April 19, 2024

New Format, South Korea, The Journal 8 Propaganda

Hello hello, it's been a while! Also new journal format, yay! It's part of my website revamp that is taking way too long because I am incredibly lazy. XD While updating, I decided to get rid of my old journal entries. I still have them saved on my computer, but I deleted them off of my site. No particular reason why. I guess I just didn't feel like reformatting them. Plus, having a fresh start is always nice. Hopefully, I'll update this version of my journal more often than the last!

Anyway, I just got back from a trip to South Korea! I stayed for a little over a week with my mother. It was actually her first time going back since she immigrated to the US. And it was my first time leaving the Americas. I've traveled outside of the US before (Mexico, Belize, Canada), but I've never flown across the ocean until now. The flight was excruciatingly long, but I'm pleased to announce that the Boeing airplane I was on had zero issues! No parts randomly falling off or anything. Hurray for not dying!

We mostly stayed in Seoul and spent our time wandering around and eating lol. Despite the sheer amount of food I was consuming, I don't think I gained any weight due to all of the walking. I might have actually lost a pound or two. The weather there was mostly nice. It was drizzly in the mornings and became pretty hot by the afternoon. I'm used to desert heat, so I wilted pretty quickly from all of the humidity lol. Our stay in Seoul was pretty unstructured. We didn't really have an itinerary or anything. We would usually just pick an area and wander around. When we got hungry, we would stop and eat and then continue onwards. I think the next time I visit, I'll probably do something more structured. There are certain places I'd like to hit up. Also, I want to explore more outside of Seoul. Visiting Jeju is definitely on my bucket list!

One day, we randomly went to a village called Samha-ri (삼하리에) in Jangheung-myeon, Yangju-si, Gyeonggi. Apparently, an old drama, "Country Diaries" (전원일기), was filmed here. I haven't watched it, but it was cool to explore a village. My mother grew up in the rural countryside outside of Seoul, so visiting a village like Samha-ri was somewhat nostalgic for her. Of course, things have greatly modernized since she was a child, but still, it was interesting to see the remnants of the past.

Here's a photo dump! I took over 200 pictures and had a hard time choosing what I wanted to post here. Click on the image for the full size!

Photo Dump

Do you love journaling? Do you hate every single software that you've used to journal? Does the thought of having to use Notion, Evernote, Obsidian, etc. make you feel like this guy? If so, then boy howdy do I have the journaling application for you! Introducing The Journal! The Journal is a diary app that packs quite the punch! Not only can you keep a daily journal, but you can also take notes, compile research, store media (audio/video), and more! The Journal features a robust linking feature, allowing you to create links not only to other entries in your journal, but to web pages as well as files stored on your computer! You can also import html pages to The Journal and export entries to various blogging sites like WordPress! Best of all, The Journal works completely offline and is secure! Not only can you set a password for your journal, but you can also set individual passwords for sections in your journal! Wowza! No prying eyes will be able to see your deepest inner thoughts with... The Journal!

Ahem. Anyway, I recently downloaded The Journal 8. I've only used it for a few days, but I already really like it and am quite impressed by its utility. If you're looking for journaling software, consider giving it a try. It has a very generous 45-day trial. It's a little pricey at $64.99, but the site offers a lot of random discounts, so you could get the price knocked down to $45. Personally, I think it's worth the cost, especially considering it's been developed by just one guy. Do note that this app is Windows-only, and I'm not sure about its syncing capabilities because I haven't looked into it.

I've included a sample entry from my journal. Near the top, you can see various tab sections for my user profile. The program defaults to having a tree-type setup, but I think the tabs look nicer. The Daily Journal section is self-explanatory. You can edit this in your settings, but basically every day it creates a new entry. However, the entry isn't saved until you actually write in it, so it's no big deal to skip days. On the calendar, you can place little 'charms', such as the star, and you can make your own custom charms. The Journal offers pretty robust customization options, but my only complaint is that text-wrapping for images is pretty limited. So, if you like to embed images into paragraphs as you write, like I do, you're basically limited to having images on either the far left or the far right. This only qualifies for large images. As you can see, I included little pixel gifs after some sentences, and the formatting was fine for them.

The 'gaslight gatekeep girlboss' is my semi-ironically named section for stuff relating to my daily life/self-improvement. The 'Vent' section is self-explanatory. I've given myself permission to be as unhinged as I like. It helps that this is all offline and password-protected. And then there's the 'misc.' section that I haven't really touched other than to shove the default example entries into there. I mentioned before that The Journal is password-protected. So, when you first launch the program, you create a user profile. You can password protect your profile so that you have to login every time you open the program or when you minimize and then maximize The Journal window. Additionally, you can password-protect tab sections (ggg or vent) as well as individual entries (17 - Hello World!). So, if you're particularly paranoid, you have the option of having multiple layers of password protection or just locking specific sections/entries. Pretty neat!

That's enough The Journal 8 propaganda for now! Time to wrap up this journal entry. I hope everyone's been well. Spring has definitely sprung where I live. All of the trees have flowered and are now growing leaves. I hope your spring (or fall) has been lovely so far. Apparently, I missed some Neocities drama while I was traveling. I saw mentions of it on my activity feed but it seems like it's been resolved now? Lol. Lmao, even. I don't understand why some users import social media nonsense to Neocities but you do you, I guess. Okay, enough vague-posting for now. Look at me; I just said I don't get social media nonsense, and here I am, vague-posting about users I've never interacted with (and never will). Smh my head! Talk about hypocritical. Sheesh!