trying to make some sense of music

25/11/2022

to preface, it seems i took another accidental 2 month break. sorry about that lmao

anyway, i'd like to talk about music. it's always been something that has interested me and something very important in my life. i listen to music constantly. i find myself drawing more inspiration for my art out of music than other visual artists sometimes. it's something that just makes sense in my brain in the way that it's just a different type of painting - with sound rather that visual medium - and more drawn out as opposed to a static image.

i've always been able to find a beat in anything, but for some reason whenever i've tried to record a song, it all goes weird in one way or another. i'd love to make music but i feel like there's some kind of a gap in my knowledge or something just won't click and i don't know precisely what it is, but i always feel really out of place in musical spaces.

the only instrument i can play is guitar and i'm a bit mediocre and i have no idea how to use a DAW. there is so much daunting knowledge i would need to take in to pursue music and i don't know if i have enough time or brainspace for it. lyrics are the one thing i can come up with though. they just enter my brain sometimes out of nowhere and i think it would be a shame to put them to waste. i'm starting to figure out how to structure them around a tune.

i would love to make some music somehow. i feel like if i commit to learning how to produce music and get over my fears around recording i could make something really cool :) i guess it just comes down to finding the time and energy.

recent art dump

28/9/2022

i ended up making quite a lot of art during my three month break from this site. i can't really be fucked to make an individual post for every piece, so here's everything in one. these were all done (at least partially) in an a5 sketchbook i got from the dollar store.

this is the most recent out of all of these. i made this by taking a photo of a graphite sketch and painting over it in krita.

this one was an acrylic painting which i enchanced digitally in GIMP.

this was another acrylic painting which i enchanced digitally in GIMP.

another acrylic painting which i enchanced digitally in GIMP. it was originally just a graphite sketch, but i didn't like it so i painted over it. it has a really cool texture in real life but u guys can't feel it through the internet >:(

another acrylic painting which i enchanced digitally in GIMP. this one i just did when i was bored in class and had a song stuck in my head.

another acrylic painting which i enchanced digitally in GIMP. this was the first acrylic portrait in my sketchbook i actually really liked. my sketchbook got soaked exactly 3.5 times by my water bottle leaking in my bag according to the counter on the first page, so that's why it looks wavy.

and lastly, a digital painting. this one is very special to me.

getting into retro game emulation

28/9/2022

i feel like i missed out on a lot of the nostalgia that a lot of people my age have towards older video games as i was never really allowed to play them, but as a linux user and enjoyer of weird/surreal/obscure media, retro games and emulation are a goldmine. lucky for me, linux is pretty much top of the emulation software game.

it all started when i discovered lsd dream emulator through coming across some screenshots on pinterest during the days before i got into cybersecurity. this was even before i knew what linux was. it looked like such a fascinating game, yet it was only fully playable on the ps1.

the emulators i currently have installed on my laptop are desmume, duckstation, mame. mednaffe, mgba, m64p, nestopia, pcsx2 and ppsspp. i like to explore a variety of consoles. these emulators are all free and open source.

some games i've really been enjoying as of late are mysims (DS), mario kart (DS), neon genesis evangelion - shito ikusei (bandai wonderswan), pokemon emerald (GBA), fester's quest (NES), monster party (NES), taboo - the sixth sense (NES), stretch panic (PS2), we love katamari (PS2), hatsune miku: project diva (PSP), and the obvious lsd dream emulator (PSX).

i don't really know how to end this entry, but if any of this interests you, i'd highly recommend looking into it. also, apologies for not updating this site for a few months. i've been quite busy with school and other life happenings.i've been neglecting my online presence, but i promise to update more from now on.

some digital art

13/6/2022

i keep forgetting that i'm a digital artist

more image dithering

12/6/2022

this post can be considered a part two to one of my previous. i fucked up some jpegs by playing with 8-bit dithering in GIMP, which was a lot of fun. i ended up going back and making more :D (also, i feel i should clarify that i do not own any of the original images)

another oil portrait

8/6/2022

painting is hard but i'm quite pleased with the colours on this one :)

interesting RSS feeds

28/5/2022

in case you don't know what RSS is, it stands for Really Simple Syndication. it's an XML based web feed that allows you to access updates to websites in a simple format. it's generally used for things like news.

i've discovered that i love it, especially since quitting using social media recreationally. here are some interesting feeds i've discovered;

techlore - tech/cybersecurity news

sizeof(cat) - cybersecurity news

sadgrl.online - rss feed of yesterweb creator, sadgrl

blackgnu - cybersecurity guides

dig deeper - cybersecurity guides

stallman - richard stallman's feed (creator of the GNU project)

slime-net - old/weird web

my recent adventures in image manipulation

28/5/2022

recently i've been experimenting with fucking up jpegs;

a while ago i read a lainzine article about databending in audacity to create glitched images and it sparked some kind of interest in me. i love the concept of it and it's produced some really cool results. i ended up leaving it for a while because the process confused me slightly and i wasn't able to convert the files back to images from audacity. recently i decided to revisit it.

i ended up watching a random youtube tutorial that was able to simplify the process enough for my puny little mind brain to comprehend and i was able to replicate the process myself :D here are some results;

the process involves importing bitmap images into audacity as raw data and applying a fuckton of effects, the exporting it again as a bmp. there's a lot more to it but if you really want to look into it yourself, you can do so on your own time because i'm too lazy to explain and i still don't fully understand the ins and outs of the process.

here's another image i glitched except i applied a few of my own edits in GIMP;

another thing i've been doing recently is 8-bit dithering in GIMP. this process involves changing the image mode to indexed and messing around with some of the settings involved with that. here are some examples (they look a bit better up close sorry);

i've created some really neat desktop wallpapers for myself with this and i'm quite pleased. the images i used were mainly old windows xp default wallpapers and LSD dream emulator screenshots.

overall, i would consider this a very fun hobby and i highly recommend looking into it :)

painting is hard

5/5/2022

this is an oil portrait i did for school. i haven't worked with oils in around two years now, which is weird to think about. i really enjoy them but i just don't want my room to smell like turpentine.

today, i worked with water-based oils and i feel like it could be a good option for me.

some cool links :)

5/5/2022

time for a generic link dump

gifcities - geocities gif archive

funky chickens - old html guide

88x31 gif collection - page stamps

unixsheikh - a bunch of articles and tutorials

web design museum - cool old web design

the old net - more old web

1mb club - sites less than 1mb

lissa explains it all - old html guide

oddities - weird/old games

jspaint - old mspaint in your browser

manga artbooks - manga artbooks

ani-cli - script that lets you watch anime from your terminal

searx.space - list of searx instances

surfing the web-webs (art)

24/4/2022

gimme a lil twitter like

a little drawing i did in class to portray my better experiences on the internet.

i hate the internet, but i love it

29/3/2022

if you couldn't already tell by this absolute menace of a website, i was raised online. i was first given my own laptop when i was 8 years old and it was a windows xp laptop (which was obsolete, even at the time). it was gifted to me for free by my dad's colleague. for a while, all i used it to do was draw shitty my little pony (everyone in my class liked my little pony im not perculiar) fanart on ms paint.

one day my friend introduced me to a website named scratch where you could make your own video games. i thought that this concept was so incredibly cool and i signed up that evening. thus, i was plunged into the magnetic culture of the online world. since then, it's consumed me.

without a question, i am addicted to the internet. the question is, "do i like the internet?" and the answer is no. i hate the endless mindlessness it breeds and the mind numbing algorithms that are all too present. i hate soulless web design that's bloated with javascript and the lost souls of web devs that runs the web. i hate the cycle of information being gathered and sold and used to make you more addicted and i hate the echo chambers it breeds.

although the internet is a safe haven for me and a great place for me to spread my art and express my creativity, i am aware that the way the internet is moderated makes it extremely unlikely for it to actually aid me in making art a career. it's completely changed the way creatives find a name for themselves. it's just kind of sad.