Speedcubing
Read Part 1 here! Today is the second day of my thirteenth cubing competition! There isn't that much ado, but I do want to bring up that I did stretch my hand quite weirdly while helping set up, so it hurt a little bit throughout the whole day
Speedcubing
It's finally SD Summer 2026 time! This is my thirteenth cubing competition, so as I mentioned on yesterday's weekly update, I'm keeping an ace of spades in my pocket for funsies. I might bring a different one tomorrow though, as it actually ended up
Weekly Updates
Definitely a much slower week for me compared to the previous one, but it's fortunately still been pretty good! I haven't brought it up yet, as I unfortunately don't have direct involvement with it this time, but this I have a speedcubing competition this
Achievements
As of today, July 2nd, 2026, at 1:11 AM UTC (Still July 1st for me), I have finally 100%'d Portal 2, as in I finally completed all of its achievements! For almost a year I've had only 50 of its 51 achievements, with the last
NimbleBit Games
As I said in my latest weekly update, I've been "playing" a lot of Bit City, a game by NimbleBit (creators of Tiny Tower, Pocket Planes, Pocket Trains, and more), and so I've ended up with a lot of its music stuck in my
Weekly Updates
I definitely feel like I've hit my stride again this week. Despite there being some bad news going around, this has been a very good and productive week for me! I started doing some deep cleaning of my files and photos after being inspired by Jeremy Maluf'
Video Games
After a much shorter waiting period than I thought, Deltarune Chapter 5 came out, and I wanna share my thoughts about it, but I should probably clarify some things first. I used to be a bit more serious about it when the game (or at least Chapter 1) first came
Dropout
I don't know why I am only starting this now, but I've decided that while Season 8 of Game Changer is going, I might as well write my full thoughts on the episodes as they come out, as I usually have a lot to say about
Personal
https://desertbus.org/express2026/
A blog by Karl Abate
I managed to go out and do slightly more stuff this week than usual, which was extremely nice! As well as generally doing more stuff than just being on the internet. Of course, I have to mention what's probably the highlight of the week, though it was just
I've really wanted to write more this week, and today in particular, but I was really struggling to find something to actually write about. Bored, and with no idea what to do, I was sitting on my desk with this same page open, and then I got a
Welp, today is June 15, 2026, meaning that it's been 1 year since I officially launched this blog! This is a very big milestone for me, so just like I did when I uploaded my 100th post, I'll temporarily turn this site gold! Hooray! Originally I
About 2 months ago MrWeenus on YouTube shared an old video from 2006 by 1Up Network where they interviewed Valve during the development of The Orange Box, which included a lot of footage of early versions of Portal, Team Fortress 2, and — the main focus of this post — Half-Life
I haven't been that motivated to write recently, so this is my sixth post in a row to be a weekly update. I've noticed I'm getting a pretty bad case of "nobody cares" syndrome with my writing, so I haven't
I wasn't sure on if I would write this week at all, let alone a weekly update, but I guess I am! Though this one will be a bit different. To officially reveal what I've been teasing lately, I am currently in New York! It was
I've gotten into full prep mode for the upcoming secret thing, which I was originally planning on directly revealing today, but I decided not to, as I don't know when I'll get to write about it here. I did drop a hint on my
This was another pretty hectic week for me, but at least I managed to do some nice things. We got a new small cabinet from Ikea on Monday, and we decided to put our board games there! Pretty much all of these games used to be in another cabinet with
It's been a bit of a tough week. Although I didn't write anything here, I did spend a lot of time this week on some of my other hobbies, which has been very nice! Plus I still have some cool stuff to share, of course. I&
Another week, another update! I've done quite a few new things, returned to some old stuff, and have quite a lot of fun stuff to share! First of all, like last week, I wanna explain the header image. This week I spent a while in Punta Cana with
An old school project from 2021.
After I finished my previous map about how each country divides their currency, I watched a video by RobWords about how a lot of currencies got their names and symbols, which I highly recommend you check out! It's very well made, has lots of interesting bits of information,
