Podruff: Blog

A clean camera is a happy camera

Sami Saravaara — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 15:54:14 +0200

I woke up today and immediately decided that it would finally be time to clean my camera. It took two tries, but the surgery was indeed a huge success!

There was a bit of an incident after christmas, where my ma had packaged my digicam with a poorly sealed container of salmon! The camera was genuinely oozing with grease, but that has finally been fixed... Oh, and I also dusted off the sensor, so now there will no longer be those annoying dust particles visible in every picture. It's curious how such small bits of matter can be such a bother.

Disassembling the camera was surprisingly easy, and so doing it twice was pretty fun actually. I got all the remaining grease out from the pieces and thankfully none of it had actually gotten into the components; only inside the shell. The components and sensor are protected by a metal barrier that sits right below the display, so that was to thank for.

I had originally cleaned it, but since I had just gotten it, I was a bit too spooked to open it up...! So I only cleaned it externally and hoped that it wasn't too bad, which it wasn't. And it hadn't gone bad or anything either, since oil doesn't do that very often.

Icon was taken after cleaning!

Doodlin' Gators

Sami Saravaara — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 11:02:45 +0200

11:35 I've been big on drawing my sona recently, especially as warm-ups between commissions and owed art. I need to make him a full refsheet as I won him as a raffle prize from my pal Eris (dragonwaltz)!! (also the main image lowkey has jpeg artifacting)

I was thinking of incorporating the thing below (fallout version of him as courier 6) into the main ref, so yk him on the side beside the front and back drawings. I'd also kind of want to make a nice profile for him here, where I'd code a nice ol' pip-boy to look through his info and outfits and such, based on my latest playthrough that I finished a few days back.

Oh and I also thrifted myself some new pants yesterday. So happy! And a geen button up this morning :D Pic of the pants at the very bottom. They're very gator-ey... Surely no one will ever guess my favourite colour.

OH AND YAYAYAY I GOT MY TRANS HEALTHCARE REFERRAL SENT YESTERDAYggg

Slow life

Sami Saravaara — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 09:45:05 +0200

I have finally gotten out of a really bad prolonged situation and can't help but feel very hopeful for both myself and the other party involved. Yay! I do regret how I went about it, and feel quilty for many things, but all I can do is route that energy into bettering myself as a person so that perhaps in the future there won't be things to regret.

In case I can't land a job over here in my current town, I have plans to move to Jyväskylä, the closest large city near me. Despite being the closest, it's still quite far away and has been my only chance at intensive therapy, having made it pretty difficult so far with all the travel that would need to be involved. Here in my town psychologists come and go constantly, and there is almost never a doctor available.

I hope that when I move and pursue my engineering degree there, I will be able to do psychotherapy much easier and become better, especially without having to be in such a bad situation where I also need to manage myself for another person who can get hurt when I can barely handle myself...! I feel very apologetic for it.

I have a few commissions to finish up right now, but it's all stuff that I really enjoy working on. I was commissioned for a bunny dragon, teehee, alongside a few other things like a lovely experimental piece.

Linux for newbs (mirror)

Sami Saravaara — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 11:52:53 +0200

NOTICE: this is a mirror of my toyhouse post about the topic, find it here.

HELLOOOO TOYHOUSE, here's a little guide I scrambled up for everyone sick of Windows and wanting to switch to Linux. Make sure to check the TABS. I have been using Linux for a bit now and autism struck hard with it. I even deleted windows, eh? I am personally using Arch linux :3

Why switch to Linux?
There are many reasons to switch to Linux. The main reasons that may concern you, my fellow toyhouse users, is the far better ability to easily customise the look and feel of your system. Other reasons of course include better security, no ads, way better performance and free + open-source software for pretty much everything.

Why NOT switch to Linux?
If you play games with kernel-level anti-cheat (please check your games) or if you are dependent on Adobe products, then you should not fully switch to Linux. You should instead dual-boot or set up a virtual machine of Windows after installing Linux.

Getting started

Get a USB stick. You should have at least one 8 gb or higher USB stick.
Pick your distro (see tabs on the left)
Pick a desktop environment or window manager (see tabs on the left) Desktop environments are basically just the user interface on top of your distro, and usually most distros can have most DEs. Window managers are specialised in arranging open windows in a productive way.
Go onto the distro's official website and find a suitable ISO file, (will usually be titled "ISO file" or just "installer" if your distro has just one installer). Usually installers are netinstall, aka they need internet. Non-netinstall installers will be much larger in size.
Download Rufus or Balena Etcher
Plug in your USB, open the previously downloaded program and flash the ISO file onto the USB. This will be very clear when using the program.
If dual-booting, partition your disk beforehand. Basically just open windows disk manager or whatever the equivalent on mac is, and then shrink the largest partition you see. The amount shrunk will later be occupied by linux.
Backup any important files you have. IF you are replacing Windows or another OS, YOUR ENTIRE DISK WILL BE ERASED. If you don't want to make a backup, then keep your previous operating system like Windows on your disk via dual-booting, but even then, a backup is recommended.
If a newbie, please watch a video tutorial detailing the installation steps for your distro!! This will make sure that you receive all necessary info before installation.
Plug in your previously flashed USB and reboot into bios. Often you do this by spamming f 12, f 2, f 9 or del.
In bios, disable secure boot and in boot options boot using the USB. Re-enable secure boot after installation is completed if you dual-boot with Windows.
Plug ethernet into your computer. If you don't have ethernet, you can also try enabling mobile hotspot on your phone and share it via USB...
Follow your installers instructions. If dual-booting, select to install linux onto the largest bit o' empty space on your disk.
Done! :P Now boot into linux and ensure that you have all your necessary drivers installed. Good examples of necessary drivers are the drivers to your WiFi card or whatever else you use to get WiFi on your pc, as well as the proprietary or open-source NVIDIA drivers if you have an NVIDIA GPU. Proprietary is usually better in NVIDIA's case...

If you decide to dual-boot, you should install as normal but just pick a smaller space to install Linux onto. This will basically just install Linux along side Windows, plus pretty much all Linux distros will also install a bootloader, aka a little menu that will let you pick which OS to boot into when turning on your computer. If you are dual-booting, then avoid using Arch as setting up the partitions can be confusing for a newbie. Instead opt for an easier Arch-based distro with an installer.

Check out the tabs on the left for extra info, or ask me in the comments if you have anything specific to ask!

Distros

To use Linux, you must pick a distribution, aka distro. There are many distros for many different users, so I suggest you do some deeper research on this. You can always hop between distros if you end up not liking the one you choose!

If you wanna skip the following section: personally I suggest arch-based distros, but do pick whatever you prefer. CachyOS is great for new users that are worried about accidentally erasing their hard drive, because the installer shows precisely how your partitions will be installed. Though I've had trouble with it not installing based on the desktop environment picked, so I suggest just selecting KDE Plasma and installing another DE if you want later. It in general has a very simple installer while giving the benefits of arch and aur (user-submitted packages). EndeavorOS is also good, but may be a bit "bloated" and my buddy at least got some graphical errors though also he has an old ass puter.

I myself use arch on my thinkpad (used for websurfing, coding and school work) and CachyOS on my desktop (used for gaming) since it has a lot of gamer-oriented optimisations.

INFLUENTIAL DISTROS:

Debian ("ol' reliable")
Arch ("I use arch btw")
Fedora
Gentoo
Void
NixOS
OpenSUSE
Slackware

ARCH BASED:

EndeavourOS
CachyOS
Manjaro
Furreto (furry linux furry linux furry li)
SteamOS (new, unreleased still i think?)

DEBIAN BASED:

Ubuntu
Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu)
Kali
SteamOS (old)

One difference between distros is their release model. Some are stable and release updates maybe twice a year, and others are rolling, aka update as often as possible. Stable distros are usually easy and work as expected, but can have outdated packages and drivers. For example, if you pick debian, you may experience many graphical errors in games because of the outdated NVIDIA drivers (speaking from experience). Rolling release distros like arch and arch-based distros are the best choice for gamers and people who depend on recent packages and drivers.

Often distros are also aimed at different types of users and have a different feeling to them. Some are distros that "just work" (like Linux Mint) which are great for beginners, while others give the user more control. Some also have more specific purposes, like Kali and Parrot which are meant for hacking and cybersecurity testing. Distros like Kali aren't meant to be used as a day-to-day OS.

Some distros are just otherwise kind of meh. Many don't like Ubuntu or Manjaro because of poor actions by the devs or company behind them.

Desktops

Probably just google images of these. You can have multiple at once, and you can just pick which one to log in to on the login screen. Personally I use hyprland.

POPULAR DESKTOP ENVIRONMENTS:

Gnome (similar to mac)
KDE plasma (similar to windows)
XFCE
MATE
Cinnamon

POPULAR WINDOW MANAGERS:

i3
Hyprland
Awesome
Bspwm

Window managers are usually BARE BONES. For beginners, I recommend downloading a DE and only then your WM of choice.

Package managers

Downloading content aka packages on Linux is done through package managers. Your package manager will depend on your distro, but common ones include apt and pacman.

Example! To download Firefox, run sudo apt install firefox or for example sudo pacman -S firefox.

If you are using an arch-based distro, you will likely have access to user submitted packages, aka aur packages. To download them, first run sudo pacman -S --needed git base-devel && git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git && cd yay && makepkg -si, and after that you can run yay name-of-your-package, which will show you a list of all aur packages that match your search. After that just pick which all to install!

Sudo?

Sudo means "super user do". It basically means running something as admin. Super user = admin!

Gaming

Steam loves Linux, so pretty much all Steam games can be played on Linux, with the exception of games with kernel-level anti-cheat that will prevent you from playing the game.

Go into steam's settings, then "Compatibility", and in there enable steam play for all titles.

For other games without official Linux releases, either install Wine and run your .exe games through the terminal, or install something like "Bottles" and use it to play games using Wine or steam's Proton, which are both compatibility layers.

RPG maker games can run prettyyyy poorly thru wine or steam's proton, so you might wanna look for alternative methods to run them. There are multiple projects on github that are meant to make them run better.

Troubleshooting

Won't boot past bootloader
Try installing and booting into another distro... Most often if a clean install won't boot, then it's best to just try another distro instead of sinking hours into troubleshooting it.

No WiFi
Check what your WiFi card or adapter is. If you get WiFi using a thingy attached to a usb port, then that's an adapter. The commands `lspci`, `lsusb` or `lshw` should let you find your device. Search up the name of your distro and the name/model of your WiFi device to find the correct drivers. After installing them, restart your computer and see if you have WiFi. If not, chances are that you installed the wrong drivers.

Won't boot into DE or WM
In the terminal, write the start command of your DE or WM. If you are able to get in, then the problem is likely with your display manager. Try downloading a different one and seeing if that helps... Try switching between SDDM and GDM, or try another one.

Games look FUCKED UP
Install the correct drivers for your GPU. If you are using Debian or another stable distribution, then you will likely have to manually find the latest drivers and install them, as the drivers provided by your distro are likely outdated by a year or two...

I erased my entire hard drive!!!
Rest in peace, beloved files... If you erase your hard drive, the erased files will be unrecoverable. It's the hard truth, please be cautious of what you are doing to your machine.

Stupid elitism

Beware, quite a lot of Linux users (mainly newer ones and ones on tiktok and reddit of all places) can be quite elitist. They will either bully people who don't use Linux, or bully people who use a distro that they have deemed "worse" or "too easy". From my experience, many arch users will go around parading about how cool and advanced they are compared to, say, Ubuntu users, when they probably just used archinstall to get the distro on their machine.

Often times these same elitists can be quite elitist in... "Other"... Ways....... So in general it's just best to stay away and spit on em or something.

Seriously, just use whatever distro you want, and don't be afraid to use something like archinstall, because WHO has the time to spend 3 hours installing a new OS anyway? Be friendly among your fellow Linux and computer users.

Hiking desire

Sami Saravaara — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 02:00:00 +0200

I've been planning some stuff for the summer recently. I really want to hike/bicycle every few weeks for a couple days and nights, depending on how I'll be employed.

We have the freedom to roam around here, so I for example would be allowed to hike and bicycle in nature no matter who it's owned by, as well as camp (but not make fires) temporarily on said land. Once I get my fishing liscences for this year I could also do some fishing, though that of course depends on what town I am in, for I would need all the necessary liscences for said town.

Anyway. I do have some other plans for the summer: work, mainly. I've applied for many summer positions and then that will give me time to look for a longform job.

I'm happy to mainly do some random jobs for money, as my rent is thankfully pretty cheap with the terrace having mainly shady occupants... Most of them likely see me just as shady, heh...

Anyways I'll be happily waiting for spring. Winter is nice and all but the heating is expensive. And I can't find as many birds! I indeed need to make a list of all the birds I want to see this year, as well as fish. Here are some prototypes for those:

birdlist

whooper swan
mallard
common pheasant
common quail
western capercaillie
black grouse
common cuckoo
eurasian nightjar
common swift
common crane
northern lapwing
common ringed plover
black-headed gull
little gull
common gull
european herring gull
lesser black-backed gull
common tern
great northern diver
white stork
great cormorant
great bittern
grey heron
osprey
lesser spotted eagle
golden eagle
eurasian sparrowhawk
northern goshawk

common buzzard

eurasian eagle-owl

snowy owl

tengmalm's owl

common kingfisher

eurasian hoopoe

great spotted woodpecker

grey-headed woodpecker

black woodpecker

eurasian kestrel

merlin

eurasian jay

eurasian magpie

eurasian jackdaw

hooded crow

common raven

coal tit

crested tit

willow tit

eurasian blue tit

siberian tit

great tit

barn swallow

common house martin

eurasian nuthatch

common starling

fieldfare

eurasian bullfinch

fishlist

northern pike
perch
zander
burbot
atlantic salmon (lake variant)
brown trout (lake variant)

Education and Employment

Sami Saravaara — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 08:46:51 +0200

Recently I found out that I'm much more screwed with my education than I had previously thought. Before, my mother had told me that I would not need a high school diploma to get my ylioppilastodistus, so like the thing you get when you complete your finals aproppriately. The high school diploma would instead need all the 160 points from courses to be completed, and right now I have 133. Each course gives 1 to 2 points...

Turns out that my ma was wrong and I do need both of them to seek the further education I want. I have until the end of May to get all the points..... :( I feel bad but I suppose it could be worse... And I think I may ask my student counsellor about whether or not I can continue further, considering I could use a bit more time. I don't want the 4 years I've already spent here to go to waste, as after that I don't know what I would do in life.

Well, if I do manage to get all those courses done in that time, I would also need to find myself a job for July and afterward so that I can afford my rent. When my education ends, my disability support will also end. It's not a lot that I would need to cover, but eh, still stressful with how bad the job market in Finland has been...

For education, I've been wanting to go do coding stuff. Scarily I would need to move to a bigger city where rent would of course be even more expensive. Like yeah, I'll have the student loan to cover that, but I'm not really looking forward to it. And then who knows how well I can find a job after that, though I suppose I can always just come back here and work some random job if I can find one.

12:21 Alright well instead of just panicking about it, I did a little research. Turns out that I can do more than 4 years of upper secondary school, thank fuck. But yeah, I'll still need to worry about a job and I'm just overwhelmed with worrying about stuff once I let a little bit of worry get to me once...

I'm considering applying for summer jobs since they would be easier to get into, and in the mean time I could look for long time jobs. I'm considering grocery stores and also the local parish/graveyard.

Dreaming for creation

Sami Saravaara — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 07:40:57 +0200

I'm feeling very excited to create more again... So so so excited, I'm jumping and hopping thinking about all the things I could make...

Specifically I would like to draw some little pagedolls for the index. I'd wanna draw something either of myself or of Scott/Martin chilling around on the edge of the "enter" container.

I'm also excited about continuing some writing work that I'm passionate about... Life is endless, everything is joyous!! Uf, anyway, I've been sleeping a bit poorly because of the heart palpitations I've been having but the palpitations themselves have mostly gone away, just the bad sleep routine is still there. Tonight I awoke at 12 in the morning, and it's now 8:22 in the morning.

Sighhh I'm hoping to work on short comics and stories. I often try my hand at larger work but it's hard to finish. I wanna tell my stories or little snippets about my characters lives and personalities.

I may write more later.

Hatered of joy

Sami Saravaara — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 02:00:00 +0200

I have a feeling that if therianthropy wasn't so stigmatised, a lot more people would identify with it. I consider myself one (psychological), yet I never tell anyone about it. Instead I just share cool pics of my theriotype. I don't care for the culture of quads or masks, or go out of my way to engage with others like myself, yet I have nothing against it, of course. I'm just shy. I do feel a deep connection to badgers and other mustelids, as well as a lesser connection to alligators and bears. All of these are based on my physical characteristics of stubby, fat and big-nosed.

I refer to myself as a badger and imagine myself as one scampering in the field as I go on my outings, yet somehow it seems that as long as it stays without the label of therian, then it is alright. Somehow it seems that whenever primarily neurodivergent or female audiences enjoy something, it will immediately be made the butt of jokes. It was the same with equestrians and hobby horsers.

On many occasion I have witnessed people make disgusting sexual jokes about young equestrians and therians. ^{[tw: gross]}"Oh they must want to fuck their pet horse, they must want an excuse to have sex with animals!!" they say as they make pedophilic and zoophilic jokes about children who are simply having fun and finding community in something innocent. These are both real jokes I have seen made by deplorable people, and worse yet, there were thousands of likes on these posts. When the case is a neurotypical boys' hobby or interest, suddenly it is rad and cool, no matter how it may set them up for an alt-right pipeline in the future like with looksmaxxing or a peculiar obsession with WW2.

In a similar vein, I've noticed the bounce back from 2020 and 2021's radical acceptance. It was very much not perfect, and I much preferred the time around 2022 or maybe 2023, but now, it seems that people are going more and more right-leaning in their beliefs. There has been this air of ignorance, with people saying things to dismiss the furthering struggle of those in need, and the continued bad treatment of marginalised groups like bipoc and queer folk. "And the world kept spinning," "It's just a joke," "I'm not woke enough for this."

I still remember when people were raving on about neopronouns and how cool they were. Now, cyberbullying is far worse and even just toying with such concepts, one may get harrassed. Even when regarding things not considered "woke". People will tell you to just log off, yet the bullying isn't contained only within the internet as some think, obviously.

Well, no matter. For me, personally, I know for a fact that my connection to things not human is because of my autism and transgender identity. I feel othered by the world and find comfort in taking control of that otherness. It's not really a choice for me to feel so inhuman, but oh well. You can probably see this in how I never really connect to my humanoid personas, and how even my main fursona Saint lacks the common characteristics of a badger. He is kind of just a creature. Even as a child I became a furry early on because I felt so uncomfortable in my skin as a person. I often imagined myself as a creature of sorts, a dragon, anything else.

Somehow I do still relate to human characters, sometimes far more than my fursonas, yet it isn't typically a character made to be myself. Think Martin for example. He is no sona, yet he was created with a lot of my own characteristics. Not sure why this is, but it's interesting enough to put here, heh...

Themes and little updates

Sami Saravaara — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 22:59:15 +0200

I've slowly been adding a few things here and there on the website. I've mainly updated some things that make my workflow a bit easier and I added a nice little theme selector at the top of the sidebar. Most of the themes are still big wips and are not quaranteed to work with everything.

I again added the classic theme, which imitates the theme of my very most original website which I still have archived! It's most definitely not 1-to-1, as my original website did not have any staying elements such as a sidebar, header or footer. There were only little back buttons here and there...

Sadly, because I was going through a really rough patch while that site had been under my use, so like before antidepressants and everything, using the theme is making me feel a bit anxious, but I hope to use it during development every once in a while to maybe get rid of that feeling, as that website was uncomfortable only after moving on from it, for working on it brought me a huge joy and comfort during my difficult time. Oh, and it has Mr. Zorleb on the sidebar <3 I'll need to make him a new reference sheet soon.

Medicinal problems + stylus update

Sami Saravaara — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 21:07:38 +0200

Yhyyy, I ran out of my medicine and forgot to refill my prescription for them in time. I'm on 150 mg of venlafaxine (you might know it as effexor) which is very good at keeping me happy and not having many side effects BUT... Oh dear god do i pay for that when I forget to take it or run out, as the withdrawl is genuine hell on earth.

After only missing one dose for about a day:

I start getting tunnelvision in a way where I can see everything, yes, but anything that isn't in my line of sight i cannot comprehend,
the brain zaps get physically painful and they get SO overstimulating,
I get extremely angry and overwhelmed at everything,
it feels like my body is being havoced by the flu,
I can't stop trembling,
I get extremely sad and unwell without a fix!!!

And I'll have to do my math exam in this state tomorrow :( Oh and on another note, I ended up having to reorder a new stylus bc the previous seller didn't mail the stylus within a week, which at least for me is like a lot of art and work's worth of time... There is so much owed art and adopts or raffles that I could have finished in that time. Not cool!

May life get better soon once I finally get my meds and pen...

Cleaning

Sami Saravaara — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 20:04:56 +0200

I purchased 100 tealights and 10 boxes of match sticks today. I've been lighting them all around the house for, peculiarly, they push me to clean up the place. I see all the twinkling lights in my home and consider how much prettier the space would be when cleaned.

The dishes are the biggest problem for me right now, and good loooord, I haven't been having much fun with them. I used to be better with dishes but after getting fucked over real bad a month or so ago, I started struggling with them even if I've got every other part of my life harnessed under my reigns again.

I'm really missing drawing and such, but hopefully soon I will be able to draw some stuff for my website again. I at the very least wish to be able to make a proper landing page. My ideas include pictures I have taken with drawings and scribbles overlaying them.

Why must my luck be so bad

Sami Saravaara — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 07:53:57 +0200

Sniffle, my apple pencil decided to stop working last night. It was only a little over a year old from when I had first purchased it brand new for my birthday last year. Worst part is of course that I happen to be participating in a secret santa event that is time sensitive... Stressful...

Thankfully I managed to find a used third-party (I think?) stylus for really cheap so I am currently just waiting for that to arrive...

I had a ton of wips I was working on and I was right in the middle of drawing!! Smh, they hate to see a cute guy drawing other cute guys cuddling homoerotically.

I also had some other bad troubles that came out of left field completely and now I'm feeling pretty lost with what to do... Fuck my stupid chud life. I may as well try writing something now that I can't draw with anything but my finger, plus I have a wip piece of about 4k words that I might as well finish since I wrote it down real quick one night.