Getting pummeled

I've been breaking my one-post-per-month rule lately, I suppose this is a way to make up for some of the lacking activity around here.

I finally threw my gamepad in the trash bin and installed DSFix + DSMFix, and made my way to the Undead Burg without too much trouble. And suddenly Dark Souls became incredibly good. Just for fun I made a new character and wasted the Asylum Demon on my first try (not yet on the first encounter, that will probably come later, and no black firebombs as a starting gift!). Currently trying to kill dark knights for gud lewt, but my parrying must have taken a dive. Did two in a row in the beginning, but suddenly I cannot do it anymore. Now that I know I should do light instead of heavy attacks after a successful parry.
Bottomline: Screw all of the people who say you must play with a gamepad, the game plays great with keyboard + mouse + fixes.

Playing the violin pretty much every day now until my neck hurts. Fortunately, all of my typing exercises at work keep my fingers and hands in shape so those parts are fine. I really do need to get a proper chinrest soon however, can't put a big wad of towely material on the violin forever. I'm almost able to play the first three Etüden from Wohlfahrt with good intonation all the way through again, the next step will be better bowing. It took just a few days to go from bowing all over the fingerboard (even when looking) to keeping the bow in the proper +-cm area. For 15 years, my 7 years of childhood playing was hiding deep down in my heart, and now I'm letting it blossom again. The big hurdle right now is to finally learn proper beautiful vibrato, which is the main reason my neck is clamping down on the violin like a vice. Ave Maria by Schubert...

Might start _the_ big origami project soon. Still thinking about whether to use one 1.5x1.5m^2 or two 2.0x1.0m^2 pieces. The big version would be magnificent, but I'm not sure if I would ever be able to forgive myself for the joint in the middle :p

I should order a Teensy and hack my HHKB, the warranty is over by now anyway. Would be great to have any flashed keyboard layout wherever I go with my HHKB. I read about an idea to use CTRL-tapping for ESC since I'm a vim:er, and that sounds incroyable. I should also finish my own keyboard layout optimizer, I have a scoring system which is rather different from most where Normal does very well, and I'd like to see what the optimal layout would be this way. The scoring is based on which would be the most comfortable key to press next, rather than which keys are most comfortable to press overall. The latter produces a lot of funny stretches and tension (Colemak...) which my scoring tries to eliminate.

Power is off in parts of the cave, cannot do much. So I did this. And thinking about what to topple on my todo-list.