January was a pretty sad month. I don’t want to get into too much detail, as I already covered what happened in the article Absence. TL;DR my mother died, and I have had a hard time coping with that fact. As much as I miss her though, life must move on and I am trying to find healthy ways to cope. What I have found, to my surprise since my last article, was that programming actually takes my mind off of everything happening and makes me feel a lot better. Still feel awful, but not AS awful which is good.

In other news, I decided I didn’t like the old theme which used ASCII art as its main thematic element. It looked retro, which I liked, but on mobile it tended to look bad. So I found a minimalist theme, which looks sort of like a UNIX terminal. Depending on how I feel after I am done testing it for a month, I will either keep it or try out a different theme. That’s about everything in my personal life…lets talk nerdy.

Icaros and BSD

I started off the week by trying out Icaros. It is an Amiga-like OS that runs on x86 hardware. The only one that I personally know of that runs on x86. Having been using Linux consistently since Microsoft ruined my Windows 8 install by upgrading to Windows 10 in 2016, I felt like I needed to try something more esoteric. I always wanted an Amiga, so Icaros is the next best thing. Its definitely been a different experience. I’m used to things being UNIX-like, and Amiga is a whole ’nother animal. It is not installed on hardware. My drivers simply do not work with it. I am instead running it in VirtualBox. I will update next week on how I am enjoying it.

After next week, I will likely be using a BSD system as it will be BSD week. This feels like an interesting experiment, so I will be installing it after playing around with Icaros for a bit. I have some experience in Slackware, which is the oldest currently-maintained version of Linux, but I didn’t like the way upgrades worked. Linux is not Unix, but Slackware is as close to Unix as Linux gets.

Lifting

Earlier this week I started bench pressing with my brother. I was able to press about 90 pounds, and I didn’t even feel DOMs the next day. Monday is my arm day, so I will bump up the weight to see how high I can get the weight. My end goal is to lose weight and reduce risk of stroke, diabetes, and cardiac arrest. I am currently 260 pounds, so through lifting, eating healthy protein, and cardio, I am hoping to reach 120 by the end of the year. Admittedly, 40 pounds is a lot of weight to lose. Its reachable though. The strat is to drink protein shakes with Almond Milk, eat lots of fish, and even more veggies while doing these intense exercises four times a week. By 2024 I will be 120 pounds again.

Fun stuff

As for fun, non-nerd stuff I have done, I went to see Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. I loved just about everything about the movie. Puss in Boots coming to terms that he only has one life left, learning to value friends and family more than personal achievement, etc. all feel very topical for me right now. It hit me in just the right spot emotionally. And Death? Death really stole the show. One minute Puss in Boots is fighting with swords, being dashing and debonair, and the next minute he is running in a horror-movie style chase scene.

I particularly liked Goldilocks’s character arc. When I saw the trailer I thought that she and the bears looked boring, but for me they ended up being some of the most lovable characters in the movie. Her arc dealt with loving family, and appreciating what she has instead of what she could have had. Her Yorkshire(I think) accent was also very funny. I usually think of Goldilocks’s voice as being sweet and innocent when I read the fairy tale, but the British accent works for her.

This is a Shrek spin-off?

Overall, I was surprised how un-shreklike it was. Shrek is known for pop culture references, gross-out humor, and crass jokes. Nothing wrong with that, but Puss in Boots hardly had any of that. It was still very funny, but I could tell that the writers were playing it more serious this time around. Thankfully, we still had Perro the…well…perro, and Jack Horner around for comedy relief. The ending also teased heavily that Shrek 5 is in the works, which I am excited for.

I’m hoping that they hire the team that worked on Puss in Boots: The Last Wish for it, because the Shrek franchise needs this kind of writing to thrive. They can keep the gross-out humor, pop culture references, etc. all they want. But ever since Shrek 3 came out, the characters stopped being the focus, and the gross out humor was the main attraction. Shrek 1 and 2 weren’t exactly deep. They especially didn’t tackle existentialism like Puss in Boots did. If they play it right and hire the right writing team, Shrek 5 could be the best movie in the series.

Thats all

Mini-review aside, that’s pretty much everything I have done this week. The plan is to keep working on June Text Editor, get familiar with C, and become a good programmer. My goal with this project is to start using C more regularly, since in college I almost exclusively did my programming in Python. Python is cool, but its not challenging. I get bored when I use it. It is also slow. I will keep working on it, and update this blog next week.