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oldguydoesstuff · 1 year

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Bare CPU Printed Circuit Board for the Alpha NT XL366 workstation I designed back in 1995 or so. This was an obscure model of an obscure product line, made by a company (Digital Equipment Corp.) that is now itself obscure. To be honest I don't even remember much about this machine now.

What I do remember is the HUUUUGE fight I got into with our Signal Integrity team while I was designing this, over decoupling capacitors.

Decoupling caps are small components that hold a charge to help even out power when a circuit is active. This board featured hundreds of them, smaller than a grain of rice (see photo comparison of mounting pads vs rice grain below).

Our Signal Integrity team was tasked with making sure everything was electrically stable, so they required many hundreds of these to be added to the board, based on power simulations they did. Trouble was, they wanted so many, we couldn't even build the board.

My job as the Systems Engineer here was to meet the requirements from the SI team, but also from manufacturing, and the requirement that my PCB layout techs don't go insane trying to place and route the board. SI really only cared about signal quality, so they would not relent, and I ended up getting shouted at at one point by a junior SI engineer who was also under a lot of stress, when I said "There are different schools of thought on this.." and he screamed THERE ARE NOT DIFFERENT SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT ON THIS!!

It got to the point where the product was not going to get built, because we just couldn't fit like a thousand of these tiny caps on the board, we needed to ditch at least 25% of them to have a hope. The models were the models though, and you couldn't argue against them.

But then my boss got a genius idea. What if we could prove the simulation models were too conservative? We came up with an experiment where we would remove caps from an older system and measure the power supply noise, to see how many caps could be taken off before the system became unstable.

Me and the junior SI engineer were tasked with doing this experiment (later deemed The Decapitation Project), so we grabbed a Tektronix scope and Metcal soldering station and headed over to this abandoned lab we had in our old Maynard headquarters, a now creepy attic space on the 6th floor of an old mill building. Here were a few older Alphastation 3000 workstations we built years earlier, working but waiting to be recycled.

We had this special program that would thrash the CPU within an inch of its life, to put a big demand on the power supply system. While this was running, the SI engineer measured the power quality, while I proceeded to (very carefully to avoid short-circuiting the system) actually desolder caps from the board while the workstation was running.

We managed to get about 1/3 of them off before there was any noticeable effect, and we found one specific type of cap was not doing much of anything at all. We took the data back to the head of the SI team, and he finally relented and let us remove several hundred capacitors. (He also buried the report and data I had, because he didn't want the bad publicity - I remember being mad about that)

The system got built after that, and worked just fine. We did try to enact a small bit of petty revenge on the SI team manager though - there was a recognition event for people involved on the project, and me and our PCB procurement guy decided to give the SI team manager a special "Faraday Award" for achievement in capacitance (Farads are a measure of capacitance - geeky eng joke). We took an old bowling trophy with a giant, beer-can sized electrolytic capacitor strapped to the top of it as the award. He was a no-show so we didn't get to present it. Those SI guys never did have much of a sense of humor.

Anyway, long story sorry. Just thinking of it recently because I was helping someone at work with an analog simulation and I remembered this..

#digitalequipmentcorp #hardware #engineering #digital electronics

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thenineofus · 2 years

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It's cause it's about FILM do you get it? It's about film! It's about digital vs analogical, it's about "the viewers", it's about film history and legacy, it's about how once you make film into spectacle it will consume everything, it's about how if you go out looking for the perfect shot you will die trying, because the perfect shot is where you least expect it to be, it's about how cinema is a collaboration, it's about not looking at the camera, but also sometimes the only way to get what you need is to deliberately look at the camera

#nope #nope 2022 #jordan peele #i am CRYING #about me

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weirdozjunkary · 9 months

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ADHD brain too,but i am jusy an thing not an guy ...SO OPEN UP YOUR BRAIN AND LET ME SEE WHAT OTHER FANDOS YOU ARE /nf/hj

Aight aight, I’ll humour you guys. Let me see if I can remember every fandom I’m in. Sit tight cause this is gonna be a bit…

(Most of these are just media I like. I don’t know 100% about all of them. Also not including people I am a fan of)

Shows: MLP, LPS, Kill La Kill, Octonauts, Bluey, Pikwik Pack, Lego Monkey Kid, Dead End, Scooby Doo, BNA, Scooby Doo, RISE:TMNT, Carmen Sandiego(2021), Steven universe, Adventure Time, Regular Show, TOH, Amphibia, Tom and Jerry, Loony Tunes, Super Giant Robot Brothers, Centaur World, Stranger Things, SpongeBob, Love Death and Robots, TAWOG, Toopy and Binoo

Games: Sonic, Mario, Little Nightmares, Resident evil, Undertale, Deltarune, Outlast, Omori, FNAF, MyHouse.WAD, Amanda the adventurer, GOW, Stray, Cuphead, The Stanley Parable, Poppy Playtime, My Friendly Neighborhood, BATIM, BATDR, Pizza Tower, Pokemon, FNF, Faith:The Unholy Trinity, Animal Crossing, AER:Memories of Old, Splatoon, Kirby, In Sound Mind, Portal(1&2), Subnautica, Here Comes Niko, A Hat In Time, Hollow Knight, Subway Midnight, DDLC

Online Media: Welcome Home, Mandela catalogue, Creepypasta, Sonic.EXE(?), The Walten Files, Dreams of an insomniac, The Children Under The House, The Monument Mythos, Liminal Land, Happy Meat Farms, Winter of 83, Vita Carnis, Xploshi/Soucorp, Gemini Home Entertainment, Mystery Flesh Pit National Park, Midwest Angelica

Other Media: Spiderman, Frankenstein, Barbie, Coraline, Monsters VS Aliens, Puss In Boots, Hardcore Henry, Learning With Pibby, Sam and Max, Mech Cadet Yu, Monty Python, Mitches Vs The Machines, The House, Ponyo, NOPE, SpyXFamily, (Analog/Digital Horror in general), (Cosmic Horror in general)

There’s most likely more, but this is as far as I can think of at the moment and boy it’s already a lot haha. I know there is a lot of horror stuff that I haven’t thought about, but it’s still a lot of it. Please use this to get into new things you think are interesting because I could ramble about a lot of these things

#inbix #rambles #textpost #long post #multiple fandoms #I plan on making fanart for some in the future

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mrwilliewonka · 2 months

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"Analog synthesizers vs digital synthesizers" why are you pitting 2 bad bitches against each other? They are kissing. They are having passionate gay sex.

#synthesizers #synth

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madeofsweetness · 2 years

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Book Talk Continuation @2pretty

I honestly loved reading your thoughts (the analogy to junk food was perfect!) and I agree with everything you said. The most beautiful thing you wrote was, "Our time should be spent in a way that makes us love life, not distracts from us living it." It’s the whole conclusion of the book really! I’ve noticed that many people in our generation are almost against the idea of this. They call everything cringe, make fun of people who are happy, disrespect anyone who doesn’t believe their nonsense, and try to drag others down. This is the problem of social media I guess and I’m sure you’ve talked about it before.

Also let me point out, the quote at page 202 is spot on! When I began to limit my sm usage and do No Social Media Sundays (thanks to you girl!), I felt anew. I now do not wanna spend no more than like 20 minutes on apps like twitter and tumblr cause it feels weird😭 Cultivating a life worth living is the ultimate freeing state to be in and a lot of these apps become extremely wasteful, once you start filling your schedule with higher quality activities. It’s just like Outkast said, you need to get up, get out and get something. Don’t let the days of your life pass by!

I would love to hear about any habits you have or will do as well! But here are my habits I would like to implement after reading this book:

Calling people instead of texting. Honestly, the only people I call are my family but when I make more friends, I want them to know, calling is my preferred method of communication. I want to be even more human again and only texting doesn’t allow for that. (Reference to page 145 about irl communication vs digital)

Printing or writing out directions instead of using google maps. I love google maps but I want to be able to have an internal compass, know which street will come after the other and be able to ask people around me for help like my parents do, without feeling so sure that “oh my phone will tell me”.

Only accessing social media on my laptop instead of through the apps. The apps are there to make the process convenient and addicting but I’m planning on using these apps for a sole purpose which means, I can’t keep caring about conveniency!

Only looking up words in my physical dictionary. As a kid, I loved reading my dictionary and encyclopedia but as technology progressed, it became easier to quickly open the next tab and search "what does [blank] mean?" without thinking. I honestly miss the feeling of cracking open a hardcover book and scanning through the words until I finally landed on what I was searching for. Plus I think dictionaries are good for truth/historical purpose, it’s not based in emotion ;) hehe

Buy photo albums again!! I still use disposable cameras so that’s not a problem, but instead of keeping my pics digital, I want to print them out from my phone and keep them safe in a beautiful family album like how my other memories are. I also was totally inspired by my mom bcs I seen her photo book from her teen years and it warmed my heart completely. Memories will always be cherished, even the silly ones.

Praying 24/7. To talk, to reflect, to ask for guidance, etc. I’m realizing that praying isn’t to be done only when in a [blank] state of mind nor is it to be "perfect". (Direct reference to page 95)

Learning to not just whip out my headphones when I feel awkward. On page 100, I felt sooo called out when he said iPods created this way of living that now enables you to have a musical backdrop for your entire day lol. I love music too much to give it up whenever I’m outside especially since it helps with my emotions, but I do recognize that being plugged in constantly will not want to make people talk to me, and I want to look approachable and friendly!!

I eventually want to start taking 2 hour walks. That’s it.

Months ago, I wished badly to have love letters written about me from my future man haha, but I realized I could write myself love letters! I decided that every year I could write about what this year was about for me. I don’t know if I will still do that or if I’ll just write everything down in my journal and label that as my "love letter" but either way, I’m documenting off of my phone.

Just like when I was a kid, I now always carry a current book im reading, my word finder book and a notebook whenever I leave the house. Only problem is I need a bigger bag haha.

As a (Black) American, I think it’s crucial for me to learn the skills that my grandmother and great grandmother knew, things like sewing, quilting, and cooking without recipes lol, are what I want to know how to do as well. I think it’s a wonderful way to honor them and when I have my own family, I would love to teach my children too. These crafts should not be forgotten, it’s culture.

#mineee

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several-ravens · 4 days

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@jo1sstuff i'm going to reply to this in its own post so i can find it and add to it later more easily if i need to

also it's under the cut because it's a demonstation that's long af

tldr: technology

so here is the line of thinking that got me to this conclusion:

1) episode 65 presents something totally different from any other category we've met so far, and that is analog horror (so found footage, creepy videos, possessed digital devices, and the likes). usually it is about something that's old, or older than the person who uses it (just like tessa winters in 2017 who finds the (alleged) program made by sergei yshanka in the 1980's)

and analog horror has been a very important part of the 'new age' of horror as technology and the internet grew. there are some very famous things like the movies the ring and blair witch project, or mickey mouse whistling, or the scp foundation, or the new doom mod, or creepy pasta, you get the idea

my personal comment: it's very meta to have an episode on analog horror which is literally an ancestor and relative to tma itself, and i LOVE this

2) tessa winters makes a loooong monologue about the differences between analog and digital and draws our attention to jon's tape recorder

which reminded me of the very first episode where he explains why he records some statements on tape: "I plan to digitise the files as much as possible and record audio versions, though some will have to be on tape recorder, as my attempts to get them on my laptop have met with… significant audio distortions." (unofficial transcripts)

3) in episode 62, gertrude says: "Who does the book come from?" and mary keay responds: "The End, of course." (unofficial transcripts)

notice how she said 'who' and not 'where'. so my guess is the categories are not only there to classify the different types of fears but also have an 'entity' or a 'god' attached to it

my personal comment: i like the idea that they are similar to the great old ones from lovecraft, who also plays a very fundamental part in today's horror

4) i'm then reminded of american gods by neil gaiman (<3), where the gods of the old worships have a war with the new ones (technology, media, etc.)

which brings us back to our point no.2 (analog vs. digital), and the fact that apparently the only things that won't go into jonathan's computer are the statements that fit into the categories, so that are associated with our 'old gods' (the end, and the 13 others)

"why wouldn't they go digital?" you might ask. well, because they are at war with digital and the new technologies (or something of that kind). here i quote the unofficial transcripts from mag47: jonathan says: "You make it sound like there’s a… war." to which delirium michael responds with: "[heh] Then I will say nothing further. I wouldn’t wish to tarnish your ignorance prematurely."

5) the fear of our future being taken over by technology is a very real thing (detroit become human comes to my mind rn, also fallout somehow (even though it's more about capitalism but technology is still important, i.e. nuclear weapons), also the current discourses with ai, etc.)

so its just a draft for now, but my guess is something along the lines of 'technology' or like 'progress'

P.S. (i know editing a post after it has been posted is bad but honetly idc): you (jo1sstuff) said something about the 15th corridor not being there at the time of episode 35, which confirms this theory about 'technology' being a new, emergent deity

#no spoilers beyond mag65 please i don't want to know if i'm right or wrong #i know a lot about analog horror and the history of horror on the internet #my credentials: my boyfriend is very passionate about this subject and loves to ramble about it #so when tessa winters started talking about analog vs. digital my brain immediately switched on #pun very much intended #tma #the magnus archives #tma spoilers

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shannankle · 6 months

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Shadow Meta Series Post#3: Anurak and Old vs New Technology

This is my third post in my Shadow meta series on technology, time, and horror. You can check out my introduction and plan for that in this post!

When watching through the first seven episodes of Shadow for the first time, Josh’s technology usage was fairly obvious. But when I watched through the episodes again with an eye on technology, I was surprised by a few characters who were also heavily surrounded by tech. One of these is brother Anurak.

In his office alone he has two clocks, three landline phones, a tape recorder, a Newton’s cradle, a lamp, a portable TV radio cassette player (thanks @raypakorn for helping to confirm this one), another radio or older music player (my best guess is an FM radio stereo but I can’t find a closer shot of this one), and candles.

My goal here is to do a reading of Anurak’s relationship with technology and put forth a few potential theories as to what Shadow might be trying to communicate through this. Unlike other posts in the series so far, the conclusions on this one remain much more speculation as I feel we have a lot more to learn about Anurak in order to get to a deeper reading. I’ll be relying on some other theories about Anurak, particularly @wen-kexing-apologist 's theory that Anurak is the one-armed man.

Old vs New Technology

What struck me most about Anurak in going over his technology, was the fact that he was pretty even with Josh in terms of how many different types of tech they had. However, Anurak’s tech gives the impression of being more dated. If we go with the theory that Anurak is the one-armed man, then we know his execution happened 20 years before the present day, so 1979.

My theory is that most of his technology predates 1979. It’s hard to track everything down, and we have to consider whether it’s more appropriate to go with the year a technology was invented or with the precise model. Still here’s some of what I was able to track down.

Anurak’s Tech

Three landline phones

While two of these look like the phones found elsewhere in the show, one of these is a rotary which were invented back in 1892. These models seem to have been common up through the 50s with the corded landlines used elsewhere in the show coming on the market in the 60s and 70s.

TV Radio Cassette Player

This one was surprisingly tricky to track down. You can find models being resold online but actually figuring out when they first went on the market was a dead end. Most of the ones I found were from the 80s when they seemed to be most popular. The earliest I found was a model from Japan from 1978. This is cutting it very close but it does technically make the cut.

Tape recorder

The model used here looks to be a Sony TC-150 portable tape recorder and player from 1977–it also makes the cut

The Newton’s Cradle

Invented in 1967

The clocks

Both are analog so safely in our window

Music player

If we go with my guess (FM radio stereo), the first FM multiplex stereo tuner came out in the US in 1961

Candles

Obviously these are pre-1979. But they’re of extra note because we also see the one-armed man associated with candles

Some of Josh’s tech

Walkman

I’m not sure the exact model, but it looks like a 90s era walkman. The 80s versions were much blockier and come the 2000s walkmans were getting into digital players and CD players. Regardless, walkmans were invented in 1979 which makes the year stand out as a split in technology in the show.

Handheld video game console

I’m sure I could be a bit off here, but it looks like a Game Boy, which was released in 1989. The first handheld console with interchangeable cartridges was released in 1979.

Cell phone

It's hard to tell much about Josh's phone. But given the size, it looks at home in the late 90s. We can safely say it's post 1979.

Digital camcorder

Again, not sure of the model, but the first digital camera with recording came out in 1995

Camera

I haven’t tracked down the model yet, but looking at the history of most of the big camera companies, this looks at home in the 90s, definitely post-1979 though

Some Take-A-Ways and A Theory

I won’t pretend my methodology here is foolproof, and it’s hard to know when these were available in Thailand since tech comes to places at different paces. But I think it paints an interesting picture overall. If Josh is surrounded by more contemporary, often cutting edge tech for the time, Anurak is surrounded by the past.

This old vs new dynamic is right at home with the themes of late 90s horror, which I’ll explore in a later post to come. But here I want to think about what it might mean for Anurak to be stuck in the past.

Throughout the first seven episodes, Anurak is consistently opposing and denying change and the supernatural. This comes to the forefront in episode 3, as Anurak is discussing the bible with Dan’s class. He tells them if they follow God, then they’ll know ghost stories are lies.

On the one hand, this could be Anurak denying the supernatural in order to stop Dan and others from finding out some hidden truth. On the other hand, this Christian framework offers a safe black and white logic between safety and risk, reality and fantasy, the abject and the normative.

In any case, Dan jumps in to challenge Anurak. He tells him “If old beliefs don’t work, there's no harm in trying new things.” He then tells Anurak that “closing ourselves off from the world is more horrifying.” These comments show the audience the growing tension between Dan and Anurak. Anurak repeatedly denies the shadow’s reality and asks Dan to perform that same denial. Yet the scene here feels so specific in how it frames Anurak as stuck in the past and tradition.

This is emphasized further as the scene cuts to the video of Trin performing outside of the theater. A sharp reminder of modern technology, queerness, and the supernatural mystery surrounding Trin’s death.

Now there could be a number of reasons why Anurak is stuck in the past and the one taking on this thematic role.

Let’s assume that Anurak is the one-armed man. Then we know that he is likely queer and has gone through a number of traumatic experiences because of this. I’d argue that we could read him as someone who has come to conform and act for those with power due to trauma and a fear of change. Not dissimilar to Chadok from The Eclipse.

I recognize we only have half of his story at this point, and I may need to make another post addressing this once the second half airs. As it stands, I view this as speculation rather than a full reading of Anurak’s role viz a viz technology. Still, the pattern of him being stuck in the past is there, regardless of what the show will ultimately do with these connections.

If Anurak is the one-armed man, has he closed himself off from the world? Is he trying to protect Dan by metaphorically making him hide his queerness by suppressing and denying the supernatural? He continually emphasizes reality, telling Dan that if he doesn’t believe in the shadow it can’t hurt him.

A similar exchange to the one discussed above plays out at the start of episode 5, when Dan confronts Anurak about his sense that the shadow is linked to Trin. Anurak tells Dan that "We're talking about reality here, not feelings," something he also tells Dan’s mother. Denying one’s feelings and over-reliance on rationalism (see my post on surrealism vs realism here) could be interpreted as a coping mechanism, a way to survive by pushing your feelings down and conforming to violent systems.

Perhaps this is a reason why Anurak reacts with fear over the idea that Dan might not forgive his father (and might even want to let him suffer). Of course this is also tied into cultural values around filial piety and we could read it as a fear of Dan straying from the correct path. But perhaps Anurak’s anxiety is also heightened by the fear of seeing Dan choose a path where he refuses to hide his anger and his pain.

In the hospital Anurak tells Dan that he can’t change the way people think. In his office, Dan tells Anurak that he "should let go of [his] fixation on the teachings" since they might be blinding him from the truth. Conform or push for change. Bury your emotions to not get hurt more or use them to fuel you.

This dynamic between Anurak and Dan is also paralleled in what we see of Anurak and Trin in the past. Trin is pushing for change, and, while kinder than the headmaster, Anurak resists, telling Trin, “But you’re trying to change a long-standing tradition.” He acknowledges Trin’s opinion in a sense but really just resists change in a nicer way. He’s not angry or using punishment, but change is still a nonstarter.

Trin pushes back asking “If the tradition was good, then why would people want to change it?” Interestingly, Anurak unlike the headmaster doesn’t defend the goodness or value of tradition. Instead he uses “logic” to point out the difficulty of making changes. Interestingly, Anurak tells the headmaster that “these things can’t be easily changed but we must respect reality,” but then turns to use such “reality” to debate Trin and make him back down.

Reality and reason are safe to Anurak. Much more than the uncertainty of resistance or change. He may not like the status quo, it likely has done him much harm, but to resist and be hurt is far scarier to him. So he conforms, stuck in time like the butterflies on display in his office.

One final piece of technology

I talk about narrative prosthesis in this post, but lets talk real prosthetics. If we continue to assume Anurak is the one-armed man, this means that his left arm is a prosthetic. As @wen-kexing-apologist has noted here, he rarely moves it, and in certain scenes if you watch it closely you can see it reflect light or hang in a way that isn’t quite like his right arm.

Prosthetics are technology, but they fall into a couple different categories. Some are functional while others are cosmetic. Given that we never see Anurak use his arm and it typically remains immobile, it’s likely that the prosthetic is largely cosmetic. Meaning it’s used to make Anurak look like he has an arm, to hide his difference and help him conform. Once again connecting Anurak to both the idea of alterity and difference but also conformity.

I want to mention one other allusion to prosthetics that comes up in Shadow. The bust in episode 7 is a replica of Lacoon and His Sons. The statue famously was missing the right arm for around 400 years before it was found in 1906. A year after it was unearthed in 1509, the pope’s architect held a contest to see who could best figure out what the arm looked like. An arm was added in 1532 that remained until the real arm was unearthed in the early 1900s. It is interesting to think about how the statue was given a prosthetic for 400 years, reflecting values about bodily wholeness.

In one version of the Lacoon myth, he and his sons were punished by the gods after trying to warn people about the Trojan horse. Both the myth and the story of the statue’s prosthetic touch on themes of punishment and conformity tied together with technology.

If my reading of Anurak is accurate, this ties not just to the fact that he is missing his left arm, but to his relationship with trauma and conformity which is expressed in part through his relationship with technology.

Alright! Next time we’ll jump into cameras and horror!

#shadow #shadow the series #shadow meta #shadow the series meta #shadow meta series #shadow meta series post 3 #my meta #my posts

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rongzhi · 1 year

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can you please explain the last tiktok with the self confidence alcohol? its so intriguing but meaningless to me

referencing this post

the meaning is pretty surface level absurdism so if you don't get it in general, it probably just doesn't fit your sense of humor.

there are some chinese/asian elements that are more specific but they're not completely necessary to find it funny. these include:

Opening format/tone of the video; there's a genre of douyins/Chinese shortform videos that are high production "moral lesson" type videos. They're sort of corny Dhar Mann-ish videos. The video is colorgraded the same way all of these videos tend to be (blue/orange, high contrast). Themes of the digital age vs. traditional/analog are re-occuring. Honestly when I first swiped across this video, I actually thought it was going to be one of those videos and I only paused to keep watching to see how dumb it was going to get (little did I know).

Not helping old people up (explained in a note on the video)

the romance element is playing on tropes commonly found in dramas and other shortform video skits; the rich/poor dynamic is a popular theme.

the exaggerated 80s pompadour hairstyle is commonly used for comedic imagery nowadays.

Chinese people, especially in the north, wear thermal underwear under their clothes in the cold season. The levels/unlocking referenced at the end of the video are referencing/spoofing MMORPG mobile/PC type games, which in general are hugely popular in China.

#text #answered ask

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grandhotelabyss · 4 months

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what was the experience of going from no internet (atleast in its modern form) to it suddenly dominating everything in one's life?

I enjoy the genre of question in which I am implied to be a touring carnival exhibit, The World's Oldest Living Man. "Do you remember when you had to wind up cars with a crank before they'd drive? Was the world really black and white or does it just look that way in the movies?" (I'm not mad at you, anon; I'm just teasing.)

Anyway, I may be in the minority here, but the really rough patch was the intermediate period between the last decade the world was mostly analog (the 1990s) and the first decade it was mostly digital (the 2010s), despite the socio-political chaos (wokeness vs. populism and then the pandemic) caused by the latter. If you were extremely online in the 2000s, which I sort of was, and the monoculture still reigned, and even in some respects seemed like it would reign forever, everything felt sort of hallucinatory and unreal, a bright waking nightmare; this is what Fisher's writing captures well, the disappointed cyber-utopian's dazed horror at a permanent zombie mainstream. Before that, in the analog days, counterculture and mainstream culture were more stably sealed off from each other, and you didn't necessarily expect them to bleed into each other, but also thought you could make a go of it in the counterculture if you could find your way there. (I didn't start going online until I was 18, in the year 2000, when I went to college.) Whereas now, it's all one thing. Pace Angela Nagle, there are no normies left to kill. The Boomers can't stop fiddling with their phones at the restaurant table while I keep mine politely in my pocket; they read their ebooks while I still only read (at least anything serious) in print; and they've seen memes I've never even heard of. Perhaps we're all hallucinating these days, but we're in it together.

Now certain shifts from the old world to the new are a little overstated. Remember, television killed your elders' attention spans before the internet came along, and my parents' generation were the first that happened to, back in the '50s. Everything McLuhan said about TV is 10 times truer of the internet, but it was true of TV too. Then there was talk radio and the print underground, which is how I and my father before me learned all the conspiracy theories before "online" came along. I do not speak of pornography, but it was there, and one knew where. I grew up on MTV and comic books, so I've never had much of an attention span to speak of. I like books, though. I don't think they'll ever disappear; I think the internet will disappear, and books will be all that survives of us, which is why I insist, no matter how online I am or ever will be, on writing books, real-life paper books, for our successor empires—human, robot, or alien—to ponder over in the lone and level sands.

#the internet #media studies

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possessedpasm · 1 year

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hi! sorry if this has been asked before, but: how do u get the palettes for your retro pieces? do you color normally and use a filter, or what is your process??

Hi! I've not actually been asked that before! I'd be happy to answer :3

It's a mix of both, actually! When doing commissions, i colorpick from the source material and then adjust the tone, saturation, and hue by hand to make it look aged/give it a more natural paint look since vintage media is all done analogous, and then sometimes processed through tapes, ect. A good way to get an eye for that is by studying aged media and even colorpicking from that! Bobjinx on Twitter made a good point to compare what modern media color pallettes look like vs older ones (typically more dull compared to what our neon and technicolor digital colors can achieve).

I also use tonal filters on CSP (typically set to 10% or lower) to adjust the lighting and to help balance tone and bring the piece together in a more harmonious way!

The main thing, if you want your digital art to look authentic vintage is to keep it from looking Too Sharp. Digital art is meant to be worked on in High Definition, whereas tradional can get blurry, sloppy, messy, paint and inks bleed, and you can't zoom in ×100 on a paper canvas- so keep that analog method in mind when you're doing digital art! It's definitely helped me get better at achieving that look :3

#talkin pasm #art tips #this is a good ask thank u!#one day I will make a tutorial

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khalaris · 23 days

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For the writers Ask: 5,6,9,10,11,13,15,16,23 👀 (if you want to of course)

Yooo, Kris coming in here with ALL the questions! 😆 Thank you for asking, these are a lot of fun :)

5: What is your go-to way to deal with writers block?

I wish I had some sort of guaranteed way of getting over writer's block, but really, when I'm not feeling it, I usually just do something else for a while. And when I do write, it's more bullet points of ideas or sometimes random little moments, lines or scenes that might turn into something later but most often just clutter up my file haha.

6: Do you have a motivational cycle? (As in phases in which you barely write and phases in which you write so much holy shit)

It's not a cycle as such. I feel like my writing motivation is very dependant on my general stress level. So I'm pretty motivated at the moment, since I just had 3 weeks off and managed to relax a lot and completely forget about work for that time.

Also, I'm not even going to pretend my motivation isn't heavily impacted by how readers react to my stories. That's honestly been a bit of a sticking point for me recently, because out of all the people who read my last couple of shorter stories only a handful actually liked them and I'm wondering if it's because the stories were mostly focused on secondary/minor characters or if my writing was just crap. (ok so I know one of them wasn't that good, which is why I've put it in my hidden collection for now to be reworked later) But even then, I try to just go no fuck you I can write whatever I want! and keep going. (that's directed at myself btw, not my readers :D)

Well, that's a lot of text just to say 'no' haha.

9: What genre is your favourite to write?

Gotta be Hurt/Comfort, right? I love reading that stuff and I love writing it. With straight up Fluff being a close second.

10: Do you read and write similar stuff or are there differences?

Very similar. The biggest difference is probably that I can't write all the things I read.

11: What kind of relationships do you like writing best? (Family, platonic, romantic, etc.)

I most love writing relationships that aren't easy to categorize or that blur the lines.

A relationship between two characters that is full of trust and love and intimacy, but there's no romance or sex involved. Or a developing qpr between three characters, all of whom have kind of a different view of what they are and how they work. Or the two guys, one of whom is ace and the other is straight and aro, still getting into a committed relationship. Or the former couple, who still love each other, but who are in their own way grieving their former relationship that just didn't work out.

And since I love writing about emotional self-discovery, that also often plays a large part in those relationships. Like for example, I always write Moritz as aromantic, so while at first glance it seems like his and Ernstls relationship in Die Welt... is a 'normal' romantic one, Moritz is very much confused about a lot of things that are happening and that are perhaps expected of him and he has a long way ahead of him in discovering his own feelings and what they mean.

13: How many WIPs do you have open?

Too many. Let me go look.

Errrr, it's 19. That I'm at least occasionally actively working on. That's not counting random ideas or even all my almost-finished Münster stuff. Yeah, definitely too many.

15: What is the weirdest thing you had to look up for writing?

I once spent a lot of time looking up the organizational structure of the Austrian/Viennese police in the 80s and today and all I got was the certainty that Tatort script writers don't have the slightest idea how those things work and are just making up anything they want XD

16: What is something you didn't have to look up but is still weird to know?

There was a scene in one of my Münster WIPs where I waxed poetic about headphones and tube amps and DACs and digital vs analog for several paragraphs. And then I had to edit out all of my audiophile ramblings.

23: Is there a project you want to talk about?

Hmm. I do have this Coffeeshop AU idea that I've written a few snippets for already. It features one of the relationship dynamics in question 11 (the ace guy and the straight aro guy). I love the whole set-up tbh, I think it works really well.

The backstory is basically, that Moritz used to do all sorts of odd jobs, never anything for long, but then he met Claudia and realised he wanted to give her a stable home, so he opened a coffee shop. Bibi used to be a detective, but with no Sonderermittler Moritz to help her back to her feet and no Ernstl to actually recruit her for the team, she was discharged from the police because of her drinking problem and ended up working for Moritz (whom she knew from one of his odd jobs) and basically running the coffee shop for him. Ernstl meanwhile also never went to work for the police. Instead he lawyered his way up to district attorney. He likes to spend his lunch breaks at a certain coffee shop where eventually Moritz crosses his path.

I feel like this is going to be a long story, although not as monstrously ambitious as Die Welt in unseren Händen. Unfortunately I don't have the time or mental capacity to really get into it in the forseeable future. It also still needs a lot more plot. But yeah, I'm looking forward to writing this story one day.

Writer ask game

#ask game #answered asks #tatort wien #writing #thanks for asking <3

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frosty-tian · 9 months

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Old VS New Anime Styles (Whitewashing Colour Palettes), a Long Ramble:

I wonder when did the industry decided to lighten the skin-tone of characters, and why?

Because I notice it’s not something limited to Inazuma Eleven.

(Please note: I'm aware there are exceptions (not all characters get skin tones lightened, certain characters get darkened skin colours, etc.), I'm simply saying things based on my own observations, what I heard/read about and personal experience. That being said, please take what I say with a grain of salt, and if you have examples/information which either goes against what is written in this post or notice mistakes I made (preferably with proof), you're free to either add onto the post, comment or even DM. My main aim with this post is to learn more, hear what others' have to say and have discussions (please refrain from being racist and starting arguments).

One Piece:

Ushio no Tora:

Rurouni Kenshin (don’t support this franchise, the creator is a confirmed pedophile):

Naruto’s appearance in the original (especially earlier episodes) VS in Boruto:

Even when the character is light-skinned, it still feels like the whole palette was lightened.

One example I could think of is the Tokyo Mew Mew reboot:

Another is Sailor Moon:

Personally, I believe the main reason is the prominent colourism in East Asia (how the lighter skin tones aligns with the beauty standards better), attempting to ‘change the aesthetic/colour palette’ to ‘modernize’ the series and hope to attract newer audiences (but done poorly), and stray away from the game’s colour palette (in Inazuma Eleven’s case). Another theory is the skin colours are all made to be the same in order to have an easier time to maintain consistency when animating and most chose to lighten the skin colour because it’s possibly the ‘more popular’ choice (which once again, possibly stems from the colourism issue).

(I did at first think it’s possible that the switch of analog to digital animation methods, but turns out it already started in the 1990s, so while it may still be in development (overall as a method), it likely is not a reason for Inazuma Eleven. Though I did notice that sometimes the colours’ consistencies can vary greatly in the older animes).

(Example: an old Tokyo Mew Mew DVD cover featuring Ichigo.):

I don’t know, what do y’all think?

#colourism #colorism #anime reboots #inazuma eleven #ina 11 #inazuma 11 #long post #my post #frosty babbles

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thenineofus · 2 hours

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I made a comment on a youtube video and I am getting a bunch of angry people answering me, but I will not feed the trolls, I will however post on tumblr dot com.

So the video has a section CORRECTLY criticizing the AI generated images used on Late Night with the Devil (2024). A movie I really liked, but that every time one of those images popped up, they broke my immersion and made the movie so much less for me.

One of the arguments people make to defend this decision is that it's such a small section of the film (maybe 1 min in total) that it's not fair to judge the whole thing by it. To which I say, yeah exactly, they never needed to do that, they could have had a black screen with "we'll be right back" written in arial font and I swear it would have been way less immersion breaking than those abominations. And also wouldn't have made anyone angry.

Another defense is that it's an indie film and thus they needed to save money, to which again, just make a simple text then. Literally in the entire 100+ years of independent cinema no one before this movie has ever used AI generated images to cut cost, every single one of the other independent artists have found other ways of making it work, maybe you ask a friend for a favor, maybe you draw it yourself, maybe you find royalty free stock images. You can't pretend there is no other way.

The worst part of all of this is that people don't seem to realize (or they do and just don't care) that this is an obvious testing of the waters for producers. The directors probably put those images there as placeholders in early cuts, but someone looked at it and said "hey that looks pretty good, and it was for free, maybe no one will notice, and if it works we can do more of that in the future!" And it's obvious that the movie made enough money that their plan worked. We will be seeing a lot more of that kind of shit in future productions and by the time it takes over the entire industry, everyone will act like it's just too established now to go back. Just like they did with digital cameras vs analogic, just like they did with CGI vs practical. Corporate greed keeps winning, and everything just gets a little bit worse everyday.

#about me #this is such a dumb thing to get worked up about in light of how many horrible things keep happening #so maybe just ignore this but i hate this i hate everything i wish i wasnt living in this reality

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