Why Would I Write

Author: goodnewsgeorge

  • Special


    Downtime by SeerLight

    The night is my escape. The cool breeze and moonlight my companions. Distant chatter, feet on pavement, wheels on roads – a soothing soundtrack to accompany the scene of my favorite movie, one I try to watch every night.

    I sit on this ledge. It is dangerous but it is also where I feel the most safe. Away from everybody out there. I enjoy this solitude. I don’t have to talk to anybody, and nobody has to talk to me. It is bliss.

    There is no reason to leave. Up here, I don’t have to worry about a thing. Nobody can see me. Nobody can reach me. Just a fly on a wall, watching the world go by. I like it very much.

    The funny thing is, this isn’t even my apartment. I don’t belong here. Maybe one day when I make enough money, I’ll buy this place. Then I can stay here all night long. However, a part of me thinks that if I could come here all the time, it wouldn’t be so special anymore. I wouldn’t treasure every moment out here. Are things special only because we can’t have them all the time?

    Oh dear, I’m starting to doubt the eminence of this place. That isn’t good. I thought I’d never find a lookout point better than this one. Now I’m starting to have second thoughts. What is wrong with me? I thought I was free from all those problems. I clear my thoughts and take a deep breath. I focus on the view again. I take it all in one more time.

    The night is my escape. I make my way down the fire escape and wander off into the darkness. It’s time to return to the world. It’s time to head back home.

    Writing Prompt from Reddit: Downtime

  • Teething Problems

    Teething Problems

    There are many things we take for granted each day. And it’s only because we’ve been doing them our whole lives without having to change a thing. For example, walking, dribbling a ball, cycling, driving a car, and swimming. We can do all these things because we’ve been doing them for years. Muscle memory, they call it.

    One of the activities that fall under this category is typing. For my whole life until recently, I’ve been typing on regular keyboards. Though they have been in different sizes, they all maintained the standard 60% layout (number row on the top, QWERTY staggered layout, and modifiers accessible with both hands). I’m a touch typist, so for me to type, I rely heavily on muscle memory. However, that has changed recently with my acquisition of the Vortex Core – a 40% keyboard. For reference, here’s a picture of it:

    Ever since I started touch typing, I have been resting my fingers on the home row (ASDFGHJKL) – two rows below the number row on a keyboard. On regular keyboards, my method for finding the home row is touching the edge of the number row, and going down two rows. On the Core, this number row is missing, so I have to consciously make an effort to only move my hands down one row from the edge of the keyboard. Fortunately, typing letters on this keyboard is the least of my concerns. Without having to punctuate my texts, I can still hit my average of 70 words per minute.

    (more…)

  • blorgy.net 3.0

    blorgy.net 3.0

    Some of you might have noticed that my blog has a new look now (it’s only obvious if you’re browsing on your desktop). Since I launched blorgy.net way back in 2007, I’ve only been through two revisions. The other day I was just thinking about changing up my site a bit since I had some funky keycaps which I could use to recreate my original logo and I just continued working on the site from there.


    blorgy.net 1.0

    I compressed the archives and categories section in the sidebar since I don’t think people use them too much, and they were getting a little too long for my liking (I can’t believe I’ve actually managed to keep this blog running for over ten years!). I added some social media buttons, removed dead links, and reduced the number of posts on the front page. I also added ‘related posts’ at the bottom of each post since I’ve got a wealth of posts to link to now (I’ve written over 700 posts to date). Hopefully it doesn’t link too many cringey posts.


    blorgy.net 2.0

    Overall, they aren’t huge changes, but I think the site looks a lot better now. Also, the color scheme is based on the Vortex Core keyboard (the keys in the logo are from the keyboard). I’m a big fan of its retro color scheme. The font used is Bryant Regular, which is similar to Gorton Modified (couldn’t find the font for that) – the font used on the legends of SA keycaps. Not sure if I managed to change all the elements of my site properly, but based on my initial checking, it seems fine. Let me know if I missed anything.

    Prior to this, I hadn’t touched CSS or HTML in a long time. I had to do tons of Googling for simple things like changing the background color. It’s crazy how much I didn’t know or remember! Anyway, it was a fun experience and I’ll probably make additional tweaks over the coming weeks if I think of anything else.