I know that there are certain areas of this website that are a a little “off” and sometimes “outdated.” If you took some time to look around the changes, you can tell that little by little, I’ve been doing some major updates. Things like page layout and stuff like that, WYSIWYG. I can’t really work on it for many hours straight because of a busy life. But little by little, there will be changes not mentioned in the Site Updates section. I could have this entire site on my GitHub, but that would be too much of a hassle. I’m too old skool and too GitHub-noob to spend time archiving this site there. Besides, I have automated backups on the backend set up, so when this site suddenly goes down, just like the last time, I can always bring it back up again.
However, this website isn’t the only one that’s going through an upgrade. My entire workflow system is going through an upgrade as well.
New iPad – iPad Air 13" M3
What’s the difference between my old iPad1) and this model? Other than the usual upgraded backend system, it’s more of the screen size. My old one was 11", while this one is 13". Most of all, my old iPad had been running very slow as of late, my Procreate freezing, my browser has been lagging, and some of the apps I’m using are outdated because I have an outdated version. My new one also has a larger storage capacity than the old one, and a larger capacity means I get to save all of my digital artwork. I don’t plan on using just Procreate alone. I want to use other programs too, such as Clip Studio Paint. I’ve owned this iPad for 6 years, and usually, I would keep it for as close to ten years. But with Apple products, sometimes, keeping it that long doesn’t work anymore because technology advances so fast that all your top of the line system will get outdated very fast.
In a way, I’d like to do better, more high quality illustrations, and I feel that having a larger screen can help me achieve that. A lot of the art tutorials and self-taught courses use dimensions that are a lot larger than mine and having a bigger screen can also support file sizes as large as those. My old iPad has the basic specs (256GB), and having a small internal storage doesn’t quite help. Luckily, there were sales for good prices for the latest iPad Air, and I decided to snag it before the prices go up again. I purchased this newer model during the Memorial Day sales.
I’m having a lot of fun with this! The current illustration that I’m doing on this image is my first storefront illustration with actual characters in them. Again, I’m using templates and stamps, but it’s the only way for me to learn effectively on creating my own original illustrations. I’ve started this artwork since May, and I work on it during the extra hours that I have during lunch at work. At home, unless if I’m motivated, I rarely even touch my iPad. Today is one of those days that I’m finally working on my art right now.
Second Upgrade – Macbook Air 15" M4 (2025)
The Macbook Pro that I’m currently using now is 10 years old. I purchased this as a refurbished Intel-powered laptop, with some small customizations. I had it installed with macOS 12 Monterey and its internal HD being 1TB. That was it. When the new OS came out right after Monterey, I was never able to update. Because it’s the 2015 model, it won’t support any OS right after Monterey. But even after the years being stuck with Monterey, this Mac has been really good to me and it hasn’t given me any issues at all.
… until today, that is. It’s still working, however, I came across various news articles about the upcoming macOS 26 Tahoe. And one tidbit stood me out from those articles wasn’t about the upcoming new OS itself. It was about Apple no longer supporting Intel-based Macs, which also meant that Intel-based Macs would no longer receive any security updates, nor provide any form of tech support in case the hardware goes wrong or anything within the OS goes wrong. Looking back, since I decided to get a new iPad as an upgrade, why not upgrade my Macbook too, so at least, these two devices can work together?
Even though I have the new Macbook Air, with all the latest updates, at the same time, I also downgraded. The one I bought has the base specs, 2 while my old one has 16GB mem, 1TB internal space. Transferring files would be a complete pain because there won’t be enough space to occupy all my old/current settings. Luckily, I also purchased a 4TB external hard drive on sale recently, so I decided to have my new Macbook Air boot from the external HD instead, then transfer all my current stuff from the old Macbook to the new one and have them saved in the 4TB HD via Time Machine. My luck went up when I found my two old external HDs (1TB and 2TB, respectively) from close to 10 years old.3 Both still work perfectly, so I formatted both of them and used my 2TB one as my backup Time Machine HD.
Right now, I’m installing (and re-installing) macOS Sequoia on the 4TB HD, following along the steps. I really couldn’t wait to start using the new one and get back to work. If that still fails, then I’ll have to start all over, re-installing some of my programs, etc. Luckily, all my personal files are saved in both Dropbox and iCloud. I’ll eventually move them to the external HDs so I can cancel my subscriptions to them🥲
That’s all that I’ve been doing as of late. Oh, and I got new games for the Switch too. I’ll wait until I get my new laptop all set up before I start writing about the games I recently played and currently playing right now.
Till next time!
Funny enough I got the new MacBook Air a couple months ago too. It’s always fun getting new stuff like that. Only pain ever is transferring stuff sometimes. I forget what year my old one was but I knew I was gonna have to upgrade soon for updates. Boots up soooo much faster too which is nice.