I decided to not take extra classes or internship this summer break so I had time to do some of my own personal projects. I'm majoring in International Relations is college, which is a field that I'm always glad to study, but not necessarily to work in. Two years in college, and I still honestly have little idea how to think about it. It certainly taught me a great deal about the world, a whole great deal that I won't learn if I chose to study something else, but I'm still torn for a lot of things. College has, for example, made it almost impossible for me to pursue some longer programming or fiction writing projects.
So! This summer break was a lot of successes and failures and finished projects and ongoing-for-who-knows-how-long projects. I think, and I've noted this multiple times in my diaries so I know my memory's not messing with me again, I did pretty well this break. Not a lot of wasted time at all. Got things done even though it doesn't feel like it.
The biggest thing I finished was the flash card app Lightning Cards. In the process I learned a whole lot more about (solo) project management, user interface, and front-end web programming. I wrote a bit (a lot) about that in a previous post. I think that, yeah, I won't mind doing this for a living. I just have to find someone who needs/wants it enough to pay for it.
I wrote a guide to basic JavaScript for new (front-end) web developers: The No-Nonsense Basic JavaScript Guide for the Novice Web Developer. I believe it's a good one. It went through a couple of revisions and I got a couple of people to read through it. I have no idea if it's going to help anyone, but I hope it does. I survived in this field by blindly stumbling on things and code snippets and assorted advices. This is the kind of guide I wish I had when I had had enough of HTML/CSS and wanted to start learning JavaScript. I wrote more about it in a previous blog post.
I'm currently writing an appendix page for it concerning clean code and good code structure. It's a bit harder to figure out, but I think I can get it out soon.
I got paid moving a website for my dad's organization from Wix (the horror!) to Wordpress. I used to rap on Wordpress a lot, but it's been 7 years and my blog is still here, heh. Wix, on the other hand, is horrible bad very bad. I had to copy-paste the website's post by hand, by hand. I also did some fun CSS/HTML editing to make the new Wordpress site looks like the old one. This one, at least, was fun.
I finished one (1) translation, for an Indonesian newspaper short story. Everything I have to say about that I already said in the blog post. Maybe I should have done more translations, but I guess summer break I wasn't feeling it. I also have another ongoing English to Indonesian translation for a science fiction story. Hmm. I should get to it. It's gonna be a good one.
I studied Japanese a lot. My studying pattern is still erratic; some days I'm gonna drill vocabularies in and then I'll forget about it until next week when I'll try to brush up on grammar or so. But I'm still going. Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar has been indispensable. Duolingo also isn't a terrible place when my brain is too mushy for proper studying sessions.
I tidied up my homepage a bit. I went into it expecting that I'd want an overhaul, but no, I think it's fine. I can't really think of some other design I wanted to change it into, anyway.
I started working on a game with my sister. A Neko Atsume-like, but set in a shop for magical girls to visit. She did some fun designs for it, while I tried to make the system and UI. It's not really going anywhere, at the moment. I planned to make it a browser game with some Vue + PixiJS magic, but I haven't really gotten it further than the drawing board. I should pick it back up sometime.
I'm writing a novel. It's sitting at 18k words at the moment. That's twice and a half as long as the longest story I've ever finished, so I'm really nervous about it. I've never really written a novel before---or well rather, none of the things I wrote that I planned to be a novel ever really take off. Even short stories are often difficult for me to finish. Flash fictions, I'm more okay with, but not a lot of people are interested in that.
The novel's progressing. Slowly, but it's progressing. The pacing is terrible. The writing is often shite. But I feel like I'm learning more about the story and characters as I go along, so I think I'm going to chug along until I see the end before I inevitably throw these into the trash and write the entire thing again from the beginning.
Gah, writing is hard.
I bought a Nintendo Switch! With money I saved up doing various odd jobs the last few months. God, I love this machine. I love the small Wiimote-like Joy-Cons. I love that I can play it on TV and then just pick it up and move and still play it when I get too restless on the couch. I love how it feels in my hand.
I got Just Shapes & Beats and Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The former is a good fun game I can play with my sister. The latter is just A Whole Meal, An Entire Rollercoaster of Emotion, A Lot. I thought $60 is a lot, but this game might genuinely make it worth it. It's A Lot. I might say more about it later.
I feel like I'm still missing something, but I think that's the major points for this summer break. Technically, this semester I'll be doing research work with my professors instead of classes, but I'm still not sure how the process is going to be. I might have still have time to do some extracurricular cross-field funtime (i.e. more coding, more translating). We'll see.
