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You'll know when it happens. It's almost the end of the dance, and the DJ plays a slow song. "Yes! One last chance, one last shot at victory," you say to yourself. It's that time, the time to experience all the good things one last time. Clumsily, you try to see if there's an opportunity, to see if your crush is still available to dance. Once you know you're in the clear you go in, ask her, and you spend your last dance with her. The end is nigh, this might be your last dance together. She will be your last dance—probably for years to come. As the night ends, you just can't help but hope that things between you two will be better. But alas, no matter how you try, the opportunity will never come back.

That's basically what's been going through my mind on nights like this. Only instead of dancing with a girl, I was enjoying life and having fun with my interests. Yeah, on nights like this, the only thing I really miss is the year 2013, and how good my life was back then.

I really have no idea why 2013 became such an influential year for me. Sure, it was the year I really got into technology, Girls' Generation, Elaine, blogging, and gaming, but it was also the year I got into depression and (almost) suicide. In the recent years, I labeled it as my worst year ever because of my suicide problem; however, as I grew older, I realized that 2013 wasn't entirely a bad year for me.

It was a really strange year for me. I fell in love, I fell out of love, I was led astray by the false hope of love, I wandered onto the path of depression, and, magically, I was guided by the light that was Elaine and SNSD into... wellness, I suppose.

The truth is, I really miss that year of mine. It was my year of exploration. A time when I explored my interests and, although I got mildly scarred in the process, I learned a lot about the world around me. I was filled with so much inquisitiveness and willingness to explore the world beyond.

What's saddening to say is that I'm not the same anymore, or at least not in that context. I've tried instilling all those dreams and hopes of mine back then and trying to relive those past experiences, but it's not the same anymore. It might never be.

I've joined my local Sone (SNSD fan) group and I've participated in a gathering once and bought a shirt, but I still feel like I'm missing something. I've tried to contact my big sister Elaine, but, no matter how hard I try, our connection will only last for a day and then we'll be back to minding our own lives. I can't really blame her, she just grew up. She's not into imitating Taeyeon anymore and I'm definitely sure that she doesn't want to hear me spazz about the upcoming anniversary album. She's moved on to better things, and I accept that.

Sadly, the same can also be said for the main interest that kept us together—SNSD. While girls are very much active, the group isn't. Ever since Jessica left the group back in 2014, their activities have slowly grounded to a halt. No more new DVDs like Paradise in Phuket, no smashing Japanese albums like "Girls & Peace," and certainly no more weird concert stuff that Elaine and I will spazz about. I have a strong gut feeling that, once the 10th anniversary of Girls' Generation is released, a few months or so later, they will announce that the group will disband or go on a really long hiatus (again). Things are just not the same anymore.

Realizing the futility of my situation—the inability to bring back the joy that I once had—I just gave in to the only choice I had. August is coming up, and it's SNSD month because their 10th anniversary is coming up. The end is nigh for SNSD and most of my interests from 2013 already ended. This might be my last dance, I might as well savor it.

The months ahead will definitely be filled with uncertainty, as the group hasn't even acknowledged whether or not they'd continue releasing new stuff in the future. I've personally given up hope for another comeback after this one, and this might be the my last chance to relive the fun I experienced in 2013. Although this opportunity may never come back, I'll be sure I won't waste this last dance.

This week, we tackled about cyber crime issues, privacy, and other stuff relating to those. We learned about the different cybercrime types and it was a really cool lesson to learn overall. The various in which people can be exploited through different crime schemes, and the various laws that cover and protect people were just amazing.

Although most of these were things that were common sense, or stuff I already knew, learning about them in-depth was still great. As far as I know, there was that "debt elimination" scheme wherein you'd receive an email from a company that claims to wipe off all your debt in exchange for a little sum of money. There is also that commonly-known scam known as the Nigerian "419" scam wherein a person would email you claiming to be a relative or the Nigerian prince that would give you his million-dollar inheritance money in exchange for a few thousand dollars to help him get it.

These are just some of the various ways "smooth criminals" try to make you part from your money. Although I admit that avoiding these scams are already common sense, there are still, unfortunately, who get scammed by these practices. And so, learning about how these scams and dirty tricks operate is something we're very glad to learn about.

Another thing we learned about is privacy. I have to admit, I laughed when my classmate said that privacy is only your identity online. Thankfully, I believe I recited correctly and said that privacy is the right to not have all your activities be tracked online. Although let's be fair, privacy does, in fact, cover your identity, but it isn't just limited to your identity.

Here's an example I thought up: If you are on Facebook, sharing your real name with friends and the general public, your privacy is not fully compromised. But, the moment Facebook or some other entity shares the pages you visited, the people you've been talking to, your messages with those people, your geolocation, the network you're on, and even the list of people you've blocked—that is, unequivocally, the time that your privacy is compromised.

As for me, my stance on whether or not users should be private online is firmly on the pro side. I highly believe that people, should at least, have some form of privacy online. And being a privacy freak (I highly monitor my info on Facebook), I really get triggered whenever someone says "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide." I have a problem with that argument because I actually don't want people to find out all the sites I've visited, my password, and the pictures of me that I don't want anyone to see.

But yeah, all in all, it was a really fun and interesting two weeks of INFOSEC.

Despite having only 3 classroom sessions these past two weeks, I sure did learn a lot in regards to my INFOSEC class. Specifically, (as you can tell from the picture above) about Bitcoin in general.

For our INFOSEC class, we took a deeper dive on organizational security, and the matters regarding it. Earlier in the day, our professor talked about the implementation of the acceptable use policy, what constitutes it, and what happens if implemented. Our professor told us a really funny and yet interesting story about a coworker of his using the computer for "non-work-related purposes" where the said employee got in trouble with the IT department, and sorts. It really opened my eyes about the kinds of stuff I am/am not allowed to do at the workplace, which made me want to make a note to my future self to check on the company's acceptable use policy before doing something non-work-related on the computer.

But aside from that, I really learned a lot about Bitcoin this week. Like, so much of it. What started as a forced task due to some of my teammates not helping me soon turned into kind of an obsession with Bitcoin. First, I got into how it works and such, and I found a really good SciShow video about how Bitcoin works and it really got me interested in the topic. I gotta admit, having every single coin in the system have its own list of past transactions for verification is quite cool, I'm not gonna lie. And then I got into the bulk of the topic: what is a blockchain, how it works, why it's there, Bitcoin mining, and other stuff of the sort.

I must say that my eyes lit up to the topic as I really found out that it's a great 21st-century invention. Sure, this week was great in terms of learning, but it had some downs as well.

To be quite honest, I actually hate being tasked with a technical research paper/case study. If it was only a little on the technical side, sure, it would be okay with me—as I know my teammates will actually share the work around the whole team. Well, tough luck that we were all tasked with a technical research paper, and the opposite just happens.

Just like in my last class with my professor, DNETCOM, I'm highly sure that I'll have to bear the weight of actually doing the bulk of the work. My research paper in that class was hell because I really was the only one who made the entire paper, and that added a lot of stress on me. Sadly, the same goes for this paper as well.

For the past week or so, I've been toiling through articles and research papers talking about the problems with Bitcoin and how to improve it and it's been driving me mad. It would be okay if I only wrote a part of the "results and discussion" as well as the "recommendations," but no way in hell did I expect to do all the work. I've personally asked my teammates for help regarding the paper and one agreed to help me, and yet the other 3 have stated that the task was too hard for them or said that they can't do the work.

Which actually just puts me at a crossroads with this paper. While I do want to make them work on some parts of the paper, I do know that the information they will gather will either be wrong, incorrect, or be missing a huge part about the topic. I just wish they actually tried to do the work I tell them and learn to check it themselves rather than relying on me to do everything.

So, in summary, I've learned a few things these past few weeks:

Bitcoin actually has an ingenious mechanism if you took a closer look at it.
Try to minimize the use of computers for personal use in the workplace.
Learn how to deal with people who respond with "it's too hard, I can't do it."
When all else fails, take note of those who actually try to help in group papers and just do the paper yourself.
Oh, and, in the future, partner up with those who actually have the courage to take on a technical topic and write about it.
Although I like to have a picture-heavy blog, do not over-obsess about the post image much as it can lead to unnecessary stress.

Overall, it was a fun (albeit stressful) week!

After what seemed like an eternity of a summer vacation, I'm (finally) back to school and hitting the books. My new roster of subjects includes a greatly-welcomed subject that tackles on information, the security of it, and security in general.

Although I was not able to take the COMSEC2 (Computer Security 2) class that my professor was offering, since he is the same professor for that class, I at least expect some topics to be covered from that class. I just hope that my time watching videos on YouTube about WannaCrypt/Wanna Cry, cryptography, and others will hopefully prove useful for this class.

And to an extent, it did. I was able to recite and give the correct answer several times when our professor asked us, so that's good for me, I guess.

For the first week, we learned about access controls, basic security threats, reasonings for security, the full basics of information security. We also got to do a small case study, for which we passed and the 3rd week of INFOSEC is almost upon us.

I have to pass an outline for our research paper, which is to be passed around midterms, and it covers one of my favorite topics: Bitcoin. Originally, we weren't able to get Bitcoin, but since no one was interested in the topic (aside from me), I picked it.

I wanted to choose Bitcoin as a topic because it's a very exciting thing in technology. It applies some cryptography for its regular transaction, which is why it's called a "cryptocurrency," and it has so many functions, vulnerabilities, and topics available. Just the videos of Computerphile alone is a more-than-good-enough basis for me to write my research paper on.

So, for the next few weeks or so, my team and I (well, mostly I) will do some research work behind Bitcoin. It's flaws, improvements, threats, and so on. I'm really excited and giddy about it because I can talk about some problems about it off the top of my head, such as how and if asset recovery services exist for Bitcoin, how the bitcoin blockchain is already the size of gigabytes, etc.

I'll do my best to write my our research paper for INFOSEC. Hopefully I'll be able to apply the things I've learned—in and out of class—to our research paper.

If you're a regular citizen of the Internet, you must've once wondered about the reason why you don't see a lot of old-looking or even old websites on the Internet anymore. And you pondered about that question for a good while until you got a notification from your app/website, and just continued your way. I got that question, too, after reading about Tiffany's "hidden" Xanga blog, and, being the technologically-curious kid that I am, I wanted to explore and find the reason/s as to why that's the case. That brings me here, and here's what I found.

A famous old website, the Xanga blog of SNSD's Tiffany.

But before that, I want to give you a little bit of information about the web some years ago. Back then, the web looked different, and I mean really different. So much so that, to this day, we call those early website designs "primitive," "basic," "tacky," or even "nostalgic."

Websites like Apple's website back in 1997 were, at the time, one of "the most beautiful" websites on the Internet. It had all these fancy computer graphics, gradients, shadows, colors, pictures, it had everything that could be pleasing to the eye of your average 1997 Internet user. And, to be fair, websites like these would be revolutionary at the time. We take it for granted today but pictures and graphics, they were hard to come by back in the day. Almost everyone had a dial-up Internet connection, and the loading of "high quality" images took almost forever on a 56 kilobit Internet connection.

As such, much of the content that composed the "old web" was mostly text and some CSS to add flair to a site. Sure, there were a lot of sites that had their own unique design, but sites weren't as image-heavy as now. The web back then mostly relied on CSS or repeating 5KB PNG backgrounds as their design.

Today, the Internet is a much more different story. The websites of today are extremely different compared to their old counterparts. The core of websites—HTML and CSS (as well as Javascript)—almost remained the same, but the way websites are displayed have vastly changed. And sure, I could go on about how sites are different today compared to back then, but therein lies one of the core reasons as to why you don't see old-looking websites that much.

Designs and Presentation

Over the last few years or so, we've seen an enormous change in the way websites look. From the use of 8-bit repeating GIFs as the background to the use of high-quality (albeit compressed) JPEGs and PNGs, from the noble PNG to the use of SVG, and eventually the rise of web-oriented picture formats such as WebP. That's just in the images alone, and the web has changed so much today other than just in terms of image quality.

Sites today need to be fluid, they need to be dynamic—responsive. They need to be displayed correctly from any device you're viewing it from, whether it's from a 4K monitor, a 720p laptop screen, and even from your phone or tablet. Web developers today need to guarantee that their site can look great on all those devices; otherwise, they won't get as much visitors. And typically, less visitors means less ad revenue, and less ad revenue means less money. So, web developers and designers alike are in a constant battle to make their site viewable and, most of all, presentable on a variety of screen sizes, resolutions, and form factors.

Back then, websites didn't much worry about this. Phones didn't have the capability to fully load websites from the Internet yet. It was just an expensive commodity, something only the rich would have. If your phone could load a website back in the early 2000's, you'd instantly be thought of as rich, as the devices that could do those cost a small fortune.

So, the web designers back day only had a few compatibility problems to deal with. And, since most people owned a resolution of 640×480 or 800×600—a 4:3 resolution—monitor, it was the only resolution to develop for. Thus, sites looked rather "square" at the time or they made their content stick to one corner of the screen when viewed from a modern 16:9 screen.

The "infamous" Napster website when viewed from a 16:9 screen.

Also, most of the design trends in web design have changed. Everyone's moving to a more simplistic or minimalistic look. It's not that sites didn't look simplistic at the time (they had to look simplistic as their Internet speed wasn't that good), but it's just that sites today use a more "elegant" approach while maintaining simplicity. We don't often and almost never use dotted, dashed, double, groove, ridge, inset, and outset borders anymore, and some sites have ditched the heavy use of text shadows—both of which were heavily prevalent in the early days of the web.

Gradients are also making their subtle comeback in web design, but now people are now using them to make sites look more elegant, to add color and sense of vibrancy to a site. And not like something a kid made in MS Paint. Also, the same can be said with fonts. Comic Sans is now banned and antialiasing is applied to most, if not all, fonts nowadays, so no more "crispy-looking" pixelated fonts, but some old fonts like Arial and Times New Roman can still be integrated into the modern web if used correctly.

WebGradents, a modern site that shows gradients can integrate beautifully with the modern web.

In a nutshell, the overall design and presentation of websites is a huge factor as to why we don't see old-looking sites nowadays, to be honest.

Technology

We take for granted the immediately-updating notifications on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit, and we also take for granted the animations that come with them. The truth is, the entire technological landscape itself had a significant impact on the way websites—and even the entire web—are presented.

We have faster Internet connections than ever before, so not only does today's sites look more image-heavy, they're also information heavy. Some sites update in real-time without having to click the refresh button. Some sites utilize jQuery, a Javascript framework made to help web developers make their site more customizable, easier to use, and things like that, and it has since been used by millions of sites on the Internet, including this one.

CNN's site from 2000 compared to CNN's site in 2017. Notice the presence of more high-quality images.

Browsers also not only exist in your standard desktop computer, but phones and even seemingly "displayless" devices like the Raspberry Pi or the Microsoft Hololens can and do have browsers within them. As I said earlier, most people want their websites to adapt to the user, and since old and static designs don't really scale well on other devices, they've since been thrown into the trash.

Plus, we have more computing power available, and browsers allow more versatility to a site. We're now able to display complex, moving animations that only require 10% or even 5% of our CPU. That's a luxury the people of the early web didn't have.

These factors contribute to how websites are designed and developed today. We have new technologies to help us build sites easier and make them look better. Also, we have more processing power and browsers have all these new features to make websites look and perform better.

Search Engine Optimization

Finally, the main reason as to why you don't see a lot of old-looking or even old websites on the Internet: search engine optimization or S.E.O. for short. We've all encountered that term at least once, and even a lot of times if you own or run a business on the Internet, are an entrepreneur, or a web developer. At its core, search engine optimization is self-explanatory: it's the discipline of making your site appear at a higher rank or position within web search engines, such as Google, by optimizing or tweaking your site.

It's a given that there was A LOT of content that was put into the Internet from 1990–2005, but we're not seeing those content that much because of how search engines crawl and "categorize" the web.

You see, your standard search engine, take Google for instance, doesn't just show results based on the order of time they were indexed by Google—that'd be a bad idea—and instead results are shown in order of relevance. If Google showed us results based on the time they indexed or crawled that site, then we'd see more websites that were from the 90's to early 2000's popping up in the search results, but Google doesn't do that, and they wouldn't be successful if they do so. Instead, they show you results based on a plethora of different factors.

First and foremost, results on Google are mostly sorted based on the relevance of the site's content in regards to your query. To properly sort things, Google adds some extra variables to improve their search result sorting algorithm. According to most people, they take into account a site's page load times, performance, the number of clicks it gets, and possibly whether the site is served through HTTPS. Google, of course, won't disclose its actual formula for improving search rankings because then we'd have an epidemic of scam and malicious sites showing at the top of search results.

That's really the main reason as to why you don't see old websites that much on the Internet anymore. They're still there, of course, just in the 8th or 9th page of Google. And, admit it, no one ever looks at the 9th page of Google.

Sure, you'd still see some old sites on the web if you search on Google, provided your search query was relevant enough. If you go and search up the name of your old blog, if you have one, from the early 2000's, you'd still see it (if it was still up).

And even if your query was relevant, search engine optimization will obviously prioritize more modern, faster, and secure sites over old sites. Even if your search query was about a timeless topic that, for sure, was written about in the 2000's or 90's like depression or anxiety, it's still highly likely that Google will show you an article from a modern site that got a lot of clicks, loads faster, has more relevant information, and supports HTTPS.

Search engine optimization is, what I believe, the core reason as to why the first site you'll see when you search for "how to make mashed potato" will surely be a modern, responsive site, and not just some janky 2001 blog post made by some guy who just found out how to make a blog on Xanga.

They're Dead

As a bonus tidbit, I just want to point out that most of those old sites and blogs are now dead. Open Diary, the first major blogging platform on the web, is dead, and the old blogs in it died as well. Xanga, the "Facebook before Facebook" is, well, technically dead, not to mention that the Wayback Machine has seemingly deleted all Xanga blogs from its web archive.

This Xanga 2.0 "ad" has been up for AGES and they still haven't released it yet.

Blogs weren't the only sites to go down, other independent sites have also died in the years since. I'd love to say that starting your own self-hosted, independent website is free, but it actually isn't. You'd have to pay for servers, and, if you had one, you'd pay for your domain. Now, paying for a domain isn't a one-time thing, oh no, it's a yearly or monthly subscription. And so, those who really didn't have a lasting interest in keeping a site just let their site go down rather than fork up money.

Most of the sites, as I've seen, that have survived from the mid-late 90's to early 2000's are mostly from companies or large corporations, like Apple, Microsoft, Google, and CNN. To my knowledge, I haven't heard of a site that was relevant back then, and still is today, that's not by a company. If you do, kindly tell me in the comments below.

And that's basically it, those are all the reasons as to why we don't see old websites, or old-looking websites for that matter, on the Internet that much anymore. I hope you found this blog post educational or entertaining, and I hope you had as much fun reading as I did researching. See you all next time.

What do you do when you lose something? Something, an object, a lost item. What do you do? Normally, common sense will tell you to go look for it, right? I mean, it's an innate feature, our brain automatically tells us to scour and search the place around us in order to find that missing thing. But, our brain doesn't know what to do when we've lost something... special. How about you? When you miss someone, when you miss a particular event or moment, what do you do? Do you scour the place around you in order to find or relive that moment again? That's what I've been doing these past few weeks and it's starting to take a toll on me.

For the past couple of weeks or so, especially the week before, I've been looking back on the past few years of my life. 2012, 2013, 2014, ah, the good years. I don't really know why, but I feel like there was something special during those years that isn't with me now. As a last resort, I've decided to make a blog post regarding the things from the past that I miss. (Because writing my problems down often results in some kind of resolution, apparently.) So, with that said, let's take a trip back to the past—my past.

2013

Let's start with the "most nostalgic" year of them all, 2013. Man, I gotta tell you, 2013 was one hell of a year for me, almost quite literally. 2013 was the year I really got into Girls' Generation and the Sone community. Also, 2013 was the year I almost committed suicide, so that's that. 2013 was also the year I really got into computers because I learned all about virtual machines, Unix, Windows, the basics of what an OS is, etc. This was also the year where I learned how to update my current operating system. I updated my OS from Windows 7 to Windows 8 this year (and eventually updated to Windows 8.1 Preview later that year).

"Windows XP, Me, 98, and 2000 on one machine? What sorcery is this?" I thought.

Truth be told, my adventures dabbling with virtual machines and learning how to set them up proved to be beneficial to me in the long run. At the very least, I'm glad that, around the age of 14, I already knew how to configure RAM for a virtual machine, how many cores should a virtual machine need, how to install VMware tools on a VM, etc. Ooh, and how to make MacOS (then Mac OS X) run on Windows! :D

Ah, the Mac days always had a new place to explore.

Installing and setting up virtual machines weren't the only things I learned this year, oh no. I also dabbled in the magical arts of Visual Studio for the first time. I was extremely technologically adventurous this year because it was, like, the first year I had my own personal computer, so I tried to do so a lot of stuff on it. This was around my 3rd year in high school when I asked myself, "Do I want to be a computer programmer when I grow up?" and I answered yes. So, I downloaded Visual Studio, installed the Windows Phone SDK (because I owned a Lumia 900 and wanted to make apps for it), and started working.

It took a while for me to figure out, and I had to watch a lot of online tutorials in order to know what was what. It was the first time for me to learn a programming language, to be honest. Because the main topic of our computer classes for my 3rd year in high school was Adobe Flash, and Photoshop was the main topic the year prior. So, there I was, I tried launching a new template for a Windows Phone app and boom! "What the fuck am I looking at?" I first asked myself. I got around the program, moved things, added things, removed things, changed things, and I thought it was pretty cool. By the near-end of the year or so, I had already tried to make my first-ever app (or first-ever Windows app).

I wanted the color scheme to be yellow because... Mango. You know, Windows Phone Mango. The OS of my phone.

The first-ever app I made back in June. This was supposed to get the feed from Jessica's Weibo profile.

The app I made wasn't much, just a basic layout or so. The final app had a list of the members of the local computer club—Cryptix. (I also came up with the name for the club, hehehe.) It had a custom background, too, and it fully worked with the Windows Phone emulator on my laptop. I couldn't make it run on my phone, though. I needed a Dreamspark subscription for that, but I badly wanted to developer unlock my phone. The only problem was that our school didn't offer a .edu email address, so, yeah, I wasn't able to sign up for Dreamspark.

In hindsight, it was quite surprising to see that I've learned and did so much stuff this year in the field of computers. I had learned what Tor was and how to connect to Tor, what virtual machines were and how to install them, I learned what an SDK and an IDE was and how to use them, I made my first app, and I learned a lot about computer security as well as malware—and I was only 14 years old.

I was petrified of getting Cryptolocker on my laptop back then.

Danooct1 was (and still is) one of my favorite malware-focused YouTubers out there.

Techy and nerdy stuff aside, I focused a lot on Girls' Generation this year, and integrating myself within the Sone community. I already knew Soshified existed this year, but this was the year I learned all about Philippine Sone fan groups on Facebook.

I got so involved with the community. Man, every single day, there was a new SNSD meme on my News Feed. Whether it was a meme about Jessica's Miss Korea performance, another incident of Taeyeon touching Tiffany's butt, or another post about how uptight and strict Seohyun looks. I also made my profile fully SNSD. SNSD profile picture, SNSD cover photo, the works. I didn't care what other people thought of me, I just did what I felt like doing.

My usual setup back in the day. Internet Explorer on the left, Xbox Video in the middle, and Xbox Music on the right.

I remember spazzing so much with my best friend Elaine back then. Whenever the latest news came out about SNSD, or any of the members, she'd be my first source of information. I tell you, she's great at receiving news about SNSD. I remember those days, when we'd just talk all night about our favorite SNSD albums, why that album is good, and why it's the best. I'm not sure if she still reminisces about those things, but those little things—the late-night talks and such—mean a lot to me, and I miss those moments the most.

I was extremely addicted to listening to SNSD this year. More often than not, there would be days where SNSD is the only artist I'd listen to the entire day. Also, my Lumia would be full of all the albums SNSD has, and whenever they would release a new album or song, it would be immediately on my phone.

Ah, those were the days. Listening to SNSD on the Xbox Music app and talking to Ate Elaine using the Windows Messaging app.

Being action-packed year 2013 was, it wasn't all about technology and SNSD, it was also about gaming! The amount of games my laptop was able to handle was just insane. The newly-released horror game Outlast was able to run fantastically on this laptop of mine (albeit on the lowest settings). You see, back then, I had an AMD Radeon HD 6470M graphics card. Over the years, my laptop's life slowly degraded and the graphics card now has all but burned out. It's a dead chip on my motherboard right now, to be honest. But, before it died, I sure as hell played a lot of games on this thing—and I gamed like there was no tomorrow.

This game scared the hell out of me. It felt so real and frightening.

I used to play a lot of Minecraft back in the day. My best friend and I would write cheesy books to each other and we'd keep them stored here in this library.

Portal 2 was, hands down, the BEST game I played on this ol' laptop of mine.

Since 2013 was the year I upgraded my OS to Windows 8, it was the first year I got introduced into apps. Now, unlike the apps on Windows 10, the apps on Windows 8 were "immersive," meaning that they took a full screen view of your display. As an intrepid teen, I was fascinated with this technology. "I don't see this in other operating systems!" I thought, and it was pretty revolutionary, albeit controversial, at the time. Others seemed to hate the full screen experience on Windows 8, but I loved it. I also tried the games on Windows 8, and I loved them equally as well, and I installed as much Xbox Live games as possible.

Man, I can't tell you how much I loved the experience of spending hours upon hours playing Wordament on Windows 8. Oh, and Jetpack Joyride, too! As well as Cut the Rope. Those were the most fun games to play back then.

Blogging was also a huge thing for me back then. None of my friends in real life and I believe no one else in my high school blogged, so I tried to find people who did. I also browsed through and read some of the blogs here on Blogspot. A notable person I knew who blogged was Ate Elaine. She was a great blogger, and I'd often find myself casually reading or perusing through her blog when I was bored. Whenever she made a new post, I'd often receive a notification immediately. We also would share templates with each other, and she'd ask me to change the template of her blog or make it look better.

The app on the right is Internet Explorer, by the way. I used the IE app so much back then.

2014

2014 was more of a continuation of 2013 than anything—with emphasis on arts. I continued doing the stuff I did back in 2013 this year, but I focused on doing artsy stuff. Oh, and since this year would be the year I'd become a senior in high school, I decided to get out of my shell this year.

I met so many new people this year. This would be the "glory year" of my time in Integrated Montessori Center, and so much fun stuff in school went down this year. For one, we had a bartending class, and we were supposed to bring liquor to school so we can learn about how to mix cocktails, or something. The others brought liquor, sure, but some brought hard liquor—brandy, vodka, and the alike. Since we were highschoolers and we were young, it was expected for us to drink so much that day, and I'm sure most of us did, myself included. So, yeah, I did get drunk at school, mind you. Along with many others, too, and I was just 15 :^)

Drinking alcohol isn't a hobby of mine, to be honest. In fact, I actually abstain myself from drinking it (due to prior trauma). And, since I'm on the topic of vices, I don't smoke, too. Smoking is the last thing I'll ever do. My lungs are bad enough already, and I don't even smoke; horrid my lungs would be if I smoked. That experience in my bartending class in high school was a fun experience, but I don't want it to happen again, haha.

Anyway, I got out of my small shell this year. I met some great friends this year: Sir Jep, Ashley, Bernadette, Jared, Mariah, Sofia, Emman, and Janine. I got close to my existing friends this year as well, especially the RC crew.

Skype was one of my frequently-used programs in this year. The usual scenario during afternoon or on evenings would be me opening Skype and calling someone who was online. Screen sharing was an amazing feature, too.

Adobe Photoshop was also a favorite program of mine to use this year as well. I got into Photoshop this year, and I have made several layouts within my senior year of high school. One project in particular was the layout of my school's newspaper. You see, we had a few people who were good in Photoshop back then, and, since I was the only one in the Intrepid Pen who knew how to make a layout, I was tasked with the layout of the entire school newspaper. (The final, full layout of my school newspaper can be found on my Behance profile.)

The first draft of the layout. I hadn't learned about legibility of text yet, so I had trouble with the layout.

2014 would also be the year where I would heavily pay attention to my blog. You see, before A Better Tomorrow and Memoir of an Undergrad, I had a blog—my main blog. I did so much stuff on that blog back then. I watched a lot of movies, Korean, American, foreign, it doesn't matter, and I reviewed them on my blog. I also wrote a review on Windows 8.1 on my old blog, and I even wrote a sort of "investigative article" on Tiffany Hwang's Xanga. I also coined the term "monsoon season" that year. (The "monsoon season" is the season where it rains the most, and you just feel like watching movies all day.)

2012

Finally, 2012. 2012 and the years prior were the "texting years." For the majority of 2012, I didn't have a laptop nor an Internet connection, and I only had my trusty Nokia 5233 with me. I texted a lot of people back then. In school, I'd often ask my friends for their phone number, and we would just text each other nonstop.

These were the years of "GM" or "group message." I also had my first love this year, and we would constantly text each other all day long, sending each other a good morning text when we woke up, and a good night text when we were going to sleep. Calling was also a thing this year. You couldn't call over Facebook back then, so, more often than not, you'd call the other person, and I regularly called people back then. I miss those late-night conversations over the phone, and calling someone in the middle of the night to talk about whatever.

This year and the years prior were also the "PSP years." Like I said, I had no laptop, so the only mode of entertainment I had this time was the PSP—and I had two of them. One PSP was a fat version, and it had a 4GB memory stick. That PSP was filled to the brim with low-quality 129kbps songs that came from a YouTube video converter, and with videos from a converter as well. It wasn't much to you, but it was more than enough to me. I also had a slim version PSP and that had all the games I wanted to play. DJ Max Portable 3, Need for Speed, The Sims, Midnight Dub, Gran Turismo, Thrillville, Tekken 6, and, my favorite, WipEout.

Now

In hindsight, my years of being an early teen were pretty good. Everything was filled with new places to explore, and every alley was a roadtrip to experience.

I'm 18 now and it's been a few years since I did those things. I don't know why, but, all the experiences I had have all but waned away. The fun I used to have making artworks in Photoshop and learning new stuff about technology are all gone, for some reason.

As much as I want to, it's hard to rekindle the experiences of the past. It's also not just the experiences of the past I miss, but the people, too. "People change," as they say, and most of my close friends back then are barely my friends now. I'm not sure what happened. I've retained who I was from the past, but I'm not sure with them. The saddening thought is that maybe they changed, and I just failed to change with them. I just stayed in the same spot and hoped they did, too.

Often, I try to do the things I did in the past that seemed fun, such as watching tutorial videos on YouTube about computers, but now it feels like a chore, for some reason. I no longer find interest in learning more about computers. I still love computer science, to be honest, it's just that I've lost the passion to learn more about it recently.

The same can be said for my artworks, to be honest. Whenever I feel like making art, I ask myself "Why should I do that now? I have work to do. I'm tired. I don't want to do that. I'm not artistic enough. It's pointless, I'll never be good." Even if I had real work to do, when it clashes with the feeling of me wanting to make art, it often results to just me lying on the bed, getting nothing done.

It's depressing, to be honest. I don't know what has taken over me. The things I liked back then are now either gone or aren't as enjoyable anymore. SNSD is not as active as they used to, and I believe that the group is on the verge of death. Plus, there's nothing new to talk about the group other than Taeyeon.

Maybe it's because I'm all grown up now? I don't know. The visions of another adventure down any alley has faded, well, the door to my Wonderland has closed.

A solution I see for this would be to experience new and more stuff. I've started joining hackathons recently, and I'm preparing myself to be more outgoing. I've also made strides in finding new people to talk to, and I'm getting more into Overwatch lately, so that's that.

Although I don't want to replace SNSD from my heart, I want to rekindle my experience with them. There are still tons of videos about them that I haven't watched, so, in my free time, I could do so. Oh, and there are new k-pop groups on the scene now, and they have active fanbases, but I'm not sure if I like them.

Maybe I just need companionship now. A friend whom I can share new experiences with. I've been in my lonely shell for far too long and I want to get out. Who knows? Maybe in the coming months or so, I might just shake things up.

Whatever happens, I'm just glad that I had such a bright past. The light from them continues to guide me through the future—even in the darkest paths. I guess that's the lesson for today. I'm just glad about all of it.