Hi!

Welcome to my second update. I’ve been on a trip until yesterday, so this post is a little bit late. Sorry for that. 😅 Talking about the trip, I guess that’s where I want to start off.

United LAN

In summer 2006, so about 11 years ago, I went to my first ever LAN party. It was a small-ish mostly Nintendo themed event, and the purpose of my visit was to participate in the Mario Kart DS tournament. I was 15 years old and it might have been my first ever longer journey alone. Getting to the venue was an ordeal, and when I arrived I didn’t know a single person there. But one of the organizers helped me open up to a few people and I made some friends. The big switch came when I got second place in the tournament - right behind the world champion at that time. Let’s just say that this helped me meet more people and I had a great time overall. But who would have thought that, after 11 years, I still go to this event (well, it’s kind of a successor of the original event) every year to see all the people that I’ve now known for such a long time, and even meet a few new people. Some of the people are still the very same people I have met 11 years ago, and some of them have become really good friends over the years. One of them even moved here to Göttingen because he already knew me and some of my friends. It’s hard to describe what this whole thing means to me, but going to this event is really important for me. This year’s event went from last Friday to yesterday (Tuesday), and I had once again a great time. One thing that surprised me was that I was able to create a running group. On Saturday we went out for a run with eight (!!!) people. That’s for saying that gamers are only couch potatoes. ;)

Unfortunately, the event is in danger. Less and less people are coming every year and one of the main organizers is probably dropping out for next year. So far, I’ve only been a participant, but maybe I can support them a little bit and we can make sure that this event stays alive. I have not been active in the “gaming scene” for probably 8 years or so, but I still love going to this event.

More information (in German) here: https://united-lan.de

Running

I mentioned running already above. In July, I have started again to run every day. I did something like this already in January and February 2017, but had to stop due to knee pain. This time, I’m trying to be careful and stretch properly and use knee supporters and stuff like that. So far, it has been going very well, and I’m already ahead of schedule in achieving my goal of 100 kilometers for July. My goal for this year is to run a half marathon. Depending on the progress I make over the next few weeks, I might try it already in September. I guess it will be harder to find opportunities for a half marathon in winter.

Next year a full marathon then?

Lost Duolingo Streak

Last week, I managed to lose my 136 day Duolingo streak. I was a little bit disappointed, but it has happened before, so I can deal with it. These streaks motivate me a lot, so every time I lose my streak, I struggle a little in getting back on track. But I’m not giving up!

"What is an 'Only in Japan' moment?"

https://www.quora.com/What-is-an-Only-in-Japan-moment

The answers to this question on Quora paint a beautiful picture of Japan’s culture and people. I can’t recommend enough for you to read through some of them. I personally experienced a lot of the things mentioned there, and while I’m not saying that Japan is a perfect country, these things are the reasons why I like Japan so much. If you are interested in Japan in any way, please take some time to read them!

Flappy Unicorn / Flappicorn (working title)

In 2014, I went through a tutorial on how to create a Flappy Bird clone for the iPhone. After it was finished, my flatmate and I modified the game to create a completely different atmosphere by using a unicorn instead of a bird. Don’t ask me how we got that idea. Anyway, in the following tweet’s video you can see what it looks like:

All the sprites were created by my flatmate, and I changed a lot about the physics that the original tutorial used. I rediscovered this during the LAN and got it running easily on my current iPhone. For some reason, I was motivated about actually finishing the game, so I ported it from Objective-C to Swift and started adding high scores. I think I will finish the game after my exams and maybe even put it up on the App Store. There’s some potential, right?

Dogen

A few days after the last post, I discovered a guy called Dogen. He makes comedic YouTube videos about Japan and the Japanese language, and he has actual Japanese lessons (mostly on phonetics I think) on Patreon. To be honest, I think his videos are my new favorites. I LOVE his humor and his cuts and basically everything about his videos. Here are some of my favorites:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XcB6dViF8E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJlt-B8CiIY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z8EPUsG-RU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOd7pP1tQyA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-agWmiWWbc

Also shortly after the last post, my flatmate had some music running in our living room. It was accompanied by a loop of an anime girl studying with headphones on. This was my discovery of YouTube live music, especially those relaxing ones which you just have running in the background at all times. The one I talked about above and still my favorite (although there are other really good ones as well!) is this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWZiKbWcVVQ

Channel Link: ChilledCow

Tweet Collection

Here are some random tweets, some tweeted by me, some by other people that I just really liked:

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make any new videos or anything else I could show off in this last section, so you’ll only get an old video of mine that I like:

Hiking in Bukhansan National Park. Seoul Vlog #3

Hopefully, I’ll be back on schedule by the end of this week. It might become a slightly shorter post, but I don’t think that’ll be a problem. 🙃

Thanks for reading and see you soon!

 

PS: I changed the blog theme to something a little bit more modern looking. I’m still working on it though!