The Artemis II mission kind of caught me by surprise. Think all the SPACE X pr, let alone the Orange Felon doings must have stopped it from getting any air around where I am.
The music in this is a more ambient version of the last Sewaritei Walk I did.
Other Things
As a kid growing up, I believed the lie, the propaganda, of our western systems of education and law, that the most appropriate people become our leaders and managers.
Not true at all, where in reality money and nepotism play the biggest part.
Not going to go on about current international events though, but back to a 5 month engineering gig I took in the early 2000s.
It was a city infrastructure project that took us about 2 weeks to realize that the company that had won it was in no way suitable for it. Everyone on it was a short term contractor. There was no experienced company with a great reputation behind it. Just a single investor with government friends!
But this story isn't about the guy at the top. One of the things I had to do in the gig was reverse engineer the interface on the companies green box used all over the city.
Why do they need that for their own product?!
Turns out the green box was developed during some previous project many years earlier, and when it finished and they sacked all that developed it, and all the documentation, source code disks, manufacturing information, mechanical design files were boxed up and left for the next project.
Those boxes ended up in the corner of a room that some time later was assigned to a project manager on a later project. Without even looking at what the material was, the new project manager just threw it all out!
The manufacturing information was out at a contracted manufacturer, so that wasn't lost, so they could build more but not update or do anything new with it.
To me, this is typical of Australia, and the people that become leaders, such as project managers.
The arrogance and ignorance was staggering.
I have no idea who that idiot project manager was, but am sure his confidence lead to him being a company director on the board of a big company. And being just as confident and wrong.
Those that know nothing are the most confident. More so than any one experienced in the field. Their I CAN DO THAT! is from ignorance. Not knowing enough to know what they don't know.
There was a NHK early evening story yesterday on a current boom in RADIO CONTROLLED CARS in Japan. The first boom was in the 1970s, and they were very expensive back then. This second boom is guys in their late 60s and 70s who couldn't join the first boom due to that expense, but who are retired and have enough spare money. The cars aren't any where near the cost they were back then, with an entry level car now around 30,000yen.
The 290m Tamiya Kakegawa Circuit was central to the story
One guy 67 was into the racing, another 74 was into the building of the cars. You need different interests when you get older. Both indoor and outdoor hobbies are good to have then.
So I revised this older 1 page comic into a slightly longer 5 page MUSIC+COMIC.
As a short it may get heard by a few more. Or maybe not. It certainly isn't the kind of music or subject in any TOP 5 list you will find.
It seems most English VBloggers in Japan are now posting their stuff at 7AM Saturday morning, an hour earlier than it was a couple of weeks ago. It must because of Daylight Saving change in the USA which must be their main audience. I tried that scheduled time myself this week, even though I aren't making Weeaboo Japanese content myself.
I am still searching for my best mix of synth/sequencer and heavy guitar riffs.
I keep on using the same 6 or so drum patterns and never more than 16 tracks, so I think I am just a minimalist. Minimal automation and effects. Just enough to "solve the problem" and no more. Only one track for rhythm guitar and one for melodic guitar (I would not call it lead guitar, as it isn't flashy enough).
Visited the Clinic (Ohgaki Clinic, Shijo Kyoto if you are interested) yesterday for what I thought would be the last time. I even got reservation #2. Doc said the largest of the internal hemorrhoids he used Band Ligation on is only half gone, and it needs another go. I am still recovering, some 5 weeks now, from the external things he removed and wasn't up for that yesterday. Internal band ligation isn't painful, but it does effect me for a few days, so I will go back in a month or so for that. Have to take the cat across town again for his hair trim in a few days time and need to be in better shape to carry him on public transport there and back.
Not painful now at all, but it kept me up half of last night as it just is not comfortable sometimes, especially at night. So a bit of a downer to be not over it all yet, but still a much better experience than 9 years ago.
A week since seeing PROJECT HAIL MARY and so much PR across Social Media and YouTube on it now. A great, positive movie. A masterpiece even. Dolby YouTube channel even has an interview with the soundtrack composer, even if the soundtrack isn't something that struck me as amazing.
Then there are the YouTube videos explaining it, but that doesn't seem to be for non native English speakers, but for the extremely stupid. No need to mention who they must be!
Was expecting that with the early Cherry Blossom Blooming across Japan, that my local Sewaritei walk would be on my todo list for today, but no. I saw from the train coming home yesterday from the clinic that the trees had barely started to bloom, 98% still brown.
So probably something for next weekend. For the last few years doing this 2km walk under the blossoms, with music in my earbuds ( TANGERINE DREAM last year), then getting a KEBAB and other food from the stalls along the river on the walk back to the station has been a great experience for me.
The location with the music is a magical Visual & Auditory experience.
A video I made on it last year:
It seems the first weekend of April 2026 will be the days to visit this year too.
UPDATE 2026/3/29: And I was wrong. The warm weather meant today was the day for the Cherry Blossom walk. Not at full bloom, but with rain from this evening, getting heavier over the next few days (if the forecast is correct), they will probably be all washed away by next week end.
Have seen at least one other Neil deGrasse Tyson video on the same topic. In the other he talks about himself not getting good school grades. I didn't get great school grades either and found it all really dull and stopping me from actually doing more interesting and worthwhile self study of electronics or something. Except in a Geography exam once I did color pencil diagrams as well as words to answer a question and that was used as an example to the whole geography year of a great way to answer a question. I did the most original answer they had ever seen.
But original answers is not what school is about at all. I hated school.
It is so strange to the rest of the world how, to Americans, GOFUND ME has become normal. And this AI summary seems spot on to the rest of us. And that these pleas are now a constant thing on Social Media. Understand the reason, but not that nothing is being fundamentally done to fix that places issues, that go way beyond the felon in chief. Propaganda around "freedom" has worked a treat to the advantage of the 1%.
UPDATE: 2026/4/2 This mornings YOMURI SHIMBUN Kansai has a short front page article on Sewaritei Cherry Blossoms were in full bloom yesterday, in the rain.
Artemis II launched with a crew to go around the moon this morning! It caught me off guard that this was a thing. I assume Mulusk's SpaceX BS has taken all the space stuff coverage and something real didn't get to poke its head out.
A bit like all the Japanese prime time TV news coverage of the figure skating and High School Baseball, but nothing on the Japanese GP in Suzuka last weekend.
Had started an extended version of the Hail Mary music a week or so ago, but with not feeling great, didn't come back to it till yesterday.
And this morning thought to do this first 4 pages with 2 minutes of music to see what it looks like. Of course realizing that doing that Monday morning is when no one will see it.
I then added that DUAL progress bar. RED for MUSIC duration and GREEN for when pages change. Seemed like a good idea.
This and my other comics are being constantly accessed by AI scrapers in Singapore and China, so it would be nice if a human, or even an alien, took a look too.
I'm not blocking the scrapers though. Think that is a pointless struggle now and I just give these away anyway as something I wanted to do.
Makes me realize I haven't done a multipage comic since 2022 too. Found them really interesting to do, but isn't something anyone else bothers to look at as far as I can tell.
And most people only look at the first 2 seconds of the MUSIC+COMICS on YouTube I have made. 2 seconds. That is immediately determining they don't want to see it. YouTube is broken in so many ways now. In the time this got 8 views on YouTube, it got 80 on Facebook REELs.
Other Things
I see they are announcing Dune PART3. I have no interest in seeing that at all. Still think the REDUX fan edit of David Lynch's DUNE is a better movie.
Friends are not posting like they did on Social Media, a few have stated they are trying to get away, and stay from it. Even those that are actually good people can post far too much. A few others are using it to promote interesting things. Recently I mostly post a music+comic, and maybe something else on my mind once a week, but that isn't what the algorithm wants and my time line is filled with orange garbage.
Like watching the end of Sumo Haru Basho in Osaka yesterday afternoon:
Since I started the medical procedures end of January, our cat hasn't wanted to sit on my lap like he always does. I assume the medicine/ointment and his empathy just makes that not something he wants to do at the moment. Instead if I am lying on the bed, he will lie next to, or across my ankles. The physical connection.
Kirishima had already won outright the day before. Onosato had pulled out at day 3 of the 14. Aonishiki, who had been unbeatable the last 2 bashos, wasn't this time, and even Hoshoryu beat him for the first time, after loosing the previous 4 attempts. Not much for watching sports, other than some motorsport, but I find Sumo really interesting, even if I can only remember the names of about 8 wrestlers at any given time. Favorite is Ura, just as he often does the most entertaining moves, even if he only wins about 50% of the time..
Seen a few advertisements for EL CLAPO, a hand clap and foot stomping vst. On special at the moment. Seems to work pretty well, but I don't need to do a version of QUEENS - WE WILL ROCK YOU, and that makes it kind of limited to me. Cool, but kind of a one trick pony...
To come up with the next thing I want to do, I need to be offline and just think about stuff without distractions. That is actually the same for anybody...
Of the things I have done recently, I feel STORY SHAPED BEATS means the most to me, despite getting few views:
I was visiting a medical clinic regularly for a couple of months, listening to old and new John Foxx and spending even more time with our cat. Or rather he was spending even more time with me as I didn't go out much during recovery from each small procedure.
It is 3/4s synthesizers and sequences with a spoken lyric and a late section with heavy guitar. I spent 25years of my tech career developing systems to make music with synthesizers, so it doesn't have to be all guitars.
It is a complete, non traditionally formatted song that tells a story to me of the time I made it. Most of what I do, with the MUSIC+COMICS is about some kind of "story", or says something. To me at least.
Most people I follow on social media aren't about songs. They shred a solo or something. Very skilled, but it doesn't "say anything".
But I think about that kind of thing a lot, and reposted this old comic I did this on the subject CREATIVITY V SKILL.
Saw PROJECT HAIL MARY first session and really enjoyed it. Lots to think about. I was kind of shocked to be given the PROJECT HAIL MARY patch going into the cinema. Was it because it was the first session. or does everyone get one?
Easily saying "lethal injection with a shot of heroine", was a line that really hit me. Going out on a high, and being okay with that as an option shows how desperate the situation was.
But it is such a positive, NOT dystopian film!
I did this piece of music a couple of weeks ago and tried making a music comic with different subjects since then. This is the 3rd version. Previous attempts were Ricky vs BIlly, then MINT LINUX 22.3 CINNAMON, but both were dull...
Other Things
About a week after having the stiches out, and consistently healing, things started to swell and get painful again Tuesday last week. Wasn't well at all. So went to the clinic and he said a thread that should dissolve seems to have caused and issue, so he took that out from under the skin. Anti infection cream with some tablets, an oozing sore and later that evening and all good again.
Spent much of the last week playing with the Mint Linux laptop and evaluating what I really want from it. Thing is I don't really need a laptop at the moment, only if I have to visit Australia in the future sometime, or something like that.
I found Inkscape, THE Linux vector illustration program is very weak compared to my 23 year old CorleDraw12 I used since 2003. I bought CorelDraw2024 last year, and it is a bit more polished, but doesn't really do anything new that the 2003 version didn't! What I mostly use in the new version is the presets for saving PNGs directly.
So I spent a few days learning Inkscape and trying to get CorelDraw12 to run under Linux wine. Corel installs and runs, but can't open a template so is useless. Tried all the options found in the Linux forums on the subject.
Eventually installed older VirtualBox, Win10 HOME in it without an internet connection, and put CorelDraw12 in that, and the fonts I use for my comics. Can drag and drop files between the systems and it all works. A Laptop for Internet use and a safe to use Win10 isolated from the Internet for CorelDraw12.
But I also made up a JUST THINKING comic template in Inskscape that easily allows me to make that series of comic natively in Mint Linux to. Adding topic based images and text balloons works well enough in Inkscape.
I found KRITA on Linux seems good enough that I don't need to install Photoshop in the windows VM too.
I went and installed REAPER DAW, to see how that works too, but using only cockos plugins isn't an option for me, and putting my windows VSTs in via wine is way too much trouble. I'm not going to be making music in this. What I did do is bring over the stems from a project. Could do "mastering" on it, but don't need to. So far REAPER works, but doesn't seem it will be useful for music.
Now this Lenovo ideapad520 is from 2018 and I used it daily on my desk here from end 2019 till October 2023 when I upgraded my 4GB 32bit Windows XP machine to 64bit Win10 with 16GB memory. and 2 displays. I hate the fan noise in the laptop and keyboard, and moving to the Desktop meant I didn't hear that any more, and had big screens and a way better keyboard.
But before the PC upgrade in 2023 during summer the Lenovo started to overheat, fan on fastest and the keyboard would stop working. So I opened it up expecting it would be full of cat hair and have all the vents blocked. Up until this point, the laptop had never overheated that way. It wasn't filled with dust and hair at all. Some pictures of cleaning out the dust. The machine is very easy to open up.
I found that if I turned the performance of the machine down, the overheating stopped, and for non CPU intensive things, didn't slow the machine either.
I now know ideapads and some other slim Lenovo models can overheat with age as the heatsink compound on the CPU wasn't done well, or hasn't lasted.
I might replace the compound sometime, but at the moment, PowerSav and Balanced in the MINT Linux Power Manager Options handle the issue. In PowerSav the fan noise is never a problem, even if the machine runs noticeably slower.
I bought this 17" IdeaPad 520 i7 16GB RAM Windows 10 128MB SSD 1TB HDD Laptop to be my carry on luggage and computing system for when we landed back in Japan end of 2019. It was 2018 and my desktop PC was still Windows XP. It takes months for your possessions to arrive when you move to another country, and taking what you really need on the plane with you is our approach. I did a similar thing in 2001 with a Cannon Win95 laptop when we moved Japan to Australia,
I used the Lenovo for about 2 years before upgrading the old PC to be Windows 10 with 16GB ram and become my main system, The Lenovo has been pretty much left in a laptop carry bag since. Taking it out every so often to keep it up to date with security updates.
Then Windows 11 came along, and the i7 CPU in it wasn't supported.
This forced obsolescence was all purely a cash grab by Intel/Micro$oft to offset a decade plus of intel idiot CEOs who spent money on stock buy backs rather than less on staying competitive in their market, and also allows Micro$oft to force subscriptions or such Enshittafacation onto customers in the future.
My big i7 PC suffered the same no road to Windows11 fate, so I bought a Japanese MOUSE PC, spec'ed as I needed it, as my new Windows11 PC late last year.
Been thinking about what to do about the laptop since Win10 support stopped though, as not connecting it to the Internet made it pretty useless. Finally decided to keep the Laptop usable, I needed to install Mint Linux 22.3 Cinnamon on it. Made a bootable USB memory stick, added a 33GB SDD partition, dual booting, and away we went.
After playing with it for a few hours, and more great application, found that wasn't enough disc space.
So deleted the Windows partition and gave it all to Linux with the Gparted tool.
I had been involved and developed a few things using Debian Linux on Raspberry Pi's in the last years before I retired from the tech world, so I wasn't a complete stranger to low level shell Linux, but this is the first time I have used a GUI with it on a PC. MINT Linux is so like windows. File drag and drop, file Explorers and usable applications. Except really fast and light, so far. It will eventually fill up with a gazillion log files, but that is an issue for later.
When I set up my MOUSE PC with Windows 11, I didn't reinstall my very old versions of WORD and EXCEL and used LibreOFFICE instead. Been using that the last months and have gotten used to them now. They are part of the MINT Linux install too, and so familiar.
Amazed to see LibreDRAW open and display my CorelDraw .cdr files and the Xreader can display my comic .cbr files too.
Discovered today KRITA opens Photoshop files and has all the layer and filter type effects I ever use too. But it was the first to show a problem that must be all over linux, that the open file dialogue doesn't have a way to get to other mounted drives in the system. The other Applications all have a + to get to away the the drive the application booted from.
The editor KATE is similar to Notepad++ .
Spent much of last 2 days playing with MINT Linux, and being really impressed. There is a version of REAPER DAW for linux, but that isn't much good to me without matching linux versions of instruments and other VSTs I use.
I use CorelDraw and work in CMYK. I see Inkscape, THE Linux vector app only works in SVG RGB space, and that is very limiting, but okay for making a comic for the web or an animation. So it seems I could run CorelDraw in VirtualBox in Win10, but that isn't my idea of fun. Years ago I used VirtualBox with various Win XP images for different development environments on a Windows XP Dell laptop and it is was okay.
Having said that, I don't intend to do any graphics or music on it anytime. I set the Laptop up with Internet tools, web and email, text stuff, to be useable as a computer (rather than just use our smartphone) if I need to visit Australia, for events such as the eventual funerals of parents.
My big old Win10 PC is currently unplugged from the internet and is just a MOVIE file player attached to the TV, using the KODI media center. Yet to decide if replacing the Window10 on that with MINT Linux Cinnamon is worth it or not yet.
I moved to web based email years ago, so accessing that stuff from a laptop, phone or desktop is all the same now. I made the mistake of using THUNDERBIRD on Windows 7 many years ago and discovered the difficulty of moving that to a new PC, and issues of access from a phone is just not worth it.
Found this video very useful about installing MS Fonts, regular back ups to a Linux partition and setting up TRIM to look after the SSD.
Other Things
Two and a half weeks since surgery and improvement seems to be getting slower. Haven't been out much last weeks, but intend to go to the cinema Friday first session. Sometimes I get a shot of pain more than before, but I may not have been as careful recently.
Update: 2026/3/18 It seems to be getting worse, and maybe infected, so off to the clinic again. A setback, so maybe will not get to the Cinema this week after all.
Update: 2026/3/19 Seemed I had swelling around one of the threads that was supposed to eventually dissolve. Taking that out, it drained yesterday, and really good today.
Also the MINT Linux 22.3 Cinnamon issues came to the fore with not being able to install VirtualBox or get something to run properly under wine. Those version incompatibility issues are more prevalent, when moving away from what just comes in the box. Not a deal breaker at all, and MINT Linux 22.3 Cinnamon is actually fun. Ends up installing an earlier version using the console and resolving conflicts is way to go:
Masks allow a performer to be more than themselves too.
Andreas Katsula loved his G’Kar make up
J. Michael Straczynski: “Andreas Katsulas loved the G'Kar makeup. He was a big fan of Greek theater (no surprise there) and he said many times he found the mask element to be liberating, rather than imprisoning. Behind the mask, he was truly free. “
There is a saying about Japanese people from a Jesuit Priest from way back when that says they have "three faces" .
1.The First Face (Public Persona): The mask you show to the world
2.The Second Face (Inner Circle): The face you show to close friends, family, and loved ones.
3.The Third Face (The True Self): The face you never show to anyone.
But why would you believe anything a Jesuit Priest said?
Also I think that pretty much applies to me as well, and I am not Japanese.
Many Social Media users use a mask too, curating their feed. Not being their “warts and all” selves. Like that white American being the X expert on all Japanese Culture, or the like, and being the only thing they ever post on, while wearing a kimono.
This music+comic uses as a background the tracks music visualization from MilkDrop3. Grabbed that using OBS. Formatted using Handbrake. The comic animation done as usual with MOHO, but with a green background.
That was then chroma keyed over the visualization using my video editor MOVIE STUDIO.
A week since had stitches out and getting better faster now. But Doc did indicate over 4~6 weeks to get back to "normal". Was out to local supermarket yesterday and walking with a shorter stride is more comfortable at the moment.
Rick Beato did a video on using AIlocally using LM STUDIO and QWEN3.5. His video is about private, secure local use is better than using an on-line subscription service. Such services probably don’t have much of a future, in the same way Recording Studios didn't.
The latest version he used wouldn’t install on my 32GB i7 Win11 machine ( some funny business by Microsoft I wonder?), but I did find an older version and MODEL Qwen2.5 that did install and run. Not the latest and greatest, but that doesn't matter without an idea of what I would use it for. It is chat/text based and isn't the kind of thing I had bothered to look at at all previously even though it has been in the news for what seems like ages now. I have never bothered to touch ChatGPT either. Being "retired" being the main reason though I expect.
So I asked Qwen2.5 what it can help me with:
So could it come up with better rhymes than I currently have in my track STORY SHAPED BEATS?
It can.
THAT is interesting.
I don't want to use what it suggested here, but will see what it comes up to improved what I do with spoken words and lyrics next time.
An interesting new application to me. I can't live without a spell checker, and a tool that comes up with alternate rhymes sounds useful to me, as an assistant or something to bounce ideas off. It isn't the kind of function in any word processor I know of, like WORD or Scrivener.
I later loaded the larger 8GB MODEL and enabled the OPEN CL for the PCs AMD graphic card:
Haven't done enough to know if this is better and faster or not. Just dipping a toe into the waters here. It remind me of sitting at a 300 baud terminal, as the text comes out at about that speed. And you wait a bit as it thinks about the request.
Of course you can just type this into Google AI and get results, and instantly, but that is feeding the art stealing machine that the AI industry is with your new work. (Yes the model being used stole lots of work before it was bottled too, but that isn't about to be undone from what I can see). Googles AI lets you upload a file, like an image, and get it to do something with it. So far the local system doesn't support that.
Most uses of AI are really bad for society, programmers and artists. But I was interested to see that artist Takashi Murakami used AI to come up with variations to his own lion line art. I have nothing against that use at all.
This week I updated a large vector cartoon vehicle illustration that had 2 pets in it, as a minor but important part of the illustration.
The customer had sent me pet photos and one of them a cartoon done in AI they liked. So trying AI is what I did too. GEMINI AI in this case. But first I reduced the number of colors in the reference photo and made the background white. Uploaded it to GEMINI AI asking for a cartoon, and it gave me a PNG file. I then loaded that into COREL TRACE and it made a VECTOR image out of it, after optimizing the conversion settings. That produces a RGB vector file, so convert that all to CMYK with global color model search and replace in CorelDraw.
The AI made a few mistakes though, so I edited the resulting CMYK CorelDraw images, added more high lights, teeth, fixes to color and changed some of the colors to make the pets more visible in the final illustration.
I think this was worthwhile for a small part of the illustration, where the customer can complain about likeness etc. in this case.
I did this with the help of AI last year to generate 3 different JOKER DANCING ON THE STEPS images. I had to edit the images quite a bit to have the same hands on each one, and I think I changed a head too. But for a quick throw away music animation it did cut down the effort required to do it a lot.
I read that many companies have laid off 1,000s of programmers and replaced them with AI. Having been involved with a few large software projects, and that AI lies a lot, I expect that will not go well for the companies!
I had been using the cheap Microsoft mouse from my Laptop bag with the Win 11 MOUSE PC till today. Replaced it with a Logitech G203 gaming mouse and this is so much better. It doesn't flex and creak like the cheap one did. I turned off the lighting, set DPI to 180, Mouse speed to 10 and disabled the DPI change switch.
Not sure what to do with the extra assignable buttons yet, but I have no rush to do that.
Our Lenovo Laptop has been unused in its bag for the last 2 years since getting back up and running with desktops after the move to Japan. Only used it to write music files to a SD CARD for my wife end of 2025. It is stuck with Windows 10, and doesn't support Win11. Thinking making it dual bootable between Mint Linux Cinnamon and Win 10 the thing to do. Win10 for offline and Linux for Internet access, when a phone doesn't do.
So last surgery was 2 weeks ago tomorrow and not back to normal, but much better, mostly. Good to be on the mend. I may start going out for coffee at a cafe later this week, again.
There haven't been any nearby exhibitions announced this year so far that interest me. Kind of glad for that at the moment as I recover. Last year thought the Osaka Expo had sucked all the air out of rival exhibitions for the first half of the year, but things sure picked up later.
Expect the same this year, and that the GHOST IN THE SHELL: ANIMATION FILM exhibit will come nearby in a few months time.
Wife and sister-in-law went to the cinema yesterday (saw RENTAL FAMILY) and brought back these coming film adverts.
I expect to go to PROJECT HAIL MARY opening session next week. The Mandalorian ,edited to a film version, in May would be good too, as I don't have Disney+ and haven't seen it.
Music Youtubers. Did a draft music+comic a couple of days ago featuring these two.
I had done a colored rough pencil sketch of Rick a couple of years ago and did a similar one of Billy on Saturday. The Rick one is a bit caricatured, Billy isn't.
That music+comic seems too simple at the moment, and doesn't say enough, in an interesting enough way. I wouldn't release it for a couple of weeks yet, so I may come up with something completely different by then.
It was music that came first built around a sequenced bass part. Guitars come in briefly in the center. Just love the sound. I am using the Hans Zimmer Zebra and many of his presets, and that is significant as to why synthesizer first recently. Sounds amazing.
It was Rick's What Makes This Song Great? episodes with the songs STEMS, so he could play individual parts and talk about them was what made me notice him. He hasn't done that for years now though and is mostly interviewing his music industry heroes.
Billy is all about interviewing Creatives, many who are musicians but also actors. Some who probably aren't even on Rick's radar.
But there are many other Music YouTubers. Most shilling some product or another, like Ola with his guitars. I guess I have more time for Glenn Fricker than most of the others. He talks about interesting things, often, and is 100% right about Gearspace (formerly GEAR SLUTS ) that is full with people just think some piece of gear is the important thing (and big opinions).
Speaking of Hans Zimmer. Mattias Eklundh posted he attended the current Hans Zimmer concert, helped by his friend Guthrie Gotham, who performs in it, and was amazed by it all. I previously posted on the HANS ZIMMER: HOLLYWOOD REBEL documentary and how that was really inspiring to me. But when I saw the Japanese Zimmer Concert ticket prices I couldn't justify the ¥36,000+ price for a seat without a blocked view. Or the ¥50,000 VIP tickets. So I didn't go.
But the documentary is something I watch every so often, especially the bits on his approach. Really simple themes, lots of 5ths, not chords, that repeat, adding another layer of complexity as they do. All being not at all what you learn in Music School.
Back updating a complicated 6 year old vector design last few days. The only other thing I did last year was from a previous customer from years before too.
I think it is just another indication how broken Google is with their Search and AI now. The good Internet is gone.
Saw something that mentioned how blogging is just so dead now yesterday. I had thought so myself until a year or so ago when I started posting here again. Seems some, maybe just bots, access this, but it is really for myself, as I can't stick pictures and videos in my paper diary. I just wonder exactly when Google will finally kill it,
I had bought the English GHOST IN THE SHELL manga around 1995 and was amazed. All the tech foot notes! I had watched the Japanese language ANIME many times before that, but I could never catch all that was being said. Didn't matter a whole lot.
It wasn't till we moved back to Sydney in 2002, and I had a 6 month contract working at Town Hall and discovered the 4 volume APPLESEED manga at the nearby KINOKUNIYA BOOKSTORE, that I found out about APPLESEED. I had seen the main characters, especially the Cyborg with the bunny ears antenna earlier but hadn't made the connection.
The 3D animated films look great, but aren't. The second is particularly dull. Even if the action directed by John Woo.
Other Things
A week and a half since surgery today and the wound isn’t weeping any more. Had the stitches out yesterday, and that is so much better. They hurt coming out though! A relief, even if not 100% yet. Didn't sleep well last night though. Even though the area wasn't painful, there was enough discomfort.
Had hoped to be back to normal after 7 days, but that didn’t happen. Still had a weeping wound, probably from the ointment applied daily. Not painful, but sensitive, and when you moved and walked, the stitches could pull. Made a small improvement daily though. Great to not have to schedule going back to the clinic and can now get onto other things.
Such a better experience than 9 years ago, as FB reminds me today, that was going to last 4 months and really take a year to get over.
Sometimes I set out to make a piece of music and think “this will be VERY METAL”, and end up finding a cool synth patch in the Zebra VST synthesizer that takes me somewhere else. I may even start with a series of heavily distorted Guitar riffs, that would be metal on their own, but when I add pop-ish elements the result isn’t. At least I don't think so.
I enjoy making the music I do, but you don’t have to be good at something to enjoy it. It is all simple and unsophisticated riff and sequence pattern based stuff, but that is fine. I aren’t a “composer” and make my stuff by improvising a bunch of things, then editing them together, that then suggests something else that I overdub on top. All made in my REAPER Digital Audio Workstation, which is like a word processor for sound and music. Never had any interest of being a performing musician or be in a band, just creating music and sound in a studio alone. It is just like drawing and painting to me which are both solo activities. My early technical career was about designing and building such studio music production systems.
I see other people I know repairing and renovating old music electronics or synthesizers. Some I designed a long time ago! That is something I was "good at", but have NO INTEREST in doing now in retirement! That was a job! Even if it didn’t start that way for me. I am not that person now.
Hay Fever is really bad around here now. Eyes stinging and nose running. Every morning have blood caked inside my nose. Even the cat is sneezing. And the amazing thing is, the troublesome trees where planted by the Japanese government decades ago. They just didn't select a tree without a nasty side effect.
Visited HANDS (used to be Tokyu Hands) just around the corner from the clinic in Kyoto Shijo yesterday for the first time after my visit to the clinic. 4F is my stop with stationary and art supplies. Found and bought 2 A5 20 page clear files I use for printing my manga that aren't available any more at my usual ARC OASIS.
Project Hail Mary hits the local TOHO cinema here Friday morning March 20th. This is the one with Ryan Gosling, to separate it from another movie of the same name, with same plot. Stop the sun expanding and save earth. I expect to be there opening session.
YouTubes current AI algorithm is showing me 80% garbage. Facebook is 95% sponsored or sponsored Orange pile of Shit content I have no interest in. A friend recently just gave up on Facebook. X is only saved by the Japanese content, which isn't manipulated the way the English is. Haven't found any need to visit Bluesky often, and have stopped visiting MASTODON completely.
Been listening to John Foxx's SYSTEMS OF ROMANCE, METAMATIC and his 2010 LIVE "Analogue Circuits" on continuous repeat the last week+. Some of his lyrics and delivery are "word salad poetry" like. I hadn't really noticed before, and haven't seen them referred to as that.
I found that really interesting so added such spoken word lyrics to the last short piece of music I did. They imply things, and are open to interpretation.
I think the result is a very interesting structure. I am being really original here? Maybe. But surely this stuff has all been done before...
The verses have a few bass sequences they play over, then there is kind of a call response between the spoken words and a melodic synth part, a few notes at a time. Verse ends with a melodic few bars. Could you call that a chorus though?
After 2 of those section it drops back to just the arpeggiated synth sequence that runs all through it.
Then rock guitars come in for a few bars, then it drops back to another verse end melodic few bars with some repeated spoken words.
Didn't get many view, so did this visualized with MilkDrop3 too:
Any better?
Other Things
Had my last, number 4, medical procedure for hemorrhoids last Wednesday. Cut and stitched this time and not the rubber band ligation of the previous 3 procedures. Will be uncomfortable for another few days yet, but this has been NOTHING like the 4+ week ordeal I went through 9 years ago recovering after the overnight hospital stay. Photo of Hospital room.
The point of the story is that handling a problem earlier, rather than later, can be so much easier and better! Putting off treatment for 20+ years was the wrong thing to do. I am lucky so far to have only none life threating issues, even if they have been terribly painful and inconvenient in the past.
I will be taking it easy for next week it seems, and will have my final check at the clinic on Friday and this issue should be closed.
On another medical note, the musician that video called me out of the blue last year tracking down who had made the SYSTEM FLOPPY DISC of the first Fairlight Instruments CMI Series III in the UK in the 1980s posted some not great news. He had been under treatment for cancer the last few years, but that has now stopped as the treatment itself had became dangerous for him. Without the drugs he is actually feeling the best for years, but he is now on the final stage of his life, and prepared for it.
Watched LEON THE PROFESSIONAL on Netflix over 4 nights during the week. Not a fun flic at all, but has many that made THE 5TH ELEMENT involved with it. Some of the minor music cues in LEON seemed very similar to the same composers work in THE 5th ELEMENT. THE 5th ELEMENT is one of my most favorite films, have the soundtrack CD etc. The bits with the Arabic feel.
Gave LUCIFER on Netflix a try and that is a fun police procedural. Satan, who is just so entertaining to watch, discovering justice is as good as punishing the bad, but doing that sometime too. Fom a much darker Neil Gaiman DC comic with the LUCIFER MORNINGSTAR character derived from his Sandman comic.
Mattias IA Eklundh released a track yesterday that is back to his Freak Kitchen in style, rather than the more weird Jazz of recent Freak Audio Lab work. More to my taste. I tried to get into his RESIST THE CORROSION, but it didn't have the kind of riff and melodic bits that attract me.
I guess I prefer stuff with simple riffs/ melodies and nursery rhyme like. I try and make my own stuff like that. I really like to have a simple thing to hum to myself while having a shower.
I see Dream Theater are touring Japan at the moment. I bought a few albums, and a "best of-with a hit" over the years and just didn't become a fan. Great skill and musician ship, but not "great songs" to me. Seems many of their fans are a particular type of musician that love e,g. Petrucci's guitar gymnastics (like super skillful sweep picking) and the song doesn't really matter. Same thing for the other band members. Eddy Van Halen had the gymnastics AND great songs.
I bought John Foxx's THE GOLDEN SELECTION from his Bandcamp page, his last album before calling it quits for a few decades. It is Psychedelic and "happy" but doesn't have the hooks to me of his earlier stuff. Need to listen longer, but keep going back to the 2010 live show, as having what I want to hear.
The amount of AI slop and lies on Social Media and YouTube is just crazy now. Is this just trying to distract us from the actual really big, WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRUCTION level things that are happening?
The Emperor's Birthday public holiday this Monday in Japan, so a good time to post another 180 second fake Kyoto FM Mix of 3 of my tracks from Bandcamp as a SHORT to YouTube.
And after a couple of days it got 600 views, then YouTube turned it off. Never to be seen again.
Other Things
Watched 2 great musician/ artist/ interviews yesterday.
Mattias Eklundh:
Mattias is so positive, and such a force for good, and being independent (and METAL). What struck me most though is how totally different his upbringing was from mine. Mine was very much Cats In The Cradle.
But it was Mattias's Freak Kitchen in the last 6 years that got me involved with 7 and 8 string guitars and writing and recording my own songs that really meant something. A huge recent influence, and I have met him a few times now.
Dennis Leigh ( stage name John Foxx, Ultravox founder):
I found John Foxx particularly interesting in his approach and way of thinking that is very similar to myself. A very Quietly spoken man. Something else I relate to.
When asked why THE GOLDEN SECTION was so happy and positive compared to earlier works he answers he visited Italy and discovered the sun, something he hadn't seen before living in the UK till that time. 😂
In reflection in retirement I feel I was always really an artist (drawing and making things was always my love, and did Art as a subject all throughout school), but it was drilled into me I had to have a real job and ended up doing Electronics and Software. My art and tech are very much done like painting. It isn't a performance, but a work created in a studio over time. After finishing my Fairlight Instruments High End Sampler era, I moved on to other things and didn't need to do it again.
Also his SYSTEMS OF ROMANCE & METAMATIC albums had such an impact on me on their release. I think I try and combine the sounds he did back then in what I do now with the Sequenced synths and Heavy Guitar.
Like this quick thing I did yesterday. Sequenced synths & heavy guitar. I will probably change the comic to something else before making it a YouTube SHORT:
Can someone steal the music in this, claim it is theirs and then claim a copyright strike against me in the future? It is very possible as it happened to Ola Englund from some thieving music company in China. Ola had his music published on Spotify and had done all the paperwork, and paid the fees to fight and win it though.
Spring weather the last few days and took this in someone's yard in a midday walk yesterday.
So my nose has started rehearsals for the real HAY FEVER season already.
I expect most accesses to this blog are just bots and scrappers. Doesn't really matter, as no one ever (well actually twice) comments on anything here anyway...
For 30 years I just had a 6 string Squire, that 16 years ago I shielded and put a Humbucker in the bridge of. Hated the tremolo as it was just a detune lever and unusable. But with the humbucker, I could use high distortion without the hum and I did a lot of recordings with it.
In retirement I have spent much time recording and using 6, 7 and 8 string guitars. I had thought a Ibanez RG with locking nut and trem would be the end game of the ultimate guitar for me, but not at all. Down tuning and heavier guitar music lead me to the 7 and 8 string guitars.
I have my guitars in DROP tuning now, even my bass, but found that doesn't work with an 8 string. The lowest string is too floppy that way, doesn't sound great at the really low end, and I am not interested in heavier string gauges. I already have a Jazz Bass. So the 8 just stays 1/2 tone down tuned, and it ends up the 7 gives me as many usable low notes. The ones that sound good. Being fixed bridge is also so much easier for tuning and setup. Tuning is something I fuss about a lot, and more strings and trem make it even more tedious. I find the bridge pickup on the 7 sounds better than the bridge on the RG too. The RG sounds really thin.
Will be keeping them all though, but will probably give the Squire to the grandson when he is older. 12 months ago I was really into Melodic Techno with no guitars, so have no idea where I will go musically in the future.
MUSIC+COMICS scheduled Saturday morning 8:15AM release. Music a little different, maybe, in this one.
More MS-20 synth noises.
Should the D-50 have been 808 styled? Not at the time, and the more modern look was right for it. The font they developed that was used on the D-50 and other products was called BIOFORM. I used to have a copy of it. Real SciFi looking and I loved it.
Other Things
Had the last of my main medical procedures done yesterday. Nice weather today after snow and rain this week, but I will be taking it easy. Will go back 3 times for some related things that will be more painful for a bit, starting in a week and a half.
Valentines Day to day, but I bought a cake at the Keihan Department store during the week when they first went one sale and we had it then. It was good.
Found out from an X post yesterday that mangaka MIYAGAWA AKIRA had continued MASAMUNE SHIROW'SAPPLE SEED world in 3 books that were published from 2012. This was news to me, so tracked them down second hand and will have them shortly.
Enshittification was the word of the year added to an Australian Dictionary a year or so ago now. Such is the state of the world, and this talk and interview with the author goes into more details.
Anecdote how Uber will pay one driver more to make him a cheerleader, while everyone else gets very little is one tiny part of the bigtech algorithm in his talk here. I have seen the same thing with random encouragement in all kinds of things I have done from Google, like in these YouTube SHORT view counts of mine.
Still haven't found what I'm looking for, but maybe this is closer to THE music + comics style where the speech balloons aren't animated, but other parts of the frame are. Removes the frustration of having to wait too long or the speech balloons pass by too quickly to read.
Guitar started very STATUS QUO, but it mostly went elsewhere. Been using the same, or very similar ZebraHZ bass, lead and other sounds last few musical things as I just love them. The melodic guitar has the Valhalla DSP Space Modulator Super Resonant Flanger on it that gives this just on the edge sound to me. Love sequenced synths, metal power chords and melody, so this seems to be maybe SynthRockPop as far to melodic to be metal, and there is no shredding.
Just joking, but not really 😅, did this comic too:
Other Things
THE RAT IN A CAGE guy, Billy Corgan seems to have taken over from Rick Beato as the guy with the really interesting interviews worth watching to me. And it was Rick Beato's interview with Billy that brought him to my attention.
I had heard of Smashing Pumpkins, but hadn't heard any of their music till Rick talked with Billy about tracks like Jelly Belly a couple of years ago. I then got a few of their albums, and even bought the Smashing Pumpkins BIG MUFF PEDAL.
Billy's latest interview with Patrick Mata and his Kommunity FK and the founding of GOTH music was all new to me. Hadn't heard of the US bands they mentioned during this, but did know of most of the UK bands mentioned. Being in Australia, then Uni and working at Fairlight Instruments meant the music media I had time for was limited and I had more important things to do. I had never read any of the music magazines or newspapers either, so gossip and trends local and overseas were not even on my radar.
Billy, unlike Rick, has the annoying habit of interrupting his guests, but he was also a very successful alt musician, guitarist, singer, song writer and was in the world they talk about and really lived it. He is very well spoken and philosophical. Rick is more a failed jazz musician that became a producer, even though that did mean he played a lot on his artists records.
Last year I went to the SHIROW MASAMUNE Exhibition in Tokyo on his manga that includes APPLESEED and GHOST IN THE SHELL. A week after I went to Tokyo and attended the exhibition, it was announced it would open next in Osaka. An Exhibition on the making of the Animated Film GHOST IN THE SHELL has just opened in Tokyo. It has much of the artwork found in these books I have had for many years:
I expect this one will also make it to Osaka sometime, but will not be disappointed if it doesn't. I have already seen many of the original film's background paintings. It is all very cool, but it is the manga artwork that interests me most, and I have now seen that. So if it comes to these parts I will attend, but it isn't worth the effort to go to Tokyo for it to me.
Came back to halfway through episode 7 of the HALO TV series on PRIME after a few days, and instead of RESUME, was met with START YOUR FREE 7 DAY PARRAMOUNT+ TRIAL. A hard no to that. I wouldn't have started watching it if that was originally the case. Netflix Japan recently lost all STAR TREK and assume something related for PRIME too.
