November 2023 Status Update

Hey everyone! So, November has been a really busy month so far (and I have a feeling that December might end up just as busy), but I am in pretty high spirits right now so I've been trying to get more work done.

So, as I've written in my previous post, the laptop that I got mid-2021 started having increasingly frequent issues that made it really unstable and got in the way of my workflow. Since the laptop has already been a disappointment from very early on (my biggest issues being incredibly poor colour gamut of the screen and audible coil whine even though it performed really well) I decided that rather than try to repair a floating defect I might as well go through with my old plan of finally upgrading to a desktop, something I've been planning to do way back then but couldn't due to constantly being on the move (and having frequent and lengthy power outages in the countryside, forcing me to get a laptop again), with me finally getting all the necessary components at the start of November.

Since it was my first PC build I was incredibly nervous and the process itself had a few hiccups (the highlight being the CPU coming in with bent pins which I had to straighten out myself as it wasn't covered by warranty), but I was able to assemble everything without any actual issues, with the machine running stable for almost a month now.

The build itself is a pretty budget one, with me focusing on the bare minimum necessities and upgradability in mind (in fact, I'm running on integrated graphics right now because getting a GPU would've increased the price a lot and Ryzen APU handled everything I needed just fine on my laptop). Another important aspect is being able to troubleshoot and potentially replace individual components without having to replace the whole machine, something that is very difficult to do with laptops and it bothered me a lot over the decade of using laptops.

A few other necessary upgrades included getting a new monitor since the only one I had lying around was a decade-old 4:3 VGA LCD screen (along with a second one that I saw on sale and decided to put in portrait mode) and a new drawing tablet (which I had to get due to my old tablet having driver/compatibility issues, which is expected since it's almost 12 years old now). While there are more things that I need to upgrade later (like more storage, new microphone, keyboard and mouse, and eventually getting a GPU), thankfully it's not as urgent.

Due to all that I'll probably have to focus on commissions more during December, but I'll try to squeeze in personal projects inbetween them as well. A huge thank you to everyone who supported me financially, that lifted a huge weight off my shoulders when I realized that I had to spend money on a new machine way sooner than I expected. I have a few things planned for my Boosty page and my content in general that I may or may not be able to implement by the time I write a 2023 retrospective around New Year, so stay tuned!