It's been a busy two months.

What with my part-time job at Shoprite and scattered summer festivities, I haven't had much of a chance to get a lot done. Most of my free time is being used hanging out with friends(lol, TF2) or playing video games(Tales of Destiny remake <3). I'm finding that this summer has been really different from past summers. Even barring the whole "part-time job" thing, it's been pretty bad. I've been at a serious loss of motivation, and I don't really want to do the things I normally want to do... I figure it's just summer doldrums getting to me. Whatever.

I found a neat JLPT study site, and have been going through the Level 4 material, finding that I could probably get the level 4 certification right now if I wanted to.

Programming-wise, instead of taking on huge projects, I've just been teaching myself new concepts, mostly threading and graphics programming(UGH) at the suggestion of Blacken, a FESSer who is the only person that I will ever genuinely hate on the Internet. The problem is that I respect his programming skills so much, but don't like the rest of him... XD

As a side-hobby, over the last couple of days I've taught myself XML and XLST. When I first started reading about the concept of XML, I was really impressed, so I decided to get into it. Who knows where that'll take me, but it's really good for data organization. Hundreds of tiny XML files and a few relatively small XLST files can make a huge, functional website... which is really neat :3

Drawing-wise, as always, I never see any improvement, nor can I come up with creative ideas very often. It's really been a slump. Today, though, I was looking up a few sites with drawing exercises, and I've been working on stimulating the right side of my brain - and finding that I was already able to use it pretty well; I just haven't been. On Monday(my next day off) I think I'm going to take out all my old drawings (there's a buttload, no seriously, dating years back) and group them into approximate time periods(it's not like any of them are dated), then critique them from a stranger's standpoint. This way, I can get a grip on how I've gotten over the years, as well as ascertain where I still need to improve.

(Deviantart? Why the hell would I sign up there? ...So I say, but the nagging suspicion that I'm going to in the future is there... No! No, I musn't do that, it's bad.)

Anyway. Work today, and tomorrow, so I'm not going to have very much free time. Only three more weeks, and then school starts again, which I've actually been looking forward to. I miss all my friends there :<

Until whenever, this is Darkslime, signing off.