6/30/2026

Week five of OSRI is underway and the project is going well! It's veered into some existential, creepy territory. Sometimes I feel a little squeamish working with it, which is not a bad feeling, per se, but a new challenge in the creative process.

The heat of this summer has been a scorcher, and of course the heat wave in Europe has me worried. I feel like a frog being boiled alive.

6/10/2026

This one goes out to the guy who-- when I mentioned I would be making a website for my final project-- offered to help me build it. As if I would have proposed a project that I didn't have the skills to complete... mansplaining is quite rare in my experience so that was quite frustrating!

6/9/2026

A week in to OSRI, and I have to say it's so strange being on campus during the summer. All of the buildings which I expect to be packed with students are instead weirdly vacant. This is especially true of Mudd, the main library. It's a huge concrete colossus, bulky and brutalist. It's always looked like a sci-fi temple of knowledge to me. Once I retreat to the upper levels, I can spend hours without seeing another person. Luckily for me, the cohort of researchers I'm here with are a friendly and social bunch, so any isolation is strictly voluntary.

I've met so many new and interesting people in my short time here. Everyone is very welcoming. Just last night I was on my way to run some errands when I was stopped and invited to watch The Muppets Christmas Carol. One of my suitemates left a bowl of fresh-picked strawberries in the fridge for the room. There are folks here working on insanely cool, brainy projects, but I haven't encountered any of the snobbery one might expect. Plus, Oberlin itself is lush, green, and teeming with life. I'm so excited to see where the summer takes me!

6/2/2026

It's currently the second day of OSRI and the first unstructured day where I am focusing purely on research. Yesterday was orientation, which is always a bit of a necessary evil to me. I swear by the end of the day my name stopped sounding like a word!

I've made quite the reading list for myself and am happy to say I am tearing through it so far. Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death was a short but dense read. It was able to convey more meaning with a simple sentence than many books can in a paragraph. While impressive, it was quite a challenge to read, and took longer than I would have expected at a slim 167 pages.

There was also a bit of a mix up as far as meals are concerned with the program. We all started yesterday, but the dining hall doesn't open until the fifth! It seems strange that a program going on 20 years would run in to such a problem, but It looks like I'm slumming it with instant noodles and Nutri-Grain bars until Friday.

5/21/2026

With the semester over and OSRI yet to begin, I had some time to add a few bits and bobs to the site. The comics page is more decorated, although maybe to a distracting degree... I'm still not quite happy with it, but I'll have to look on it with fresh eyes later.

My semester ended in a quite the whirlwind. Final projects and extracurricular obligations all collided to make something of a mess. I made it through, just barely, and so far my GPA is only slightly worse for wear. In the midst of this storm, I made one short film, attended a festival for another, formatted a comics anthology, served on a search committee, became an impromptu admissions rep, and once again battled the local CVS for my meds.

When I was younger, I never would have dreamed I could be so busy. I always thought of myself as a bit of a lazybones, so despite the chaos I am proud of myself for sticking it out, and seeing (mostly) everything through. Here's hoping for a quieter summer!

4/17/2026

Some months take pass like a kidney stone, others whiz by without much warning at all. Somehow, I've found myself in both kinds of month, at the same time. I think I got a little too overambitious this semester. I'm still not totally used to the idea of a folks wanting my input, so I say yes to everything that comes my way. A lot of motivational speakers say you should do that-- say yes to every opportunity-- but I'm not so convinced.

I haven't been able to give 100% of my energy to any one thing. Plus, I've had to be very rigid with my time, purely because I don't know how else I'll get it all done. Still, somehow I've managed to keep my head above water. If not perfect, at least everything's chugging along.

2/27/2026

Oh good lord it's been a second since I've written! (I say, fully aware that I've gone entire months without updating before) I've been in the throes of summer applications, classwork, and the typical college housing hullaballoo. I've also been without my ADHD meds for a while because the one-two punch of a hellishly bureaucratic psych's office and a disorganized small-town CVS has made getting my prescription feel like solving the goddamn Da Vinci Code.

I'm currently on the hunt for a dot-matrix printer. One would think that a two-hundred year old institution would have one lying around somewhere, but alas, it's proven a difficult task to find one at all, even more so one that still works!

I've finished the functional layout of the comics page, and because I'm impatient, it's now available under the Rollie-Pollie button. Hopefully soon I'll find some cute images or widgets to fill the gaps. Or maybe I could add an audio player with comics-themed music? Probably not, but there's much to consider.

In other news, I've been learning Godot, and working in a purpose-made engine has been such a breath of fresh air from forcing a web browser to kneel to my whims. It feels like a bit of a shame to learn G Script rather than some other, more standard scripting language. Oh, well, it seems like a transferable enough skill set.

2/12/2026

Today I found a box of 3000 sheets of dot-matrix printer paper that is older than I am, and has apparently sat abandoned in the basement of a bookstore for nearly thirty years. The coolest part is how the paper has aged. The topmost sheets are very yellowed, definitely pretty oxidized, but, the sheets further down in the box are much lighter! I wonder why that is?

There's some excellent potential with using it for the Vid Glitch project, as that develops. Ack! I can't wait to see where that takes me.

I also attended a show for my friend's bands, Time Bug and Pony Biology. It was a funky combo show. In spite of my raging headache and relentless caffeine jitters, I really enjoyed it!

2/11/2026

Feeling good! Stressed, but good! Went out to the bar last night for the first time in my life. On a Tuesday, for some unknowable reason. It was just alright. I had a great time with my friends but the crowded college bar scene was overwhelming.

Also last night (or I suppose this morning) there was a false fire alarm in my building. It went off at around one in the morning, and we weren't let back in for half an hour. The fire department took their sweet time too! Honestly, I can't blame them. That building has false alarms once a month. It's a bit of a boy-who-cried-wolf situation at this rate.

2/10/2026

Almost perfectly a month after that post, I actually published this damn site, so hip hip hooray! Sparrowfish is officially in a new era! But, the work's not over yet! He're some things that I still want to do:

• Add a comics page
• Add shrine pages for my favorite shows
• Create a media log with the music and TV I've been enjoying recently
• Get more folks to join the web ring
• Make button links
• Collect my buddies' button links
• Make a neighbor page
• Upload more writing
• Make items in art gallery clickable
• Clean up my whole CSS situation - this one is behind the scenes, but trust me, it's getting dire!

So much to do! Ah, the joys of indie web!

1/12/2026

Today's the day! Today's the day! Or at least tomorrow is. Regardless, Sparrowfish 4.0 is almost here! I'm so excited for this to be the new and improved Sparrowfish.

1/5/2026

Dear reader, I'll let you in on a little secret: these first few entries are FAKE!!! Gasp! Horror! Well, ok, fake might be an over-simplification, but they aren't public yet either. See, as of writing this, I'm still working on this version of Sparrowfish. Since its such a huge overhaul, it didn't feel right to update pages as I went. So I've been blogging to nobody, mostly so the page will look nice and populated when visitors come to look! But, now I'm in the mood to blog about my progress, on building the site, so that's what I'll do.

Since Getting back to Oberlin, I've been working on the project pages for Seven Dimensional Seas, Vid Glitch, and of course, Sparrowfish. I think these have come along super nicely, and it'll be nice to have a specialized place to log updates about each project. Letting myself let go of mobile optimization has been super freeing. I think I might make an abridged version of the site for mobile, but it won't be nearly as visually interesting. There's just no space!

1/4/2026

Happy New Year! I'm back on Oberlin campus for winter term! In a few days I'll start as an inter at FAVA, the Firelands Association for Visual Arts. They're located in this super cool, funky building which was formally a church, but now houses a ton of arts organizations. I'm so glad to be working in-person again. I go a little crazy if I spend too long as in front of a computer. I wanna work with my hands, dangit! And, now I get to!

12/28/2025

The hunt for Things to Do This Summer is officially on! I'm sitting in the library with my brand new CD "discman" I sometimes get weird looks, but it feels good to have add-free music without shelling out to Spotify.

12/25/2025

Merry Christmas! I had a lovely morning with my family. My Dad liked his gift, hooray! My sister got my a Kiki's Delivery Service sketchbook, and I also recived the usual wealth of Scooby-Doo merch. I've added a hoodie and some gym shorts to my collection this year.

12/24/2025

As I write this, it is almost Christmas Day. I worked very hard on my Dad's gift, and I'm so excited to see his reaction.