TOP・UPDATES・FOUR PILLARS・CINEMA/TV・GAMES・MANGA/ANIME・MUSIC・WRITINGS・FAQ・LINKS
TOP・UPDATES・FOUR PILLARS・CINEMA/TV・GAMES・MANGA/ANIME・MUSIC・WRITINGS・FAQ・LINKS
The ten best albums I listened to for the first time in December:
1. 山口五郎 - L'art de la flûte shakuhachi (1988)
2. Paysage d'Hiver - Im Wald (2020)
3. KANGA - KANGA (2016)
4. マサ子さん - つちのこ男爵 (1989)
5. Various Artists - The Fire This Time (2002)
6. Various Artists - Gamelan Semar Pegulingan: Gamelan of the Love God (1972)
7. Attila Csihar - Void ov Voices : Baalbek (2023)
8. 海童道 (1968)
9. ᓯᒥᐅᓂ ᑮᓇᐃᓐᓇᖅ - ᓯᒥᐅᓂ ᑮᓇᐃᓐᓇᖅ (1988)
10. Esoteric - A Pyrrhic Existence (2019)
Hello! I hope everyone is doing well. The weather has been very nice recently. I do wish I lived somewhere more
cold and chilly but I can only dream. I might have to start driving again soon and I feel guilty about adding to
carbon emissions by doing so potentially. I really wish American cities didn't have such shit public transit. I
don't know what else there is to say about it. I would love to live somewhere chilly but it feels like there are
fewer and fewer places I could rely on to stay cold in the winter anymore. All I can do is try to develop my
career until I can be stable enough to move somewhere up north. I sadly have started to give up on living in Japan
again. As much as culturally I'd love to, I think somewhere like Alaska, northern Canada, Scandinavia, etc. are
better bets for consistently cold weather these days. At least for a longer time... everything is burning up at
one rate or another right now.
I have been slacking on my drawings, unfortunately. I started a new picture but have not been progressing very far
yet. I always draw arms and hands way too tiny on my girls and keep needing to revise them. I'll do my best to at
least finish it before the end of the year, although it's another sports day theme and probably out of season now.
Oh well. It'll still be a great picture I think, at least in terms of ideas if not execution.
What else have I been doing? LOTS of Warcraft III. I started doing random in earnest on Battle.net and it's
a ton of fun! I still like Night Elf best but I guess I would say I like playing Night Elf > Orc > Undead > Human
in that order. All of them are fun. Orc is a lot more exciting than I expected. Far Seer + Tauren Chieftain +
Shadow Hunter is just such a fun trio of heroes to play with. I never seem to win very much with Orc though, lol.
Maybe it's not the ideal? IDK, I can't get into Blademaster. He's just not as fun. Although maybe I should try more
to make some other Night Elf players suffer like I have. I really do need to get back to playing more Touhou
Project. Subterranean Animism is ridiculous. Who the fuck thought those Orin spells were anywhere near
acceptable? Slow improvements continue... I hope and pray.
I also did a lot of reading. For one thing, this month I finished the long biography of Mao Zedong by Philip Short
that I started all the way back in January. When it comes to books like this, I typically read the first two
thirds or so very slowly and then get super interested and motivated when I sense that the end is close. And it
was especially exciting and horrifying to read about the Great Famine and Cultural Revolution, which have to be
some of the most bonkers stuff you can read about in the 20th century. Just absolute tragedy and chaos on a level
that's hard to comprehend. It's made me curious to revisit Jia Zhangke's Platform since I'd probably
understand it much better now.
I read a number of other smaller books too. Hiroshima by John Hersey is a classic work of humanism that I
think everyone should read. Now, in retrospect I do feel like it's a little strange how much it focuses on Christian
people in Japan. If I was thinking cynically, I would think that maybe Hersey intentionally tried to focus on
Christian people so that the most evil-hearted Americans would think that Japanese people were more "human" because
they too had Christians among them. What a vile way of thinking. But there probably were a lot of Americans back
then who felt that way. That said, I have no proof of that. It's very possible that Christians would have simply
felt more likely to speak to a western journalist, especially one there so recently after the bombing. Indeed, I
think that's the most impressive and respectable thing about this book. He published it in 1946, right as Americans
were patting themselves on the back for "ending the war" and celebrating. But they committed a great evil to end the
war, and Hersey lets the facts speak for themselves. And yet, it's never a book that comes across as angry or
accusatory. Everyone who loves humanity and cares for others is on the "same side" as the author and the people
interviewed. It's an astonishing work.
I also read a wonderful book called The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller by
Carlo Ginzburg about a "heretical" miller in an Italian town who preached his own distinctive cosmology and
theology. I loved it. It's wonderful to see how a lot of peasants even into the sixteenth century probably had a
very distinctive understanding of religion that didn't really change in essence even after their "Christianization."
Highly recommended if you like stuff like this. I really want to read the author's other books which are about
agrarian cults accused of witchcraft and stuff like that.
Oh, and I'm also increasing the pace of a very in-depth article on Martin Heidegger and his philosophy. I am about
halfway through Being and Time right now and am writing a sort of guide to understanding it. I think Heidegger
is such a brilliant thinker and he has helped me so much. I just want everyone to gain what I have from reading him!
Really, the ultimate goal is moving onto his truly greatest works from his later career, but Being and Time
is where it all has to start. It is very difficult though... and I know that the works only get harder to grasp from
here on. I'm up for it though!!!
As far as anime goes, I watched the original Vampire Hunter D movie with my friends. I LOVE how the main
heroine in it basically just flashes her pantsu the entire movie. This is a true movie for gentlemen with refined
taste! It is a gorgeous movie in general, with stellar animation and sumptuous colors. I watched a mediocre old
OVA called Bounty Dog: Getsumen no Eve which isn't that worth talking about. But then I watched a series
called Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid that made me moan in joy at all the amazing oppai in my face constantly and
drown in my own cum. Sooooo fucking good. I don't care about the story, it's just some silly fantasy stuff (kind
of like an isekai before that was really a thing). But the characters and fan-service was extraordinary. It totally
carried it. I love shows like this that make no concessions to the kind of swine who are too prudish to understand
the truth and the beauty which is truth's aureole! Nosebleed heaven.
Well, let's hope that this winter actually has some chill to it. I will watch a lot of snowy movies and listen to
a lot of black metal either way to try to make up for some of the damage.
The ten best albums I listened to for the first time in November:
1. Various Artists - ウサギチャンスーパースター!! Vol.0001 (2002)
2. Internal Suffering - Choronzonic Force Domination (2004)
3. Siiickbrain - Ashtray for Your Agony (2021)
4. ikd-sj - 死んだ雪白中毒者にキスを (2023)
5. All Shall Suffer - The Way of Pain (2021)
6. Heirdrain - Batna (2007)
7. Wormsblood - Black & White Art for Man & Beast (2011)
8. Legionz ov Hell - Born in Hell: 666 B.C. (2001)
9. 만수대예술단 - Revolutionary Opera "The Flower Girl": Adapted from the Immortal Classic "The Flower Girl" 3 (2001)
10. Up-Tight - Five Psychedelic Pieces (2004)
I've been attacked by a sudden onset of melancholy and haven't been able to game very well, so I figure it might help to write,
especially where others can see it.
The signs of climate disruption are hard to forget in any point of my life. Right now, the weather is actually rather pleasant. It
is a textbook fall day and I was glad to step out a bit to do some biking. But how much longer can it continue? How much shorter was
this fall season than last year's? At the same time, I am upset about climate activists. We all know it's bad. It wasn't as punchy
as some other books about the subject, but this was a reason I enjoyed Michael E. Mann's The New Climate War. Here was someone
who actually talked about economics and governmental steps to improvement. It really angers me because a lot of these things are
things that you could probably get the overwhelming majority of the United States on board with. But instead left-wingers attach
fourty other contentious issues on top of it. The moment some rural farmer in Wyoming is totally sympathetic and understanding to
how much the droughts are destroying agriculture, these fucking people say "great, now you see everything is INTERSECTIONAL and
actually supporting good economic policy about the climate also means you have to give all your land back to native tribes and
support abortion and give up all your guns and let trannies teach your kids that they are a two-spirit and abolish capitalism
:DDDD" Is it any wonder that these people turn to the right instead? I hate these people. It's not hard; just stop being soy and
everything will fall in place. Of course, the soy brainrot will instead drive humankind to its death and we will all drown because
US liberals refused to get off the sinking ship and into the lifeboat because the captain used the wrong pronouns.
Anyway, I think about this more and more because slowly election season is starting in the US. The Republican party is a gang of
denialists and the few who do not deny it simply go "lol don't care", as should surprise absolutely no one. I wish there was a
shorter way to say "anthropogenic climate change denialist." Because "climate-denialist" is a nonsense phrase. No one denies that
climates exist. And nowadays because their devastation has already destroyed the purity and beauty of earth to a point that no one
can ignore it, if you call them a "climate change denier" they will just say "of course it's changing, but it's not because of us!
:DDDDD" So you have to say that they are an anthropogenic climate change denier, and the average -40 IQ subhuman who votes in the
US doesn't know what the word "anthropogenic" means. I suppose this is why Richard Stallman invented the phrase "planet roaster"
and it's pretty good. A good alternative is "fucktard," but that's probably not descriptive enough. Anyway, that's one half of who
you can vote for in the US. Anyone who tries to tell you that the two parties are identical is a psyop at this point.
It boggles the mind that people don't focus on this more in appealing to voters to me. Even "radicals" appeal to all kinds of things
like "they want to take away titty skittles for kids DDDD:" Even something really worth worrying about, like taking away the right
to abortion or banning books from school libraries or whatever is more often or not the focus of their ire. This is like if some
criminal was holding a gun to someone's head, and the victim wasn't convinced that the criminal was a bad person (an apt analogy,
because anyone who would vote for a planet roaster is probably that stupid). It's easy to do, just point out the fucking gun held
to their head! But instead, the left-winger tries to say "uh... he hates da heckin trans kiddos!! :(((" or even something real like
"he has a bad foreign policy that will continue to harm the US internationally." He has a fucking gun to your head! Of course,
most people who would vote for a planet roaster are barely connected to reality at this point. I could support being apathetic about
the two parties in the US if there weren't legions of braindead retards that have to be reigned in and stood against.
A lot of this is exacerbated by focusing exclusively on Trump. A quick look at the other Republican candidates shows that he is
pretty much indistinguishable from everyone around him.
Look at
this article on current Republican candidate stances on how to confront climate change. It's actually comical how cartoonishly
evil and idiotic these people are. The "best" candidate, Christie, essentially amounts to "do nothing to stop expanding oil, coal,
and natural gas, oppose government incentives for green energy, and put all of the blame on China and India." And the others are
far worse. Of course, Trump is probably the only one who stands a decent chance of winning the nomination, but he's not alone.
I should say that of course I'm not deluded about how much countries like China and India contribute to global CO2 emissions. But
the US has far greater PER-CAPITA emissions than either. There is so much still to be done in the US. Even if your own plastic
bottle is a pittance of the trash in the ocean, wouldn't you still not throw it in?
I'm not optimistic. I urge everyone to vote at every opportunity you can and become active at your local level (where things
actually get done between election cycles) of course. Being pessimistic isn't an excuse for not doing what is right. Your inaction
fuels fossil fuel companies' tyrrany. But when half of your country will actively, enthusiastically vote for someone who tells you
to your face that they want to deny your children a future, it is hard to stay optimistic. And I do hold all of you fucking SJWs to
task for it, because this is your fault. The censorious, soy, discriminatory culture you have created is what moves people to
support right-wing candidates. Has all of the Canadian government's soy posturing done a damn thing to get the Athabascan Tar Sands
shut down? No. It has probably driven right-wingers in Canada to support them even harder. I think antinatalism is cringe and gay,
but I don't think I can ever bring myself to have a child at this point. What future would I be leaving them? Heatwaves that mean
being inside 2/3rds of the year broken up by mass roving gangs breaking in to attempt to secure food and shelter before a terminal
nuclear war to conquer Antarctica as one of the last livable places on earth.
All I want people to know is that I opposed it. I hated it. I was a victim of them as much as you were. I too was denied a stable
and beautiful future for myself and my descendents. I didn't give up and I believed in doing all the things I could to make the
future just a little less awful. After all, US carbon emissions still fell from 2017 to 2021 even with Trump doing all he could to
exacerbate destruction. And it happened because people did not sit back and do nothing.
In addition to voting in a way that will keep the worst guy out (whoever that may be), and doing everything I can to live more
responsibly, I will continue to write something I have been working on for a while, which is an explanation and commentary on
Martin Heidegger's philosophy. It is all I can think to do, because reading Heidegger is something I've always done to stay sane.
He understood all of these terrors long before any of us and has insights that we still will need decades to understand. If we last
that long, that is.
I read Hiroshima by John Hersey recently and was very struck by all the little things people did to help each other during
the crisis. We need people doing the right thing even as the world goes up in flames. Stay sane out there. I know it's hard.
This was my first October back in the United States in a long time. When you're in Japan, you learn to enjoy this month without the
spooky atmosphere that everyone associates with it in the US. And I did really enjoy that. It's wonderful to experience familiar
seasons with totally different associations. So I do try to retain that even when I am back in the US. I try to look at autumn and
Halloween as different things and enjoy the deep, melancholy mood of autumn for what it is. Not that my part of the country gets a
very distinct and brisk autumn, unfortunately. The last couple of days were amazingly cool and wonderful, but it will warm back up
next week and it doesn't feel distinctive. I would love to move somewhere with a more defined four seasons, but we will just have to
wait right now.
So what did I do this past month? A few things. I drew a new Maori picture in the Maori
Shrine, and it's a more difficult image with difficult poses. I'm not super pleased with it, but it's an advancement. What
keeps me going is knowing that any Arcana Heart art and any non-AI art online is a good thing, as long as it's done with love and
authentic love for the source material. I'm still very much a a beginner and have not been able to create something exactly as I
wanted it, but I will continue to draw. I might be biting off a bit more than I can chew in terms of choosing difficult subject
matter, but it's good to draw something you really want to make, isn't it? I can always re-do these pictures later when I'm better
at drawing after all. I might eventually try to do some more basic copying and practice work, but I have some ideas that I really
need to get out of my head right now. The next one will be really difficult, but rewarding. It will have some loli characters and
that's a body type I've never tried to draw.
I watched one anime series in October, the thematically appropriate Kannadzuki no Miko. It didn't completely blow me away but I
enjoyed it for all the Shintou themes. Of course, it yielded me two new miko characters for the list, so how can you complain about
that? On Halloween night, I watched The Fog by John Carpenter, which is one of his most famous movies that I'd never seen. I love
John Carpenter of course, and this is pretty classic and typical Carpenter fare. I don't like it quite as much as some of the all-time
classics, but I do think it is a very good film. I was engaged pretty much the whole time watching it. Me and my friends have been watching
a lot of the classic Shouwa Godzilla movies and they aren't really great but they are very charming in their own way. Godzilla vs.
Biollante was probably my favorite this month, but Terror of Mechagodzilla was also a lot of fun. I loved the Okinawa setting.
I also watched two "bad" movies that were actually fantastic: Mind Trap (1989) and Science Crazed (1989). Both were mind-meltingly
bizarre, but the latter one really will drive you insane because of the repetitiveness. It's so inept and strange in terms of editing that it
goes from shot-on-video horror to Hollis Frampton.
When it comes to gaming, of course I've been plugging away at Subterranean Animism... improvements are slow but I did make it to
stage 6 on a run! Otherwise, overwhelmingly I've been playing Warcraft III online. I don't know what to say, it's just one of the
best games to blow off steam about. I now know the feeling of the Korean karoushi slave or NEET loser who gets all their depression out
by Zerg rushing n00bs for 3 hours in order to not go on a stabbing spree! I've been getting back on Battle.net as opposed to W3Champions,
since I get much better results here than I did in Japan for whatever reason. It's more appropriate to my skill level, but W3Champions is
great to get on once in a while too. Battle.net is my training ground as far as I'm concerned. I tried to play random for a bit but man
it's hard to get used to off-races. I will continue to do it though. I only won one game this month while off-racing as Orc against a Night
Elf player (no surprise, I know their weakness!). Otherwise I've just been playing Elf. Off-racing really does make it clear how much I
prefer Elf though. I am a nature-worshipping warrior! (Does turning trees into Treants contribute to deforestation though?) Most of my
wins are against Human players because Human is the hardest race... no surprise there.
I also finished playing Day of the Tentacle with my friends and it was a ton of fun. Probably one of the better point-and-clicks I've
played along with Harvester to be honest. I love the girl character Laverne, all her dialogue was hilarious and her voice actress really
captured the "unhinged" vibe perfectly. Her walk-cycles were so ridiculous that they made me laugh far longer than they should have. I also
started playing Dungeon Keeper 2, which is a great game to play when I just need to unwind. Getting it working is kind of buggy as you
can expect from running an old PC game, but I've managed to do it. The sense of humor is even more ramped-up than the first game, but it all
still comes together. I was playing the game at 3:30 AM and got a "secret piece of advice" saying GO TO BED! Amazing easter egg, you can tell
from things like that that this is really a game that the devs put their heart and soul into.
The ten best albums I listened to for the first time in October:
1. Virgin VS - 乗物デラックス (1982)
2. Rasthof Dachau - Prison Poems (2006)
3. Evilgloom - Addictions (2023)
4. 宮内庁楽部 - Gagaku: Ancient Japanese Court and Dance Music (1998)
5. Operation Miranda - Children's Pornography Review Vol. 1 (2006)
6. Aliene Maφriage - 傀儡人形 ～マネキン～ (1998)
7. Wongraven - Fjelltronen (1995)
8. M.S. Gopalakrishnan - Violin Melody (1996)
9. Analepsy - Dehumanization by Supremacy (2015)
10. Minor Science - 064 (2023)
September was a pretty big month on multiple fronts, at least when it comes to the internet and other nerd shit. I
mostly updated a lot of stuff in my "Writings" section. I decided to go ahead and write out all my political positions,
since I feel like people might be curious. I don't like to bog down the site with political BS in the fun sections about
games and anime and stuff like that, but I think that there's some really important stuff that I would feel incomplete if
I didn't at least make a statement about. A lot of things in it are just where I stand at the moment and I might change my
feelings later. I don't love talking about this stuff but I think it has to have somewhere to be delimited or else it will
leak around other parts of the site.
On a lighter note, the other big thing I added in the "Writings" section is a
dream journal. I've kept dream journals off and on over the year, but I think it would be a good motivation to keep one on
this site in case others want to read. I've always felt like I remember dreams better when I consistently journal about them, and
I often have pretty out-there ones that I like to mine for inspiration. Dreams have been sources of wisdom, creativity, and
spirituality since ancient times and getting back in touch with them is always nice. I'm skeptical about psychoanalysis of them and
all that, but I might be able to glean some interesting psychological insights at the same time. One thing I've seen is that I dream
about crashing planes a lot, but usually I'm always nearby watching the crash instead of riding on it. It's interesting since I'm not
really scared of planes at all in real life. I also have a lot of dreams of being naked in public, but I think that's pretty common.
Recently I've had a lot of dreams about video games because I watch videos of them while going to bed, haha.
I've been slacking on anime watching. I finished Yumeria and it was very cute and enjoyable, although the ending wasn't
particularly outstanding. But I did like it on the whole. But on the vidya front, I got a lot done. Not Subterranean Animism
yet though. That game is a fucking brick wall, I swear. It's driving me fucking crazy. BUT! I think I am making progress. At the
very least I'm getting numb to the early game, which is what's most important for making progress in Touhou. I've been enjoying playing
some classic point-and-click adventure games with my two IRL friends. We finished The Secret of Monkey Island this month
and it was pretty great. I was surprised by how well the humor held up. It made us laugh a lot. It was a pretty good difficulty
for beginners as well. Nothing too difficult in that game and no real "aww, come on!" moments. Also, it's a very pretty game with
some pretty damn smooth pixel animation. We're doing Day of the Tentacle right now and getting pretty far so hopefully we'll
finish it up before long. I like playing these old LucasArts games because a lot of the sprites and art are ones I recognize from
old animutations but never saw the source of. That always feels really great. lastly, I should mention that I finished Chapter 2 of
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and am greatly enjoying it. Still have a long way to go but I will continue gladly.
I finished Doom II: Hell on Earth on the middle difficulty, Hurt Me Plenty. I know, anything below Ultra-Violence is barely a
real playthrough, but I'm still a noob among noobs when it comes to these games. It was an amazing game and I'd love to return to it
someday. I got 100% secrets on all maps except Map 15: Industrial Zone. There was one secret on that map that no matter what I just
could not get. And no, it's not the bugged one that you need to do some crazy shit by manipulating a Pain Elemental to access. I
wouldn't count that for a 100%. There's this one Megasphere near the end of the level that you have to leap across a gap to get to.
I tried it for 30+ minutes and just could not get it at all. So unfortunately I had to admit defeat. In general, I've been playing a
surprising amount of non-weeb games. I know, it feels dirty! But I don't know, something about old turn-of-the-millennium PC games gives
me an incredible sense of peace and nostalgia right now. I played through Deus Ex this month as well, which is very different
from the kinds of games I normally play. But I've always had a big soft spot for stories about crazy, intricate conspiracies. So I
adored it. The gameplay is pretty fun on top of the story too. And a lot of the atmosphere was outstanding with the environments, music,
etc. I honestly wonder if the creator of Ever17 -the out of infinity- ever played this game. I know it seems unlikely, but if
you've played both you might see some of the parallels to the story and even to one of the settings. And you should play both, because
they're both excellent games. I kind of feel like playing some more old CRPGs and FPS games to continue this mood because it was really
appealing to me. I had an old friend on a movie forum who shared a lot of my taste in music and he really liked those kinds of games so
I have some recommendations to nab from his old lists of favorites.
Lastly, I've been getting more serious about drawing with my Wacom tablet as a hobby. I had a ton of fun with it once I really got into
the swing of things. Making all the headers for this site was a lot of fun even if they still look pretty crappy. I think it adds to the
early 2000s feeling in a way, haha. Besides those headers, I only have drawn one picture so far. It's a nude pic of Kasuga Maori and I
put it in the Maori Shrine. It was in GIMP so the lines look pretty
rough and sloppy, but it was a ton of fun to draw. I've switched to using Krita and the lines look far more smooth already. Can't wait to
continue and make a bunch of Maori art to fill up the fan gallery. There are some other underrated and under-represented characters I'd
like to take a crack at, but Maori comes first for now. Someday I'd like to make a few short comics or even a tiny doujinshi of sorts,
but that's a big investment. And coloring is really fun, so I'm more interested in single pictures at the moment. Anyway, I'm still
kind of learning how to draw in this style and with digital tools for the first time, so I have a lot to learn. I don't claim to be good at
it yet. But I do love doing it.
The ten best albums I listened to for the first time in September:
1. Blasphemy - Gods of War (1993)
2. Basilisk - A Joyless March Through the Cold-Lands (2004)
3. Big End Bolt - Killstruments & Deathods (2016)
4. Guttural Secrete - Reek of Pubescent Despoilment (2006)
5. DJ Анжела Шульженко - Fucking Life (1997)
6. Blood Sermon - Never Stop the Madness (2021)
7. Solstice - New Dark Age (1998)
8. Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares - Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares : Volume 4 (1998)
9. Reverend Bizarre - Death Is Glory... Now (2009)
10. Joey Beltram - The Beltram Re-Releases 1989-1991 (1994)
Hello! August was mostly uneventful but nevertheless there's some stuff to report. The
heat is becoming slightly less oppressive... or so I want to believe, at least. The
Farmer's Almanac is saying that this winter will be decently cold so I'm looking forward
to that at least. The new climatic regime seems to entail long and brutal summers with
short but incredibly intense winters, at least in North America. It sucks but there's
nothing to do about it besides everything I am: trying to live a simpler and more
ecologically responsible life, educating others about the risks, and voting in a way
that helps.
The first thing you'll probably notice is that I have a new, incredibly crappy-looking
header image at the top of every page. I've had a tablet for a while but only recently
got back into experimenting with it. The old header and main page image were from when I
experimented with creating a VTuber character for streaming. I couldn't get it to work
well and it taxed my old crappy laptop too much. This computer might be better, but I
don't really have the desire to create a VTuber avatar anymore. I want to make a different
header for each section with a themed version of site image character Ikeda Megumi. I've
only made the generic main page one and the updates section so far, but I'd like to draw
one for each area. I'm aware that they look pretty hideous, but I first just want to
create them and then eventually I'll go back and refine them. More than anything it was a
way to try to make the "defining" imagery of the site self-created instead of dependent on
someone else's assets, since the previous miko character was largely adapted from a free
asset I grabbed from some other site. Not that I have a problem with that in theory, but I
prefer 2-D drawings like this to 3-D models anyway. I am working at a more serious drawing
at the same time and would eventually like to have a section on the site dedicated to my
pictures. I'm not particularly happy with any of them, but you can't expect perfection when
you're just starting out. Of course, I appreciate any constructive criticism. The first and
foremost thing is adding some real linework to make them look less like MS Paint and adding
some shading so they have some more depth, along with some other stuff perhaps. I created
these in a 450x180 px window which was a mistake. Next time I'll start with a larger template
and then just resize them down. Anyway, it's a start.
I've been messing around with GIMP to work on my drawings a lot. I used Photoshop a bit in
school, but I have no intention of getting it again. GIMP can be a little weird and non-intuitive
sometimes, but I've been getting really into free and open source software. It's so liberating
to try to rid yourself of proprietary software to whatever degree you can. I've downloaded
LibreOffice for the same reason which is awesome because now I can do spreadsheets and stuff
without Microsoft Office. I've now been able to completely sever myself from the crappy old MacBook I
have. Truly, the only purpose it now serves is a second monitor. That's because I have some .rtf
files that I've kept updated since 2009 which log the movies I've watched and some other stuff,
but haven't had a good program to handle .rtf files on Windows. Now I can open them in LibreOffice
Writer. I also have been using LibreOffice Calc for some spreadsheet data about potential places
I'd like to try to move to and their climate. Lastly, I was using Atom to edit html but made the
jump to Notepad++. The main motivation for downloading Notepad++ was to handle my ordinary .txt
files in a tabbed window instead of having seven Notepad windows open at all times and to be
able to set it to a dark theme to be easier on my eyes. But after trying to open my HTML files
in it, I also found it completely superior to Atom. It loads way faster and is more lightweight,
plus it lacks some of Atom's more annoying features. Of course, it's also still an active project,
which is a plus.
I like free software culture and the ideology behind aiming against the corporatization
of the computing world and all, although I'm not prepared to go all the way and dual-boot Linux
or anything like that yet. Maybe someday. I was also considering switching to a new browser with
better privacy settings, less resource use, no connection to Mozilla as a corporation, or even
just a better "aesthetic." I still use Firefox which is at the very least infinitely preferable to
shit like Google Chrome. I like Firefox most so I would probably want to use a fork of it, but
the downside is that I can't import everything quickly. LibreWolf seems like the best option though,
so I'll probably download it and set it up eventually. As long as I can make Ecosia with dark theme
my main search engine.
I've been incredibly lazy in my time off and busy with other things this past month, so I wish I
had more time to dedicate to vidya. No Subterranean Animism 1cc yet. I hate Yuugi's lasers so
much. I didn't even finish Yumeria all the way yet either. Truly despicable. But I did find
myself wanting to play some Heroes of Might and Magic III for the first time in a while. I
played a bit on the randomly generated map mode instead of the campaign and that was a great way to
shake things up. I'm still such a n00b though. The only map I won so far was against four enemy CPUs
and two of them were segmented completely off from me and from each other by a particularly bizarre generation
of mountains that had no way inside. I didn't even know the game could do that. I might have missed
some very tiny way through, but you'd think the AI would have found it before I did. I know the
AI is stupid, but even on 130% they had a ton of time to try to break through to me in any way
they could. The answer was simple though: just build up my army until I researched Fly, levelled a
hero up to Expert Wisdom, then flew over and kicked ass.
I'd also like to find out how to create a guestbook for the website. How quaint, right? Well, I thought
it would be a good way to allow people to comment without requiring them to go to the trouble of sending
me an email, which can be a bit more of an endeavor, and also allow others to see what people think of
the site. Looking forward to a lot of people calling me a faggot. Anyway, thanks for reading and I'll see
you again in a month.
The ten best albums I listened to for the first time in August:
1. Pazuzu - Awaken the Dragon (1996)
2. Immoralist - Unholy (2016)
3. Wojnar - Zimowa opowieść (1998)
4. Godflesh - Purge (2023)
5. Cold Blank Stare - Humanity Will Come Undone (2008)
6. 桃箱＆miko - Roripoppuchu♥ - ろりぽっぷちゅ♥ (2015)
7. Johann Sebastian Bach [Konrad Junghänel] - Complete Lute Works (1990)
8. No.305 / Rorikiller - No. 305 / Rorikiller (2006)
9. Umbilical Apshyxia - Rampant Infantile Strangulation (2018)
10. DJ Brainkiller - '98 Year of the World Damnation (1998)
Hi all. Roasting under triple-degree heat in the United States (38+ degrees for
those of you who can't into freedom units). But I'm trying to stay optimistic and
continue working on my website.
I finally got my 1cc in Mr. Driller which was pretty exciting, so now
I'm thinking about what arcade 1cc I want to aim for next. Maybe Pu-Li-Ru-La?
I'm just grinding at Subterranean Animism otherwise, which is proving to
be the ass-kicker I thought it would be. Most everything is streaming but man is
it some hard streaming. I love the game's spooky, hellish mood though. Never gets
old.
I watched three classic ecchi anime I always wanted to watch as a kid: Mouse,
DearS, and Grenadier. They may not look like much now, but they are such
a soothing balm to my soul. I need to keep them private from a world too corrupt
and hideous to handle their purity and grace. I'll finish all the other classic
ecchi series soon enough. Yumeria up next!
I read a book called We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices From
Turtle Island on the Changing Earth. It was pretty interesting reading. Of
course, it had a lot of different speakers and I disagreed with them on a few things
here and there. What can you expect? A lot of it had some very cringy idpol language
that I disliked. But some of the speakers were truly remarkable. My favorite was
probably Ilarion Merculieff. I put a ton of quotes by him in my four pillars because
he puts all kind of stuff into words that seems so wise to me. I don't understand
it in full but I can tell that embodies some truly ancient, pure wisdom. It reminded
me of a lot of Shintou thought. I recommend the book on the strength of some of
the best interviews in it.
I finally finished a top 10 per year in the cinema section, where you can see
my top 10 films per year. However, it's still in a mode where all titles are in
their original languages and alphabets (Russian ones in cyrillic, Japanese ones
in kana and kanji, etc.). I will eventually go back and fix this by adding mouseover
text over the unfamiliar writing systems to reveal the translations. I prefer this
to just writing the translated title next to it, which is ugly and adds a lot
of clutter. I eventually want to do this for my game index too, as a matter of fact.
See my first example of using it at the bottom of this page! But I'm too tired now,
so please wait a bit! Eventually screenshots will come too, but again, everything
in due time...
Now that I have my site up, I'm getting kind of invested in the idea of preserving
all my data about what I've seen, listened to, etc. on my own site. But as long as
I can use RateYourMusic, MyAnimeList, etc., I really don't see the need to.
The ten best albums I listened to for the first time in July:
1. 土取利行 - 縄文鼓: 大地の響震 (2008)
2. Branikald - Рдяндалир (1996)
3. Sinclair Cheechoo - James Bay Cree Fiddler - Muskeg Fiddling Music (1987)
4. "The Orthodox Singers" Male Choir / Георгий Смирнов - Basso Profondo From Old Russia (1999)
5. Hildegard von Bingen [Sequentia] - Voice of the Blood (1995)
6. Wojnar - Kiedy duch wojny nade mną powstanie (1999)
7. Various Artists - Warfaring Strangers: Darkscorch Canticles (2014)
8. 小長谷淳 - Travel (2014)
9. 和金花 - 演唱纳西族民歌 (2022)
10. David & Steve Gordon - Lightspring (1987)