bitty-bits

[bitty-bits]

The First and the Last of the Year

And possibly last ever... on Tumblr at least.

Where did I go?

Nowhere in particular... if you've seen my socials all year, that is. This blog/newsletter however, took an extended vacation, not just from a lack of interest (and personal real life stuff getting in the way) but also from a technical standpoint - I really wanted the email newsletter aspect of this to work, but I still couldn't. I was considering using TinyLetter ...until they announced that was shutting down. If I had a nickel for every time a newsletter service shut down out of nowhere I'd have two... you know the rest. And with Tumblr getting worse as the year went by, maintaining this wasn't exactly motivating enough.

That said, it was a less than ideal year for my productivity, inconsistent pace, money issues, the lowest amount of notable dreams to write down on my dream journal to date... you get the idea.

So I can only hope for things to be better. For me to be less lazy... and work not only on stuff I make, but on myself. And I do have a bit of optimism, since a lot has, so let's see a couple of stuff, although everything else you should expect to see in a "rebooted" version of this blog...

Also, Free Palestine!

What I've Been Playing / Watching

So while I haven't fully completed a LOT of things this year, this will be going back to the beginning of the year, essentially, so strap yourselves. (Some of it I'll be grabbing from my media thread that I've made on Twitter as well)

Lucky Star (Finished)

I have posted about Lucky Star in another issue, but I was still in the middle of watching it. Now that I've actually finished watching it (in February) I can say more about it: When it comes to this anime, it was either pretty ahead of its time, or we just have Regressed as a species since then. Maybe the latter.

And sorry folkz, Lucky Star is pro-ship/pro-fic culture and there’s nothing you can do about it. I watched the entire series including the OVA, and while I’m definitely still not sure I’m exactly the "target demographic" what I saw was still very enjoyable. it really just is whatever the fuck and I'm all for it.

At first my kin™ was Konata pretty quickly because of course. That was until Minami showed up and like, she’s basically the weeb version of Ongo Jelly Jamm™!!! I actually can say I got attached to and care about most of the characters, even if just a little.

Like I said in a previous issue, in 2015 I had watched part of an episode of it english dubbed and it didn’t click with me at all. Turns out the dub just sucks as I should’ve expected lol (And I really wasn’t used to segmented "several short stories in one" type anime and stuff to be fair - that and I was dumber too of course so I couldnt properly appreciate the ART........)

My rating is Timotei/10 - and Nichijou is next!

Pizza Tower

Easily the biggest loss for gaming this year was this game not winning "Best Debut Indie" at the Game Awards. Oh well.

I was already highly anticipating this game - having first heard of it when it had a demo at SAGE 2019 I’m glad the game turned out great and is getting the recognition it deserves. I pretty much finished the game in early March. P/10

The Owl House (Finished)

Well... it’s over... for better or worse. I do think they managed to deliver a satisfactory ending all things considered. This was definitely a great cartoon to kick off the new decade.

And of course, fuck Disney as always.

This show got me to break out of, I guess an habit, you could say, or a superstition, or whatever the hell it is, when it came to media with too much ""occultism"" in them. You know the drill. I guess it opened up the little my mind had left that was still a bit closed. Even if it’s mostly involuntary.

But this isn’t even new. As a child I’d actually have an "imaginary friend" that i made (that kinda just Existed, didn’t really "interact" much with them whatsoever cuz i was Dumb™) that their backstory was literally that they were a demon in hell "gone rogue" so they were "not an evil one". Again, I was a kid. I never thought too much about the implications of me thinking about stuff like that already at that age. But it is interesting to think about now.

Anyways, been gay, did witchcraft. ⛥/5

Invader ZIM (Series + Enter The Florpus)

Well I did it. I finally watched the funny hot topic show™ (Finished in late May)

What can I even say about it that hasn’t been already said by everyone else? ...well maybe I have one thing: for some reason I didn’t find That One Episode that people always bring up the MOST disturbing one. I thought the one with a literal character flatlining and Zim being ":)" about it got to me a bit more.

Anyways yeah it’s Cool I liked the characters especially Gaz, and GIR obviously Why Wouldn’t He Be Here. The show can be stupid and end episodes in Whatever The Fuck ways that leave you like "That's it? That's the episode???" but I think that’s one of the unique aspects of it that I Enjoy - also the movie is cool. ☮️>🐔+🍚/10

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

So I watched it first when we only had shitty cinema bootleg recordings (that aren’t even that shitty anymore at this point in terms of quality, the Shit comes in the form of godawful intrusive illegal casino ads™ placed.) even though a bit later the raw movie would sometimes be uploaded in full to YouTube with no consequence for days. And at this point I’ve rewatched it plenty of times in proper HD (though only once in English cuz I’ll be honest, the Brazilian dub really is phenomenal really and blows the original "star talent cast" out of the water in my opinion, where it falls short is the voice for Luigi, as I know the dude’s voice too well and he’s just doing his normal voice with an accent, not to mention he’s the brazilian Sonic voice already!!!)

I think Charlie Day is the superior Loogy here but I’d still say the dub is better, not only for the fact there are "real voice actors" cuz you know, that’s Their Job, but also like, Charles Martinet is still in there cuz in case you didn't know, he voiced that jumpman dude’s only line in pretty much every language possible which is absurd/admirable.

It’s a fun movie if not mostly for looking at Mario Things happening that you know and recognize, because otherwise the story is pretty ridiculously basic, though even for "Mario game story" standards it’s definitely refreshing to see Luigi as the one to be rescued... though that Also sucks because Luigi deserved more screentime. The main Toad too. Oh well. Also disappointed that the "wise Toad" in the movie isn’t Toadsworth… or maybe he is but hasn’t aged yet and maybe in a sequel we’ll see him get older and then main Toad becomes Captain Toad. Who knows 🍄/10

Honorable Mentions - Stuff I've Watched That I've Yet To Write My Thoughts About, I Don't Have The Time Now

Spy × Family (Season 1) - Not the type of anime I'd see myself watching, but I was forced roped into it by one of my partners and found it to be VERY enjoyable.

Sparkle On, Raven: The Life of Drillgirl - Charming, shitpost-y, but genuine and fun

The Amazing Digital Circus - A very promising series with unexpected popularity, and equally unexpected high quality Brazilian dub with recognizable talent.

Murder Drones (Season 1 - 6/8) - A series I've been cautiously optimistic about since its pilot - it has endearing, enjoyable characters and settings, but flawed writing and pacing - more on that at a future date.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off - An amazing take on a series that I'm not so familiar with (haven't seen the movie or read the comics, only really knew that the franchise "exists") and judging from what I've heard from others, it probably is the best take on the main storyline. Especially when it comes to the representation of who turned out to be my fave - Roxie. Watching the live action now is... probably gonna be very weird. Not sure if I want to.

Kunshikter (Күншіктер) - A new, yet very obscure cartoon from Kazakhstan. It's cute. It's for children but at this point I don't think y'all care. It's still ongoing and there are not many episodes so far. I recommend giving it a watch. Now!

Future YouTube Updates

As some of you saw in a xeet tweet from early October I was planning to do something significant on my main YouTube channel which has been stagnant for a while now, only for that to, surprise, not happen. I do have a set goal now: In very early January, a video to explain exactly what happened and what was the video I wanted to make, and... why it's hard for me to get a video like that out in the first place. The short answer (that doesn't actually account for Everything) is autism. The long answer is... stay tuned for it, lol

Song of the Issue

Although this section was supposed to be for sharing music that isn't mine, I thought I'd share snippets of music stuff I've been making since the beginning of 2023 until now, that you can look forward to!

Conclusion

I dunno. All I can say is... happy new year! It's been a tradition to make a stupid amateurish collage at the end of the year with the highlights, but this year there's been... less of them, that I took note of at least. But that won't stop me I think. Once I have that done, I may edit this to include it.

No comment on anything related to Twitter (which I'll never call "X") and the billionaire that happened this year as you all probably already know by now, and by the way you can now follow me on the social butterfly of bluesky. See you next year!

#newsletter #personal #Youtube

[bitty-bits]

A Jolly SineTrismas

It surely was another year. Let's look back at some stuff, and forward to other stuff, in the final Bitty Bits edition of 2022.

First of all, happy holidays to all who celebrate. Yeah it is a bit late on the "more famous holiday" side of things, but there are still others going on, and... in general it's probably never wrong to be festive during all of December. (It's also not wrong to NOT be festive! Just pointing that out!)

Many things happened in this late half of the year, controversial things, stupid things, all things. Here I will talk about some that mattered to me, to some extent.

(Also, RIP bozo...naro! Good riddance!)

This issue is dedicated to @rick-666, friend and avid newsletter enthusiast who encouraged me to try to fix the broken ass email form thingy that should actually send these posts as newsletter things but just isn't working! I'll have it fixed next year, I promise!!!!

My Work - Where To Next?

So I've made and tried to make many things through the years, but as someone who pretty much does anything all the time, I'm finding myself often doing... nothing at the end of it.

In 2020 I basically started work on Ketchup Dreams by making its first characters, Bitty and Lake, with more to follow the coming years... but still nothing too substantial. Pondered with which medium to present these characters in. Comics? Animation? In the end I'd just continue adding some things here and there to the overall project, but it still doesn't seem like enough. I really want to build a good universe for these guys to live in.

So at the moment I feel kinda directionless. But hopefully that will change. I guess I won't know what sticks until I actually do stuff.

From Bitty also came the entire aesthetic, motif, symbol, meaning AND name for, I guess you can call my "indie" studio/group/label thing... which my future creative works will be released under, and who knows maybe even friends' creations. The "ᑎᐱ" thing was kind of accidental, but I liked it enough that I wanted it to mean something for me. Not to sound corny and dumb, but to me "ᑎᐱ" is kinda like another representation of the polarity we have in life, much like black and white, but in this case it would be something like... smooth and sharp. Yeah I'm not gonna try to give too much meaning to it, it's just for fun, mostly. Bitty's ears initially were meant to just be bunny + kitty ears (hence the incredibly original name) for an asymmetrical design, but that basically spiraled into everything else.

All that said I'm still doing stuff every now and then, I even have been experimenting with tweaking Lake's design slightly, you can even see a little bit of that in the header art here. More on that some other time...

You can check the current "roadmap" for Studio SineTri projects on the pinned tweet.

Why not "TriSine" instead? Because that just... sounds too normal. "Tri" is an existing and common prefix. Also the order matters.

The Tesla In The Room

I don't think I need to talk much about the whole thing with Elon Musk buying Twitter and everything that came with it. Mostly I'm just tired of it all. Billionaires, other than beings that shouldn't exist, are Boring and not even in a funny kind of way (except for Bill Gates, his mere existence is comedic to me probably thanks to early internet culture) I wish I just didn't have to hear about 'em. But I guess we can't.

Anyways this entire situation practically got me back into being on Tumblr daily, after I had left it in favor of Twitter in like 2015, and now... the opposite is happening, that's just how sick I am of Twitter. Not just the website itself but the people in it and the energy that usually comes out of there these days. Musk was simply a final nail in the coffin. The problem is... he just keeps adding more nails. Here's hoping Elon doesn't ruin the very last thing that made Twitter "fun" to me - TweetDeck, but chances it'll survive are slim.

I'm also on Mastodon btw. Juuust in case.

AI Art Discourse - What's Happening?!

"A Still of Klonoa in The Simpsons"

Speaking of Twitter, probably one of the least pleasing topics to witness over there lately will be this.

No doubt, "AI art" as a concept pretty much exploded into popularity in 2022, while it already existed in concept years before, this was pretty much the one year that, 5 years ago, we'd look at machine learning attempting art and say "now just think about how that'll be 5 years from now", and well, that time IS now. Kinda.

There's legitimate worry about whether or not the computer would be able to replace artists, but... personally I don't think it will ever BECAUSE... there will still always be a demand for humanity and human-created content no matter how good any sort of AI gets, and well, currently AI still struggles with "drawing" many things. But it's fine, earlier this year people were mostly memeing with AI generators, being impressed, confused, having a laugh, or everything all at once.

Until computers making drawings suddenly were no longer seen as cool but rather, bad!!! evil!!! problematic!!! etc. even though the reason for that all stems from... misconceptions and misinformation (sometimes on purpose, just because... I dunno. Internet rewards people who get angry at things.) about how the technology works to begin with. No, AI doesn't simply collage a bunch of pictures together, that just isn't how it works, even if it knows what a Mona Lisa looks like almost perfectly. It's hard to put it into words, but this thread I believe explains it a bit better in simpler terms (hopefully), even if you still don't understand, it's... best to not be too ignorant about it.

Of course, I DO think AI ethics is an important conversation that should happen, but not if it's... not gonna be a conversation in the first place. If it sounds too extreme, reactionary, or sounds just about as crazy as anything you'd hear coming from Alex Jones or like, your pro-life uncle™, then it probably isn't the way to go.

This made even people who think photography isn't art come out of their closets, if they even were in one.

There are good use cases for AI in art. One of them is allowing disabled individuals to also partake and experiment with visual arts. Yes, technically nothing "stopped" them from "really" doing it, but just look at how much that argument almost slips into ableism territory (and there is a surprising amount of that coming from some anti-AI folks.) Hell, I could've used AI to create a background for the art on my header as I'm mostly... a character illustrator, focused on characters, and just don't really enjoy drawing backgrounds much at all.

Anyways I recommend y'all check out AWAY (Are We Art Yet), a collective of artists and creators alike embracing AI but also fighting for more ethical AI usage (discussion about scraping images from the web, consent for works to be used as training data, etc.), without the reactionarism and sometimes ableism. They're a friendly bunch.

What I’ve Been Playing / Watching

Gravity Falls

Well, does it really?

Hey Kids, Have You Heard Of Gravity Falls? The show's 10th anniversary was this year and, having heard mostly only good things about it since then, AND as someone who had recently been sucked deep into the modern Disney TVA pipeline (DuckTales 2017, Amphibia and Owl House are also great and would also recommend), I made it a goal to watch all of it before the year ends.

At first I thought this, like other very successful shows, would have way too many seasons for me to really get into, so I was surprised when I found out that wasn't the case.

It's definitely a great show, even 10 years later. From what I saw very little of it comes across as dated when it comes to references or jokes, the characters being likable and interesting are about enough to hook you into it I think. Also Matt Chapman is in there a lot and as an avid Homestar Runner fan, you can just Tell not only through his voices, but his humor and vibes entirely in some episodes.

If there's one thing I probably can't get enough of is Disney cartoons made by some of the most... Non-Disney people on Earth.

The Dream I Had On December 25th

Usually I share my dreams on Twitter, but decided it might be neat to feature some of the more interesting ones right here. They are an essential part of one of my creations after all. This year though, for a reason or another, I had less eventful or weird dreams in general. But waking up on Christmas day this is what was on my mind:

For more of my dreams you can check out my dream journal with stuff since at least 2014, here.

I had a dream I can split up in three parts - first I was at an old house of mine but I could hear a new trailer for the Mario movie premiering far outside, a classic game song could be heard in it and things pointed to it being a Daisy reveal.

Second part was a Strong Bad thing, where I possibly interact with him directly and actually cause a change to homestarrunner.com "accidentally". He makes some sort of analog horror parody, and an old main page gets a new "feature" permanently. I felt a sense of realization since "I caused this". I really wish I remembered more cuz it was great

Third part is the one I can recall the most, it was what seemed like a weird Gravity Falls AU type thing, which is slightly mixed up with The Owl House - In what appears to be the first episode, Grunkle Stan is nowhere to be found, with probably Eda taking his place as the twins' "Graunt". The episode begins with Mabel just wandering around the forest, when she comes across several typically good luck signs all at once, things like four leaf clovers and such. Eda knowing better knows it's a trap and tries to protect Mabel, but she is convinced that Eda is a witch (which probably Should be a secret at first in this alternate timeline I guess, Eda Is Not What She Seems™) and EVIL!!! and ignores her, acting hostile towards her, even, so Eda locks her up in a shelter. Perfectly normal. In there she finds… a journal. It doesn't appear to be -the- GF journal but rather a mix of that and Philip's journal from Owl House. At first it looked like the journal could talk by itself but someone just happened to be there in disguise, it was Soos, who happens to know a couple things about the journal but probably not much. For some reason I was "watching" it in Portuguese and they'd give him a completely different name, likely starting with a hard C, but I can't remember now. Some weird magic thing happens too which I don't remember how it's triggered or when exactly in the episode progression it even happens but it would make food and candy "infinitely stretchy", where you could essentially have infinite amounts of something just by stretching them, and it caused children to go insane over it. Eventually Soos and Mabel made it out of the shelter, with the latter no longer feeling suspicious about Eda. That's about what I can recall.

Song of the Issue

I will now feature some cool music (probably just vgm) I like here, just because. Sometimes topical, sometimes not.

But today it might be.

A secret easter egg track, on the older 2008 MIDI version of the Charlie (the Duck) II soundtrack (that probably came into existence together with the 2008 Windows version of the game, as opposed to the original DOS version which much like other Wiering Software games only had sound effects, at most.)

It would only play on Christmas day, and was basically a slight arrangement of the proper theme, but with some classic Christmas tunes thrown into it.

The OGG/streamed version you hear on the Steam release cuts the song a bit shorter.

More Stuff

Audicons Fluent/2.0/Name Pending

Inspired by Microsoft's Fluent Design aesthetics and technicalities, this will be an update to my existing icon pack for audio formats, covering even more obscure formats that only 3 people know about! Just like the old pack, this will be fully compatible with probably any version of foobar2000. Very soon!

Ninjin on Archive.org

Yeah!

juke...box. AI. video.

yeah dude.

(no, seriously, it'll come out when it comes out. that's it.)

Miscellaneous Tumblr Side Things

I dunno, I just felt like... having a couple dedicated side blogs for specific interests, as some people do, cuz I have ideas. One of them will be about brazilian animation in general. Nothing fancy or scheduled, just things that will exist.

Conclusion

The more I write the more self-conscious I get that I might just be shit at writing Anything, but I still appreciate if anyone actually likes reading through!

Stay tuned for the traditional yearly dumb highlights collage pic™ on my main Tumblr (@lu9) and Twitter (if it's not completely broken by then...)

Bitty's Message of the Day

My new year's resolution is to Exist more!

#newsletter #personal #preservation

[bitty-bits]

Like Halloween but Spookier - It's Brazil Elections Day!

Today will likely go down as one of the most important days in recent brazilian history... maybe

Later today the people of Brazil (that's me) will get to decide whether or not the fascist little Trump-wannabe, who shrugged off hundreds of thousands of preventable covid deaths, mass producing loads of placebo pills with quite harmful side effects instead of investing in vaccines, and even once pondered the possibility of eating the meat of an indigenous individual, among other ridiculous statements, gets to continue to put the country in shame. Either that or we give it back to a lil bearded dude who's political party may or may not be stealing your Kromer[citation, and I cannot stress this enough, needed] but at least don't want to see you fuckin dead or in absolute poverty.

Yeah, this got political quickly. Don't worry, this'll be rare here. I just really do not want Bolsonaro for another 4 years, to keep doing the shit he does. I won't go much into details about what stuff did he do exactly, as it is just very upsetting (especially for a neurodivergent LGBT+ individual), but let's say that during the pandemic people called him genocidal for a reason. So literally anyone could go against him in an election and already be better. At least, that's what I think. Brazilians, let's try our best to change this actually spooky reality!

What I’ve Been Playing / Watching

Night in the Woods

Putting aside external and very complex contriversies that should probably just be forgotten at this point, this was a pretty comfy game. Even though I wasn't yet able to fully digest everything that I saw, I appreciated the mood, the vibes, the characters, and especially the music, which I actually wasn't expecting to be so dang good. Rest easy, Alec.

New Icon for them Social Medias

"It's even funnier the CMYKth time!"

More Stuff

YouTube Reinvents the Wheel Again (Again) With Handles

Please, YouTube. I just wanted a friggin custom URL for my dumbass video game music channel. This is like the third time you're changing how URLs work. Next you'll tell me annotations will be back and it'll be innovative this time like it was never a thing before. As much as I despise TikTok, just accept your loss.

Part 3 of Jukebox AI Video. 🔫

workin on it™

Conclusion

Hopefully I'll be back again to write more bullshit before the year ends. Have a nice 'ween, and vote thirteen.

Bitty's Message of the Day

Who's this????

#newsletter #personal

[bitty-bits]

Back In Action

DALL-E 2 Background (Prompt: Dreamy background painting with a checkered pattern grass and blue mountains in the distance), Emojis made for the SineTri Discord. Join us!

After a few months, I'm finally back doing this thing.

I'm back here probably cuz I do have a lot more to say than last time. Tumblr's embeds of posts don't seem to be very good, I've noticed. Oh well. Again you'll likely see me on that dreaded hellsite a lot more than here, but I'll still try to write here to maintain a tradition, and hopefully I won't be gone for too long again. Anyways here's what I've been doing lately.

New Computer

Yeah!

Without giving away too much details as for how this happened, I indeed have a new computer (notebook, specifically, as I've been used to the form factor my whole life, probably) and probably the first time it is almost on par with the latest high end specs, and, no memes, it has an RTX graphics card. What else can I say about it... well, using it so far has been a positive experience for the most part, my only complaint would be how "not good" the trackpad is. Cuz you know, I actually got used to drawing with the trackpad (believe it or not) on my previous notebook, which is still a pretty good notebook that still works and can still do a lot (I was able to play and beat Super Mario 3D World emulated on it at almost full speed, so I think that says something) so I hope whoever uses it next makes a good use out of it. I'd say outside of being "mid" (that's the Funny Word Them Kid's These Dayz R Usein' Right) its only problem is its battery doesn't really work anymore so it'll only work while plugged in, which is probably completely my fault, so I'm hoping to avoid this issue on the new computer. (Tip: There's an useful VBScript you can get and put it on Windows' "startup programs" folder that will show a message whenever your battery is close to 100% charge. Google it!)

Trackpad issues aside, I still have a standard optical mouse to use, but even then, It's still gonna take getting used to... using one again. I'm weird.

Cut it Out, Ninjin! - Preservation Efforts (Post-Warner Bros. Discovery Fiasco Update)

With all the clownery going down lately with the Warner Bros. + Discovery merger, the Ninjin cartoon series (my biggest "brainrot" of the year pretty much) unfortunately also fell victim to the "great cartoon purge" that happened as a result of WBD's terrible (and inefficient) cost cutting decisions. Fortunately, the timing for me to get into this series couldn't have been better, and at least the show staff got to finish a season right before the shitstorm, so finished material didn't go unreleased. That said we can only hope the series somehow makes a comeback or is revived in some form, as at least Warner doesn't own the Ninjin IP (as far as I'm aware).

With the series gone from HBO Max, YouTube and all of Cartoon Network itself (though not without a few exceptions still left here and there), it's important to remember that preservation is a must, and something to keep in mind from start to end in any project. Here's what a staff member at Birdo studio had to say on the matter (Portuguese):

for those who work on animated shows, for the love of god, don't forget to always keep a copy of the final versions of your scenes/episodes downloaded (and if you're the director, back up the entire series) cuz if we just rely on the son of a bitch companies and channels everything will be gone then we won't even be able to assemble an animation reel / portfolio afterwards

As I have shared in the first blog post, I have made an archive of pretty much all the CN Ninjin content that I could find, on a MEGA folder, which I've recently updated in light of the unfortunate news - Every episode is now available as MKV (Matroska Video) files with multiple audio channels (Original Portuguese, as well as the Spanish and English dubs!) which I plan to later still update to have English fansubs done by yours truly (So you don't have to stick to the... not very amazing English dub), you will also find the shorts (which I've already given subtitles!) and some comics too, which I still gotta translate.

I'll also make extra links for easier sharing soon.

We can't let the big corporations win again as they usually do.

You can buy Ninjin: Clash of Carrots (the game the series was based on!) on Steam here, and Pocket Trap's latest game, Dodgeball Academia, here!

Let's try to keep Ninjin alive. Please.

Do it for her.

Calimero Subtitles Project Returns

After staying stagnant for at least 2 years, interest in subtitling Calimero's 1992 anime by Toei Animation (easily my favorite Calimero-related media) ressurged. Likely due to me... having figured out what an MKV file even is and what it can have, as well as coming across what is now my favorite software for subtitle making in general, SubtitleEdit (Not very creative, I know), and learning about the more advanced, fancy subtitle formats a good chunk of anime (fan)subs use. Also the project expanded a little; it's gonna be more than just the subtitles over a single specific dub of the anime, actually it'll have most of the dubs ever made of the show that can be found. A lot of audio tracks in still considerably small files! I sure do love me some Matroska files. The current plan is for me to subtitle the first half of the series (26 episodes, "season 1", if you will) all by myself, while the second half is a bit tricky, as only the German, Italian and Arabic dubs have the entire series found. But I already have a German friend willing to help with those, and there are also a couple episodes from the second half in the original Japanese version found, so if you're fluent in any of these languages and are interested in helping out, feel free to tell me! Once the project is finished we will finally have one convenient place to watch this series, in a variety of language dubs, and English subs, and hopefully more people in the West will acquire interest for it.

My Channel for posting Video Game Music, CalimeroVGM on YouTube

Not "high quality rips" in the SiivaGunner sense, but actual VGM that either can't be found on YouTube elsewhere, or if it can be, the quality kinda sucks, or it's in a video with other tracks. I may have done a lot for SiivaGunner, and continue to do "high quality ripping" over on my music channel (ples suscribe), but I also have been contributing a lot to actual ripping and video game music preservation in general, and decided to make a channel dedicated to it (here), so I don't have to pollute my channel of miscellaneous whatevers, Lu9.2, which is already kind of polluted. So whenever I have any new rips, or even a few "experiments" with VGM, I'll put it on this relatively new channel. I encourage you to subscribe to it at least so I can get to 100 and get a custom URL, because I just am the weird kinda guy who likes neat looking URLs.

What I've Been Playing / Watching

Just in case people would want to know, I'd probably talk about it on Twitter anyways, but let's go:

Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series

I love Klonoa. Babe, GIVE me Klonoa. Played the first game (original PS1 version) back in either 2015 or 2016, though I was already a fan for longer, but loved it. The remastered version is very charming and combines the best of both the original colorful PS1 version and the Wii remake. And with this I was finally able to experience the sequel for the first time, and again, a masterpiece. Wish they kept some of the classic UI for the first game and other minor details, but that aside, this collection needs to succeed. This franchise needs to succeed.

Lucky Star

After giving up on watching it in 2015 (I was watching the English dub and didn't know what type of anime I was even expecting, Oops) I decide to give this another shot, this time subbed. What I can say is - I enjoy. It's fun. I guess my tastes have changed over the years too.

More Stuff

Moving (Again)

Seems like I do that a lot, but hopefully it'll actually stick now. Some unexpected problems rose in the current apartment I'm in. Nothing too serious (though it's only a matter of time) but the new place will be pretty big I think. I just hope I don't lose anything during the moving process again.

Fonts For Fun

Sometimes I also try my hand at typography, mostly recreating stuff I see, and this year I've made a few (and posted some older ones I had) fonts just for the fun of it (though they probably are useful)

You can check them out here.

Where's Part 3 Of Closing Logos Extended By Jukebox AI?

Not too long ago after releasing Part 2 of my intriguing Jukebox AI series, already some of the more "peculiar" logo-obsessed (presumably) children started to "predict" Part 3, some eben by just posting what will be on Part 3, conjuring up facts, classic Greeny Phatom style. Told that guy to wait until August.

...and I really wish I could keep such promises but I really just don't find the time and energy to put into those videos, not to mention the upsampling process that I still have to put some of the samples through. Though it's less time consuming now, there's still the entire editing and visuals part. I'm doing these videos completely for free, you know. Unless you're fine with something half-baked, be patient.

Also there will be more Jukebox AI videos in general, not just the logo ones, I hope you look forward to those too.

Donald Alves' Original Flash Website Is Now A Progressive Web App

Yeah. Did this just for fun. And to see what kind of stuff I can do with PWA features in general. It's still not a full "installable" web app, but it should work as its own thing on your phone no problem. Don't know who Donald Alves is? Well, this is one of those things that you just had to be there at the time, dude.

Conclusion

That was a big one! Hopefully next post will come before Christmas. Maybe before Brazil's presidential elections too... oh god I'm scared

Bitty's Message of the Day

I do not like beans.

#newsletter #preservation #personal

[bitty-bits]

A Week

A lot happened yet I'm still in the same place.

Oh yeah, is the RSS and newsletter stuff working? Tell me... I also wanna see if I can get the embed to show the first image so this post technically lacks a title I guess, let's see

The past week was very busy for me, I had to travel to another state to do some boring shit. Though I got to see people I haven't seen since the start of the pandemic, so that was nice.

Here's a little something since I couldn't write something in time last month.

Tumblr Nukes Me For No Reason

It seems to be a thing that happens with a certain frequency

On April 22nd, Tumblr completely deactivated my account (including this blog) for seemingly no reason - the only plausible reason being spam coming from my poor implementation of lu9bot from Twitter to Tumblr.

Well, this is no longer a problem, but it was still frustrating that it happened in the first place.

April Fools 2k22

I made an NFT, didn't sell it, and Totally Fooled Everyone with a very real hexagonal profile pic.

pfp used on that day

pfp after becoming corrupted by crypto

And in case you didn't know: If you upload a PNG with the exact dimensions of 400x400px as your profile pic, the image will retain its transparency! Nice!!!!!!!!!!

Other Stuff

Wow I'm bad at this

umm

Brazilian Chocolate Likes Toby Fox, I Think

That's a weird oddly specific one huh

I really don't know what else to say

I haven't done anything worthwhile in a long time lmao I get real lazy sometimes and just feel like sleeping all day but to be fair there was my trip and there's still more boring irl stuff to resolve, I just hope I don't end this month with nothing worth showing, and I really wanna do stuff related to Ketchup Dreams, and finally start it in some capacity. I also just wanna see other people draw my characters.

That said I'll still do this blog thing and eventually I'll figure out the right pace for me.

Bitty's Message of the Day

Draw me!

#newsletter #personal #tumblr #account deletion #april fools #nft #crypto #undertale #deltarune

[bitty-bits]

The First Post Always Sucks

The humble beginnings of a fucking blog in the year 2022

Welcome to Bitty Bits! This will be a blog for basically posting about what I have been up to, without having to dig through my Twitter for it. Essentially a small "digest" type thing, with some personal thoughts as well.

Oh yeah, this is also still Tumblr which means you can do all the... Tumblr things.

Finally, regarding the newsletter button at the bottom - I have no idea if that will even work. Not many people want to do that these days. But if you'd like to help me figure that out... subscribe to it and next month we'll see.

That said you can still use the RSS feed with no problems.

Now on to today's topics...

Ninjin Cartoon In English - Preservation Efforts

(Image: Pocket Trap/Cartoon Network LA)

Alright, so who or what is Ninjin, and why should I care?

After only having known the series because of it being of brazilian origin, I finally decided to see what it was all about this year, and maybe have a hyperfixation on it as it usually happens. It all started with a humble little indie game, called Ninjin: Clash of Carrots (available on most platforms).

It managed to be enough of a hit that an animated series even got picked up by the Latin American division of Cartoon Network! Things were getting exciting. It would take a while for the show to solidify itself though - starting slow with 1-to-3 minute shorts, then later having "full episodes" each with 7 minutes, consistently. The first five of them are publicly available to watch for free on the official CN LA/Brazil YouTube channel, much like the other shorts. The rest of the series, now also known as "Corta Essa, Ninjin!" (which roughly translates to "Cut It Out, Ninjin!", and can) would then air on Cartoon Network, and be streamable on HBO Max. But there was something curious that I noticed at the end of some of these episodes - dubbing and voice acting credits (much like most streaming services), and that included an American English dub.

Curious about it, I tried to find any information about it online, but got nothing out of it. This was starting to look like a lost media case. But once I figured that there was more to this series than just the content posted on YouTube, I knew I'd have to do one thing - get an HBO Max subscription... and that's what I did. Not to my surprise, the English dub was there... ...but who in Latin America would be watching it over the Spanish dub or the original Brazilian Portuguese audio? That was the question I had, and still have. But at least, the dub was found.

...now whether or not it was worth finding it is probably something you can draw your own conclusions about. But efforts have been made into preserving this dub, and making Ninjin media in general more accessible, all right here in this MEGA folder. It's still, of course, highly recommended that you (if you have an HBO Max subscription) just use a VPN instead to get access to the show legally, but there are also no subtitled versions so...

Startpage vs. DuckDuckGo in 2022

"Online privacy is but an unending pissing contest." -Me (Images: Startpage.com/DuckDuckGo.com)

I am very much not a "privacy neat freak" like many people when it comes to , but alternatives are always welcome.

So it was pretty cool to know that Startpage.com was basically Google without... the not so great aspects of Google. To be fair I knew nothing about that website period, and thought it was some sort of homepage speed dial/link collection thing that you'd see in the 2000s, maybe I was getting it confused for something else entirely.

I've also heard elsewhere that DuckDuckGo was basically the same but with Microsoft Bing. Now I'm not sure how true that is, but it would make sense too.

But of course, having used Google for the longest time, I was more inclined to go for Startpage.com - and having tried to use DuckDuckGo before, I would definitely miss some of the more "convenient" aspects of Google search, even if it meant being tracked in a very not "Don't Be Evil" manner - But then I quickly started to have problems regardless.

As a researcher of lost content and more specific things in general, using search operators (such as using quotation marks) was essential. But Startpage would always, and it still does, to this day, prevent me from doing so. I'd be greeted by a quite threatening looking screen, misidentifying me as some sort of robot, or search request abuser. All I did was add quotation marks to my query... Filling in the help form or reaching out to them on Twitter did nothing to help.

(Image: Startpage.com)

I really don't know if I am the only person having this issue. I am not doing anything that is listed over there. It also does not seem to be an issue with my Wi-Fi connection, as this still happens to me with mobile data, and in every browser I've tested.

It is probably worth mentioning the controversy that DuckDuckGo got into fairly recently, when they decided to downrank "russian disinformation" from the search results, which made all the heavy users of linux and wojak memes (this very specific demographic) very upset. #StandWithUkraine

What can be upsetting to me about this though, is the inconsistency with claims, as DDG had flexed their "unbiased results" feature in the past more than once.

I could also go on for quite a long time talking about how the heavily advertised "Brave Browser" is probably one of the worst and most shady things that the internet of recent years has seen (and why Vivaldi is much better in every conceivable way, not sponsored btw) but that might be a topic for another day...

My April Fools Thing Will Probably Be Very Predictable

You and your April Fool jokes. I don't think that's funny! (Image: Popeye - Cookin' With Gags/Famous Studios 1955)

And very hexagon shaped. That is all.

End of Post

Initially I wanted to have a lot more in this post but quickly realized how tiring it is to write all of this, so I'm going to try to summarize a lot of it.

Paused Gaming™

For most of my teenage years the times I actually sat down to play a video game were not many. Most of the time I'd play the games I already knew, and newer things would usually just be "one-offs", and I'd also playtest stuff I'd make myself more too. Not a lot of "unfamiliar games" that I've finished. And during the pandemic that got worse. As such the last "actual game" that I still haven't finished was... SpongeBob Battle for Bikini Bottom. Hopefully that changes this year, and after that I'm playing OMORI. I'm not a real gamer. I only play mobile games

New Snap On Redbubble Soon

Enjoyed this one for whatever reason? I'm adding it to my redbubble shop... eventually. Not now.

A.I. Voices - Where Are They?

I still do want to bring more fun text-to-speech voices to Uberduck but my focus and priorities kinda shifted a bit as I got tired of going through the entire process of training voices. Sorry. It's a neurodivergent thing. One day the interest will be reignited.

Content Creation

If you haven't heard, I've reopened my music commissions on YouTube. That's one thing. But as said in many wall of text™ videos that I posted on my main channel, I want to do more varied stuff, and especially use my voice more. But it's hard as an autistic individual and "vocal underdoer", who speaks for probably less than an hour total in a single day.

One day I just hope to get just enough motivation to step out of my comfort zone!

Conclusion

As rough as life is right now, especially in my country, especially in my position, I've been having some small victories here and there, and making this blog was probably one of them. (Either that or a mistake)

Bitty's Message of the Day

Keep on dreaming! ...I couldn't think of anything better

#newsletter #personal #preservation #ninjin #ninjin: clash of carrots #lost media #startpage.com #duckduckgo #internet privacy #brave browser #uberduck