So this month was quite crazy, and I have a feeling that the next one might be even more, since I will have some Eastern vacation time, which is going to be kinda fun.

Just like 30 days ago, I will take a look at some of my media consumption and device usage and divide it into categories, and I will also talk about how I felt about it.

Podcasts

Nothing too different this time, I listened to the regular Darknet Diaries and Late Night Linux episodes of the month, which were actually quite great.

A notable mention should go to Tech Over Tea’s episode 108, I don’t listen to it that often , but I did so this time.

My highlight would go to Already Gone and its episode, The disappearance of Cari Farver, one of the weirdest true crime stories I’ve heard in a while. I tend to sleep while listening to these, but I just couldn’t with this one until I finished it completely.

Books

Last month I had mentioned that I wanted to start reading more books, I had read a ton of manga, but I kinda didn’t wanna count them as proper books, still, while I gained a lot of respect for manga lately, I will still differentiate them a bit just for the sake of it.

I finished The Stranger, by Albert Camus, a philosophical novel with a protagonist who kinda doesn’t care about anything, but everything he does ends up being quite important for his future. Its a short read, but really interesting, I think the author won a Nobel prize so there’s that. I found myself identifying more with the main character than I thought, I kinda hated that, but I guess you tend to dislike the features of people that remind you of yourself the most.

I finished Scythe, and the Thunderhead, by Neal Shusterman. This is a trilogy, and I am currently reading the last part. Its a sci-fi novel about a future where humanity achieved immortality, and its governed by a a benevolent (and, so far, actually good) artificial intelligence that makes sure humanity lives on an actually happy and good life, despite how meaningless it has become for new generations that don’t know what mortality feels like. However, the matters of life and death are outside the Thunderhead’s jurisdiction, and in hands of the scythes, humans chosen with the right to kill (a.k.a. glean), permanently, too keep population in check. The story revolves around two scythe apprentices, their adventures and struggles. It’s a really awesome read that will probably be turned into a movie at some point.

I finished Dracula, by Bram Stroker. I had never given classic horror a go before, but this one was a pleasant surprise. The original Dracula story was something I thought I knew, elements like Dracula’s castle and the power possessed by that monster make an appearance here, but despite what you might expect of the original vampire, the book is still filled with great characters and moments that were truly nerve-wracking. I couldn’t help but read faster and faster at times where the tension raised up, hoping for it to end when it was only getting worse. But its not all bad, there is always hope, and the determination of the characters to defend their loved ones and the future of humanity from the reign of the un-dead, is just great, but a few moments of old English were a little hard to read. I listened to different audiobooks while reading, which was quite atmospheric too.

Manga

I didn’t make the time to script anything to get this data via the API, but here is my manually obtained data.

• Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie. From chapters 1-46. I got introduced to this just like Komi-san, via the anime trailer. Shikimori is pretty cool, and his boyfriend, Izumi, wants to show her that he can be cool too, but he is pretty unlucky, which makes for some fun stuff happening all the time.
• Yankee-kun to Hakujou Girl. From chapters 1-44. This one is about some high-school gangster who falls in love with a blind girl, its also kinda cute and ends up teaching some things about how blind people interact with the world and stuff like that, the art style is not my favorite, but its still quite good.

Other than that, I pretty much kept up to date with other series I’ve mentioned before.

Anime

I didn’t really watch a lot this time, I only watched the first episode of My Dress-Up Darling, which is pretty much like the manga with overkill animation, and I watched until chapter 21 of Kill La Kill, which keeps getting weirder and weirder while somehow having epic moments in between.

Movies

I watched a couple movies this month.

First, Edge of Tomorrow, I heard that this movie is based on a manga, and I decided to watch it first before reading it. It was pretty good, came out a few years ago but I think it holds up.

Last, The Batman. It was quite a fantastic movie, I really enjoyed it a lot, I actually missed the first few minutes but still managed to see Batman’s first appearance in the movie. I actually almost cried at the end, good stuff.

Music

I tend to just shuffle the same City Pop personal playlist, but I recently added Moonset, by Yukika, and kinda liked it, which is why its the first one, clearly. Still, I have a lot more Anri songs, so she got first place.

Top 5 songs

1. Moonset by Yukika, Kim Mi Jeong
2. じゃじゃ馬娘 by Taeko Onuki
3. Street Dancer by Hiromi Iwasaki
4. Forever by Pete Drake
5. AMAI SEIKATSU by Towa Tei

Top 5 artists

1. Anri
2. Yuki Saitou
3. Taeko Onuki
4. Mariya Takeuchi
5. 流線形

Screen Time

Like last month, I don’t really feel like plain old statistics, so I will just mention some interesting details and stuff like that.

• YouTube clients still made it to the top, with 67 hours, three hours less than last month. I can say that I listened to a a few album playlists and more video podcasts than usual, which kind of justifies me since I was doing something else, but still.
• I read manga via Tachiyomi for almost 40 hours, nothing close to February, since I managed to control myself.
• A total of 60 hours were spent in different reading apps that I was testing out, I ended up with Librera Pro, where I read for 38 hours.
• Social media apps took about 26 hours of my month, which is less than an hour per day, I am happy with that, but still looking to reduce it. I spent 13 hours in mobile games, Brawl Stars and Clash Royale, and it was actually during dead time where I had nothing else to do, I could have read some more, but not everything’s possible.

Most of my desktop usage was still tracked but its mostly Firefox and websites, 4 hours of Joplin, a ton in the terminal too.

Wrapping up

I feel a lot less “guilty” about this month, but I have been meaning to not consider my hobbies as a waste of time. I recently started folding origami again, and shared a few pics on my mastodon account, and folding paper takes time too, probably 4 to 6 hours this month.

I entered my community service for university, where, most of the time, I can do as I please as long as I am available when needed, which has allowed me to spend some time reading, folding paper and doing techie stuff.

Overall, a nice month, but I gotta admit, there is still some school work I haven’t finished, I might also have to dual boot Windows again at some point, and I also want to switch my android ROM again, let’s see what happens…

Thanks for reading, I am out.