RIP volk.neocities.org; today's song is in your memory. (I don't know what happened to Volk. If anyone does, please message me on Neocities.)

  Quite a few things happened this cycle. First off, I had my preliminary counselling session. The guy I talked to was very receptive, and he even told me some stuff beyond just the questions. I started off really nervous but I warmed up to him. Sadly, he's not going to be my counselor, so I'm going to have to go through that again, I guess. I have my first real session coming early November because of my New York trip and the lady not being available for a while.

  I did some stuff related to modding M&B, specifically porting and making factions/troops for an old mod called Gangs of Glasgow. I wrote a whole article about it, but I'll summarize here. Most of the actual work was learning the few tools that I was able to find for Mount and Blade to work with the hex that modules use for pretty much everything. This is as opposed to starting from scratch in the module system, which really made my head hurt just thinking about how much I'd have to cross-reference between files. I began by doing a few tweaks to the map and then porting over a lot of the stuff from another version of the mod. First I just pulled the textures and models over, and then I had to start modifying existing items to use those models and textures. That took a long time. After that, I did more map work, adding some towns for the unused factions to exist in, and some more towns to recruit from. Finally, I added the new items to existing troops and replaced Rhodok and Khergits to match their respective factions. I did not do any sceneing(scene decorating/mapping, as opposed to world mapping) and it never was the most stable mod, but I had fun working on it and I'm happy with how it came out. I don't know if I'll support it any futher, seeing as only a handful of people have been interested enough to download it.

  I made a few batches of shrub according to the recipe in the Tasting History video on it. First I used some leftover strawberries, only a cup's worth, so at a quarter of the original recipe by volume. It came out very strong because I did not think to let it simmer slower, there being less liquid to reduce. It came out very good, but only made a cup's worth. I finished, today, a batch of blackberry shrub, using the full recipe, and it did come out very good as well, though I can't help but regret not adding the full amount of sugar. Without it, there's a bitterness that comes through in some sips.

  Discord's gonna fix people like me using their server space for random junk, like most of the songs on this site. I don't wanna go back to Catbox, have to look into alternatives. Going to use Discord links 'til the last second. Someone told me that wasteful use of resources like this is what makes Discord worse, but I realized that by making the platform worse, I'm improving the chances that people get annoyed and leave, which is what I want. Fuck Discord. I wish everyone would just exodus from it to something else that sucks less.

  Not much else to report, really. Went to Goodwill and found a cool book about interior design. Anticipating the New York trip, starting to get stuff together for packing luggage. Have not been playing any tabletop recently, though I just finished(?) a character for a Banestorm campaign that may happen in the future. Helping my brother with building a new computer.

  Feeling fried right now, can't conjure up much else. I'll probably have tons to say next time, though. See you then.