📝 Buffering

Lots of changes are in the air! Some good, some not so good.

The end of cohost

cohost is shutting down, which is a real shame. I enjoyed my time there, and met lots of cool folks through that site. My last few months were, uh, marred by some really terrible events, but for the most part I had a good time. I am choosing to remember the good.

In light of those events, I've been trying to scoop up as many blog and personal site links as I can and add them to my newly renovated Links page. I've also been bugging folks into making 88x31 buttons to add to my button wall, muahaha. If I know you and you have a website, please send me your URL (and your button, if you have one!!) so I can add you! (And if you don't have a website, please consider making one! If you need help, I wrote a newbie guide to getting started with Eleventy.)

Speaking of websites, I've started cleaning stuff up around here. On top of the aforementioned Links overhaul, I've also combined the old Sites and bitsy pages to make a more general Works page. I've also added a bunch of fun little buttons to the index.html, and re-added my old status.cafe site update log.

Back to photography

Henry is, as ever, my grumpy little model.

Tonight I found my old Fujifilm point-n-shoot camera! I'm thinking of using this instead of my phone, even though quality-wise I don't think there is too much of a difference. I just like having objects that have Only One Function. And it gives me a good reason to finally learn how to use Rawtherapee...

Looking at these photos on my computer rather than the tiny viewfinder, I can tell that the P&S doesn't do weird behind-the-scenes "touch up" editing to my photos (read: arbitrarily up the contrast to make them more Instagram-y) which is very nice. Plus it has aperture mode which makes photos look a little softer than my phone's harsher autofocus, at the expense of taking a tiny bit more fiddling to take each shot. But maybe that is secretly a good thing? Mindful versus spontaneous photography.

The downsides are that it is a separate device that I'll have to remember to pack before leaving the house, thus reducing the likelihood I'll have it on me when I want to take photos. Also the Fujifilm app is terrible so I'll probably need to manually import my photos into my computer with a cable, meaning I can't really look at my photos until the very end of the day. The upside is that the lens is not covered in smudges and fingerprints, unlike my phone's camera 😭

I also technically still have my Nikon D40 DSLR, though I think the battery died (RIP) so I'll need to replace that... In the meantime, it is nice to have my Fujifilm P&S to go on little photo walks again. At least once a month I say I will get back into photography, maybe it's finally time!

I've also got a new reason to take photos: Daikon recently got me a new stamp book!

Grabbed these two stamps the other day from both Atsugi highway service areas. Don't mind the chicken scratch Japanese writing at the bottom...

So far, I've only got a few stamps from highway service areas near our town. But I'm planning on grabbing a lot more stamps soon...

Autumn gaming events

...because we are going to be super busy doing gaming stuff over the next couple of months!

Tokyo Game Show

I'm helping out a friend with her game at Tokyo Game Show in the Selected Indies 80 area on Friday and Saturday! I'm really nervous because Daikon won't be with me, and I get overwhelmed so easily in big crowded areas. But I'm also pretty excited, because come on, it's Tokyo Game Show! Not every day you get to go to that, right? I don't know if I'll have much energy to walk around, but I'll try to snap shots of whatever I can.

Zentame

Daikon and I will be at this year's Zentame from October 19-20! We'll be showing off his latest game, Hamayumishi: Night Parade of a Hundred Yokai, the demo of which is out now on itch! He worked really hard on it, and was heavily inspired by the old Yokai Kemuri cards we used to love collecting:

Compare Daikon's banner art for Hamayumishi with...

...these cool Yokai Kemuri cards we got before they were discontinued.

Daikon's been working super hard on this game for months now, and I am really excited to finally show it off to the public and see people's reactions. If you haven't yet, please check it out and let us know what you think!

I'm also going to bring the interview editions of all our Indie Tsushin issues, as well as new postcards! We're still waiting for those to come in.

Digigame Expo (デジゲー博)

And finally, we'll also be at the Digital Games Expo in Akihabara on November 3rd! I'm really excited about that too. I'm hoping to get more postcards printed before then, so there should be a different lineup from Zentame, ahaha.

All right, I was going to write some more but it got very late, and I need to get some chores done. Hopefully I will be back soon with regular blog updates?! (How many times have I promised exactly that...)