180 seconds of fake Kyoto FM radio broadcast of 3 tracks from my ASSORTED BITS3 album
Alpha Station FM Kyoto is a local station here, but we get poor reception. Online radiko version has better sound. Voice is clips of a bit of Kyoto weather, Train incident announcement intro, the coming weekend is a 3 day weekend..., Cherry Blossoms need the cold... from MORNING GOLD DJ Akita
So been listening to IRVING FORCE again and had this Tiesto gig pointed out to me:
That resulted in the MUSIC+COMIC post I did yesterday:
Which made me think back to my discovering Melodic Techno and DJ Cassian about 2 years ago now and that may be a thing I could move a little closer again too.
My last 2 music comics here have a soundtrack that is 3 of my minute tracks DJ MIXED together, and even though I like them, the tracks themselves are just slight variations of the same thing.
I hadn't made anything for a week and that got me down. I had planned to go to the mall for lunch, but was having fun making the one at the top, I ended up not going, and making a chicken cheese toasted sandwich instead. Can go tomorrow instead.
Netflix removes all Star Trek Jan 8 2026, and I spent the last few years catching up on the DEEP SPACE 9, VOYAGER and ENTERPRISE I had only ever seen the first 1 or 2 seasons of when they first came out. Mostly very good.
The last few weeks re-watching the original series, which was always on a Sunday afternoon in continuous repeat when I was in High School and I mostly didn't watch. Rewatching now struck me how good some episodes were, and how terrible others are! A few, like CATSPAW, I didn't bother to finish and went and found lists of best episodes to see instead. Much of the dialogue and acting is so stilted and unrealistic, and then there is the American '67~'68 culture good and bad.
But it still became a cultural beacon.
We can currently watch PRIME and NETFLIX, and I have been shocked a lot of the time how few movies there are on these services. I have never seen The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, and it is just one of the many I have gone to have a look at and found not available. They seem to have focused on their latest "hit series" and little else.
So with the start of the new year, we seem to have changed our routine a little. For the last months I had been making a Music+Comics thing once or twice a week, and don't feel any need to do that at the moment. Had a forced break for a week with visiting kids and grandson, and it just isn't worth the effort at the moment. I did do the FRUMP-OKER thing, but that was a bit different using a "cover not-cover" and not a thing I do regularly.
Music wise been back listening to Irving Force and his Metal SynthWave. More my thing than most of Steve Vai or MINISTRY, even if I do love random tracks of their stuff.
Will probably continue to think, go for long walks listening to music and ponder which creative direction to go in next for a bit longer...
But made this after going for a long walk, then taking a nap...
2026 January 2: Have kids and grandson visiting, but aren't up to much other than that. The cats hate the intrusion.
When they were out yesterday afternoon, I went for a longish walk, contemplating what to do in the next weeks. Listened to the last 30 minutes of my own music and I really don't mind it. All very much the same, and not sure I should, or need to change that a bit. I only have to please myself and if I continue to have fun doing just what I am doing, I don't need to change anything at all.
This morning I finalized my 2025 expenses spreadsheet I use for tracking my finances and printed it out and put in a file I have for these.
I put up my newly printed Renwa 8 / 2026 Calendar pages and it is very open at the moment. The only actual important things in the next 3 months are a yearly Tax document submission, wife's birthday, a minor surgery 😐 and a Dental appointment.
The ASTERISM - Kick Down the Wall, their new CD, and Urasawa Naoki's manga ASADORA #9 in English will be released in January and have now penciled those in.
More will come up I am sure. They always do.
One thing about being retired is that it is always like the time between Christmas and New Year for many people, when you forget what day it is. So that I do know what day it is, I mark off in green the days and see what important stuff is on for today when I get up in the morning. I have a few codes I use for things like that and mark them on the calendar too.
CorelDraw has a Calendar generating script and I have been using that and making my own and printing it (usually in B/W) for probably the last 10 years. I used to have when I had to pay bills marked on it, but now it is what events I will attend and what creative things I have done, and birthdays etc. 2 years ago I bought a calendar that was almost this format and used it for awhile, but I always find making my own means I can put something in for many months in advance, that you can't actually buy a calendar for yet.
I am not expecting to get any illustration enquiries any more, but we will see. The rise of AI and the way Google search changed during 2025 with AI summaries completely killed illustration enquires from our website.
Most accesses have been by AI BOT SCRAPPERS using the content for training AI systems, then Google using that content to directly answer search queries, and even generate images and illustrations. Maybe I should be flattered, but see it as the continuing enshittification of the Internet, and nothing I can do anything about.
Same thing plotted in this bit on Stack Overflow, a programmers forum.
I may now be truly retied.
Our daughter may visit us for a few weeks end of March or April. A few other family things may happen. Wife is going on a 10 day trip in May.
I don't have any big goals anymore, other than stay healthy and active again this year. I expect to continue to make cartoons, comics and bits of music. I did around 60 pieces of music last year, and put most of them on my Bandcamp page. I hope to continue to get out and visit a local cafe regularly and listen to music there. They may release some great movie I don't even know about yet, that I will have to see.
I haven't sculpted anything for 3~4 years now, and maybe the urge to do that will return. Maybe not. Or something else will come up that I will just have to have a go at.
What will be will be.
2026 January 6: A lot of not great things happening around the world, and nothing I have any agency over. Seems just like that scene after he goes over the edge, dances down the stairs to the Gary Glitter anthem... then it all goes BOOM very quickly. But rather wonky and off... If you aren't subtle enough, the bots leave a million comments in support of it all, and being AI driven now makes them smarter than before. All the bots being used to generate income from rage and engagement from the posters outside America in third world countries.
SHORTS & Social Media is so much about about personality, and not music or anything actually worthwhile... so much chasing celebrity. And this SHORT is just an excuse for an instrumental music track as a SHORT😀
The kids and grandson will be arriving shortly and staying this week, just getting this quick thing out before they arrive. 😀
But when you consider TOPGEAR was popular, not because it was a car show, but due to the personality and relationships between the three hosts mucking about in cars, that doesn't seem so bad.
BUT garbage, AI SLOP and Grifters seem to make up way to much of YouTube and Social Media now, and not forgetting the RAGE BATE side of things.
Again this uses the 7 string, DIed and free Neural DSP Modeler vst for the amp/cabinets. SDS drums and ZebraHZ for most of the synth sounds.
SHORTs have taken over the YouTube feed now, so maybe sticking with them is the thing to do, rather than go off where no one will find me with a 1080p HD 8 panel comic page with music as I was planning? But the life of 24 hours maximum for a short and the multiple posts people make of the same thing isn't something I want to spend my time doing. I do really like the music in this, but it is very close to the last few tracks too. It is my style at the moment and do I want to change it? I think I need to to not loose interest.
This week is the Japanese End of Year /New Year Holidays. New Years day used to be about the only time everything was closed, and shrines and temples did a booming trade.
The way the stores are so crowded now you would think everything was going to closed for a month.
New Years day post cards used to be a really big thing, but even Japan now has many converted to New Year messages instead.
I did my first real, multiple panels a page, multiple pages comic, TERAFORM 8 year ago now. I had made various single panel cartoons for decades before that so a long single story with drawing the same character over and over was new. I re-read it this morning for the first time in years, after seeing in my website logs a couple of visitors had read it recently.
I could only get to work on it a few hours on weekends and it took months to finish using the traditional drawing, inking and coloring each frame. My goal when just half way through was JUST to finish it.
It looks rushed, which is understandable, but I do like the take on Climate Change, AI, the Media and Corporations I have in it. My love of THUNDERBIRDS, a secret organization doing good must had something to do with the approach too. Maybe it is more like a film pitch/treatment as a comic that just hits the main points, where in a longer/better comic those points would be revealed much more slowly rather than the characters just explaining it all. I was trying to be subtle, with the intentional misdirection with the early images of Mars. Implies Terraforming Mars, but that isn't what it is actually about.
If I had spent longer on it, the art would have been better, and with more panels of world building. Even characters drawn better. Doing it in all color added many hours and I would have been better off just doing it with line and gray tone and make it more manga like.
I did 2 other related comics after it, a page from the second one:
They are what they are.
I initially posted a link to them in a webcomic related site. I have only received one comment on them in 8 years.
I imagine that the color in the first two stories took a lot more work, but I found their style a bit easier to read than the third one.
The first was very much like a documentary, which reminds me of Arthur C. Clark. The second one actually has a character, so was more like Issac Asimov. Each style has its place, but the latter attracts a larger audience.
I agree with what he said, especially with the number of years since since doing it. The second comic has a sentient robot as the main character.
Rewatching the DEVO documentary again, I feel they too were rather too subtle for the public to understand their thesis that America was obviously de-evolving. Seems all to true now.
Other Things
Well it is the Christmas/New Years break now. For me that involves the kids and grandson visiting for a week and thinking about what happened this year, and what I think I want to do next year.
So far, I think I will attend the May 2026 Osaka Sound Messe and that is about it. There are tours by KRAFTWERK and DEEP PURPLE early in the year, but I don't care for huge crowded concerts anymore. A small sound house with a band I know is a much better experience.
Haven't made any new music in about 2 weeks, as the last 30 things I did all sound the same and I need to change my composition method a bit before continuing. I need to recharge.
Thinking about other interests I could get back to too, like where to go with my comics. I haven't done a comic book in 2 years now. Am I done with them? I don't know.
I did the last Stop Frame Animated Rock Opera episode 3 years ago and I know I aren't trying that again. A bunch of too long scenes, a few I actually like, strung together that don't make ANY sense, and the music doesn't help at all. It is a mess. The 5 episodes could be edited into a single MUCH SHORT thing that is actually interesting, possible with some voice over. Maybe one year, but I just got really sick of it.
Star Trek leaves Netflix Jan 8 2026. In the last few years I managed to finally get to see all of Deep Space 9, Voyager and Enterprise via Netflix. Missed most on their initial broadcasts back in the day, other than ST:TNG. They were mostly great. The original STAR TREK was on for many years, like Sunday afternoon, when I was in high school and I mostly didn't watch it. I have no memory of any S2 or 3 episodes and catching up with them at the moment. So dated, but also interesting stories.
