It's already the end of October, and the weather has finally started to get cold. Even here in Guangdong, a province that basically only has summer and autumn, people have to wear two layers (though it will probably go back up to over 30 degrees in November). A long time ago, I wanted to write one article every month to record my life and things like that (of course, simple “chatting” doesn’t really count as an article), but somehow in recent months I’ve only been in the mood to read other people’s articles. Whenever I open the editor to write something about my life, I just don’t know where to start. Looking back at my past posts, there doesn’t seem to be much about my personal life anyway — most are about little mini-programs or projects I found interesting. I spent the whole day trying to write this one, and finally finished it. So let’s mark this post as the beginning of a new series.

Life

During the National Day holiday, I planned to watch anime for two days, American TV shows for two days, read books for two days, and use the last day to go back to school. In reality, I got dragged out by my family for three days, had a barbecue one day, and spent the last two days lying on the sofa playing with my phone. Out of the seven-day holiday, the only productive thing was taking a few decent photos during our outings. I tried editing them a bit using a Xiaohongshu color grading tutorial, and they turned out pretty good XD.

In mid-October, I changed my phone carrier from China Unicom to China Mobile. It took me three days just to update my phone number on all the apps. As for updating the website’s registration info, even though Tencent Cloud recommends doing it right away, the printing shop near campus doesn’t seem to have ink pads for fingerprints. Buying a box just to use once feels like a waste (can’t imagine using it again just to “stamp” my name for a final exam, lol). Anyway, since my old number still receives messages, I’ll just wait until winter break to update the registration info.

I also bought a browser plugin recently that lets you take notes, archive, and organize web pages. It’s actually pretty handy — maybe I’ll write a short post introducing it later (a little filler content~).

Website

I’ve been browsing blogs on my phone a lot lately and noticed that my own site is painfully slow when opening article pages. On desktop it’s fine, but on mobile it usually stays on a blank white screen for 3–4 seconds before loading. I first thought it was because the server hadn’t been restarted in a while or because the log files got too big (since before, I once had 1-second TTFB per file, and clearing logs fixed it). But after clearing them, the issue persisted. Later I found out it was caused by a broken CDN link for one of the referenced resources, which made the browser wait indefinitely. I moved that asset to COS, took the chance to delete and rewrite my self-authored JS, and optimized the logic. For instance, code highlighting and similar tasks that used to rely on onload are now loaded only when needed. Now, article pages should load instantly on mobile.

My free student server on Tencent Cloud will (probably) expire around December 15 this year. Although I still have an unused student qualification on Alibaba Cloud, going through the registration process again is just too painful. So I’ll probably switch to Tencent Cloud’s Lightweight Application Server — 2 cores, 4GB RAM, 8Mbps bandwidth for only ¥74 a year. Honestly, that’s such a great deal.

Gaming

In last year’s annual wrap-up, I said I would complete a horror game this year. After some struggle, I finally beat Outlast 2 over the past few days — mission accomplished!

Plans

• Create a New Year “remake” skin for this theme (?), I’ve already set up the folder, hopefully I can finish before the new year.
• Rename all CSS variables in this theme; the current ones look really ugly.
• Get a cat 🐱

Ending

I never really know how to end my posts… so I’ll just say: please take care of yourselves and stay warm as the weather gets colder.