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what is up

Okay, so here’s what’s up.

It’s been almost a year since the last one of these. The short version: my ACL is fine, the OTHER knee is the problem now, I’m back playing in the league where I’m also the commissioner.

Fitness

This is the big one.

  • My ACL is fine. The doctor cleared it months ago. One year post-op came and went and it was honestly just depressing - the thing holding me back isn’t even the knee they operated on.
  • The real problem is my left knee. Chronic patellar tendinitis, 5 years of it. I finally got it scanned in August and it came back enlarged and worn, not torn - years of overload, not one injury. The tendon is thickened but weaker for its size, and there are new blood vessels with new nerves grown into the bad spot. That’s what’s actually hurting.
  • So I’m on a 12 week block of heavy slow loading now. Muscles change in weeks, tendons change in months. The exercises are treatment for the tendon, delivered through the muscle.
  • I stopped judging it by how a session feels and started tracking numbers instead - the first 5 leg straightenings in the morning (worst rep out of 10, should trend down), the box squat getting lower, and the single leg leg press going from 80kg toward 120kg.
  • I’m finally doing plyometrics. First proper session was September and I’m confidently jumping by myself again. First time in 5 years I felt good about that knee. LET’S GO!
  • Every flare restarts the clock, so the fastest thing available isn’t a needle. It’s a month without a flare.

Basketball

I’m playing again! Season 4 of the league I’m the commissioner of. I skipped 3 whole seasons waiting on this knee.

I only lasted one round though. The left knee started hurting and that was it. It’s a weird kind of frustrating - the knee they rebuilt is ready and the one nobody operated on is the one that stopped me.

Productivity

  • Habitica is still my bible. The system still runs my day.
  • Buffer is still doing the posting - Facebook, Bluesky and Threads on the free tier, X manually.
  • The Tuesday Lightroom ritual is dead. Haven’t touched it in a long time. I’m so lazy.

Books

  • Still on She Comes First. Page 111, moving slow.
  • I started the One Outs manga. The anime stopped short so I had to go find the rest myself.

Media

I finished a bunch of insanely good stuff this year.

  • To Be Hero X - 10
  • Wistoria S2 - 10
  • Food Wars - 9
  • Dandadan - 8, the story is just everywhere
  • One Outs - 10, really good. A pitcher who looks like he’s going to drag an entire losing team to winning.
  • Peaky Blinders - 9, finally done with it. It got repetitive in my opinion
  • Movies that were actually good: Obsession - 5/5, Project Hail Mary - 4.5/5, The Odyssey - 4.5/5, Predestination - 4.5/5. And Chernobyl - 5/5, which is a miniseries but it’s going in here anyway. Letterboxd
  • Adolescence - I really don’t like that. But that’s just my emotion, not a technical judgment.
  • Backrooms - terrible, jesus christ.

Kdramas came back in a big way too. Business Proposal over the holidays was my first one in a while - binged it in 2 days - and it just kept going from there. MyDramaList

  • It’s Okay to Not Be Okay - 9.5, problematic parents and their kids breaking the wheel. Very touching.
  • Smile, You - 9. This is my childhood. I watched it on our thick TV with my mother, brother and sister, and I finally found it again after years of looking. 45 episodes, they really dragged it, but SO nostalgic.
  • Can This Love Be Translated? - 9. The story isn’t that great, Go Youn Jung carried the entire show on her back LOL
  • Business Proposal - 9. Not deep, I liked it anyway.
  • Crash Landing on You - 8.5. Terrible CGI and weird voice delays, carried by the leads.
  • Dropped The East Palace at episode 3, it felt childish. Dropping Alchemy of Souls too.

Before Can This Love Be Translated? I dropped 2 or 3 Netflix kdramas in a row because the stories were super terrible. When a Netflix kdrama is meh, it’s REALLY meh.

Still savoring Bleach: TYBW. I’m on season 4 and still rationing it. It’s the anime of animes, I don’t want it to end yet.

Currently binging Gnosia. We’re on episode 9 and I feel like it’s too repetitive, but it keeps me watching anyway. My expectations are low and I’m genuinely not sure what to expect. It could be the sunk cost fallacy keeping me on it LOL

The other thing I did this year was build myself an actual rating system, because one number was always too small. Now I score four things separately - craft, story, hit (the aura, the goosebumps) and would I rewatch it. Hit is the mood-sensitive one, so quarantining it there stops it from poisoning the rest. And I never rate on the day I finish something, and never two things on the same day.

Business / Building

  • Gaspar Labs is the studio brand now, and the reviewer apps live under it on the Play Store. This is the one that actually shipped.
  • RPS, my game, is at MVP. I’m leaning toward self publishing and self marketing rather than chasing a publisher.
  • Sugar free white chocolate. Low insulin, monk fruit, and the ones I made are pretty good! But this one’s in the back of my mind now because scaling is really hard - nutrition facts, weight, approvals, all of that.
  • Shirts. Plain shirts with different designs, printed off a programmable sewing machine like the one I saw on YouTube. Same problem - scaling is tough. Also back of my mind.
  • 3D Printing. not sure what to do here. Same problem - scaling is tough, back of my mind.

Both of the product ideas are parked for the same reason. Making one of something is easy and fun. Making a thousand is a completely different job.

Software Engineering

  • The reviewer apps under Gaspar Labs - the biggest thing I’ve actually put in front of users.
  • RPS, the game.
  • This website, still. I keep tinkering.

Homelab

Maintenance mode. The firewall and VPN are done, notifications are done, and I’m mostly just keeping it running now instead of adding things. OPNSense and notifications if you want the writeups.

Watches

New hobby - watch making. Seiko mods.

The plan is a Santos, then an AP, then a Nautilus. The AP and the Nautilus are skeletons on NH72. The Santos will be on an NH38, the no date one with the heart, although the Santos won’t have an open heart. This is just to avoid that ghost click since I don’t like dates.

So far I’ve only bought a few parts. I’m not sure if I’ll go further than those three, because it becomes too much, the movements have gotten super expensive, and I’m not going to wear them all anyway. So there’s that.

I spent months last year deciding which Citizen to buy as my first real watch. That’s off the table now - I’d rather build them than buy one.

Karaoke

DONE! I built it.

Yamaha MG06X for the mixer (not the MG10X I was eyeing), Phenyx Pro PTU-71-2H mic, the Alto - TX410 PA speaker, and storage for all of it. I’ve already used it as the commentator for our playoffs and finals games. SO WORTH IT.

I wish I took the one that can mount to the rack though, so that it’s easier to move around.

Gaming

I stopped for a bit. I’m planning on getting into Chrono Trigger once I got the time.

Simracing cooled off too. The Moza rig is sitting right there, I’m just not driving it.

Skills

With the rise of AI I can’t just lock myself and my skills to a specialization, I need to learn more things. So I’m going wide instead of deep - security, software development, AI, product, and honestly every hobby on this page counts too. Not all of it has to be for a job. Some of it is for me to be happy, to talk to people, to have hobbies.

The one thing I actually need to fix is talking and communication. I work from home on a night shift and sometimes I don’t open my mouth for the entire day, so when talking is needed my mouth is just everywhere, I can’t talk straight, I’m mumbling. It’s a skill that went cold, not a personality thing. So now I do tongue twisters before I read, I read out loud with a lower and deeper voice, and I’m looking into Toastmasters.

On the back of my mind

  • Snapmaker U1. I want it and I’m openly trying to justify it lol. The best case I’ve got is prototype the part in plastic, then order the final one machined in aluminum.
  • A bike. Mostly because of my knee. Leaning internal gear hub, and a fixie is ruled out for obvious reasons.
  • Toastmasters. Still just researching clubs.

Gear

Studio monitors - a pair of Edifier MR5 for the desk. They’re the cheapest ones I found, and the thing that sold me is that the other options at that price were per piece. That’s how I ended up with these.

This now page was inspired by Derek Sivers - How and why to make a /now page on your site.

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