Syl's Blog

I was thinking the other day about some of the games I've loved that have been poorly received by the general public. I enjoy reading reviews and appreciate others' opinions, but I usually try to experience a game for myself before passing judgement on it if it's something I'm interested in. The same goes for movies, books, and other forms of entertainment media. Today I want to mention a few of the games I love that other people seem to dislike. Silent Hill: Downpour There's a stigma around…

It's time for another edition of "things I've found around the internet recently that I think are really cool." Conversations with my mother - This older post at Forking Mad had me chuckling, mainly because I've had so many similar conversations with my own mother. lessons on committing to creativity - I liked this post by Cuifen about committing to creative habits, and I'm trying to take inspiration from it for myself. It's very difficult for me to stick to a routine, as I've realized I'm…

Just a quick post today to say that we're celebrating our girl's second birthday! She started her morning by going to the dog park, where she saw her friends and played fetch to her heart's content. Danny stopped by a coffee shop on the way home, where she got a pup cup with a treat. After arriving home, she's had plenty of cuddles and more playtime. I bought her a peanut butter-filled cow hoof (which you can see off to the right in the picture above), but she hasn't done much with it yet. She…

It's the last day of Blaugust! I enjoyed it for the most part and got some fun posts out of it, like my favorite screenshots and my top 10 game developers. Will I do it again next year? I think so! It's fun to participate, to see other blogs, and to come up with topics I might not otherwise. Even if I feel a bit of burnout at times, I think it's worth it in the end, and I do like posting regularly. We shall see for sure when next August rolls around! I'm ending the month with another photolog:…

Not only do I want to bring back the photologs, but I'd also like to go back to covering the books I read each month here. I still don't want to meticulously log things, but I like writing about what I read. August is almost over and I don't think I'll be finishing any other books before the month ends, so I'm going to go ahead and recap them now, starting with the ones I loved the most. Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker (2025) This book was published five years after…

I'd like to bring back the photologs on this blog. One of my goals at the moment is to use my digicam more, and I miss snapping photos with the idea of sharing them here. I hope to get outside more in the future, but it's been so hot lately, so almost all of these photos were taken indoors. A photo of Ranni that was actually taken back in February, the only one of this bunch that wasn't taken this week. She looks so pretty here (but she's always pretty!). You can see she had a discolored spot…

Today, I'm using a prompt from blogprompts.fyi: Write a blog post about moments in your current or past life that you would classify as sublime. Many moments with Danny come to mind, of course. We've had lots of times together that I would consider sublime, both extravagant and mundane. Of course, the night when he proposed is prominent in my mind. We were on top of the Space Needle, it was nighttime, and there was already a sense of celebration in the air, even before he got down on one knee.…

I think one of my favorite feelings is accomplishment. Completing tasks and having them behind me, knowing I did them to the best of my ability, gets me on kind of a high. I've been feeling that way for the past couple of days because I accomplished two major things: I completed a review for Adventure Game Hotspot, and I visited the library and spoke to the librarians for my volunteer role. Both tasks went well, and finishing them has invigorated me. I'm now really excited to visit the library…

One of my favorite things to do when playing a game is take screenshots to have mementos of the time I spent with it, much like taking photos in real life. There's some amazing virtual photography out there, where people have gotten angles, lighting, and filters just right. I'm no expert myself, but I do have some favorite screenshots that I've taken, either because of composition or because they simply bring back good memories of a moment in the game. I wanted to share some of those with you…

The current moment of my life feels like one in which I'm waiting for things. Ranni had her spay appointment, so I'm waiting for her to recover and be back to her normal self. Our cabin vacation is in about a month, so I'm waiting impatiently for that. I'm waiting to visit the library on Saturday for my first volunteer shift, which I'm equally nervous and excited about. I'm tired of the summer heat, so I'm desperately waiting for autumn. I'm waiting for the midterm elections here in the US…

I've been entertaining the idea of doing a beauty blog over at my more private weblog, but I decided to go ahead and post my skincare routine here on the main blog. It's taken me a while to find a good regimen that works for me, but the products I use now are a good combination of affordable and effective, and I really love this little routine. A couple of notes upfront about "beauty": The beauty industry revolves around societal standards that I don't necessarily agree with. While I think a…

I noticed the commenting feature was broken on my last post, but I've fixed it now. So, did I accomplish everything I set out to do yesterday? Let's see! Take my digicam out on a walk and try to snap some photos of interesting things I see. - I unfortunately didn't do this because it was just too hot outside. I forgot that we're in the middle of a heat wave, and it was 95 degrees (F) here but felt like 104. I did take Ranni to the park around 9:00am, but even then it was too hot, and we only…

I made a conscious decision not to blog yesterday. That means another day of missing Blaugust, but I'm okay with it. We had a friend's birthday party to go to, and after that I spent the rest of the day playing with Ranni, getting some reading in, and focusing on things I needed to do. I allowed myself to have time away from this blog. It's difficult to post every day and to push myself to post on days when it's not coming naturally. Just like last year, I'm having mixed feelings about…

I'm feeling a bit ill today, so I'm going to cheat and bring back an old post from 2024. I had it up for a while, but I eventually unpublished it because my opinions slightly changed. I'm doing some rewrites, so this is technically a new post, just updated to fit my thoughts today. When you ask someone what their favorite song is, you might not get a clear answer. It's often one of those questions that has lots of answers. It's hard to narrow down, and people usually associate many different…

I'm jumping ahead a bit in the Blaugust prompts, but I saw this topic and knew I had to cover it. Today, I'm sharing my top 10 game developers, and it's quite a long post, so grab a coffee or tea and get ready to dive in! A note: I want to highlight indie devs for the most part, but there are a couple of triple-A devs on this list. While I don't particularly want to focus on larger studios because I feel they already get plenty of attention and they tend to treat their employees worse than…

I missed a Blaugust post yesterday! I took off work and went with my family to Dollywood, Dolly Parton's theme park. It's close to where I live, so going there is far from a new occurrence to me. It had been a few years since my last visit, though, so one of the rollercoasters we rode was a new experience: Big Bear Mountain. I liked it quite a bit! It doesn't have any loops but instead focuses on speed, feeling like you're whipping and reeling through the mountains. We left at 8:30am and didn't…

I thought I'd do a little post dedicated to Ranni, as it's been a while since I've done one that's solely about her. Here she is, sleepy in her favorite spot, the futon in my office: She has grown to have a full and distinct personality. She's quite headstrong and set in her ways. She loves going places, but she loves coming back home even more. She has a ton of energy and absolutely adores the dog park, where she can chase a ball to her heart's content. Playing fetch with the Chuck It and a…

There was one Blaugust prompt for this week that I definitely wanted to dedicate to a post of its own: Tell us about your absolutely favorite entertainment media. If you've read this blog at all, it should come as no surprise that my favorite entertainment media is video games. I've been playing games since I was around five years old. Some of my earliest memories are of watching my older brother play Nintendo and PlayStation games like the original Resident Evil and Final Fantasy VI. The scene…

A-ha, I have found the official Blaugust 2026 prompts! This week's topic is "Introduce Yourself," so I'll go ahead and do just that. I'm only covering some of the questions in this post. I'm thinking about doing the others in posts of their own. Tell us ten random facts about the human behind the blog. I already halfway did this in my second Blaugust post, and you can find 38 more facts about me on this page. Tell the story behind the creation and name of your blog. "Syl's Blog" is probably the…

In light of Blaugust, I've been looking over some of my past posts here to get ideas, and I've realized that...I love this blog. Sometimes I get self-conscious about my writing here, like it's not very good or interesting enough for anyone to want to read. And it is largely personal, largely for myself to be able to look back on and reminisce about times gone by. And that's exactly what I've been doing lately, so I suppose it's serving its purpose well. I've always said that the point of this…

I was looking at my Blaugust posts from last year, and I have one titled Hidden Gems on Bandcamp, wherein I shared some of my favorite lesser-known albums on the platform. Since there is another Bandcamp Friday coming up tomorrow, I thought it'd be a great time to revisit this idea and share some more albums with you. If you purchase any albums on Bandcamp tomorrow, 100% of the proceeds go directly to the artists. Moons by Megan Carnes I recommend all of Megan's music, but Moons is a particular…

We're only on the 5th day of Blaugust and I'm already struggling to think of something to write about. I went through the list of prompts and nothing is standing out there either. I think I'll just do a little free-writing (freewheeling?) today and see how it goes. Let's start with some music I've been loving lately: The album Come Closer by Tomora - a trip-hop collaboration between Aurora and Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers. I always love seeing new trip-hop releases because it's a bit…

I did a quiz! Thanks to Swifty's HQ, I now know which eeveelution I am: Leafeon! I've always been a fan of grass-type Pokémon. My first starter ever, way back in the day, was Bulbasaur. I've stuck with the tradition and chosen grass types for almost all of my starters since then: Turtwig, Snivy, Rowlet, and Sprigatito. The one exception was Mudkip in Generation 3, which was a water type, simply because I thought it was too adorable not to choose. My favorite eeveelution is Leafeon, closely…

I love going to concerts, but it's not always easy to get to them, either because they're held in another country or they're not financially feasible for me. A lot of my favorite bands are European metal, and they tend to mostly play in Europe and Latin America because there's sadly not a huge market for them in the US. Enter the internet. I try to catch my favorite bands when they come to the US, but in the meantime I'm grateful for live streams and uploaded concerts from official sources! Two…

I have good news! Volume 4 of my indie recs zine is finally published, and it got featured on the front page of ZinesForever! You can check out the new issue plus all previously published issues at my ZinesForever profile. I debated using a different zine-maker, but it turns out that ZinesForever was in the process of revamping their entire site and I really like the new version. The zine editor is a little wonky, but I think I've figured it out enough to be comfortable with it, and I like that…

I've decided I'm going to participate in Blaugust 2026, and I'm excited for it this year! I posted almost every day in July, so I think it should be fairly easy for me to manage posting every day this month. I got a little burnt out on it last year, but I don't think that'll be the case this time around. I'm feeling quite optimistic about it. July was very hot, for the most part. It cooled down at the end of the month, so we've been enjoying some nice mild days this past week, as well as some…

I love being completely absorbed by a game, to the point where it's hard for me to step away from it. It's like it leaves an imprint on my brain so that I can't stop thinking about it, even when I'm not playing and long after I've finished it. I have a bad habit of starting games and leaving them unfinished for a while, so when I find one that sticks, it's a rare and wonderful feeling. A few games I've played so far this year stand out in that respect, and they're listed below. All of them took…

I realized I've never shared my tattoos here. I have three, all on my right arm. My goal has always been to get that arm covered with different tattoos, but since they're a bit of a financial investment, I haven't quite achieved that yet. I do have some ideas for tattoos I want to get in the future, but I'll cover that later in this post. For now, here are the ones I have so far! The Intellectual Yeti from Hidden Folks This was my first tattoo. I will say, first of all, that none of my tattoos…

July 23rd was my fourth anniversary with Danny. It's when we had our first date, rather than when we married -- we celebrate both days! Our three-year wedding anniversary will be coming up in March. Because the 23rd was a Thursday and we both had to work, we celebrated on Saturday. We started the day by taking Ranni to the dog park so she could get plenty of exercise before we left. It was beautiful, only in the low-70s Fahrenheit, much cooler than July has been for the most part, so we were…

I skipped my weekly musings post for the weekend. It should only be my second one here on my main blog, but I've already skipped it, both because I'm too tired from the weekend to bother and also because I didn't really keep up with what I did the past week in any sort of tangible way. I'm also starting to think that, honestly, I just don't want to keep up with everything I consume. I've tried very hard for so long to do that, and it's clearly not working out for me. I rarely actually post week…