Hey everyone. It’s been 8 months since my last blog post (which wasn’t really even a full post), yikes! It’s late at night on a Saturday and I just had caffeine so I’m not falling asleep for a while longer, so here’s a random post about what I’ve been up to this past half year and more.

New Years

On New Year’s Eve I went to the Seattle Center Space Needle fireworks. I got some nice pictures, but there were way too many people. Probably won’t go again for a long time.

Dual language post warning!! Chinese version is over here.

雙語po練中文！中文在這裡。

Coming to Seattle from Austin was already two years ago! The last time I wrote such a long reflection was Thanksgiving 2019. It’s about time to reflect a bit on life and the past two years.

Thoughts on Moving to Seattle

I came to Seattle in September of 2021. At the time I thought Return to Office was happening soon, so I made plans with the company to move in September. The company had extensive benefits, helping me move my clothes, computer, printer, etc. to Seattle, renting a temporary apartment, and giving me a house-hunting assistant, all for free.

Dual language post warning!! English version is over here.

Well, here it is. It’s been an open secret within the Violet Moon Discord and community that I would be retiring from modding Minecraft soon, and here is the announcement.

This comes exactly 10 years from the day I publicly released my first mod (the timing wasn’t a coincidence, I saw it while writing the post and decided to release it today, as a nice whole number).

I wanted to spend some time reminiscing about my journey with Minecraft and modded, and where things will go next from here.

It’s the end of the year, which means my stories on social media are flooded with Spotify Wrapped posts and similar “lookbacks” from other services.

Unfortunately, I don’t use Spotify (or is it fortunately?), so I’m missing out on the action. To deal with the fear-of-missing-out (FOMO), I thought I’d write a blog post about some vocal music, new and old, I’ve been enjoying this year.

This is a rarity because most of the music I listen to is non-vocal, video game music, but on the plus side that means I appreciate the vocal music I do like a lot. This list isn’t exhaustive, of course, but just a small sampling of the ones on my mind.

I’ve gotten lazy and not done any Thanksgiving post for three years(?!), which says something about how those years have just evaporated and blown past in the wind.

I feel bad about missing so many, so here is one for this year. It’s two days late though, oops.

I’m thankful…

• For my parents and siblings. Moving away from home in 2021 has made me much more conscious and intentional about maintaining our relationships with regular video chats, a siblings group chat, phone calls etc. I love you all.
• For my continued health.
• For my continued employment through some questionable economic times in the tech industry over the past year. We are VERY privileged in this field and it’s important not to lose sight of that.
• For my precious friends, new and old, for coming into and staying in my life. I’ve never been very great at being social so it’s been a goal of mine for the past few years to treasure everyone I’ve been fortunate enough to form a connection with. Nonexhaustive shoutouts: John, Ben, Marisa, Hailey, Aaron, Jenny, Wanlu. Y’all rock!
• For my past and present music educators. This item appears every time I do these lists and it might be strange given that I don’t do music as a profession at all nowadays, but the lessons I’ve learned in both solo and ensemble settings have stuck with me to this day, and it’s such a joy to be able to occasionally unwind and spend an entire holiday or weekend afternoon just jamming on my instruments (guess what I did all of yesterday afternoon instead of going out for Black Friday shopping? :P).
• For the Violet Moon community, in particular the regulars on IRC. It’s a joy to log into IRC, greet everyone every day, and ask how life is going, even though we’re “strangers” scattered across the globe. My retirement from modding Minecraft is coming soon, but I promise to continue staying with y’all for a long time to come.
• For the Touhou Project community and fangame community. You continue to amaze me with the incredible fanworks that are released year after year, and I look forward to continuing to contribute in my own way through Chinese -> English translation work, showcase videos, etc.

Overall, I am enjoying life and slowly learning how to figure out what truly matters to me. At the risk of sounding narcissistic, when I reflect on who I am, I like what I see and I like that I can see myself changing as I grow up.

I forgot to do my usual Thanksigiving list yesterday, but it’s a tradition I’ve been holding myself to since middle school, so I had to do a make-up today.

Nothing complicated this year, no essays, etc. Just a simple list of the people and things I hold dear.

I’m thankful for…

1. My parents and siblings, who have lovingly cared for me over the last two decades and more.
2. My continued good health.
3. My music educators, for providing me a life-changing experience that impacts me to this day.
4. The fact that I have a comfortable remote job, in a pandemic where many others are struggling day to day.
5. My friends (Kate, Ben, John, Hailey, Charles, Marisa, and other Harmonies Hooligans) for their love and support.
6. The Touhou project and fangame community, for being an endless source of joy and leisure.
7. The Vazkii’s Mods Minecraft community, for being my lurking place for Minecraft.

This year has really gone by in a blink. I hope that we can look forward to better times for both ourselves and our country in the coming year.

GitHub announced several days ago their intention to rename the master branch on the main GitHub interface. This stirred up some thoughts I had about this and renaming “offensive” technological terms altogether, so I decided to make a post.

Disclaimer

Let’s get things straight first. I respect the rights of all people to be who they are, and support diversity efforts in technology. Please don’t go around claiming I hold extremist views as a result of the very narrowly-addressed opinion here. Difficult issues are nuanced. Taking a one-sided approach to everything is rarely the right choice.

I just finished my final presentation of my entire BS and MS career on Tuesday, so I’ve been going through old school files and cleaning them up.

Today, I came across a short piece I wrote sophomore year for a Dean’s Scholars seminar on happiness and positive psychology. The topic was just to write a short piece about something you believed in. Enjoy! The last line is a quote from Nichijou, by the way.

It’s my tenth and final semester at the University of Texas at Austin, so I thought I’d rage a bit comment on which classes I enjoyed the most and least. This will be a random discussion, and won’t exhaustively include every class I’ve ever taken. Perhaps some current UT students will find this of use.

I’ve separated them into three major tiers. “Low tier” are the classes that I despised or were an absolute joke. “Middle tier” are the classes that were helpful, but not particularly impactful. “High tier” are the classes that I felt were definitely worth my tuition.