Saturday, October 3, 2026

A New Era, INTERNET, Notebooks

 


A few quiet words about INTERNET-ing and our song with that name in 45 seconds.

I am no YOUTUBER, but a few things like this talking to camera around the MUSIC VIDEO SHORTS I made couldn't be too bad, right? The sound of the DJI MIC MINI is way better than just using the camera.

Since recording this video I canceled our website hosting and DNS I had for 20 years and am now  just using this BLOG and X, mostly. On Facebook and others too. I was going to close our website sometime, but had our hand forced in the last week. 

The whole MUSIC VIDEO SHORT referred too:


The changed YouTube algorithm treats these differently now, thinking I should try long form content again.  The same videos on X and Facebook get 3+ times the views. 

The Interneting-ing on Bandcamp.  Mostly there for my own entertainment.  Not a place ordinary music listeners visit at all, who always just stick to their Spotify.  You have to really be an  Independent music purists to care. To me, Spotify is a pay to maybe be played site and I am not playing that game.

I took some timelapse video at the Mall and made a very different HD video of the song too:



Other Things

Another great Billy Corgan guest with  Scott Ian of Anthrax. 


Have one Anthrax CD. Never played any of their stuff enough to know it well. More familiar with his  SOD ( STORMTROUPERS OF DEATH). Knew he was just a rhythm guitarist, but cool that he doesn't drink and has an interest in a variety of no-metal music. An interesting guy, and he married MEATLOAF's daughter!


Daughter showed me a large series of illustrated books on many subjects in the bookstore. This THE ANATOMY OF SUMO WRESTLING PICTURE BOOK looks interesting.


I enjoy Sumo, but no expert on all the goings on. Or what the refs fan like thing is called. I could get to learn the Japanese terms I don't know, or have missed in the commentary if I get this. A big job to read it for me though. I watch sumo with the Japanese commentary and follow most of what is said, but I couldn't put a number on it.  Depending on what they are talking about, it varies between 100% to maybe 75%.  Partly my hearing and partly sumo specific vocabulary.

But I find watching British Bake Off Season 12, I can't catch what some of the contestants say either,  And they are all speaking, nominally, English!  Many movies and shows are the same, and find English subtitles very useful.


Notebooks: To change things around, I thought I should carry a small A6 sized note book when out from now on. I have put Google Keep on my phone as well. Just jot down ideas and draw what ever comes into my head, so I don't forget anything. Something different from my home A5 spiral bound Diary.


I bought to try a few cheap A6 sized notebooks, but found most of them lacking in paper quality and durability. And the pages don't lay flat. MUJI has a series with an optional canvas cover, but not very nice, the cover means the writing surface has a step in it. The MUJI 0.5 ballpen makes a thicker wet line compared to my preferred UNI 0.5 JETSTREAM pen.  

On Amazon, the Chinese MOLESKIN copy at almost 1/3 the price of the real thing seems okay so far. Has a tree embossed in the leather hard cover and a pen holder. Yet to see how durable it is when carried around in my shoulder bag. 


But I also thought I should get a real MOLESKIN just to check. They do seem very nice. Expensive though!

I do like my A5 spiral bound notebooks I use for my diary. The pages lay flat, they have a heavy cover, paper is good and available in lined, doted and plain.  Only problem is the wire spiral gets mangled and doesn't open properly if you take it out and about in a shoulder bag.  

I didn't know that these A6 notebooks, the makes and way people use them for journaling, were such a big thing on YouTube till this week.  Part of it seems a reaction to smartphones and a way to get away from the world of doom scrolling.  I can understand that.



Yet to see if carrying a notebook and not having a traditional website anymore works for me. But A NEW ERA anyway.

Life without our own website is kind of like retirement. Something I haven't done before. In many ways it is a relief to not have to deal with it and the SPAM and bots any more.

With the changes to Internet use in the last 3 years in general, I don't think not having one will make any difference to me now. So few people looked at the webcomics or rock opera I had there, and other things I was most interested in now, that I may as well not have had a website.  

I was so busy in 2020/2021 with people wanting illustrations and graphics. The opposite now, and I expect into the future. I also don't want to spend my time in retirement doing illustrations for others anymore. 

Not being able to renew our 20 year old domain name as I was now retired with an expired registered business number was what forced the end.  Having moved our website to 2 previous domain names since 1995, I was very aware it took years to be findable in search engines, and with AI and no-click-through search now, it never would again if starting from scratch. There was no point in continuing with a new domain name.

A VIDEO BLOG on YouTube is probably more popular as a creative outlet for many recently, but I'm not really that personality type to enjoy doing that very often.  

We will see.

The statistics on this blog indicate it is mostly bots stealing the content of it by a very large margin. And me.


Australian Nepotism & Jobs for The Boys

I have no way of telling if Nepotism is far worse in Australia compared to other countries or not, or just that is the way much of the world works. Only looking back at my life now do I realize how much I saw of it around me, despite me being told often, it isn't what you know, but who you know. The 2017 book GAME OF MATES goes as far to say that Australia is much more like Columbia than America, Britain or Europe with its insiders in business and government. 

So it was a surprise to see the RAYGUN BREAK DANCE disaster wasn't that kind of insider opportunism.  


Does show another issue where THE BEST may not get to be involved in something in Australia due to arbitrary rules and timing.  

To even attend the selection events for the Australian Breakdance team, you had to already have a Passport. An expensive thing now, something like A$450. And the announcement of the selection events and them being held was very short.  

A good way to eliminate young, excellent break dancers, but not well off.  

But it is like a recent Rick Beato video where most artists that made it have rich families supporting them.  Taylor Swift and The Slash being in a long list proving the theory. 


Our Comic Books

Here is the link to download all our free .cbr formatted comic books.  I use the YACReader. Have considered making them PDFs too, but I find the ,cbr format more useful.

They all still have the now dead website .com.au url and watermark on them and it is just way too much trouble to change that.  But one comic in particular I will put here too:

Where The Smoke Comes Out

46 pages. Name is from the inscription musician Peter Gabriel put on an Album he gave me. Inspired by the Historical/Autobiographical work SHOWA, by Shigeru Mizuki, Has historical and personal memories of looking what influenced me to end up where I did. From Sydney Australia, to Japan, to Australia and back to Japan, with 20+ years in the electronic Musical Instrument development Industry, then not. Not an Autobiography at all, just a few memories.  Combines Narrative Captions, comics and Black & White photos mostly.

DOWNLOAD .cbr File.

The significant problem with most posts on Social Media, in the FOR YOU or RECOMENDED streams:




Adrian Bruce ©2026 KYOTO, JAPAN
(Previously of now defunct artandtechnology website)
Blog: https://art-and-technology.blogspot.com/
Our Music: https://megacurve.bandcamp.com/
X: https://x.com/Megacurve
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/adrian.bruce.9
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@adriansbruce/
Zazzle: http://www.zazzle.com.au/artandtechnology
Pinterest: https://jp.pinterest.com/arttechdesign/

Tuesday, September 29, 2026

Our Free To Download Comic Books

 


Here are the links to download all our free .cbr formatted comic books.  I use the YACReader.

These were on our website. They all still have the now dead website url and watermark on them and it is just way too much trouble to change that. 


Where The Smoke Comes Out

46 pages. Name is from the inscription musician Peter Gabriel put on an Album he gave me. Inspired by the Historical/Autobiographical work SHOWA, by Shigeru Mizuki, Has historical and personal memories of looking what influenced me to end up where I did. From Sydney Australia, to Japan, to Australia and back to Japan, with 20+ years in the electronic Musical Instrument development Industry, then not. Not an Autobiography, just a few memories.  Combines Narrative Captions, comics and Black & White photos

DOWNLOAD .cbr File.



IN THE NEXT DIMENSION

31 pages. Bright, colorful very simple vector graphic SF stories in the next dimension. Done in a style I have not used before so that the art is quick to do. Most of the Vector Illustration I get commissioned to do is very different and more time consuming than this to do. Kind of a fun break.

DOWNLOAD .cbr File.



Heavy Metal Garage

A 20 pages car based comic. Maybe inspired by old Topgear or The Grand Tour, just a little. Pen on Paper drawn cars and vector old guys. In glorious gray scale, black and white. Mostly.


DOWNLOAD .cbr File.


The Shadow

26 pages on the History of THE SHADOW car racing team started at the end of the 1960s by someone who may have been a CIA SPY. Black &White comic.

DOWNLOAD .cbr File.



My Music

14 page book.  8 pages on how I wrote and recorded 6 songs in 2021 in our studio, 2 pages on Headphone thoughts and 4 pages on the history of Listening To Music In Stereo. Black &White comic.

DOWNLOAD .cbr File.


Just Thinking

56 pages of the comic strips and comics I did over the 2 years mostly around living in the time of covid in the outer suburbs of  Kyoto Japan. Mostly off the cuff thoughts. Black &White comic. We moved back to Japan just before the Pandemic hit.

DOWNLOAD .cbr File.


Terraform1

17 pages. The first actual comic book I tried to write and draw in 2017, after many years of just doing single panel and strip joke cartoons. 

After reading all 40 years of the French SF graphic novel "Valerian and Lareline" by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude M zi res and the 6 volumes of the amazing "Orbital" by writer Sylvain Runberg and artist Serge Pell, I wanted to try something along those lines.  They mix world building, amazing SF tech and their world view, into something truly amazing

It is inspired by Japanese Manga and the French Album approaches, rather than Marvel or DC Comics. "A Contract with God" has also been a layout  influence.  I'm sure "Orbital" would have taken a month per page with his elaborate oil pastel artwork, so I cannot say I'm trying to be the equal of those works at all.


It was hard to do this quite traditionally. Took months working just with spare time on weekends. Just finishing it become the goal. I do like some of the ideas in it, even if things are more just stated rather than evolve as they should in a story.


DOWNLOAD .cbr File.


The Heavy Metal Garage Strip

We have yet to do a book collection of the 46 Heavy Metal Garage strips I did before stopping.

Here are a few:






Could release them all, but the reality is the AI skimmers were the only one downloading them so why bother? 


Adrian Bruce ©2026 KYOTO, JAPAN
(Previously of now defunct artandtechnology website)
Blog: https://art-and-technology.blogspot.com/
Our Music: https://megacurve.bandcamp.com/
X: https://x.com/Megacurve
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/adrian.bruce.9
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@adriansbruce/
Zazzle: http://www.zazzle.com.au/artandtechnology
Pinterest: https://jp.pinterest.com/arttechdesign/

Saturday, September 26, 2026

TRAINS: Kyoto Japan Ambient

 



I use the trains around Kyoto a lot. So much more convenient than driving for me. Only a 7 minute walk to the local station, then not long to downtown Osaka or Kyoto.  Even if the next station in Osaka is as far as I usually go.


3 Years ago I used my ZOOM H1 recorder and was out recording environmental sounds I used in a few pieces of music, such as this TRAINS one: 



I had had the ZOOM recorder for quite a few years and hadn't had much success with any of the previous ambient stuff I had tried to make using it, but it all just clicked 3 years ago.

This 700yen Breakfast is a trip to and from my favorite cafe at the next train station for breakfast:


It was just something I wanted to do at the time, and they are kind of like diary entries for me. The way many into photography would relate to a photography trip they went on, when looking at photos years later.

But I have never been into photography and have never had a camera. Only ever borrowed one my father had or used the disposable FILM WITH LENS cameras I used to take on overseas business trips when I was at Roland Japan. 

First attempt using the radio mic with camera outside, but very conscience I don't want to be seen as a YouTuber talking into a selfie stick camera.  

This music used a lot of ZEBRATTE synth vst and a free ambient orientated library of pads and such sounds.


Other Things


I started this blog a long time ago now. August 2007. I had my final website www.artandtechnolog.com.au set up in 2006, which was all hand crafted HTML and php, and wanted a simply way to post random personal stuff, but didn't want that stuff on my own "professional" website. 

So started with Blogger, linked from our website. Reachable but not obvious. Then there was a period where Facebook was the thing to post your own random personal stuff to, and this blog was mostly ignored for years.

Then Facebook and social media all changed, not seeing friends posts any more, just PR and propaganda, and the Blog was useful again.  About the time Musk took over Twitter.

And now there is also Substack, a blogging site, where the newsletter are automatically emailed out, and a copy left on the website. You can also charge subscription fees. If you don't subscribe, it is just a blog. Have read there are a lot of  far-right and neo-Nazi there.

I see Joshua Heath Scott uses Substack, and publishes on Saturdays, the way I do here in recent months.  He only started in the recent past of 2025. Unlike my Mixed Media Missives here, each essay he writes is LLLOOONNNGG.  Substack is for writers. 

I have no interest in Substack, and have no idea if anyone actually reads this blog, despite the access numbers, and assume most accesses are just bots and AI Skimmers. 

I find it useful to myself to look back at stuff though. I just forget!  I also have handwritten notebooks that are part diary and just memos I write to my future self.  But I don't write essays. I HATED essays at school and university, the way I still HATE debating. Facts and truths are NOT required in essays or debating.

And to think I lost my Domain name of 20 years, artandtechnolog.com.au, this week. I don't qualify for the .com.au any more, so it can not be renewed.  Not a traumatic lose, as the last 3 years almost nothing but bots ever accessed the website and sent me SPAM email.  

Chinese and recently Singaporean AI Skimmers have been the biggest visitors. Now seemed like a good time to get rid of the on going expense and trouble, even though I hadn't planned it to be so this soon.  

Facebook  or X is probably the best way to contact me now, or leave a message on any of the social media I use to get our email address. But other than the few diehards still using the ancient Fairlight Instruments CMI systems,  or interested in some old articles I contributed to magazines, 


don't expect to get contacted any more. I am just another one of those old retired guys fading into obscurity. 

Joshua Heath Scott's other channel on creativity has shown up more interesting stuff:

JACK OF ALL TRADES MASTER OF NONE 
BUT OFTEN SOMETIMES BETTER THAN A MASTER OF ONE

Such as the way the original 18th Century expression got changed in the 19th Century. I prefer this  original, as that is actually true to my experience and Joshua thinks so too.  

I only just noticed he hasn't been doing the vblog for long. Just a month?  The first one talks about his use of notebooks and analog memo taking and his second brain to remove anxiety of having to remember thoughts and ideas. But he doesn't keep a diary, due to childhood trauma.

I keep notebooks as a diary/ memo.  Also artist diaries for drawings and ideas.   During the time I worked at Roland in the 80s and 90s I kept a daily diary in a SYSTEM NOTE.  Kept at it back in Oz too, till 2012, then stopped for a few years. Starting up a diary again in 2019 back in Japan.


Never liked the fixed format of a set space for a day in a diary though. I now just use bigger ruled/ not ruled notebooks and write the date. day, weather and as much as I want. Somedays don't write anything. Other days pages. 

My study of Japanese is in other notebooks and worksheets.  

And for some AI reasoning, now my YouTube feed is full of videos on analog journaling and what small notebooks and formats are the best.  I learnt of magnetic bookmarks, which may come in handy.


Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has opened. The WSJ Fine Art critic panned it as "not art" and myself, and all the artist people I know think that is just so wrong. Illustrations and comics are art!  SYD MEAD had to deal with his awesome work not being taken seriously by the same fine art critics.  The Fine Art World those critics live in is a scam: 




This is my "Where The Smoke Comes Out" comic.  Inspired by the Historical/Autobiographical work SHOWA, by Shigeru Mizuki. Has historical and personal memories of art, tech and music in Australia & Japan.  It isn't an autobiography, just a few memories in 45 pages.

Download the .cbr format comic book from this link. You will need a .cbr Comic Reader. I use YACReader



Much of social media feels like a few parties and business events I attended over the years, where the only people I know there are the 2 hosts. Then I end up sitting on a couch for 2 hours hemmed in by 4 guests with never ending talk of their mobile phone collections or fandom conventions they attended...    


Friday, September 25, 2026

Loosing My Domain .com.au Name after 20 years...

Our website DNS renewal was strange this time. The Hosting Company, HostNetworks and DNS seller had been bought by another company a few years ago and the billing system has changed.  

For the last week our site was mostly off line. An email came a couple of days ago blaming "old infrastructure".


My DNS was due for renewal, and I never received the email about it, as I did in 2024, 30 days before expiry date like the last time it renewed. 

I logged onto the DNS management console and found I had the Notifications there from 25 days ago.  I used the option to resend the email to myself.  

Emails never came.

Strange.

I have sent emails to the support email given in the account support section.

No replies as yet.

Anyway, the account was set to auto renewal, same as in 2024, so I didn't think much about it.  They were having problems and website was mostly down anyway.

Then I contacted support. 

Got no reply.  

I finally found a few layers down "a compliance issue" related to the DNS renewal. 

I retired, left Australia 7 years ago and lost my soletrader ABN, the government issued business number.

I discovered after my DNS wasn't renewed, that without an ABN and not being resident, you can not renew a .com.au in your DNS.  I did have an ABN and was resident for all but the last few years, but that doesn't, stupidly in my opinion, count. Feels like a bureaucratic punishment for not being in the taxable workforce anymore.

I wish I had known about that a year or so ago to be able to prepare. For a few years I had always been forwarding our sites email to gmail  for my wife and I.  I had also opened new accounts for the last years with my gmail account as the filtering and SPAM control was better. 

But my wife only used the one email.   All the services she made accounts on, need to be changed somehow. She does however use LINE much more than email.

Interesting times ahead.

I can just buy a new DNS.xxx and have the website back up. That doesn't help with the other service accounts that used the now unusable email address.  Also will not be in Google anymore, and become unfindable with GOOGLES current advertisers first and no-click-thru strategy.  For the last few years  99.9% of traffic was BOTS and AI scrappers anyway, so doing that isn't attractive. In the last 2 years, only previous customers had ever contacted me. No one new.

Previous customers will not be able to contact me anymore, unless I bulk email them of change of contact info.  Not out of the question. There aren't many from the last few years anyway. But if they search for me they will probably find our blog and other sites and be able to get in touch.

I have yet to get any support from the hosting and DNS company after using their support request system.   I assume the new company that bought the previously excellent hosting company has made changes that make them not excellent now. 

Until this year, our website had never been down for days. And that was before the DNS expired.

No support replies and lots of down time.  That crossed a line with me.  

I am thinking I don't need a website any more at all. Had a huge gallery of  Car Caricatures I had done, but I don't need that any more.


I searched on google if HostNetworks issues are common now:


I should just cancel it all. It appears the new owners, Edge Centres, have done what Private Equity does, even if they aren't technically Private Equity. 😡

Will say my final experience with HostNetworks Brisbane support has been very poor and do not recommend them any more.

Other Things


Have put some interesting to me Mixed Media Missives to like:

These are from the front page of what was our website.


Saturday, September 19, 2026

Who Are You?


Who are you when you take away your career? People’s perception of you shifts constantly based on how you look and what you’ve done.

Shockingly so... Had many experiences where the way someone acted toward me was just so inappropriate. And now you want me to buy your product?? 😧 Some of the rudest ever were Musical Instrument store staff (particularly the heavily tattooed guitarist that "was a rock star" but he just hadn't "made it" yet) type when I had gone in to look at a guitar pedal or some gear in Sydney in the 70s/ 80s... ゴダイゴ Tommy Snyder was a Roland Japan demonstrator/Product Specialist and he was always so condescending to me. Not sure if it was (A), I'm the gaijin here, (B) I'm a rockstar and you are beneath me, or (C) the tech I tried to get his thoughts on was over his head, or all of the above. Other foreign product specialists were not like that at all. Even the Americans like Tommy. So different from meeting TV/ROCK star Jon English when I worked at the Roland office in Sydney before moving to Japan. Wonderful guy, chatted about PZM microphones and his home recording studio. Or the awesomely wonderful/ kind/ helpful Mattias IA Eklundh of Freak Kitchen. Our Story/ Who We Are as a short webcomic. Track on Bandcamp.

I had posted this to our Facebook a week ago and people that know me responded favorably. More than me just posting a usual music+comic thing, which are mostly ignored.

Putting it on YouTube SHORTs this week, but think that platform is all rather broken and isn't worth putting any effort into. Certainly not a priority for me at all now.

Since YouTube stopped prioritizing SUBSCRIPTIONS a few years ago, the YouTube experience has greatly deteriorated. And that they have emphasized SHORTS over long meaningful content the last few years is IDIOCY. I saw something in the last few days that they are changing focus to target TV living room viewing now.😐

I am not a YOUTUBER talking to camera about something, even if this is the start of a short series in that format. These shorts are referring to music I have already released that no one noticed. This video has no slow intro, gets to the point in the first 2 seconds and has a real person in it, the way most of my stuff doesn't. Have read this is now important to YouTube videos.

I have never been about getting subscribers and assume they take into account my very rarely changing number of Subscribers ( just 242 as I write this), means my channel has a value of $0 relatively, for Google's advertisers.

I hate the way YouTube manipulates creators, such as musicians into doing reviews and gear box openings and what have you, rather than presenting their MUSIC, as that is what gets views!  I fear that I too have been manipulated.

Since doing this one I have bought the inexpensive DJI Mic Mini (1x TX 1x RX)  wireless microphone set and installed Open Camera on my SHARP Android phone to be able to use the external microphone.  Seems to work well, and the sound is way better than the camera alone. The sound is really important to me.  Bought the small phone tripod/selfie stick a few years ago and is very useful. Mostly gets used to hold the camera on the kitchen table when doing family photos though. 




Fun learning and practicing new things. Still using ancient VEGAS Movie Studio but as yet haven't bothered to download Davinci Resolve and learn how to use it.  I just wonder of it would render any faster on my i7 or not.


Wil Wheaton's Radio Free Burrito was a Podcast I listened to for a few years before he stopped doing it. Just him doing a radio show with music he liked. I thought it was interesting and I tried doing my own, hosted on my own www.artandtechnology.com.au website. Talked about current issues I had, music I was making and whatever else was going on, the way I do on this blog. I did 3 episodes then gave up and shortly later deleted them from our site. No one listened to it, and bots just continuously downloaded the files all the time wasting the site's bandwidth.

Other Things


Joshua Heath Scott the JHS guitar pedals guy, has a channel on creativity. Loves photography and has a collection of books on philosophy and creative works that I just wouldn't expect.

And then something like this:


"find the courage to make and share creative work", is the focus of the book. Not something I have a problem with and it doesn't mention anything I don't know at my stage of life.

Such as YOU CAN'T PLEASE THE MASSES with your strange quirky stuff. If one likes it, that is enough.

He makes an interesting observation, not from this book, that I have felt, but have never heard before. Every other thing you learn pours into (supports and improves) all the other things you do. You get innovation when you pull in your experiences from a different field.


UNIQLO 790円 out of season clearance and XL size! YOASOBI: producer+ musician+ singer originally making songs from an amateur writers website. Not a fan of their J-POP music, BUT LOVE the illustration on the back😍!!! Name on front so cool too.



Yoasobi is "nightlife" in Japanese.


Reminded I tried to learn freehand airbrush, the way you do things like t-shirts 10 or so years ago. This is one of the dozens of large practice pieces of paper I filled. I can use airbrush on sculptures and models, but that can use lots of masks and is a very different process.


T-shirts use a different type of paint. I just got sick of practicing the strokes, the smell, the mess, the steady hand you need, and cleaning the airbrush. I just hate cleaning the airbrush! I still have 3 airbrushes but haven't used them much in the last years with my music production focus.

I don't expect I will ever get back to any freehand airbrush. It turned out it just wasn't "my thing".

The comic Punk'N Head I had ordered never showed. When I check the supplier on AMAZON JAPAN, all they gave was a 3rd part shipping agent: GLOBAL HUB in Los Angeles, not who they actually were. A few days after THE DELIVERED BY DATE I found many other had found the same experience and that the supplier couldn't be trusted. I left a 1 star review and that it seemed it could be FRAUD. I got a refund no questions asked. My first such experience, and a reminder to check who you are actually getting something from on Amazon.



Adrian Bruce ©2026 KYOTO, JAPAN
(Previously of now defunct artandtechnology website)
Blog: https://art-and-technology.blogspot.com/
Our Music: https://megacurve.bandcamp.com/
X: https://x.com/Megacurve
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/adrian.bruce.9
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@adriansbruce/
Zazzle: http://www.zazzle.com.au/artandtechnology
Pinterest: https://jp.pinterest.com/arttechdesign/
Our Comic Book: https://art-and-technology.blogspot.com/2026/09/our-free-to-download-comic-books.html