Tea Time

In which a master and his pupils think about life.

The cold wind was blowing incessantly and with its strength, it had cleared all clouds from the sky: perfect blue now being painted with black spots where a flock of birds was moving South. The sun was setting, painting the skyline red and turning the snow-covered mountain tops pink. The shadows were growing longer and the only noises were the cicadas song and the wind blowing among the tree leaves.

Useful tools for blogging and maintaining a website

Joplin is a note-taking and to-do application with synchronization capabilities for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS.

Useful tools for blogging and maintaining a website

While I don't use a lot of images on this blog, I do make art that I sometimes like to share online, and think it is important to make sure that images are optimised properly, so they don't take up a huge amount of space.

Krita – the app I use to make art – has its own web optimisation settings, however it is TinyPNG that provides the best results.

A short story by Neil Gaiman

I have been in a bit of a slump this week, so I am glad I picked a short story for my blog: even if I didn't feel like reading, this was short enough that I could do it, and in turn, I was able to push myself to write this blog entry.

In which I understand why “The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson is considered one of the best ghost stories of the 20th Century.

I picked up this book after I watched both the 1999 film “The Haunting” and the more recent Netflix TV adaptation, and:

• Failed to imagine how the two screen adaptations could be even connected.
• Based on what I saw in the TV adaptation, I wanted to know how important Nell's isolation was in the original book.
• As a skeptic, found interesting how the book was inspired by the story of a real-life “paranormal investigation”, of which the author noticed the flaws.

Some notes on the novel “Let the Right one In” by John Ajvide Lindqvist

I have been traveling a lot the past couple of weeks, but thanks to my long commutes, I was still able to finish Let the Right one In (this might be the only perk of train commutes), which I found to be intensely creepy in a good way.

My thoughts on the novel “Ishmael” by Daniel Quinn

I used to be an avid reader, but my life has been so hectic recently, and filled with not-so-good events, that I abandoned reading for quite a long time now.

A new home for my blog

I have been blogging for ages, my first blog being on LiveJournal back in the days it was not only the popular option, but the only option. After LiveJournal, I moved to Tumblr, then Wordpress, Medium, then back to a more basic blogging platform with GitHub Pages. However, I've never really blogged consistently, even though I have set that as a goal for myself every year (and failed every single time).

So many things have happened in my life since I last blogged, that I would need to write a separate post just for that, and I might be doing it, but right now I am taking advantage of my newly found stability (well, “kind of” stability, since I am currently without a home of my own), to pick up blogging again, and really make it a habit this time.