Reflections: Where Were We Again?

 

Our hearing isn't what it was, I don't get to check my mixes in a car I know well any more and barely drive at all, so depend on a SPECTRUM analyzer in slow MASTERING MODE to see how balanced things are. I listen too, but that is all so deceptive.

The above is an OBS capture of the later part of STORY SHAPED BEATS showing the SPAN SPECTRUM analyzer I rely a lot on.

Is the mix great? 

Probably not.

But it sounds okay to me at the moment, and better than stuff I did 2 years ago, but will probably find it lacking if I look back at it in 2 years time. But as myself, and maybe, 5 other people will bother to listen to it for more than a few seconds, it really doesn't matter.  I came to realize the mix and mastering in cases like this isn't something to worry about. 

I found my structure of STORY SHAPED BEATS and how it makes me feel really interesting. The lyrics are personnel, but the word salad nature of them gives them other meanings depending on how I am feeling. I have no idea what anyone else thinks of it, other then being "original".

I have spent since November 2025 producing a piece of music to go with a comic animation about once a week for my MUSIC + COMICS.  So at the current time my album on Bandcamp ASSORTED BITS 3 has 23 tracks in it.

Maybe I should say that album is now compete? I feel an ending.  

I render out a DJ MIX of my tracks and will often have this on repeat when out and about.

It doesn't take long for me to completely forget that I made the tracks and can be objective about them.  I like much of many of them.

I think they all genre MEGACURVE.  And that is fine by me. 

Until 2 years ago I was doing a JUST THINKING comic weekly. Much of those were about living in the time of COVID just after moving back to Japan. I did them for myself.  I put them together in a CBR book for download. I still do one sometimes, but that project is pretty much finished.  I spent about 2 years on them, then I moved onto doing something else. It felt like the thing to do. There was an ending.

So the MUSIC+COMICS combined a comic strip with music into a short video. 

It seemed the thing to do.

Have I found what I was looking for doing those? No, not really. 

Some work better than others and they were a reason, an excuse, to do a weekly comic AND music, even though, mostly one had nothing to do with the other.

What I found, doing my guitar and synthesizer stuff is that an 8 string doesn't give me anything I didn't already have with a drop tuned 7 string.  I have done tracks that are rock/metal drums and guitars but feel most "at home" with synths, sequenced synth bass with heavy guitars.

Not sure I have anything else musical to say at the moment though. Feel that the last tracks are all variations on the same few chords and melody with different instrumentation. The last two tracks even used spare guitar out takes from the tracks before them. 

Is this an ending?

I have spent much of the last 2 months mostly at home recovering from regular, minor, medical procedures, and have one more to go. Being uncomfortable changes my perspective on things. But that kind of feels like an ending soon too.  Or is that just a change of my mood with Spring being here and the ending of the really cold weather?

Is that just looking for a pattern in random, unconnected things?

Will probably do a bit more reflection on what I have done recently, then set out again on another art project. 

Other Things

ARTEMIS II has done their fly around the moon and are on the way back now. This epitomizes what the world admires about America!

And so different from the felon in charge and all that has involved.

 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Online Portfolios and the AI Issue: Website Update

 

So I updated our ArtAndTechnology Website today. I hadn't updated our portfolio pages for a while, as I wondered if I should or not any more. But if the page hasn't been updated for a while I get asked in emails do I still do the illustrations or not.

I decided to do "the last" gallery update with an image with a text overlay explaining the AI issue. The description also contains the same text. The images behind the text are new, but it says the 6 pages of illustrations already here should be enough to see what our stuff looks like.

I feel close to being really retired now. Had only 3 clients since 2024, doing some 11 illustrations, which isn't very much. As I saw previously, that seems the way Illustration has gone globally now due to Google search changes, the focus on advertisement delivery, and generative AI.   

But that is okay. I am happy making my own music and comics. 

In the website update, I also directly linked to some popular Blog posts I've done.

ASTERISM with Support Dr.Capital Kyoto MOJO: 2025/10/10.

Urasawa Naoki Rhythm & Drawing, Yes Theater, Osaka 2025-9-23.
Freak Kitchen & Rikugo LIVE! Club Quattro Osaka 2025-9-16 Behind The Scenes.
The BOTS are Listening.
Mid 2025, and has AI changed it all? And Other Thoughts..
Car Comics: Pen on Ink, Black and White.
SQ Quadraphonic - A Dead Surround Audio Format.... or is it?.
The Naim Audio Game....

 

The views from the last 6 months are:

The ones in red are mostly years old.  Not blockbuster numbers at all, but that is fine. 

I have been paying for the website hosting and url since 2008. I will still be keeping the email addresses we use for some time to come but not so sure about the website itself, and doing freelance illustration.  Google keeps on making up new excuses for why pages that have been indexed for 18 years don't comply any more. Heard the same thing from other site maintainers as well. Google would rather push sponsored content.

Will having a website be of any value in 12 months or 36 months?  We will see and determine what to do then. 

Other Things

IN EAR MONITORS (IEMs) were a custom fitted to the ear set of isolating earbuds for musicians, but I recently discovered that definition has changed in the last few years. 

A zillion Chinese hi-fi wired earbud manufacturers use that term now too with a slightly different meaning. They aren't custom fitted or just for musicians. A more HiFi wired earbud.  I have been using JBL ENDURANCE RUN 2 wired earbuds for a few years when out and about and have learnt, the slightly more expensive IEMs may offer a better sound, in a less durable package.  Things like the USD$50 Linsoul Kiwi Ears Cadenza II.  

And with the surveillance we are now constantly all under, I get nothing but IEM YouTube recommendations and advertisements!  😠

If I am not in a noisy environment, and need to hear what is happening around me out and about, I use my SHOKZ OPENFIT. I do wish they made a wired set though.  All wireless earbuds are disposable in a few short years, with unreplaceable batteries. Having said that, the thin wires of wired earbuds don't last real long with a lot of travel time and being stuffed in bag pockets either.  

The JBL ENDURANCE RUN 2 wired earbuds have proven to be pretty durable, and cheap. The magnets in the earpieces help with storage and less tangled wires too.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

To The Moon, Like it's 1969!

 

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.  

Like it is 1969 in another way too. Back then there was Vietnam...

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.

The last complete figure I sculpted in epoxy putty was this character from one of Dave Deal's Phony Car illustrations a few years ago, to go with a few of the Dave Deal car kits I had in storage and finally built and painted. 

Rocky from Project Hail Mary is such a great character. I thought I could sculpt a little Rocky myself, then realized that getting enough reference images wasn't possible. So complicated to get accurate.

Then this morning the film makers posted the STL files for Rocky! This is the parts imported into Blender.

I don't have  a 3D printer, but could use a 3D printing service, or use this as reference for a sculpt in epoxy.  Does seem too much trouble at the moment though...

Did a variation on the Sewaritei Cherry Blossom Walk Yawata Kyoto using portrait video I also recorded as a MUSIC+COMIC YouTube SHORT.

Keep seeing posts from YouTube channels with large followings and lots of views explaining how their views have dramatically dropped recently. But Google has used their bait& switch strategy forever to limit their payouts to a smaller and small number of channels since the beginning.  Nothing "recent" about it at all.

Still surprised Google hasn't killed Blogger yet, what I use here.  I could put a blog on my own website, and may do that in the future.  

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

CREATIVITY v SKILL, Again

 

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).

I put this track on Bandcamp and called it CREATIVITY V SKILL.

Other Things

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.  

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

IN THE NEXT DIMENSION: First 4 pages as Music+Comic

 

First 4 pages of my 2022 comic as a music + comic. The whole 18 pages as a .CBR file downloadable from our free comics page.

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.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN