the goofiness i so desperately need rn. Also The Quick Brown Fox, Mayhem, and HHSU are really good at keeping me awake and able to keep writing a report until like 4 in the morning. Nerve's Ending goes incredibly hard.

P.S. Play TIME TRIPPER if you haven't already holy shit. I watched ShallowVA's playthough of it recently and it reminded me how cool it is. Also check out ShallowVA he makes cool and funny videos :).

Found a Parafilm M fan account on twitter. Finally found another person who appreciates parafilm as much as i do.

Doing another assignment last minute.

This is so much fun.

Canva should not exist. Just use powerpoint or google slides. It's so much easier and actually has features rather than having everything but basic shit be paywalled. We already have an office 360 subscription through the uni. use it????

I wanted my text to not look weirdly spaced so i wanted to increase paragraph spacing and that doesn't exist? it doesn't have basic text formatting but has built in generative ai that you can't get rid of.

Why does powerpoint but worse need to be a product that exists.

I'm going to scream.

I have like three assignments due this week and i've been procrastinating them :/. I don't know how i'm gonna survive this. I mean i've done it before but it's really not fun.

Also just embarrassed myself in a group meeting after doing some work last minute last night. Procrastinating on my own work is fine but it's really not cool to do it on group tasks. I told myself this but then ended up doing it anyway. idk why tf i can't just concentrate on shit like a normal person.

My train was delayed due to a person on the tracks. They were fine. Hoping it was something inconspicuous like a graffiti-ist (?).

i've been listening to more Vylet Pony. I love i've still got something to teach you i've listened to it so much over the last few days along with the entire album "can opener’s notebook: fish whisperer".

i think i'm a new fan.

I mention a lot on this page how much i like halley labs/em. So, i was going through their site again and saw their animals/characters page again and it reminded me how cool it was. It makes me want to design a cool page around a certain topic like that in a kind of collage style. I'm really not that good at designing things like that, nor do i have a topic in mind to do it on, but it would be cool to learn how to do it.

This is sort of my main creative outlet right now past writing reports at uni and obsessing over making them look good using LaTeX and making fancy graphs using PGF/TikZ, R, or matplotlib/seaborn (nerd shit like that).

Speaking of, i do wanna learn how to draw because (being in the furry fandom) i see so many people make really fucking cool art, but i'm afraid i would be confined to the mspaint fanart side to the spectrum, which has its own charm.

Anyway, that page reminded me of their old page design (web archive link) which i thought was really cool. Seeing it sort of reminded me how cool i thought the idea of a personal web page was and got me inspired to make my own even though i had (still don't) anything particularly interesting to put on it. I ended up copying the aesthetic lol, which was how it looked before this update.

Got one hour of sleep. Feel dead. Forgot a presentation i had to give this morning and ended up making the entire thing past midnight again.

I've fallen asleep at like 2 of this professor's lectures at this point. He's definitely noticed at this point.

Found a really fucking cool ANTONYMPH music video made entirely in the browser using javascript and a super creative use of popup windows made by lyra.horse. Honestly the coolest shit i've seen in months.

If you can't run it in your browser, or you're on mobile, check out their youtube video recording of the animation.

Of course, this is a music video of Vylet Pony's great song and music video ANTONYMPH.

Sometimes i look in the mirror and don't recognise myself. And because it feels like a stranger is looking back at me i get scared. It feels the strongest when looking at my face.

I wonder what this is called. I hate it when this happens.

It feels like i'm inhabiting someone else's body. Like my brain doesn't belong in the body i have. It's like i'm wearing a suit.

Some days i feel normal. Some days the feeling is extremely vivid and genuinely scary. Looking at my body is very uncanny, not even in a mirror, it could just be my arms or hands. Most of the time it's in the back of my mind and i try not to think about it when looking at myself.

idk, maybe it's because i look quite masculine, although i've never had a reference otherwise. At this point it feels kind of normal to feel this way. ALthough i tend to hate my body less, it still doesn't feel 'normal', which is why it feels strange to not feel anything negative when looking at myself.

Anyway, rant over... for now. I made this place to post random shit that crosses my mind but it feels weird to use it for rants like this. Sorry, about that. I don't really know where to put this tho.

I learnt about Vylet Pony from her popular track ANTONYMPH and immediately fell in love. I got recommended i've still got something to teach you and reminded just how cool her music can be.

ANTONYMPH kinda inspired me to make this site and do something creative for once and it's been really nice to have a creative outlet (not just for writing a stream of consciousness onto that like 5 people will ever read). Even if it's just for myself, because who cares, it makes me happier.

Anyway, have a listen to ANTONYMPH and i've still got something to teach you, they're really good, and check out the rest of her music too!

I know i'm gonna after this.

There's so much stuff to do. Uni somehow feels more busy than it ever has. Especially with applying to other courses. How does everyone around me cope.

How are people excited to graduate? Thinking about the future is too stressful, scary. Things feel more simple here, even if it's already stressful. At least I know what to do. I only just feel kinda settled in (which is a bit weird to say as a third year) after finding some cool people to hang out with and i don't really want to let that go yet.

It's hard to imagine the future. Kind of feels like you're looking at it as an outside observer. You're never in it yourself. I never thought i would be around this long anyways.

:/

It's week 5 of the semester, and there's only about 8 students still attending lectures. That's 3rd year for you i guess.

For some reason the classes with the biggest turnout are from the smallest units (i really overestimated the amount of microbiology majors in my cohort).

I was browsing sharpiepaws' site and saw their status page. I was thinking of making something i could chuck my random thoughts onto that's not as formal as a blog because i'm not really comfortable using social media and got inspired, so I threw this together! (Check out their mixes!)

Anyway, feeling kinda tired now. Overwhelmed from uni. Procrastinating by doing this.