#choppost

even though i basically use tumblr for casual posts right now, i might force myself to get a bit more artsy with blog posts on my website where i'm not as limited by formats (i may even pay for neocities so i can posts video files and whatnot).

in thinking about the posts i could add to the feed, i was thinking about starting a monthly thread of the art/media that i've been enjoying, and maybe some bits of stuff i'm working on from my end. that would likely be the #1 thing i'd focus on posting.

i've also thought about writing some reference pages for things i know a bit more than the average person in - from music/band/artist info, video games, and maybe even some recipes (because god knows how much a bitch it is to deal with mobile layouts for those). i've started and abandoned pages on my site over and over for those kinds of things but i think it's just because the formats are too hard for myself to keep track of. more concise posts that are still informative will keep my brain in check.

It keeps following me and I keep telling it "no I'm not going to sign your fucking contract!" but it pesters me everywhere I go. and then it's about 5am in the real world and my fucking doorbell rings.

I shit you not I'm like half awake, only under about an hour of sleep, and now afraid this fucking bastard is after me and I start having a mini-panic attack in bed. I couldn't even process what the doorbell noise was at the time. I eventually woke up enough to realize that I was only having a dream and tried going back to sleep, but I couldn't, because my brain was still lingering on the nightmare and the fucker's voice kept telling me "you can't go back to sleep! that's not a part of the contract!" And this process repeated for what felt like 20 minutes.

The doorbell rang again, multiple times, and I started getting nervous again. It was enough noise to wake me up more than the last time at least. I finally got up and opened the door, and thankfully it was just a guy whose car battery failed and wanted permission to park it in the driveway while his friend was on the way to help him out. If anything else would've been at the door though, I think I was about to star in my own horror shoujo anime

FUCK YOU YOU STUPID LITTLE FUCKER

I've been getting ambitious with it, but I'll probably push out a more general update by the end of next (this?) week with only the aesthetic updates. I'll add the other stuff I have ideas for in time (as long as I don't get burned out again *crosses fingers*).

When the update gets pushed, I'll be taking down some pages for reconstruction. Hopefully they'll be more interesting/fleshed out when they're back up.

Some MSI motherboards supposedly have an issue with AMD Ryzen CPUs where they'll just throttle them at 1.5Ghz (around half of what a R5 1600, my CPU, can do) after installing chipset drivers or god knows what else. Most people online seem to have varying reasons and some, like me, have no idea the exact cause.

I suppose I just never noticed it because I ran quite a few modern triple A titles (NieR: Automata, Resident Evil 2 Remake, GTAV once or twice...) with little issue. I'm guessing it was my GPU, a GTX 1060, doing the heavy lifting, and those games probably only needed the visuals and not the processing power.

After an on/off conversation with @gumpeiyokoi about Saturn emulation, and discovering how my comparatively weak laptop could run the games perfectly, the issue eventually clicked after many hours of fucking around with settings and fighting SEO for the answers I was looking for. I always saw that my CPU was running around 1.3-5Ghz in Task Manager, but never thought much of it unless I was doing something taxing. By then, I ignorantly thought it was the program's fault for being poorly optimized. Not until finding some articles online did I realize "No? It's supposed to show 3.6Ghz even when it's not doing anything big?" Thankfully, this was all fixed by resetting the BIOS settings to default (while turning back the things I needed on).

Now, my computer runs even FASTER than the upgrade from a HDD boot to an SSD boot, and recently, a Legacy boot to a UEFI boot. Not only can I play Saturn games flawlessly through Mednafen (don't worry, physical Saturn I actually own, I have component cables coming in the mail for you next week), but I can even run Minecraft with slightly fewer framerate drops! Wow! Ain't technology something! It'll be something I'll have to test out over the course of time, but it should certainly help in making videos in the future. As long as it took to process some of those parts in the Tenchi video, this will probably be a major game changer.

Mase just gave me the best Christmas gift earlier tonight 🩵

Meant to post this yesterday but tumblr failed me.

Continuing to test out the new turntable and pulled out one of my personal faves. This near mint copy was shoved in the corner of one of my local shops, probably forgotten to time, but maybe I’m over exaggerating that point.

I love Jarre but I wish he wasn’t an A.I. shill currently. Hopefully he learns (but he probably won’t because he’s old and rich)

Not that anybody who reads this is really going to care, but felt like getting my thoughts put out somewhere, since I don't really have a spot on my website to put this stuff currently (and I'm still trying to stay off Twitter for the most part and its word cap would only get in the way anyways)

I've been a massive fan of Orbital's for a couple years now, and would call Snivilisation one of my favorite albums that hits me on multiple emotional levels when sitting down to listen to it in its entirety. In Sides, The Middle of Nowhere, the Brown Album, and The Altogether are more of some of what I would consider masterpieces from them, although none of their albums are bad in my opinion. This album, however, is probably the one I've been the most frustrated with due to a variety of reasons.

The lead up to this album was an absolute shitshow, to start, because the brothers clearly weren't in contact with their social media manager enough (or their social media manager was just super incompetent at their job), self-leaking songs before their official announcements, and just announcing the album about 3 months before its release. Each version of the album available is different too, the digital and vinyl releases being the most basic, while there are 3, count 'em, 3, different versions of CDs you can get: one basic, one with a separate bonus CD, and one with included bonus tracks (all three are completely different and barely vary in price). This isn't to mention how NONE of these were explained until about ONE WEEK before the album's release, fucking up many peoples' pre-order plans (and prevented me from even pre-ordering the album in the first place as a result, especially as a US citizen who gets fucked with ~20 pound shipping costs). There was a super expensive (and limited) blu-ray edition that is the only "complete" package, with all bonus tracks (minus one), with surround mixes as a bonus, but, obviously, not everybody has the money (or set up) to settle for that package. Then, there was the whole stupid N(o) F(ucking) T(hanks) shit they pulled about a week before its release too, a clear last minute ploy to squeeze a couple extra bucks out of some idiots who believe in that shit.

Funny, then, for how obviously political/environmental this album is that they wanted to sell it through such incomprehensible means. I know that sometimes labels can get in the way of music releases, but the absurdity of all this cannot be just the result of some publisher's stupidity. So, I feel everybody, especially including the band, needs to take blame for this shit. This is stuff that is actually getting in the way for normal people to just listen to music, and I wouldn't be surprised if this album ends up under-performing as a result.

About the actual quality of the album, that's very subjective, and it shouldn't surprise anybody that I am pretty sour and my opinions are biased, even if I went in with as much of an open mind as I could. There are good tracks here, but most feel extremely under-developed for Orbital's standards (and learning that none of the tracks were actually worked in collaboration between the brothers strengthens this belief).

The always common political messages for Orbital albums here are also extremely on the nose, making it annoying when I have to read every other comment on posts regarding the album complaining from dense right-wing dickheads about how they want all their music to be 'non-political.' I obviously wholly support Orbital in continuing to push their messages, but the way they do it here is far from subtle or tongue in cheek (like in almost any of their previous albums). If I'm leaning on the same side of the political spectrum that they seem to be on, and I am finding their messages to be forced or cringey, then I think there is something wrong with the presentation of the message.

Notably, the album's themes revolving around the pandemic are almost 3 years behind the time it would have made the most impact. The pandemic still affects us today, yes, but they relay their message as if the damn thing just started a month ago. It would be more impactful and relevant if the focus was more on the people who still refuse to believe the virus exists, and how that affects the rest of us, but the messages don't go any further than "the virus sucks," or "the government doesn't care about us."

I find the only standout song on here to be "Are You Alive?," which is still a bit weak in the lyrical department, and feels like it has nothing to add for the last 4 minutes when the vocals get done in the first 3. The radio edit of it was horribly done though (although radio edits never do justice to Orbital's songs), cutting off the end of the track ungracefully and shortening the space between the main lyrics before there is time to let the music speak. It's unfortunate, because this song had potential to be one of their best in their whole catalogue.

I only recently got to listen to some of the bonus tracks (because somebody had to sneakily upload them on to Youtube), and it's a damn shame they weren't included on the main album (which is already under an hour in length, so come the fuck on with that). They are perhaps some of the best developed tracks out of this release, and it's completely insane that nobody told whoever was in charge to just put them all in the one package (hell, it would even further justify the album being a 2xLP, since the fact its only 51 minutes is just a waste of vinyl plastic at this point).