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Hello all. I'm here with a brief update, since I'm now on the other side of my dissertation, and one of my exams. It sure is nice to be free of all of that. Even though I've still got 5 exams left to go I feel quite free having only revision to worry about. It's great.

On the day after my report was due I went out with my friends to a Sealife aquarium because they wanted to see the Animal Crossing promotion going on. It was quite fun. I haven't been to an aquarium in years and it was fun to observe so many creatures.

I took my 3DS with my hoping to Streepass some Animal Crossing fans, and I actually did get 2 Streetpasses - my fourth and fifth this year. It's not wholly dead! I ended up taking some fun low-res pictures with my 3DS camera, too.

In my free time I've also been making a new MTG deck. I've been building an Azorius flicker deck and it's such an interesting archetype! You can generate value in so many ways. Originally, my deck's idea was to use Venser, Shaper Savant as a flicker outlet by using instant speed fast flicker effects like Ephemerate to have a repeatable source of Counterspells (or, in this case, Unsubstantiates), but I've been having fun with building it to do much more than that. In particular I am enjoying being able to flicker creatures that tutor on entry. Micromancer is great in particular on merit of being able to fetch more flicker effects!

For the commander I've chosen Yorion, Sky Nomad. This is a card I've been interested in for a while, mostly because I think companions are cool (though this one can't be your companion in commander) and I think Yorion is pretty. But now I understand it's excellent with the same spells I want to be using on Venser, specifically instant speed fast flickers. It lets you respond to a board wipe by casting Ephemerate on Yorion to repeat its entry effect, allowing you to slow flicker the rest of your board to dodge the wipe. How cool is that! You can even save Yorion by scooping it up into your hand with something like a Dour Port Mage. The shenanigans this archetype are capable of have thoroughly enamoured me.

Beyond that, I don't really have too much news. I'm hanging in there, so, I'll see you in the next post, if I make it that far.

Salutations, all. It has been a hot minute. Life has been busy, both at university and at home. I have been slaving away at my dissertaiton project, which is... going. So, here's a little bit of an update.

Firstly I have no baked goods to show off this time, unfortunately. However, I have made several batches of gingerbread for various friends, even if I didn't get pictures of them.

My Magic the Gathering addiction hyperfixation continues to endure. I've been working on a new decklist for Grist Voracious Larva which I am looking forward to taking out for a spin at some point soon. When I'm happy with it, I'll post it. It's pretty standard for a Golgari reanimator list, though. I'm still on the hunt for the secret sauce...

One last exciting thing is that I went to Comic Con. It was very fun. I dressed up as Faust, like I did last year, and there were a lot of Guilty Gear fans, actually! It was so nice to get to meet people that liked the same things I did. And I got a lot of cool merchandise, too. It was a great day!

So, I don't really have that much to tell. But that's alright. It's been nice to just have a chill Christmas holiday at home. See you next time.

Hello all. 'Tis August, so I thought it's about time I updated the old blog. So, here I am!

First thing's first: behold my latest bakes! Fistly, brownies. I usually just make chocolate fudge cake because it's my go-to easy cake. However I wanted actual brownies this time, and took to BBC Good Food. The recipe is a bit expensive because it needs lots of dark chocolate, but it produced perhaps the nicest brownies I had had in a long time.

Secondly, an olive oil cake. I was a bit sceptical about this one but it was actually really lovely. The olive oil really enhances the texture. Can recommend! Shoutout to Lily for lending me her ultra-fancy actually-from-Greece olive oil for it.

Cuppa Conquest was a fun project for my holiday in Norfolk. Now I am home though, so don't have much to add to it for now. Perhaps another time! Norfolk was great though, lots of nice places to go to, and we were right by the beach. Most relaxing!

I got back from holiday just as Bloomburrow prereleases began, and on that weekend I met with some friends for lots of MtG gaming. We played with our new Bloomburrow Commander decks and it was so much fun. Miss Bumbleflower is an absolute beast! Of the 3 games I've played with her so far, she has won me 2 and got me joint second in another (me and the other last player were having an infinite value showdown and ended up calling it a draw because we were hungry). We also split the cost for a draft booster box of Phyrexia: All Will Be One, and that was really fun. 'Twas a great weekend!

One last thing on the topic of MtG: I keep making cards based on me and my friends' D&D characters, so I might make a page for those at some point soon. And I also might make a page to dump my MtG dekclists. Keep your eyes peeled.

Anyways, I'll see you in the next post. I must get back to having a whimsical and joyous summer! Until then!

Hello all. Here's a little update on how my summer has been going.

Recently I made the trek to Warwick Castle with some friends. It was a very good outing. I had been there twice before, but both instances were many many moons ago. I think since then I have acrued a lot more medieval fantasy based interests (D&D, Fire Emblem, etc.) which made me enjoy it even more this time. I can very much recommend it. The castle and dungeons were great, the jousting was spectacular, and it was an all round good day out.

A project me and a freind have been working on this past week is assembling Ultimate Monopoly by jonizaak. We thought if we had a bunch of people over to play it one afternoon it'd be most hilarious. However, we didn't expect it to be such a pain to compile: it needs resources from Monopoly, Monopoly Stock Exchange, Monopoly: The Mega Edition, and Monopoly Super Add-Ons. It took us a while, but we got there. We're going to play the game in August, so after we're done with that I might make a follow-up post reviewing the chaos.

With said friend I also made an orange and almond cake. Not something I've ever made before, but it was very tasty. Can recommend. It was very funny to make though, requiring you to simmer an orange for an hour so it purees more easily.

Dungeons & Dragons is a game very prevalent in my mind right now. I've been playing a lot with my group going through Lost Mine of Phandelver at the minute, and I'm likely going to be playing with another group too, soon. I'm looking forward to getting to make another character. Nothing's set in stone right now, but the updates to the Wizard in the 2024 PHB are really making me want to play an Illusioner. It's just a subclasss I've never really thought about before, but I think really suits my playstyle. I might ask if I can use the updated version since I really like the enw features it gets. We'll see. I'm just glad that I want to play Wizard again, because my old wizard was one of my favourite characters I've ever played. It's a much needed return to my roots.

My quest of learning Magic: The Gathering is going well too. I've made a deck centred around Sefris of the Hidden Ways that makes a ton of value by going through dungeons super fast. It's super fun! If a little strong for the rest of my playgroup. I've managed to find a fourth person as well, so I'm no longer stuck playing 3 player Commander. Huzzah!

I think that's all I have to tell for now. Summer is going well. I have lots to occupy myself, and when I'm not occupied I am quite happy to just sit there and chill. It's nice not having to work constantly any more. So, I shall see you in the next post. Until then!

Salutaitons, all. Things have been quite well recently. My birthday was on Sunday, which was very nice. My mum made a smashing cake and I got some cool stuff. A new bag, and also some MTG cards to start my collection (currently having a lot of fun, looking to build an Elminster commander deck), as well as a loaf tin, which I will be baking many a cake in I've no doubt.

The day before, though, I had a most splendid outing to the National Museum of Computing. I had been to Bletchley Park a few years ago, and it was good, but this was even better. There was lots about the wartime computing, and it was more detailed than that in Bletchley Park. There were working replicas of several machines, and it was wonderful to learn many a fact about them.

What I was really there for, though, was the retro computers. And boy were they plentiful. It was quite astonishing how big they were. The disk drives were comparable to that of two ovens adjoined to each other. Astonishing! I also got to play some of an old text-based adventure game named Colossal Cave. It was very cool to see an old era game!

There were also some very good demos for the retro side of things. There was a working phone server that you could see dial, and also an old computer that let you take a selfie with a grainy 90s webcam. It was so good!

Hello, readers. This month has been going pretty alright. I went on a day trip to Oxford recently which was quite nice, and definitely a highlight of recent times. A friend of mine was in a play which I went to see, and it was very good. I didn't manage to get any spectacular photos, so here's an average one I took of the river, and one of a beautiful painting in G&D's:

Also, while I was there, my friend and I made white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake. (Recipe is by iconic Mary Berry, and can be found here.) We also used his bread machine to make chocolate bread. It was certainly an unusual beast to say the least. It was surprisingly like normal bread, only truly tasting like chocolate when proper chunks were in your bite. I didn't think to take photos before they had begun being devoured, but here they are nonetheless:

Another bake of mine recently is classic scones. I made a batch for Mother's day to make a cream tea in a box. Recipe is, again, Mary Berry's, which you can find here.

In the gaming department, I've been playing a lot of my new copy of Splatoon 3, which is a game I've been meaning to get for absolutely ages. Found it in the local CEX for £30 and thought "why the hell not". It's as spectacular as I expected. I'll be representing Team Keyboard in next weekend's Splatfest, so watch out!

That's about the highlights of my life since last update. I don't have much to say right now, cause I'm quite tired. Thankfully, it's the end of term now, so I'll be heading home soon for a much needed break... If you can even call it that, because I've got 5 exams to revise for and 2 programming courseworks to do. It's whatever. I'll hold out, because I always do. See you then.