Quick update
Don't really have a lot of motivation to continue working on my art page. I needed to re-do the about me page and come up with a good layout for it to incorporate the art/projects page. Also wanted to make page with interests of mine, but as always, not enough time, exams, bla bla bla.
Tomorrow is my mom's birthday. Recently becoming stepdad, he sent me ~100 bucks from his prison cell for me to buy a big bouqet of 35 roses (around my mom's age) and to invite our side of the family to a nice cafe. But yesterday evening, my mom had a big argument with him so much so that the next morning she told me this: "If you buy anything for me using his money, just know that I will throw it away". Well that kinda sucks. So I bought 5 roses with my own money that I will gift with my sister tomorrow morning, but I will still propose going to a cafe. But like, if she says no, do I just keep the 100 bucks or do I somehow send it back to him? I don't think he has an active bank account in the prison.
Also today I felted the whole day after school. Since the school project I tackled was too big for a month worth of lessons, I had to finish what I could at home, go to school the next week, get the materials, and finish a lot of work today. Today I worked on it for around 3.5 hours and here's the result:

This was inspired by a reference painting avaliable to us in class by Hundertwasser's "tree tenants do not sleep" or something. This painting wasn't really popular online. Now I'll need to frame it in class and the teacher said that she will take it to our school's exhibition, which is pretty cool. I think this is one of the biggest projects I did ever.

12.05.2026

Fear of war
On May 7th, at 4:45 AM we received an emergency alert about a possible air threat, again. This isn't the first time it happened. Just 4 days ago, on May 3rd we received a similar message titled "severe alert" at 4:01 AM, with an "end of threat" message following at 7:20 AM. The cause for that alert seemed to be Ukrainian drones flying past our air space to attack a russian port near Leningrad. Scary, but this doesn't affect us, right? Unfortunately, this time it's different.

First of all, the title was "extreme alert" instead of a "severe" one, which meant it was already somehow different from the previous alert. FYI, the details in the alert were the same as the previous one. This already gave me anxiety for like an hour and I couldn't fall asleep. I started scouring reddit and news articles, but found nothing. Unsurprising, considering only 5-10 minutes have passed since the unwarranted alert.
While I was searching for any available information, my mom came out of her room and immediately asked: "Are you reading about it too?". Yes, by that time I just opened a recent LSM article, which talked about drones possibly coming in from russia's side. She handed me her phone to read something while she went to the kitchen to make some tea. What I read was shocking to me. It was a facebook comment page from our city's forum. Everyone talked about how they heard a big explosion, felt a strong vibration and saw a bright flash near some supermarkets. I immediately thought of my grandma, who lives near that region and is possibly stressing herself to death, if she knows what's happening.

I'm still researching at 6 AM, so I'm gathering as much information as I see. There seemed to be a drone involved, possibly from Russia, that crashed into a water or oil tank. Looking at the photos and videos, 5 fire trucks, a police bus and an ambulance came to the impact zone. There was actually an explosion BEFORE that . The first one was heard even before the alert sounded (~3 AM) and another one after an hour. Now I'm seeing that there were explosions in a neighbouring city. Some time later my mom messaged me to open my window quickly, I did, and I heard a considerably loud humming outside. It was another drone, she said it's possibly heading in the direction of another big city, but Ukraine is also in that direction. Now I'm hearing our fighter jets flying in the sky. What the fuck.
Now I'm not so sure about it being an accident. At first I wanted to make an entry about war anxiety caused only by negative thoughts and the recency of these events, but my worries seemed to prove themselves to be a real problem. I don't know what will happen next and I'm scared. I don't want to know.

Update: don't worry about me. It seemed to be an accident, but the drones are still from an unknown source. Only two exploded but more have been spotted. Read this article if you're interested.

07.05.2026

As always, a busy week.
Sorry in advance. No big update today, but I did get status.cafe running. First of all, why do you have to wait like a week to be able to log in? No confirmation email, no nothing. It just doesn't let you log in and says that the "account is not active". Anyway, now that I got the corner set up, I can give little updates from time to time. Just don't want to make a whole new entry here to say something. I feel like I need to add something else when I open up the code editor, but I don't have time for that (like always..)
It's already really late, but I just wanted to share some plans for this website. I have scanned some of my drawings on a scanner, and I look forward to share my "pieces", so to say. I'm not good, trust me, but I'm pretty proud on some of them. And I wanted to share my interests like music, games, books and hobbies. That was the "big update" I started but had to leave the house for. The weekends were busy for me, so I decided to give myself some rest and not update this website on my last free day. Now I'm doing homework till 10PM and preparing for tests and exams. Coool!! *sob*
About art. Here's a question for any artist: should I buy a used drawing tablet or is a 3DS XL/phone(w/ no stylus) enough for learning how to draw? I asked that here before, but nobody probably saw it because I uploaded two entries at the same time. It's a dream of mine to be able to express myself through art. For now I can only re-draw stuff (pretty poorly still), but the idea of having the ability to make something cool with just a pencil and paper is so inspiring.
For now I'll just share some of my drawings here, so you can get a sense of what I can do. (with comments)

05.05.2026

Can I just get a rest please? (Lots of swearing)
This is just a rant on how I always have to do shit. The first obvious reason is school. Some teachers already piss me off while I'm there, but they just can't keep their hate to themselves and assign us to write essays, memorize huge texts and prepare for "important" tests all while they insult you and always nag on you about your disrespect to them and saying shit like: "The exams are so close, and you can't even do "simple" homework? You're gonna be fucked if you don't come to consult with me. Oh, I'm free only at like fucking 5 in the evening when you would usually bother with your own shit."
Why do we have to still do tests after the fucking exams are over? In the end of May we will have like 2 tests a day for an entire week. And you know when the exams are? At the same fucking time! So while we are trying to get ready for that looming danger that everyone is warning us about, we still have to bother with unnecessary shit that probably just sexually pleases the teacher while they scream at us about how they are "on their knees", wanting to help us at any opportunity, but we, the morons that we are, don't have any dignity.
Ok, I wrote the text that they assigned us for today, I'm sure they will at least check it, probably draw a penis on it and roll it up into a blunt. What? They forgot that they even asked us? So I was sitting at my desk till midnight for nothing? I didn't even have to spend the entirety of my already limited time torturing myself to get a single word out? Well, I guess I'll go fuck myself then.
Aside from school, I have to sit at my grandma's house for like an hour eveyday after school waiting for a bus home. Every two days I have to go to the gym with my cousin to train with him for at least an hour or more. Sometimes I have to go to a store with my mom to buy groceries immediately after I get home.
Alright, after a 40 minute bus ride home, I feed the pets, bring a bag of lumber home, take a shower, eat something and hear what my mom or sister has to say to me. Maybe I need to ride my bike to the nearest post office to pick up a parcel that they're too lazy to go get themselves. Alright, after all of that, I can do homework now. And wow, the time is 8 PM. Just enough time for me to get ready for the next school day and, if I immediately go to bed after that, get a whopping 6.5 hour sleep. No wonder I can't concentrate in school, because I obviously "use phones and play games too much and it negatively impacts my brain to the point that I'm being 'zombified' by it, like my whole generation of brainless teenagers".
I'm sorry.

28.04.2026

Rough blog from 26.04.2026 written on my notebook
While I am writing this, I'm outside of the city in my dad's house, waiting to get driven home, but my stepbrother feels a bit sick, so we are staying here for a bit. Thankfully, I brought my notepad with me, and I can write here until I upload it to my neocity. It's like I knew a moment like this would come eventually.
Today we went to my stepsister's volleyball competition in another city, which was roughly a 2-hour drive. Her team won both of the matches there. While we were there, we got some nearby fast food, which I haven't tried in a long time. It wasn't terrible, but not great either.
While I sat in my dad's house, I stared at hung paintings made by my stepsister. It made me think about why I'm not drawing myself. Her skills are not perfect, but the paintings are really beautiful. They aren't detailed, but that's the point. You can still see the pretty snow tundra, the horse in front of a sunset or a sakura tree in her paintings. These sights are pretty. Who cares about every little detail when the overall aesthetic and feel is there? I can't draw like that, I can't draw freely, I can't express myself with a pencil in my hand. When I want to draw, I need a reference. When I have a reference, I end up trying to perfectly replicate it. It shows up in my notebook, school and digital drawings. When I can't replicate something in a good way, I get demotivated and quit trying for weeks or months. When I eventually share my art, that problem will be obvious to see.
Some of my art looks good, I won't lie, but that's because I just re-drew it good enough. I hope I will try harder in the future. Maybe I could also buy a used drawing tablet for like 10-15 bucks and practice on that instead of my 3DS, which is pretty small for that. If anyone is even reading this, can you just tell me if it would be worth it or nah to buy a drawing tablet? I mostly saw Wacom branded tablets for a good price. Are they any decent?
This is the end of the notebook part, The next paragraph is what I wanted to add but didn't have time to.
Yesterday I got up early (6:45 AM) like I usually do and also because from the morning I had to work with lumber. While a worker from my uncle's workplace, which is where we get our firewood from, was cutting the logs into smaller pieces, I was chopping them up into the needed size firewood. Thankfully, we finished a whole truck worth of log beams in about 5 hours of work. I will need to get used to that type of physical work if I want to work a summer job at my uncle's lumber place.

26.04.2026

Little by little
I don't really have a lot of stuff I want to write about. I fixed my writing on some of my pages today, but otherwise I don't know what to do. I should probably make a page that's not just talking about me, but I don't really have the motivation.
Yesterday in school, on a break from our english exam, I saw a dude playing on a 3DS! I immediately sat down to him and I saw that he was surprised too. We talked about it for a minute or two, but my 3DS that I took with me wasn't charged for some reason. I don't know him and didn't get his contacts, but I hope I'll see him again soon, since this is my final year in this school. To clarify, I have NEVER seen a stranger carrying a 3DS before, so this was pretty exciting. His console had pink colors on the top and black on the bottom, and he was playing Ocarina of Time on it.
The wheel! I really like playing with this wheel now since I get more and more comfortable with driving manual cars. I downloaded some car mods for Euro Truck Sim 2, but I need to get more experience and money to buy them in-game. When I get home from school, the wheel, disconnected and laying on the side of my table, and the pedals, staying as they are under my feet, tempt me to get on the road and start trucking.
Also, I finally finished Detroit: become human! This game is such a masterpiece. With the price that it goes at on sales and the masterfully done optimization make it a must buy for me. Its story had me regretting my choices and crying at the ending. The best part for me is the lack of save-scumming. Once you've made a choice, there's no going back. To put it without spoilers: The path that you decide to take as any of the three characters will shape you, the people that follow you, the society and the future between humand and androids.

23.04.2026

Weekend fun
My G27 wheel came 2 days ago and the experience has been great so far! I already had ETS 2 on Steam so it was the first thing I hopped into. Did a quick job from the Netherlands to Czechia and didn't encounter any issues except for cops blocking the fucking road lol. Next I "borrowed" a copy of BeamNG.Drive and it became my favourite game so far with the wheel. Here's a clip of me going up to what seems like 250km/h and then immediately crashing my car.

Awesome, isn't it? And notice how it isn't lagging at all even at good graphics, and even while recording 1080p 60fps. That's also a new experience for me since I had a Pentium laptop with no GPU for at least the last 5 years.
But there's a pretty big design flaw with this wheel. There are only 4 tiny holes to passively cool the strong motors, and with enough time and heat the encoder wheel can crack (the thing that sees how much and where you turn the steering wheel), causing to have misalignment problems. Fortunately, my wheel isn't getting that hot because the force feedback (FFB) isn't that strong. Maybe, if I'll have some free time, I can get a dremmel and some sanding bits to DIY a cooling solution. I still ned to re-grease some parts too. Huge thanks to VVeedragon for the awesome video. I wouldn't have known any of the issues if not for him.
Driving with this wheel is fun, but, either because of the physics or the fact that I'm still sitting at my desk, it doesn't feel as good as driving a real car. There's just a feeling of isolation between the virtual road and me. Like I'm still driving with a game controller. I think I'll do some more stuff with this wheel, so I could make a dedicated page for my shenanigans with it once I get myself to refurbish it and share my setup, ooor maybe not..
On a different note, I went fishing with my mom today! We didn't really catch anything except for a little common roach, but it was fun nonetheless. Nature seems to slowly wake up now. I also saw a mysterious bug there. It was fluffy like a bumblebee and had a nose of a mosquito. First time seeing something like that, super weird.
Well, my first set of pre-exam tests are 3 days away. On the 22nd of April We'll be taking writing, speaking and listening tests for english. I As you can probably guess I'm pretty good at english, so I'm not worried about it. Somewhere in May or the start of June I'll have my math and Latvian exams, there wiil be some optional stuff I'll need to take too but to put it simply: A lot of tests. There are currently only 2 actual exam subjects: math and Latvian. I don't get why, but they removed english from that list and made it some other form of test called "monitoring work", if translated literarily. I have no doubts about the tests themselves, but I do need to get a minimum score of 50% on them to apply for a high school near me. So there's not really a lot of stress, but, you know, It's the fucking exams.

19.04.2026

FUUCCCKK WHAT DO I DO??!!
My dad asked me on the phone "what are you doing now?", like usual, and I said programming, making a website on a free hoster. He said: "ooh, interesting, how is it going? Be sure to tell me the link". WOHHHH UUUUHHH MAAAN I don't knoww... I got away by saying that it's still unfinished, but like, I'll have to share something. What should I do? Do I say that it's personal or hide everything here or make another fucking webpage for this specific moment? I really don't want my dad reading through my diary. I mean, strangers are welcome, but... I don't know what he would think.
Anyway, jeez, back to the original entry I made a couple of hours ago

Spring is here, yay...
Either I'm too used to cold winters or I'm always like that in the warm times. I am so sleepy and tired all the time and I don't want to do anything. But also I just have so much shit to do everyday. I don't know if I can keep this website active or make some creative improvements for long. I hope that the whole web dev spiel is not a hobby that will be forgotten about a month later. I also have my exams soon, like really soon. aughhh
I would want to put some more images here in general, because nobody would want to read a book's worth of blogs or about me pages that they don't know about. I wanted to write some articles on a couple of topics and share my opinion in general, but since our Latvian teacher is so egoistic (Is that the right word?), we have to write like 2 essays a week about novels I absolutely don't care about. So yeah, I don't have a lot of motivation to work on some other shit while also balancing school, exams, family and time to rest. Speaking of resting, I don't have a lot of it. Lately my sleep schedule has been pretty insufficient. Even with ~7 hours of sleep I'm gloomy and can't think straight. Probably some more self discipline would solve it.
One of the topics I would love to have a page about is second-hand marketplaces. I still don't understand why a lot of people overpay for new stuff that will probaby stop working in a couple of years instead of buying something that stood the test of time. You WILL save your money and help other people. But more about that will be on the page itself, if I actually decide to make it...
Why I brought this up is because I ordered a G27 steering wheel and pedals two days ago, which should arrive tomorrow. The price was 120€, but since the seller somehow lost the shifter, we agreed on 90 for everything else. As far as I'm aware, everything should be in perfectly working order. I'm so excited about it because I have Euro Truck Sim 2 on my Steam account and some PS3 games that support this wheel. I have a Sega Rally (or Sega Rally Revo in NA) disc in my collection, which is a very underrated arcade racer. This will also probably help me with experiencing the feel of driving a real car, since I'll need to get a licence sooner or later. Anyway, super excited for tomorrow and will post an update after that.

15.04.2026

Yes!!! I'm finally happy with how the website looks.
I just used a cool background from yesterweb.org and then the ideas were hitting me non stop. I guess working on something for 7 hours in a single day is much better than 2 hours a day for a week. The weather is so wishy-washy today with snow, rain, bright sunlight and hail happening all in the span of two hours. Since it's the last holiday today and such depressing weather outside, I decided to stay home and start coding in the morning, and it paid off!
I remembered a sticker pack from Telegram called "kolobki" and added them to the index page. Also I removed that scrolling SA2 background since it wouldn't look consistent with the whole style of the main website pages. And then the blinkies...
I originally wanted around 20 blinkies (NOT button or stamps) on the right side of the home page. I looked at it and it seemed a bit too asymetric for my liking. So I searched for ANOTHER 20 ones to put on the left side. These 40 blinkies, which I tried to keep personal or funny, took me about 2-4 hours to search, since I got distracted often and just browsed other's pages.
So yeah, massive motivation booster and a pretty good direction for the website.
Now, about me. Yesterday my order from Vinted came in the mail. An angry birds plushie of Red which I paid 2,48€ including all fees. Already ridiculously cheap. I open it up and there's a suprise!

A SECOND PLUSHIE??? WHAT? FOR FREE??
It was of a character I didn't know about from the Star Wars crossover game. And both of the plushies were completely original, not a ripoff! So yeah, that made my day.
I have big plans for the website, which you can read about in the home page. I have so much stuff I want to tell others about and maybe even show my older art which I drew on a little notebook. Unfortunately, I can't draw original stuff myself, so most of my art are just pictures of low-poly characters I have redrawn. FYI, I have a Rubix Cube collection, I own 3 video game consoles (which are all modded), I have a decent disc collection for my PS3 and I built this website on a 100$ used PC running Linux. Also my no AI policy restricts me from using any kind of generative AI for any kind of purposes.

06.04.2026

Today was pretty fun.
We went to our relatives farm/house out of town. I got to drive a car on a field and hang out with my cousin. We drove for around an hour on a straight track and switched between each other an old A class and a newer R class Mercedes. Being behind the wheel and listening to my favourite Sonic music being blasted in my ears made me feel something new. Like I was all alone and peaceful, like I was matured and free.
But then I switched to the shitbox A class and it made me feel like I am driving on a tractor with a piece of straw in my mouth and russian folk music being played on the radio. I wouldn't actually describe it as a bad thing, I kind of adore older things overall, like cars, games, tech, software and other stuff that I can't think of right now.
Ok, about the website. I started a changelog yesterday and documented all the changes starting from the first day. I realised that the background I came up with kinda sucks, so I started clicking random buttons on Neocities to find an idea. Maybe something dark and calm like on PikoRat's page (Hii Piko!), but that's just an artwork for Cave Story, which I have not played yet, and I don't want to steal from Piko. I want to have something original, which is a problem for me right now, since I:

1. Don't have any art skills
2. Have an empty head
3. Don't have much time to work on this place

I've found at least something for now. On a Nekowed website I saw a cool button with Vib Ribbon, a PS1 game with a very charming style. If I could find a walk cycle or a sleeping gif of Vibri and see how it looks she might become the background, or at least a small part of it.
I really should've put up at least a concept for this website before making it public. I am pressuring myself to work on this so that I won't dissapoint myself and the awesome people that are following me. Thank you guys, especialy PikoRat and Sonic2K.
Only now am I realising that nobody might be reading through all of this at all lol. Anyway, should get some sleep now, since it's 11:30 PM, and add more stuff here tomorrow. I think I will have more free time.

04.04.2026

A couple of days have passed and I still don't really know what to do here. I mean, I know web dev pretty well but I just don't know what I want the website to look like. I don't know if this is because I don't know what I'm interested in or I don't have a favourite style yet.
I have been drawing inspiration from other awesome neocities (will link them in another page later), but without just stealing ideas my head is empty. I should have a general idea but I don't. I don't know what I like, or at least what I want to show others what I like. That's why I had put off this project of sorts away from me. I don't know if it's an actual identity crisis or me simply thinking too much about unimportant things. I am writing this website primarily for myself, because I want to socialize here and leave my footprint, to look at this page in the future and remember myself making this.
Anyway, I will just say hi to whoever is reading this (sorry), and go to bed after I upload these changes. I have some decent CSS skills but not nearly as many good ideas. If you have a suggestion or just want to chat/say hi, email me! It will probably make my day.

31.03.2026

Hello anyone!
This version of my attempt at a website has basically not even started because there is so much to with coding and making up something to write about.
In short, my name is Mark, I am a 9th grade student from Latvia that wants to find interests. More info about me and the website will be added in the future About me page.
I am making this website from complete scratch and use plain html like many others here. I work on this website in my free time from 20:00 to 22:00, so I can't really do much progress on this every day, but would really love to, since this could be one of the only things that is more or less personal to me.
In short, I would love to work on this website more but I'm often busy and could forget about it. If someone by sheer luck stumbles across this place and it hasn't been updated for a long time, contact me directly by email to remind me lol: mgemkudz@gmail.com

Started on 23.03.2026 and first ever neocities release on 24.03.2026 21:30