Aured's Personal Site

Fall Break Update

2026-10-11T00:00:00Z

Some people have said that the biggest test of a new routine is whether you can repeat it at least once. I am not sure if that is true (or if anyone has actually said that), but I am going to try and pass that test by writing a post and pushing it to my site every sunday</strong> for as long as I can muster the energy. Anyway, welcome to week 2 of this experiment!</p>

At long last, fall break has arrived. I will hopefully get to do a little bit of relaxing in between spending time with my father, working on job applications, and exploring Pittsburgh with him. This week I had more success on the job search (more is relative): I got TWO OAs and two possible connections. I just finished the first OA and I think I did decently on it!</p>

I don’t have too much more to say this week, just providing a quick update on how things are going.</p>

Take care,</p>

Aured</p>

Summer 2026 Recap

2026-09-28T00:00:00Z

Hihi! Sorry for taking so long to write my next post, I have been quite busy!</p>
Summer 2026</h1>
This summer I handled three things: I took a summer class, I moved apartments (without the help of movers, that was brutal), I went to and paneled at Anthrocon 2026, I worked on realtime transit arrival signage for my university, and I worked on a patch for clang</code>! I did many of these concurrently, giving me many days where I had very little time to think of anything other than working. Despite this, Anthrocon 2026 was by far my favorite: it surpassed even last year’s where I paneled for the first time.</p>
Moving out put me in an apartment entirely on my own for the first time in my life. I have always had at least one roommate while living not with family, so this is a huge change! It has come with both positives and negatives. To start, I don’t have to share a bathroom or shower!!!! I can be as tidy and organized as I would like and have complete control over the interior layout and appearance of my apartment. There are many framed commissions on the wall as well as art that I or people in my family have made.</p>
For the downsides, obviously it is more expensive. In addition, I have found myself being alone for long stretches of time that have occasionally had a negative effect on my mental health, though this is much less pronounced than it has been during previous points in my life. The laundry situation is crazy. (sorry…) It is out of the way from inside my apartment, requires walking down quite a few stairs, and the dryer is really bad. It also doesn’t help that it is coin-operated, which is difficult because I do not have a debit card at any local bank (and I have not once actually gone to an Federal Credit Union network ATM). I am setting a goal for myself to do sufficiently well in the next 2 years of my life that I can have in-unit laundry that requires no stairs at all to use. I don’t care how small the machines are, if I don’t need to use stairs to get to them and they are clean, I will be immensely happy.</p>
Right Now</h1> I am completing my final semester at university which is exciting and nerve-wracking! By the end of December 2026 I will officially have a Bachelor of Science in Mathematical Sciences, complete with the paper certificate! Not to be outdone though, life won’t let me savor the moment. I will have to scramble to apply to as many jobs as I can and hope that I end up with something decent right after I graduate (so I can pay rent). I am not really expecting to be very successful (which is sad, I guess) so it is unclear if I will end up moving out of Pittsburgh at this point. It remains to be seen with how the job search goes. I am still working on clang</code> but am awaiting responses to several comments I submitted on the issues I was assigned.</p> I have been workshopping ideas for a programming blog post for my professional site. So far, the ideas I have are (1) an explainer of iterators and inductive types, (2) object oriented programming, design patterns, and their existence as a result of poor language design, and (3) an explainer of -fbounds-safety</code>, the work I did over the summer, some basics about the design of clang</code>, and how memory safety is handled by a C compiler. If you know me, feel free to suggest whichever one you like the most!</p> I have been trying to read some small amount per week to ease myself back into the habit of doing so! I recently got through a few more chapters of Robert Caro’s fantastic book The Power Broker</em>, which is about Robert Moses. Every chapter I get through leaves me in awe at his incredible proficieny at both performing the work necessary for him to shape New York City to his will and the instinct to navigate around an environment of people who covet power.</p> I got to be with my dog, Ozzy, for this weekend! Since I moved out I have not spent any time with him and it made me incredibly happy to be able to do so again. I will also get to see my dad again (I haven’t seen him since December 2024) and show him around Pittsburgh. He hasn’t been here for more than a day in a very long time. I am so looking forward to showing him around the city! I hope that this fall break will give me a chance to experience genuine happiness again and reconnect with my family after so long on my own.</p> On a less pleasing note, I am finding it difficult to have resolve and enthusiasm about getting up in the morning these days. I don’t know if it is the stress of having no guaranteed source of income upon graduation and pressing financial worries, or if it is seasonal, or if it is because I do not socialize enough with my friends, but I am just lacking joy and focus. I find myself drifting through a sea of interests and distractions, but I have not felt like I have truly gotten to bury myself in something or that anything I have done has made much of a difference. I should try to structure my life more and set goals for myself. I think it would help if I started writing here more regularly, or even if not here, somewhere private where I can at least get thoughts about my life off my chest and therefore feel better about them. I hope that through reflecting on what interests me and what has been keeping me from feeling joy, that I am able to start and adhere to a routine that helps me feel better. If you know me and have any suggestions for how to manage this, please reach out!</p> What Lies Ahead</h1> I have ideas for this site too! You may notice that sometime this summer I changed the styling quite a bit. This is part of an extensive rewrite I conducted in my downtime. Initially, this site was built with the static site generator Hugo</code> (written in Go). It has since changed to be built with my own static site generator aurssg</code> which I have not released the code for (but may in the future.) I continue to stir restlessly with thoughts of modifying this site to be even more pleasant and full of little details that make it more pleasant to visit; I would be curious to hear which of them you would like to see.</p> I would like to add tags to my posts alongside a search feature. This would let people use their favorite HOFs to reach posts they are most interested in. This will be especially useful for my technical/professional website (another thing I set up recently!) where I intend to write about programming languages, compilers, mathematics, and other technical subjects that interest me.</li> I would like to modify the styling to be cleaner. I am not sure if I would like to do another rewrite of the styling so that it can be Frutiger Aero/ Windows Aero-esque, but it has been on my mind. I like my site’s appearance now but there are a few things I have been thinking about tweaking. The font could be better and the spacing between words needs some adjustment.</li> I have been considering modifying my static site generator to cache builds. A friend of mine blogged about this within the year, so I have been giving it some thought. I have yet to encounter in practice the benefits it would provide since my site is so small, but perhaps I will find out the benefits in practice when I try. I did want to include metadata about the build data of my site in the footer of pages, including a little note about whether the page was edited or updated at any point.</li> I really want to add a gallery of fursona art. I do not know what design I would like for my gallery, though. This involves making a lot of decisions that I do not think I am ready for yet; I want to get back to this later.</li> </ul> BTW: If you are or know anyone who is in a position to hire someone for a software role and need a motivated junior engineer to hire, please tell them to reach out to me :) I would greatly appreciate it!</p> Thanks for reading!</p> Aured</li> </ul>
Anthrocon 2026 2026-07-07T00:00:00Z To start, I wanted to thank all of my friends who I was able to meet and hang out with at the convention. Many of you I had met for the first time and had a lovely time spending time with.</p> Obligations</h1> Transit Panel</h2> During AC26, I was once again a panelist for the Furbanism and Transit panel alongside co-hosts Delorean, Esker, and Kezl. This time, due to extreme heat, we opted to cancel the group bus ride (the motivation for our panel being at 09:30). The panel was a great success! I chose to write about GTFS, the current open standard for encoding transit data. My approach was to write my slides about a more technical topic in a pedagogical/lecture style: I introduced the topic in the form of a series of questions and then motivated answers to these questions, incrementally building up the files in the feed definition for GTFS. I also selected some data that would be illustrative of how a feed is built.</p> Moving apartments</h2> Immediately before this, I had one of the most stressful periods of time in my life recently. I had to move apartments without hiring a mover. Even though my new apartment was very close by, this involved having to move a lot of things to the new apartment by hand and it involved many, many back and forth car trips. I completed my move between apartments at 22:30 the day before the con, amassing 24,500 steps that day (more than any single day of the convention!) As if that weren’t enough, I had to complete a really time-intensive lab during the convention because I had not yet finished it due to having to move so many things. But this has finally passed and I can now relax.</p> Activities</h1> Compared to previous years, I spent much more time at this convention surrounded by my friends and people with whom I could have pleasant conversation. I made new friends out of circumstance and indelible memories came from them. I attended more panels this convention than I had in previous ones. I wandered around the convention center taking in the mass of people and running into groups of friends along the way, on some occasion then grabbing food with them or visiting the Dealer’s Den and exploring together. I reached a local minimum in the amount of time I spent alone in my hotel room–an extremely positive change in my con activity. In fact, much of the time I spent in my hotel room this time around was spent engaged in conversation with my roommates, which was really pleasant and very fun! It was so different to how every other con has gone for me: I genuinely had not one issue with my rooming situation at the convention: no single unpleasant social interaction whatsoever.</p> Atmosphere</h1> My sense of self and the barrier between me and others</h2> There is something about being in an environment with people of varying backgrounds with whom you have no connection besides membership in the fandom and whose lives you are enabled to get a glimpse into at the convention due to proximity. Thousands of people I would have never seen otherwise, with undoubtedly totally disjoint life stories and trajectories from mine, nonetheless are just as real and present as I and my friends are. Many of them are considerably less hesitant to express themselves in front of others, wearing more vulnerable badges, clothing, et cetera. Exposure to this generated thoughts in my mind about my identity and how I express my desires: do I care too much about appearance? Am I trying to seem too polished or refined at the expense of self-expression at this convention? Is this a consequence of a narcissistic tendency in my behavior and how I view myself that I have noticed somewhat recently? I am not sure. But I will sit with these thoughts for a while and see if any new insights result from it.</p> I feel that I have consistently struggled connecting with others. I love talking about technical things, music, art, literature, et cetera, but I wonder if there is something more that I am missing: is just being around other people enough? Perhaps I care too much about trying to feel like I “deserve” to spend time with people, proving it to myself with my actions, as opposed to just seeking it out on my own through asking people. Is it worth caring so much about appearance and thinking so much about what kind of direction I should put in an effort to realize myself? Will it really make a difference in how my friends see me or even make me a different person in any way? Is any of this even worth changing? If anyone wants to spend time with me</em>, why should I feel the need to change aspects of myself if it has already brought some people joy? I don’t know why these thoughts occupy me so often: it may be involuntary and a result of my depression. At any rate, this convention has given me more of them and has made me question whether the strong line between the sense of self and “being in a community” that I have is really worth the externalities it brings.</p> Change in the fandom over time</h2> Furry also feels different now than it did when I remember starting actively participating in it in 2020. I see more truly expressive, novel, emotional art now than at any point before in my life. There seems to be more saturation and exposure to the fandom than at any previous point in time which has led to more people joining it and conventions continually growing in attendance: Anthrocon had a staggering 20,619 attendees this summer, the most by any furry convention ever. Some people mourn the death or evolution of the previous furry culture, which felt more insular and full of canonical inside jokes. But I have never seen a greater concentration of talented, special people in the fandom before now, and I think this is a wonderful trend. I don’t think that “keep furry weird” should mean that furry remains a fandom that is predominated by a set of cyclical, r/furry_irl</code> memes and jokes and that certain people remain important: the fandom is always changing, people age, and inevitably some things fade into grey, leaving others to take their place. The cycling of voices is an important part of keeping this ecosystem healthy.</p> People</h1> Reaching towards others</h2> Throughout my life, I have wondered how people make and keep friends. I have seen people form solid and robust friend groups with which they do things together to great effect. However, in practice, I feel I have ended up in a different situation: my friends range across many different backgrounds and situations and I spend time across many of these domains. I have often wondered if this is handicapping my ability to get close with my friends, but I am coming to realize that I think it is totally fine to be this way. Being able to spend time with people I care about on my terms who have incredibly varied backgrounds is really rewarding and broadens the space of ideas I am exposed to, even if it comes at the cost of perhaps being less directly connected with many of them. Maybe this breadth is why I feel like it is easier for people to slip away from me. But then again, I did hang out with some of my friends for several hours at a time just because I ran into them at points during the convention, something I am certain would not have happened if they didn’t trust me enough to be around me.</p> Parting Words</h1> I hope that my thoughts give a better sense of who I am and what kinds of things race through my mind, helping you to know me better if you are someone to whom I have spoken before. I also hope that maybe something in this post will offer a new perspective on the fandom and what it means to attend these conventions. If neither of those, I hope it at least makes you feel something.</p> Until next time, Aured.</p> Seattle Retrospective 2026-01-02T00:00:00Z Overview</h2> From December 13th to December 25th, I was on vacation in Seattle, Washington. I inhabited three friends’ places across my trip, each with a varying degree of transit accessibility. It was a trip I desperately needed after a strenuous semester that pushed my abilities to manage changes in my work and personal life to their limits, and was one that I took full advantage of. I chose to travel somewhere dear to my heart from my childhood and adolescence; I had been to Seattle three previous times, first in 2010, then in 2015, and finally most recently in 2018. Each time I stayed with relatives in the city, but now for the first time, I decided where I would stay on my own and had full agency over my itinerary.</p> Where I Stayed</h2> Redmond</h3> The first place I stayed in was Redmond, a sort of corporate city most known for being the primary office location of Microsoft. As of December 2025, the project to connect the 1 and 2 lines on SoundTransit’s Link light rail has not yet been completed. Thus there is a serious gap in service for getting between Redmond and Seattle. This gap is made up by a variety of express buses that run quite frequently at peak hours.</p> However, for many locations within Redmond, just this is insufficient. You likely need to take a connecting bus to transfer to a location where the SoundTransit express bus stops; this is where the experience degrades significantly.</p> Figure 1: SoundTransit XDE60.</figcaption> </figure> King County Metro does run buses that go to some of these neighborhoods surrounding Redmond, but these neighborhoods are so suburban that the headways for these routes are quite bad (an hour on weekends!) There is not a lot to do in Redmond, but I didn’t particularly look very hard because I greatly prefer the city environment. It wasn’t too difficult finding places to eat in Redmond; there were a plethora of 5-over-1 apartments with built-in ground floor storefronts for restaurants and shops. By the end of two days, I was thankful to be somewhere not quite so far away from it all.</p> Fremont</h3> The second place I stayed in was Fremont, a neighborhood north of Seattle across the (name of bay here). This segment of my trip was the one that impressed me the most with respect to transit access. I was a 1 minute walk away from a route 5 stop, which is what I used while getting there for the first time. More importantly to me, I was just 3 blocks from a route 44 stop and around 6 blocks from a E line stop.</p> Figure 2: A New Flyer DE60LFR running on the E line on Aurora avenue.</figcaption> </figure> The E line impressed me tremendously; it runs on a bus-only lane all along Aurora avenue, there are dedicated stations, each with off-vehicle payment and E-ink time displays. The E line was also extremely frequent: I don’t think I waited more than 8 minutes for a bus at all during my time using it, and my median wait time was probably 4 minutes. Also, Fremont has a direct connection to UW Seattle via the route 44 which is served regularly by trolleybus! I spent a considerable amount of time in the Suzzallo/Allen libraries on campus on my trip there.</p> I did not explore the neighborhood itself very much; the (name of) zoo was essentially 2 blocks away, but I never went to it partially on account of the famous Seattle fall/winter weather. I saw some missing-middle density housing throughout the neighborhood of the new-build variety, but overall the density of the neighborhood was lower than somewhere I would be interesting in moving to.</p> Ballard</h3> The third and final place that I stayed during my trip to Seattle was in Ballard. This neighborhood had a similar composition to Fremont from what I saw of it. My main way of getting to downtown Seattle from Ballard was the D RapidRide line. This line was not nearly as expeditious as the E was; instead of under 10 minutes from my stop to downtown, it was some 20-25 minutes. There were far more stretches with no dedicated bus lanes than on the E line which made for slower service. The route 44 also travelled here, though it was a bit of a walk for me, so I only ended up using it once (getting there); the University of Washington was also closed by then, so I had no real need for this route.</p> The RapidRide System</h2> Figure 3: A diagram of the RapidRide system.</figcaption> </figure> I used many of the RapidRide lines to get around the city, trying some of them out to see the benefits offered by the dedicated infrastructure. They were generally speedy and had a dedicated fleet (painted red). I don’t think I have any complaints about vehicle frequency, I never waited more than 15 minutes for any route during my vacation during the day. An interesting note is that the G line has a fleet of buses with 5 doors (two sides) and indoor bike racks, which are missing from other lines. It also to my knowledge is a quite new bus line: I had cause to use it two times on my trip and found it an interesting experience, though I was unsure about why the infrastructure was set up the way it was. Perhaps some research is in order on this note.</p> The buses themselves were comfortable and quite varied. I experienced an Orion VII for the first time in my life on this trip; I found the interior quite spacious, though it did seem a bit short of horizontal space. As far as I could tell, nearly every bus I was on was a diesel-electric hybrid if they weren’t fully electric (trolleybuses or battery electric).</p> I got to ride some of my favorite buses as well: the LFRs with older hybrid transmissions. In addition to a truly shockingly large bus fleet, Seattle also has several streetcars which run through areas of high demand and visibility like Capitol Hill, Downtown, and South Lake Union, the last of which has a large proportion of tech workers. Unsurprisingly, the streetcar is probably the weakest of all the systems, as streetcars tend to get stuck in traffic and offer very little benefit besides “capacity” and “being a train”. The 3rd avenue Busway is one of the most active busways I’ve ever seen: it surpasses Pittsburgh’s East Busway by a considerable margin too!</p> Figure 4: Buses on 3rd ave.</figcaption> </figure> Link</h2> Seattle is served by two light rail lines: the 1 line, which goes from Federal Way Downtown to Lynwood City Center and the 2 line, which goes from Downtown Redmond to (destination here). The 1 and 2 are not yet connected so there is an awkward gap along Mercer Island through which the two lines are slated to connect in the future. I don’t have a ton to say about Link on this trip, it has a quite long track length and I didn’t use it a ton.</p> On my trip, I visited the neighborhood of Capitol Hill many times. It represented the peak of my thoughts of living in Seattle: there are many different housing density offerings, many shops and restaurants, a thriving LGBTQ+ friendly environment, and great transit connectivity. There is a Link station there which connects it to the university district, downtown, the airport, and many other neighborhoods and areas.</p> Airport</h2> For travelers, especially on a budget, good transit connections to the airport are crucial. As of 2025, the Link light rail does not really run to the airport for a considerable portion of the night. Thus for many people, the routes they must rely on are the 124 (which goes from downtown Seattle to the airport) and the 161 (which goes from Burien to the airport, but which was harder for me to access.) My trip to the airport was outside of normal operating hours, so a reduction in service is understandable. However, this is probably the worst experience I have ever had trying to get to the airport of a major city on transit in the last 5 or so years. I took a once-hourly D line to downtown, waited around 25 minutes once there in chilly weather for the 124 to the airport and then disassociated for the remainder of that trip. Being downtown late at night in a major city usually isn’t a problem for me, but there were a few belligerent passengers on the bus who tried talking to me when I very much did not want to talk to them.</p> Other stuff!</h2> I got to see my favorite NFL stadium in person up-close for the first time! I finally got to get a replacement beanie there too, which I have not had since 2024. Also I was in town for the Lambs blowing a 16 point 4th quarter lead :) I rode a ferry to Bainbridge island and back! The trip was around 20-30 minutes each way and offered some spectacular and gorgeous views of the Puget Sound and city of Seattle. For $10.50, I can think of far worse things to spend your money on. There was a shockingly robust set of ferry routes to choose from; I have no idea what the experience of using them regularly is like, but I imagine it must be decent coverage and frequency for what it is.</p> Figure 5: Views of Seattle from the Bainbridge Island ferry.</figcaption> </figure> I also was quite impressed with the Orca system: it seems to be usable on many different transit agencies across the greater Seattle area. King County Metro buses have multi-door boarding, which may be the first time I have seen such a system on a bus in my life and actively used it! (With the exception of New York City, because I just haven’t had cause to ride many buses around there.) Also, Furries! I don’t think I’ve ever been in such close proximity to so many furries anywhere outside of a furry convention. The second day I was in town I ended up taking another SoundTransit express bus over to the Vulpine Taproom and the Burrow: I spent a few hours there getting some work done and chatting with many friends, some of whom I had just met for the first time!</p> Looking Forward</h2> I would love to visit the area again! I have many friends there and I am certain that there are many things that I would love to do and didn’t have a chance to (or know about). I would like to experiment with more of the other transit agencies around the area; I want to try riding one of the double decker SoundTransit buses. I want to ride all the remaining RapidRide lines across their entire length. I want to find some cheaper good places to eat food in Seattle (very difficult!) Thank you to everyone who hosted me for doing so, I am immensely grateful for it. I once again hope that through writing on my website, I am able to positively influence someone’s life and contribute in a positive way to both my own experience in the fandom and other people’s.</p> Thank you for reading! Love, Aured</p> My long awaited post malloc update post! 2025-11-06T00:00:00Z Hello from the other side! I spent a considerable amount of the time between October and now working on two labs: these were malloclab and tshlab. As the name may suggest, in malloclab, we have to implement a memory allocator. In tshlab, we have to implement a simple linux shell.</p> Malloc</h1> I have undoubtedly spent the plurality of my time these past few weeks implementing malloc</code>. Malloc is a great assignment for a systems class, as it lets you explore a rich program design space where implementation decisions you make can have a great deal of influence on the benchmarks of your program.</p> A brief overview</h2> Why should someone implement malloc</code>? What does implementing malloc</code> do? First, if we read the question as asking “what function does malloc serve”, the answer is that we obtain a way of writing data structures of arbitrary or variable size by “allocating” memory in a region called the heap. “Well libc already has malloc, and it’s Production Grade so…”: have you considered that learning and trying things is good for you?</p> What is difficult about implementing malloc? You have no variable-size data structures! (Technically you have a GCC extension width 0 array in our implementation, but shhhhhh…..) You have to do everything via variables you store on the stack. Also, debugging utilities like gdb do not provide nearly as much help as they do on other comparable systems labs, so you end up having to do a lot of checking and generally have to have airtight implementation. I would talk more about this, but if I did that this would be less of a blog post and more of a summary of a lab handout, at which point you’d be better off taking the class instead :P</p> Model Theory</h1> I have also been spending a lot of time theseweeks on a DRP (Directed Reading Program) in which I meet weekly with a graduate student mentor and we talk about Model Theory. In the broadest possible sense, Model Theory is about the study of objects which capture a certain set of true statements generated by various symbols (which together are called a language). There are a lot of neat things you can do by studying various notions of constructing models, relationships between models and the statements contained within them, but I will wait for another time to talk about all of this.</p> Next Semester…</h1> Not learning from my past mistakes, I decided to challenge myself again with a record 3 CS courseload next semester. (On the bright side, this is it. I am not taking any other non-StuCo class!) I am by far the most excited about 15-411: Compiler Design and Implementation. This is sure to be by a considerable margin the most intense class, estimated at around 22-25 hours/week if FCE data is to be trusted. Also, I GET TO USE RUST!!!! :D and I am taking it with another furry! I genuinely like the content, I am very eager to do work on making several compilers and entering into this really neat area of study. The second class, one which I am also quite excited for, is 15-312: Foundations of Programming Languages. This is a class that I know many people become obsessed with and fell down the Type Theory/PL pipeline because of, if they hadn’t already by taking 15-150. I have for a long time now wanted to explore the abstract/structural properties of programming languages as systems because it tickles my brain in the same way that my interest in Logic does (at the very least so I can better understand what Lean is doing). The last (and least exciting) is 15-210 Parallel and Sequential DSA, which I don’t know what to expect from. I have heard very mixed things about it, but I am taking it with many friends so this will help me out with the material at any rate.</p> More importantly however, I will have no life or free time!! (again :3) so if I disappear off the face of the earth, this is why! I should have another update coming after I go ride lots of trains once the semester ends :)</p> Take care!</p> Aured +++ title: “Planning my panel” date: 2025-06-01 +++</p> I was recently informed that the panel proposal I submitted for this year’s Anthrocon has been accepted. Great! After the last two years, I am happy that the panel is going to be official this time and I can’t wait to see what the turnout is like.</p> On the subject of the panel, I have thoughts about what I want to talk about. As of June 1st, I am the only Pittsburgh resident on the panel. As such, I know a lot of operational things about the system and would be the best equipped to explain its usage. Aside from this, I am contemplating writing about some of Pittsburgh’s history to illustrate how transit evolved to its current form.</p> It definitely hasn’t escaped my mind that a lot of transit enthusiasts are prone to uninformed conjecture and speculation about transit proposals and general malaise about “the state of transit.” I think idealism and dreams are very valuable for inspiring people to pursue a course of action, but there is a point where you can be led astray by your ideals and create an enemy out of the good in pursuit of the perfect.</p> I want to somehow impart in my presentation that so many of the operational decisions a transit agency makes are a result of myriad circumstances coming together. “Replace this bus with a streetcar” and “extend the T to the airport now!” are good dreams, but I want people to ask themselves if the realization of a dream is worth the costs it has elsewhere. We all have to live in the world of optimizing finite resources because we aren’t Robert Moses</a> and don’t have the level of power needed to enact our will directly into stone, so we should do our best to operate within it.</p> I will update my site with more information about my presentation in the coming weeks. I hope anyone who goes to Anthrocon stops by if they have any interest in walkable cities, cyclable cities, and vibrant urban spaces that afford their residents opportunity and the joy of being among people.</p> Excited to see you there :)</p> Panel retrospective 2025-07-04T00:00:00Z On July 4th, I finally was able to realize the event I had been building toward for the last month: I hosted the Transit and Furbanism panel at Anthrocon 2025. Alongside me were Nick</a>, Teg</a>, and Kezl</a>. The talk had 374 registered attendees on Sched and the room was at, if not considerably beyond, the seating capacity for the venue. The panel lost very few attendees as it progressed.</p> An overview of the presentation</h1> The talk consisted of four main sections:</p> Transit in Pittsburgh (me): I gave a brief overview of Pittsburgh as a city of industry, discussed its declining population since 1960 and furshadowed (:3) the effects it will have on transit.</p> </li> Furry Civic Pride (Nick): Nick gave a point of comparison between several cities. Lastly, the example of MFF was brought up and contrasted with Anthrocon. Anthrocon is held in the center of a city with many urban amenities and more robust infrastructure, whereas MFF is held in Rosemont, where it is a chore to get to the convention center from a hotel that isn’t main (allegedly, I haven’t been).</p> </li> Urbanism and the Fandom (Teg): Teg outlined three important factors for why urbanism and the fandom can complement each other. They are (1) access and mobility (taking an Uber to the convention center or to get food sucks!), (2) access to local businesses as opposed to chains, and (3) community and culture. (Tangentially, there is a lot of potential in this section to mention things like antisocial behaviors). This section also ended with a leading question which set up the following section: “</p> </li> Furry Planning for Accessibility (Kezl): Kezl gave an account of personal experiences with transit meets being inaccessible by transit in both St. Louis and Cleveland. It turns out that the alienating experience of living without a car as a college student and trying to participate in events that are not accessible is one that causes great dismay among many people, not just transit enthusiasts. True to “be the change you seek”, Kezl helped create transit oriented furmeets in Cleveland, Ohio, a city with 6% transit mode share. Further, as of now, there is a much greater proportion of transit accessible furmeets and the rate of transit use to go to these meets is at 20%, which is ~3x the modeshare of public transit overall in Cleveland.</p> </li> </ul> The ride-along</h1> After the event, we walked a large group of people from room 316 in the DLLCC to Penn Station on the East Busway! This was by far the most chaotic part of the whole trip: around 60-80 people walked across the third floor of the convention center, down two escalator, and through the loading area to Liberty Ave, turning left and crossing the street at Grant Ave. This is the part of the panel that I think has the most room for improvement; the capacity of the group made it difficult to manage without use of radios until being outside of the center. Once we got to Penn Station, there was a slight hiccup with which direction to turn at the station crosswalk. Aside from that, everything went very well. Nobody had trouble paying their fare and the weather mercifully cooled down when we needed it to.</p> Figure 1: Furries on a bus.</figcaption> </figure> Figure 2: Furries on the East Liberty Station bridge.</figcaption> </figure> Post Convention Panel Thoughts</h1> Anthrocon 2025 was an astounding success from a goal perspective. The panel was a success, the ride-along was a success, and I had plenty of interactions that were transit adjacent throughout the whole convention. I now want to ask myself what I can do that is more novel than this panel, since I know that many people will be going to a transit panel as repeat attendees. I will strive to find engaging and informative topics that remain accessible and interesting to a general audience.</p> We rehearsed the entire presentation the night before we held it! Perhaps this is too much effort for a furry convention panel, but I like doing things that I’m passionate about well. I almost had us rehearse the route from the room to the outside of the convention center, but it was late at night the day before. Also, we did not have a crowd of people to practice moving between places. So, there was likely not much else we were able to do there.</p> Post Convention General Thoughts</h1> This was my favorite Anthrocon to date! I did more than I have done at any prior Anthrocon, I went to more panels (the Data Structures and Algorithms panel was really fun!), I participated in more panels (had to represent at the University Furs panel), and I hung out with friends much more than at previous conventions. Of course, it wasn’t perfect, and there is always more I can do to make the next convention better.</p> Furries and art in the Dealer's Den. </figcaption> </figure> The slides are available here</a>.</p> Thank you so much for making this event great! Love, Aured.</p> Planning my panel 2025-06-21T00:00:00Z I was recently informed that the panel proposal I submitted for this year’s Anthrocon has been accepted. Great! After the last two years, I am happy that the panel is going to be official this time and I can’t wait to see what the turnout is like.</p> On the subject of the panel, I have thoughts about what I want to talk about. As of June 1st, I am the only Pittsburgh resident on the panel. As such, I know a lot of operational things about the system and would be the best equipped to explain its usage. Aside from this, I am contemplating writing about some of Pittsburgh’s history to illustrate how transit evolved to its current form.</p> It definitely hasn’t escaped my mind that a lot of transit enthusiasts are prone to uninformed conjecture and speculation about transit proposals and general malaise about “the state of transit.” I think idealism and dreams are very valuable for inspiring people to pursue a course of action, but there is a point where you can be led astray by your ideals and create an enemy out of the good in pursuit of the perfect.</p> I want to somehow impart in my presentation that so many of the operational decisions a transit agency makes are a result of myriad circumstances coming together. “Replace this bus with a streetcar” and “extend the T to the airport now!” are good dreams, but I want people to ask themselves if the realization of a dream is worth the costs it has elsewhere. We all have to live in the world of optimizing finite resources because we aren’t Robert Moses</a> and don’t have the level of power needed to enact our will directly into stone, so we should do our best to operate within it.</p> I will update my site with more information about my presentation in the coming weeks. I hope anyone who goes to Anthrocon stops by if they have any interest in walkable cities, cyclable cities, and vibrant urban spaces that afford their residents opportunity and the joy of being among people.</p> Excited to see you there :)</p> Planning my panel, part 2 2025-06-21T00:00:00Z Happy 6/21! :3</p> Over the past week, I have gotten quite a bit of work done on my panel for Anthrocon.</p> Much of that work consisted of dry runs: taking the P1 from the stop in front of the Westin hotel to East Liberty station, timing each stop, measuring “capacity”. It occured to me that if any significant fraction of the 140 (!) people who registered for our panel wanted to participate in the ride-along, it would be logistically difficult to accommodate. Pittsburgh’s weather is also a factor to consider: last year, I saw someone suffer heatstroke in the registration line. It has been hot and humid recently. Should we discourage fursuiting on the trip?</p> I have also done work on my slides for the presentation, I know roughly what topics I am going to cover: I just need to add more flourishes and hooks so that the presentation is maximally engaging. I know what topics my groupmates seek to address, but I won’t talk about that here (spoilers).</p> I wonder if we’ll break 150 registered attendees, and if so, how many will show up to the panel itself.</p> My First Post 2025-05-22T00:00:00Z This is my first post on this site. Nice!</p> I am setting up this site as a place for some of my thoughts, writings, and notes on various things. I intend to keep this site more up-to-date than I have my previous attempts at sites.</p>