Cool Photos and Media of Life

1-7: Cool (IRL Photos)

One of the last days of band camp this year. Every year, I’d dread the start of band camp and breathe a sigh of relief when it’s over. I still did this year 😅. It was the last band camp of high school though. Maybe it wasn’t so bad all these years…

The last picture I took before we left my parents’ hometown. It was outside my grandma’s apartment. With covid happening and all that, it was the first time we’ve visited China in 5 years; things definitely changed. I didn’t get to talk to some old friends, but that’s okay. At least I saw my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins again, people I rarely see because of the Pacific.

I should visit alone sometime soon and roam around.

Speaking of China, some other photos that I took while looking around.

1. Top left: A night view of Shanghai. Kinda reminded me of those cyberpunk looking games, which was pretty fire
2. Top right: We were in a Chinese cultural exchange camp, and we got to see a park in Suzhou.
3. Bottom left: Probably the metaphor we say the most at home: 谁知盘中餐，粒粒皆辛苦. Who knows that for the meal in the dish, every grain of rice is hard work.
4. Bottom right: Also from the Suzhou park.

There’s a whole bunch more great photos, but I won’t bore you with the details. The China trip was great though! I do want the opportunity to walk at my own pace around my parents’ hometown though.

Back home, I like to volunteer at the gardens; it’s really peaceful once you get the (not really) grueling work out of your mind. This was taken after a cleanup event at a small garden honoring missing children.

I haven’t walked this path in so many years. I don’t think I’ve ever been by myself here.

8-16: Whoa (Minecraft & Media)

Some screenshots of me and my friend’s modded minecraft base on an All the Mods 9 server. The server’s been great and has been running since December 2024. Here’s to a long server life.

Map’s available here (Go to Menu -> Maps -> Overworld to actually see ts)

We had an old server where I just mashed a whole bunch of mods and called it a day. It was actually pretty long-lived, and pictures are even on this website on the weird slideshow thingy.

This was a timelapse on the old server. First time something I built actually looked decently house-like. I was really excited that time, since my friends’ houses were all made of random ahh blocks and such. It was a 3 story home with a Create mod elevator inside that took you to this glass observation room where you could see everything. Server’s still running but dead. Poor Lucas played at 9 FPS though, RIP

Pivoting back 6 years, this was the first time I beat the ender dragon. It took FOUR people (me, my brother, Jason, and Daniel) and HALF an hour to do so on Pocket Edition. We were awful at PVP, it was crazy.

I still have this world on the old iPad. Seeing everything being the same state it was all those years ago feels surreal. I don’t know.

Perfect.

17-25: Nice (Other Media)

If you haven’t heard of Everywhere at the End of Time, please go take a listen. It’s a 6 and a half hour long album depicting the progression of dementia.

From Wikipedia,

It is terrifying. All the things that make up someone are taken from them, piece by piece, until they are no longer themselves. EATEOT is a must listen; the way The Caretaker characterizes this through music is mind blowing.

The clip above is from the last 5 minutes of the album. There’s this phenomenon in terminally ill patients called “terminal lucidity” where in the last couple days of their life, they suddenly seem to immediately get better for a couple fleeting moments. Even in dementia, people can suddenly remember everything for one last time, talk with their loved ones, remember back on their life, before death ultimately knocks.

The last moments of the album represents terminal lucidity, and it is one of the most heartbreaking pieces I have ever heard. But that’s enough said; I could go on and on about this, but maybe that’s another blogpost 👀

Man, Omori was a roller coaster. I first about the game on Instagram a couple months ago about how depressing the story was. I decided to give a try sometime June, and dang. I can’t really put it into words. The ending completely broke me down.

It’s only been a couple of months, but Omori has been such a major inspiration for my worldbuilding and storybuilding ideas. The game I want to make in the future has also been influenced by this amazing story. Again, I can talk about this for hours and hours, but that’s it for now. Please go try it out.

Finally, we end with my favorite picture I took from the ATM9 server playthrough so far. You can see the shadows of our bases; mine towards the left, and my friends’ stone and diamond house just to the right of the bridge. But the man-made bases aren’t the main focus. It’s the emphasis on the natural wonders: the blood orange sunset, the tall cliffs, the winding river, and yes, the giant stone mountain.

It’s the perfect representation of who we are. We are the most emotionally and socially complex creatures we know. We are capable of incredible things, and we do incredible things. But, in 108 billion lives, we lie in the background of our universe.

Thank you. $\blacksquare$