PROJECT HAIL MARY: And other things

 

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. 

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.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

New Life for Lenovo Idea Note 520 Laptop with Mint Linux Cinnamon

 

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:

And it works.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Masks | AI Uses

 

Interesting John Foxx (his stage name and performing persona ) interview on Identity, and that he thinks some performers he knew died because they didn’t separate their real self from the their stage performer. They tried to live out their larger than life stage persona all the time. 

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. 

Image of composite layers:

Music Ion Storm can be found on Bandcamp

Other Things

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 AI locally 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. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

2 Weeks Down | Music YouTubers

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,

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Appleseed(S) | Recovery

 

MUSIC+COMIC on another artist picking up the APPLESEED world and characters with 3 volumes of manga many years later in 2011.

The music used in this is in the Assorted Bits3 album on Bandcamp.

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. 

Things change...

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN