Reading Out Loud In English Class...

 

Tomorrows midday NHK BS101 movie is THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI.  And that prompted me to remember that is one of the books we did in English class in High School.

I went to St.Ives High School in Sydney Australia 1971 till 1976, a free public government school, and not the expensive private schools most kids in that area went to. The books were loaned free to us for the year, but for what ever reason, there where not enough THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI to go around to all kids in our year and I had to buy my own paperback copy at a local bookstore. Don't remember that being any big deal though.

During some lessons, kids were randomly selected to read to the class from the assigned book.  And one day I was asked to read the next page or so.   I did, didn't get any reaction from the teacher or anyone else, so all good I thought.

But during packing our bags at the end of class, a big Greek guy, Paul Demoes, comes up to me and asks to see my book.  He wasn't a friend, but knew him. He looked at the book and was stunned to see it wasn't like the school issued book.  I had read a section that was full of FAHK, and hadn't realized I had been saying FUCK, and I had said that out loud in class, more than a few times. I was so innocent, I hadn't realized the characters had been swearing like that.

The teacher hadn't let on, and ignored it. 

I expect I wasn't the only one that had to buy their own normal copy of the book, but no one else ever mentioned it. Many, probably, were not listening to what anyone read. A few didn't need to listen to anything in classes, their future was secure and didn't need an education, more about that in a moment.

The only class I ever enjoyed was ART. Best, coolest, teachers too. 

During my 6 years in High School there were people I thought of as friends, that just disappeared. Go on an end of term vacation, and they didn't come back. I must not have been "enough" of a friend for them to tell me they were leaving the school.  Most that disappeared was because their parents sent them to a private school to "meet the right people".  Never about "a better education".  

The "not what you know, but who you know", that means so many in positions of power don't know anything and are actually unqualified for their position.  

"17 per cent of NSW Supreme Court judges went to one exclusive Sydney private school. A SBS TV Feed analysis revealed over 60 per cent of judges went to Sydney University and 15 per cent of male judges to one exclusive high school."  

Saw from my 20th High School Reunion Book that a few that never seemed to work at all in school, and didn't leave to a private school, just went on to inherit the big family business. So different from my own experience.

The kids in Private Schools didn't really associate with those that didn't.  Except my best friend, had left to a private school, and I remained friends with him, and met a few other Private School kids through him, or friends of his.  I remember visiting a Private School kids house a couple of times that was the grandson of the mega rich founder of one of the cheap Supermarket chains.  The guy next door was in my class at school, a family of mega rich coffee merchants, and saw me there once and asked "How do you know him?!".   They didn't mix, and I didn't become friends with either of them...

Took me many many years before I actually saw ( even though I had always been told) and REALLY realized that nepotism was so significant in Australia. Having the "right school or church" association counted for so much. 

I used to car pool going to university in the final year or so with 2 other guys. One I went to the same High School with, the other had gone to a Private School, and talked a lot about how much better that class of people were😒. 

At the end of University, the first job I was offered was in Industrial Control. I had been the most experienced practical guy doing electronics and firmware they had interviewed, and couldn't wait for me to start. The Private School guy I car pooled with told me "that was supposed to be his job, his brother-in-law worked there", even though he had never had electronics as a hobby and passion like I had. University certainly didn't teach anything practical in the field. I learnt that all in my own spare time from Electronics Australia, ETI, Elector and BYTE magazines and building and programming my own things since about Year 4 of High School. 

The day before I was to start at the Industrial Control company, I received a TELEGRAM saying the job was no longer available.  Did the bother-in-law get it back and give to his relative? I don't know, and I never met that Private School guy after University finished. 

It came as a real shock, but I soon got a better offer at Fairlight Instruments Pty Ltd.  A good start to my career.

I think now, in 2025, that a significant reason why it took 14 years to build the Sydney Opera House, was Australia has never had "the best people" for leaders.  Jobs for friends and relatives is the way it usually goes.  But having said that, have read the same thing happens in Japan here and the UK.

20 years before I retired, I saw appropriate tech positions I applied for, and was never ever called in for even an interview, go to members of THE HILL SONG CHURCH, at both ResMed and Cochlear.  I knew people at both places. I can't say that was the only reason, but it seems to have been a significant factor in the time from when I went back to Australia in 2001.   

Had felt during my time in Australia that this was all so wrong, and this in 2019, though it didn't make me feel better, made me feel I had been right. The place had gone backwards..

 

I was so innocent. That isn't what I put in my comic though.  😀

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Heads It Is... Caricatures and Music

Was playing around with the VITAL vst presets and found the main sound that starts this. Really liked it and inspired to make the rest of it.

The extended version on Bandcamp:

Happy and Bouncing along. Get tired of the dystopia and negative. 

I do caricatures every so often, sometimes often.  But there is this thing where if I don't get the likeness right in the first quick rough sketch, it can take ages fussing with it. Love the getting it right first go, and hate fussing with one.

This is just a few put into the 57sec version of music. Was very quick to do.

The music was pretty much first takes, but pretty much is just a variation on the same song done dozens of times previously.  A bit like going to an Artist Exhibition and seeing 20 paintings or prints that are very similar like Yayoi Kusama Iconic Polka Dot & Pumpkin Posters. Artists do that.

I just make stuff and throw it on the internet, to be seen between 0 and 200+ if I make an under 60 second short of it. I don't have an officially registered music publishing business or any of that, as the costs to me don't make sense to do that. I don't have a Patreon or $5 albums on Bandcamp either having experimented with a Kindle book and other things since 2001 and seeing the ROI I got.

Just a hobby. I could be spending my time sculpting or making model cars, which I do sometimes, which are the types of things that aren't "a side hustle". Think very few make any real money with music these days, unless of course you are Distrokid, Spotify or Bancamp. They sell the dream.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Ozzy Passes 2025/07/23

 

News this morning is Ozzy Osborne passes away at 76. I had been expecting this news sometime, even if 76 is really young now. We share the same birthday, with Ozzy being exactly 10 years older. 

Expect Ozzies drug abuse expedited his end. The candle burning twice as bright lasts half as long, or some human equivalent. In recent years he had back surgeries that went terribly wrong, so hasn't been a happy camper. May have wanted to get away from the pain.

Having the same birthday and being a founder of Heavy Metal made him an ongoing part of my world. 

Very sorry to see him go.  

Think the first Sabbath album bought was the 1973 Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.  We didn't have a record player before then. My parents had no interest in music. 

I was born the same year as Gary Numan, Thomas Dolby, Neil Finn, Michael Jackson, David Sylvian, Kate Bush, Prince, Madonna, Bruce Dickinson, Joan Jett, Gary Oldman, Alex Baldwin, Kevin Bacon, Tim Burton, Jamie Lee Curtis and Karen Stone. 

Another's passing makes me think...  

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Planning Ahead, Live Concerts Ahead

 

Have two concerts in September lined up. Technical Metal Freak Kitchen and a week later Urasawa Naoki's Folk Rock Music & Drawing.

The Urasawa Naoki gig will be particularly cool as my wife bought me a VIP front row ticket as a 40th Anniversary gift for the Osaka event. I do have Urasawa's I LOVE YOU and MANNON CDs. The track I like best though is the Manben Ballad that is the ending theme of his wonderful Manben Neo Manga Study TV series.

I have met and talked a little with Mattias Eklundh a few times in the last 2 years, attended his Osaka Guitar Camp, and seen him perform a few tracks, but this will be the first time to see him and his band live on stage.

The above MUSIC+COMIC was a quick off the cuff thing did yesterday afternoon. The music was one take each for each played part. Drums, ambient pedal tone synth, rhythm and lead guitars. Maybe that instrument arrangement is one of my things? For things like this I just don't care to put bass in them. Just seems kind of happy to me, and I was when I did it. I put a version on Bandcamp , Music And Drawing.here.

I worry about booking things like these concerts so far ahead in recent years, as I don't know if I will be able to attend. Had to book and pay the Freak Kitchen concert 5 months in advance, and a Hotel room as well.

It was 10 years ago I first collapsed and was rushed off to Emergency in an Ambulance. That time it was just Kidney Stones, and I have changed lifestyle since then, cut out some foods, and drink a liter of water a day.

Wasn't the only time though, and something could happen again. Nothing anyone can do about things like that though.

But going to these concerts, the first in maybe 30 years, is because it will probably just get too difficult in the years ahead. I also love these bands and events and they are a rare opportunity. The kind of thing that most likely wouldn't happen in Australia.

Social Media seems to have gotten even worse, where these blog posts now get more views than anything I post on Bluesky, X or Facebook. Stopped posting to Mastodon completely, and now rarely check there. Have Instagram, but rarely post there, but see what our kids post. It seems so bizarre to me that so many Brits and Mericans treat Bluesky as the way to fight fascism in their own countries, but the majorities in both places voted for that! They must think a 💓 actually has any worth 😱! 95% of what other people post is of no interest to me...

Started Star Trek Enterprise on Netflix. Watched some of this in 2001 or so when we went back to Australia. Remember almost nothing of it other than the main characters. I see many thought the opening theme song was cheesy, but I think it is wonderfully hopeful. So different from todays Fascist USA where they are closing down preventable disease control and NASA to give tax breaks to the billionaires. I dislike intensely all the dystopian and desperately depressing (like BLACK MIRROR, the BATTLESTAR GALLACTICA remake) TV stuff around too. Star Trek Enterprise is wonderful for being hopeful.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

A Bit Of This, A Bit Of That

Who Doesn't Like a Musical Robot? 

Upgraded my ancient MOHO pro12.2 to the not as ancient final 2013 MOHO pro12.5 with the $25 Humble Bundle offer around at the moment and it came with a few extra content packs of brushes and characters including this great Robot and rig.  The robot animation here is just the sample it comes with. 

I wanted to use it in a YouTube short, as that is the only thing that anyone looks at or listens too, so looked thru the last 40 pieces of music I made in the last 6 months and just grabbed one at 120BPM I didn't remember playing recently.   That animation music was edited in Audacity to a 50 second clip taken from Bflat-Dorian-120BPM-Stop-The-Cough with 8 string guitar synths from this track: 

https://megacurve.bandcamp.com/track/bflat-dorian-120bpm-stop-the-cough

It is just luck that the robot foot steps match perfectly to the kick drum.  It just worked. Added the tracks moving waveform as the background in the second version, and had the robot walk off screen as it fades.

I think I have made a ton of music tracks, that I may have used in a music+comic that no one sees and then just upload it to a Bandcamp album where they get forgotten, even by myself.  

This short gives part of this track another go at being heard. I should probably do that more, but I am currently driven to make new music while I can.  I expect Arthritis or such will make that difficult in the coming years.  

This version of MOHO, like my CorelDraw V12 and Illustrator CS3 are old versions, but they still have way more features than I ever use. 

Recent Movies & Documentaries

I record many of the movies broadcast on TV here, and look at those on PRIME and NETFILX. I never watch a movie in one sitting. Usually over 2 nights in the time before I go to bed at night. So many I have started to watch, then couldn't be bothered finishing.  Like the latest Beetlejuice Movie. I did see PATTON to the end, but boy that was a slog. Ad ASTRA was better, and it wasn't as bad as most of the reviews made it out to be. Quit on a Clint Eastwood directed and starred in Theif thing, and quit  IT'S COMPLICATED (supposed to be a comedy) about halfway.

Recent movies I watched and actually enjoyed were LILO & STITCH, METAL LORDS (even though the first 1/3 until he can play the drums is slow, it really picks up) and KPOP DEMON SLAYERS ( the characters and music are great).

 

The LEMANS 24H is something I have followed since being a kid and seeing how amazing the PORSCHE 917s were, and PRIME has a multi part documentary on the LEMANS 2015 race. Most of that is really good. 2015 Mark Webber and the Porsche 919 HYBRID in the LMP1 class.

LMP1's last year was 2017, and the Porsche 919 above won that with the same team that won the 2015 race. Amazing technology, but that is all for some other of my comics.

The above Porsche 919 Hybrid is a wonderful second hand 1:43 scale diecast model from Mercari.  Decades ago I would have bought a fantastic and expensive resin/white metal kit of a car I wanted, and spend 3 months making it.  Like I did for this resin Provence Moulage 1:43 scale PORSCHE 917LH.

The diecast isn't quite as detailed as the resin kit, but my eyes, the floaters and age, means I have to look really closely to see the difference, and I just don't see well enough any more to build and do a 1:43 scale kit justice. I just can't see the small parts well enough, even with a magnifying head band.

I started watching a few other Movies and Animated things, some 4 or 5 I couldn't be bothered looking up the names of, and just haven't been in the mood for what they offered.  

Then last night tried Netflix's Leviathan.  This grabbed my interest, and I watched the first 3 episodes in one evening. An alternate steam punk history of the events causing World War I.  One character has a wonderful Scottish accent that I could listen to all night.

Based on a popular book trilogy I had never heard of, then fascinated to read that it is an illustrated young adult book series.

The end credits have watercolor illustrations of scenes that occurred in that episode, but they aren't the black and white illustrations in the book.

Manga Catchup

I had been looking for Masamune Shirow's old DOMINION TANK POLICE, a work from before he made it big with APPLE SEED and GHOST IN THE SHELL for some time and finally found a reasonable copy. This is comedy action, and has furigana to make it easier for me. Always good. 

Otomo Katsuhiro is one of the founders of modern Japanese Manga, after  the Tezuka and Mizuki era and his work is something I should have a copy of and so have gotten APPLESAUCE and FIREBALL from the Complete Works Reprint series.  The detail in the illustrations is superhuman. I ask myself though, do I want to do that? My answer is no.

I have also finally found a reasonable second hand set of his AKIRA manga in English, his 1000 page masterpiece.  Should be interesting, and more than the Anime is.

And I continue to do random comics on random thoughts 😁

Or

As my own Creativity control is like the robot in this comic. Working hard to keep where I want it to be: 

It isn't something you really control. Ideas come from somewhere but it isn't controlled, and most just keep doing "the work"... 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Who Are You? What Do You Want?

I think these are questions with different answers at different times in your life.  Who I am now, and what I want in my late 60s is the same, and not, as it was in my 20s, even if I am the same 24 year old inside.

I was always drawing and making things as a kid, and won a prize in an art competition.  Now in retirement I draw and make art again.   

But for my working life I set out on a technical career as I "needed to make a living".  I see on Social Media many that did not have that kind of focus at all. They didn't know what they wanted to do, so joined the Army, or went to be an English teacher in Japan, or some such thing, before finding a direction years later. I guess what they were told growing up was very different from myself.

There is this graph of happiness with age:

I am now up at the level of being the most happy and content I have ever been, living in Kyoto Japan and retired. I now make my art and music, go to exhibitions, cafes and concerts, as I please. Working away at home in my studio is what I want to do most of the time.

During most of my life, much the working part, I had to put off what I wanted to do, as I had to study for exams, or spend much of the weekend at soccer, or write a report, or keep up to date technically, or I didn't have any money for materials, or finish some project for a deadline, or had family things to do, or I wasn't sure of the future so I couldn't spend any money on that "at the moment".  For my working life in Japan, I had money, but no time to use it, and for much of my working life in Australia, I had time but no "spare" money. We came to live a very frugal life style before retiring and moving back to Japan, which ended up being pretty good for us. Even if I hadn't had a holiday in 18 years while back in Australia. 

I got back into recording music around 2006 when the Reaper DAW came out. And after ignoring my Squire guitar for a decade+, took up playing it again.  All the music gear I ever bought was from a little of the money I made from my freelance illustration gig. A MIC100 preamp, Squire Bass and Line6 Uber Metal Pedal being about it at the time.  It just seemed right to spend art money on art to me. As a musician, I am not a bad cartoonist. My drawing ability is far more than my musical ability, being a guy he loves power chords and just plays scales over them, but my music gives me as much satisfaction. You don't have to be really good at something to get joy from it. 

Most of those earnings went into our family account too though, but that was all good. 

Was just saying to my wife this morning, just not having to get to the office for the job anymore is such a relief. The travel, traffic, crowds and people.  

Of course, people not like me (me being on the introvert side), those more extraverted, really miss not having people around them and need that to energize them.  At a similar age they have to go out and join clubs or some such, and had a tough time during covid lockdowns from 2020.

Remaining healthy (the right weight, eating right, exercising enough) and active is so important now. Use it or loose it is true, as far as remaining mobile is concerned.

And some memories:  THIS IS WHERE THE SMOKE COMES OUT

By the way, that is NOT an Autobiography at all.  It has almost no personnel/ family stuff in it. But a collection of memories on what I was doing and thinking and the world events happening then too. 

Todays answers to the posed questions, that I could answer differently tomorrow.

Who Are You? An Australian now living in Japan that was always an artist, but went after a technical career to make a living.

What Do You Want? To make stuff in my studio, and have a happy healthy family life as a grandfather. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

F1 The Movie, Rush, Lemans and Ford vs Ferrari

 

Went and saw F1 The Movie yesterday, a Thursday morning almost a week after release. Loved it.

This wasn't a movie I had been following the release of at all, and was caught by surprise when looking at the local TOHO CINEMA currently showing films that it was on.

Watched a few YouTube commentaries and things about it after watching it, and it had been in production for 2 years. I had missed all that as Formula One isn't something I have seen much of in the last years at all.  They set out to make the most exciting car race film of all time.

Back in Sydney, they would broadcast the F1 races on a Sunday afternoon. Last time I followed it was when Mark Webber was being stabbed in the back by his team mate Vettel.  After I got a PVR I would watch a race on fast forward, as the racing had became really dull.  All the cars just following each other around and win or lose on who had to pit to change tires. Modern F1 cars all look very much like each other, other than branding.

Don't remember even seeing it on free to air TV any more when we left Australia in 2019, and haven't seen it in Japan, as it is only on an expensive subscription TV channel.   The only thing I have seen in the last years is clips on X, and I really haven't paid much attention.  About the only thing I noticed was how much bigger the current cars are.

F1 The Movie gave me the same edge of the seat excitement Mad Max Fury Road did. At least for the opening Dayton sequences.  The action and the rock / metal music is like it was made for me, even if some of the non car racing elements have the subtlety of a fluorescent marker. 

I really love RUSH too, and it also has music by Hans Zimmer.  RUSH has a story with parts of it based on historical events, even if the film depicted rivalry is fiction, and has more weight to it than F1 The Movie. That was a more interesting looking generation of cars too.

Ford vs Ferrari is also based in fact and love that one too.

But the 1970 Steve McQueen's LeMans is still hard to beat for the race car footage.  It was also at a peak of endurance racing with the Porsche 917 which is as much a star of the show as McQueen is. Doesn't have music that grabs me the way it does in Rush or F1 The Movie though.

Last year I saw 1966 movie GRAND PRIX, with James Garner and Toshiro Mifune.  LeMans gets criticized for the romance crammed into it, and GRAD PRIX has two romances in it, to "keep the ladies interested", and is rather old school/ dated that way, but the car racing cinematography is great, but think the new films do it better. 

F1 The Movie is one I will get on Bluray if it is released in that format, and not just screened on Apples streaming service.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology