2025-02-06

Charles Ancheta, 6 February 2025

I got too deep into refactoring and worked past 9 PM 😭 It’s Friday tomorrow anyway, so maybe I could get off early once I’ve done all of the important tasks. Today is Jherzey and Jesse’s last day in Cancun so I’m going to accompany Jherzey’s dad to the airport to pick them up. Might grab some food after that.

2025-02-05 & what happened for the past 2 weeks

Charles Ancheta, 5 February 2025

Well, that was short-lived. My last post was 17 days ago. Maybe the fact that I made an actual blog post made this too high-effort. If it wasn’t for Jherzey reminding me about my website, I probably wouldn’t have started again. Here we go… The past 2 weeks was consumed by tons of distractions, with no opportunity to get bored. I binge-watched Over Run Over on YouTube, and once that was done, binge-watched Trauma Code on Netflix.

小红书 (Rednote) and “TikTok refugees”

Charles Ancheta, 20 January 2025

As a Canadian and a non-TikTok user, I was not exactly affected by the recent US TikTok ban. I do, however, occasionally use Xiaohongshu, which I try to avoid for the same reason as I do Instagram (it’s still social media app, after all i.e. massive time sink). This last week however, there was a huge influx of foreigners into the app which led to a lot of interesting and wholesome interactions (and a few not-so wholesome ones).

2025-01-18 & 2025-01-19 (Weekend)

Charles Ancheta, 20 January 2025

Been sleeping too much on weekends recently. I planned on going out to downtown on Saturday but woke up at 4:30 pm. I just did flashcards, watched some YouTube, and went back to sleep for 12 hours again. Today I did go out tubing and eat out with the Gen Z gang. This weekend was mostly just watching the interactions between American and Chinese people on 小红书 (Rednote).

2025-01-17

Charles Ancheta, 18 January 2025

Drinking black coffee every day was starting to give me mouth sores. I had to use powdered creamer today. Remember a few days ago when I said I was going to limit Anki time? I failed to stop myself again. To be fair, probably half of flashcard time today was spent making dim sum flashcards. I actually had to do some research in Cantonese wikipedia because some of the items had weird or missing translations.

2025-01-16

Charles Ancheta, 18 January 2025

Finally got unblocked at a task at work. Doesn’t mean I’m done though. I went to Jherzey’s by walking just like the previous days, but didn’t know there was a snows squall. That made the walk pretty interesting. I had to go back home and actually bundle up to cover my face. After shovelling, I spent 3 hours with Devin to solve a false LSP error on some embedded C toolchain.

2025-01-15

Charles Ancheta, 16 January 2025

Been consistently waking up at 9am which is good in a way because I’m being consistent, but bad in a way because it’s so late. My alarm clocks are failing me for some reason. I had to slowly clear out the 239 cards to review throughout the day, and now I have 244 cards for tomorrow. It’s really going to be a grind this week but I only have 425 new cards out of 1210.

2025-01-14

Charles Ancheta, 15 January 2025

Got up at 9am again today. No worries though, since the rest of my day wasn’t wasted. I finally followed my scheduled tasks, limiting my Anki review to only 1 hour today. That meant fewer new cards today, but at least I didn’t waste any more time with it and lightened up my review load to only 239 cards for tomorrow. I also got the chance to get some physical activity:

2025-01-13

Charles Ancheta, 14 January 2025

Productive day at work despite waking up at 9am. I think I have really overdone the flashcards now. I don’t even have the vocabulary that actually matters, which are dim sum items. But I think I’m making good progress on the new cards. I could probably be exposed to the entire deck by the end of the month. I’m just hoping I retain them until March.

2025-01-11 & 12 (Weekend)

Charles Ancheta, 14 January 2025

Gonna have to combine these two because I forgot what I did already aside from the times I went out 😭. I slept for half the day for both days and just planned our trip. Saturday: Unlimited K-BBQ at Ginseng with Jherzey and Ate Mup. I could’ve eaten a lot more but tried to hold back. Sunday: Jerusalem Shawarma and Krispy Kreme with Yahya and Kyle. Lots of cramming on flashcards as well, but not as much as today (Monday).

TIL: Beans Etymology

Charles Ancheta, 11 January 2025

Being a Tagalog speaker and a language learner, I’ve always been interested in etymology of Tagalog words. The obvious influences are Spanish and English, but there’s also a lot from Hokkien and Malay. Today I’m going to list out some words that I find interesting: Linggo (Sunday; week) - All the days in Tagalog are directly borrowed from Spanish one to one, except for Sunday (domingo). Apparently it could be from Malay minggu which came from Portuguese domingo.

2025-01-10

Charles Ancheta, 11 January 2025

I actually got up at 6 and felt a lot more motivated today. The fact that I was probably around only 70% productivity the day before meant that I had to go ham today. I finally got around starting my daily/weekly planner (and actually following it). Also the fact that I also got approved for my PH vacation gave me a lot more motivation. Walked to Jherzey’s place while it was raining and super slippery outside.

2025-01-09

Charles Ancheta, 11 January 2025

This was the day that I got up at 6 but stayed in bed until 9 😭 so much for waking up early. I ate a small clove of garlic in the morning and it was pretty spicy. Tried eating a bigger one and it gave me a crazy heartburn. Had a CitySync discussion with Michael before he leaves for Vietnam. I also tried out Reaper but didn’t get too far.

2025-01-08

Charles Ancheta, 9 January 2025

Woke up early today and did cardio. Almost puked but the cold shower afterwards hit different. Also super locked in at work. Had K-BBQ at home for dinner with pork belly and organ meats. I asked Jherzey to help me skin the cat and it definitely scared her. I did more after she left but my right shoulder started hurting. I’m gonna have to take it easy on the shoulder exercises.

2025-01-07

Charles Ancheta, 7 January 2025

Pretty productive day! Found a beat for focusing at work so I don’t have to sit in silence anymore. I also tried out some online shopping haul with Jherzey after work before eating momos. Just now, I set up Anki with Cantonese flashcards. I picked one without Chinese characters so I actually have to associate sounds to meaning. I’ve also been consistently waking up at 7 which means that I can finally get to sleep early (which is why I’m actually able to write before midnight now).

Background music while working

Charles Ancheta, 7 January 2025

Finally found some appropriate background music for when I’m working. My peers used to always ask me what I listen to while working on my computer, and they’re always shocked to find out that I work in silence. I used to unironically listen to lofi hip hop mix 📚 beats to relax/study to but I get too sleepy. When I listen to music I actually like listening to, I get too distracted.

2025-01-06

Charles Ancheta, 7 January 2025

Went straight to University after meeting my friend David to tour the Gen Z gang around the campus. It was pretty nice to go back to the places I used to study in pre-pandemic and tell them about it. “That’s the exact spot where I studied for my first Math midterm. My heart was beating fast the whole time. Not sure if it was from nerves or from coffee” “We used to do labs here until 8 pm”

2025-01-05

Charles Ancheta, 6 January 2025

Peeled a bunch of garlic cloves today. Also went skating for a bit with Jherzey. Her skates were too small for her so we didn’t stay too long. Also planned how much I would need to save up this year. It’s gonna be tough considering I still have one more major trip.

2025-01-04

Charles Ancheta, 5 January 2025

Slept pretty much until the afternoon and then worked on CitySync stuff. It’s already Sunday so I basically skipped 2 days of journalling. I definitely need to streamline this process. I could try using Obsidian for easier journalling and then automate the publishing process.

2025-01-03

Charles Ancheta, 5 January 2025

Hung out with the Gen Z gang today (actually millennials). Walked around downtown at -20°C which was fun. Went hotpot and Hanjan which basically broke resolutions 1 & 3 but it’s all good.

2025-01-02

Charles Ancheta, 3 January 2025

I got my passport today so I am now legally allowed to leave the country 😌 I think I should start scheduling my off-work hours because I’m bad at time management and get distracted easily. It’s already past midnight that I’m writing on the journal. EDIT: I forgot to add why I wanted to do this in the first place. I found an old notebook of mine from 5+ years ago that had this entry:

2025 Resolutions

Charles Ancheta, 1 January 2025

Q1 Goals Some goals specific to my vacation this March, but also probably good to keep up for the rest of the year. Lose weight (~5kg) - going to a wedding Brush up on Chinese - going to HK Not really required to get around, but one time I tried ordering bubble tea and couldn’t even say what I wanted Try to eat out less Lines up with Goal 1 and 2, since I’m going on a trip and need to save up The rest of the year The most generic resolutions you’ll find.

My Worst Semester so Far

Charles Ancheta, 4 January 2024

Fall 2023 was my first semester coming back after being out of school for 16 months (I tried taking CHINA 101 in Fall 2022 but dropped it after a week). Because of that, I have forgotten how to study. Both midterms and finals went pretty horribly. It’s not even that I don’t care about grades anymore, and I definitely could have done better if I just did the practice exams thoughtfully.

My domain expired 😭

Charles Ancheta, 15 November 2023

I hope my ~~namesake~~¹ pianist Charles Ancheta claims it back eventually. ‘charlesancheta.com’ used to redirect to his Facebook page before I registered the domain as mine.

Building a Static Website - Part 1: Introduction

Charles Ancheta, 8 June 2023

A couple of months ago, I help a friend set up a website for a business. Today, I had another talk with a friend about building a portfolio website and he asked me for a few resources. I couldn’t find a comprehensive one that outlines all the required steps so I’ll try my best. What is a static website? From ChatGPT: Basically: Static - no server-side logic, cheaper Dynamic - with server-side logic, more expensive What makes a (static) website Setting up a static website is basically free these days, maybe a few dollars a year if you want a custom domain.

TIL: Parallel `make`

Charles Ancheta, 30 May 2023

I’ve always kind of known about the -j flag for make, but I didn’t know that it just works.

I Deleted My NPM Packages

Charles Ancheta, 10 May 2023

I deleted all 4 of my NPM packages today. It has been over a year since I’ve last updated them, and I didn’t want to add any more clutter to the system. I’ve always thought that having published open source code meant something, but then I realized that it doesn’t matter if it’s not useful. Learning how to package libraries and applications was a good experience, though, and I would probably publish stuff IF/WHEN I have actually solved a need.

Happy New Year!

Charles Ancheta, 31 December 2022

You might have to zoom in a little bit to see these bad boys. They sing a just-intonated major pentatonic scale from a low fifth to a high sixth. Just enough notes to play Auld Lang Syne. Click/tap on a Pou to play a note1. Keyboard controls: z,x,a,s,d,q,w for the notes, space for confetti. Pou won't show up without JavaScript :( Toggle Confetti It’s not as responsive on mobile sadly :( ↩︎

Replicating My Linux Workflow on Windows

Charles Ancheta, 9 December 2022

A new co-op position meant new hardware1, and a new technology stack to learn. Unfortunately, that includes having to use Windows. Coming back to Windows after almost 2 full years on Linux, it felt like I forgot how to use a computer. All the keyboard shortcuts that my hands were used to would do funny things like lock my laptop. I just wanted my shell, my terminal, and my tiling window manager back.

Why I Migrated to Hugo

Charles Ancheta, 29 November 2022

Aside from the fact that Hugo is Blazingly Fast™, I had a few problems with Docusaurus/the whole JS ecosystem that made it hard for me to keep updating my website.

Go Interfaces give me a reason to live again

Charles Ancheta, 16 November 2022

A few months ago I made a meme about Go being my new favourite language (replacing TypeScript) and I just want to share a satisfying moment I had recently. The Task In the previous iteration of my website1, I have a few lines in my config that fetches information about my published NPM packages to be rendered on the Projects page. I wanted to do the same for my new website, outputted as a Markdown table, which can be easily imported into the page with readFile.

Dev Log: Boboman - Day 4

Charles Ancheta, 6 July 2022

I feel like the hardest part of writing this game would be the enemy logic. That’s why I’m putting it off for as long as possible! Today I implemented map generation, randomly placing boxes sufficiently far enough from players. I also added controls for other players, which reminded me of my local multiplayer experience with Boxhead. I miss having multiple people on play a single keyboard. These days it would be awkward to play that way.

Dev Log: Boboman - Day 3

Charles Ancheta, 5 July 2022

Feeling good today. I got to fix the collision bug that was happening yesterday. It actually had to do with the collision lifecycle, so to make the player detectable, I decoupled the check from the lifecycle of the bomb. Because of this, I could revert the player’s bomb timer to normal. Moving away from a project and letting your brain sit on a problem for a while really does wonders.

Dev Log: Boboman - Day 2

Charles Ancheta, 4 July 2022

MAJOR BUG ALERT!! Apparently my collision logic for the bombs weren’t going to hold up. Every time a bomb explodes, there is a small time window where you can place a bomb and the bomb would not recognize the player, making it a “not new” bomb. Because of that, the player gets pushed off right away and could end up in the weirdest of places. After hours of debugging I couldn’t really solve it because of how the collision library orders the entity updates.

Dev Log: Boboman - Day 1

Charles Ancheta, 3 July 2022

Recently, I’ve been heavily configuring my text editor, Neovim, which means that I’ve been writing a lot of Lua. I do find it enjoyable, even without having any tooling initially, so I wanted to give game development and Love2D a try. I just finished Sheepolution’s How to LÖVE book on Love2D, and felt prepared to make my first game from scratch. As per Jherzey’s request, I’m creating a Bomberman clone.

Bye bye Netlify

Charles Ancheta, 19 June 2022

It was short trial, but GitHub Pages just works better for me.

Friendship Ended with TypeScript, now Go is My Best Friend

Charles Ancheta, 7 June 2022

Friendship ended

TIL: My actual height

Charles Ancheta, 29 May 2022

Today I learned what my actual height was (at least at the time of writing). For a few years now I’ve always kind of just stuck with 170 cm because that’s what was in my driver’s license when I got it 5 years ago (I really need to pass the road test this year). I’m not even sure if that was right at the time.

Welcome!

Charles Ancheta, 28 May 2022

Welcome to my website! I am Charles, a Computer Engineering Student working as a Full Stack Web Developer.