march 24, 2025
if you like grim history or gruesome deaths, you'll probably like this book Death in Yellowstone! fair warning tho, it is very graphic.
It's a collection of stories of times people have died in yellowstone, the chapter on hot spring burns is especially gruesome. this book was one of my favs as a kid!! you can read it for free on the internet archives if you make an account!
if yellowstone isn't your jam, lots of different national parks have one! there's one for yosemite, grand canyon (not free), and rocky mountain national park too (also not free). probably even more that i dont know about! aside from them just being morbidly fascinating, reading them is also great prep for going to a national park and learning what *not* to do.
march 18, 2025
speaking of cool animation stuff on youtube, this week's interesting thing is this test animation and animatic from a cancelled netflix pilot! it's 2d animation superimposed over fruit puppets and is one of the most inventive things i've ever seen. It's for a Neo-noir called "Pulp" and the characters are fruit, so when they get beat up and stuff they just get all mashed up like actual fruits and veggies. It's so inventive and fun!!
CW: NSFW themes & alcoholism
and!! big news--my friend Ridge is making a pilot! you can watch his announcement vid and subscribe here:
he's also planning on streaming the pilot production on his twitch, if you wanna see how the cake is baked! and in the future, you can find him in my links on the side! ->
march 13, 2025
I've been trying slowly to untangle myself from tech in my life as the enshittification crisis continues, and a big shadow looming over me is google. i can't get rid of my google suite!! my production spreadsheets and scripts!! my maximum number accounts they'll let me make with my phone number each with maxed out google drive storage!!
well i finally got off my brain ass and checked out Apache OpenOffice. it works great! and they have an active support forum in case you encounter any issues. i've migrated over all my production documents from google drive to apache now! (but i'm going to keep all my storage maxed out, i hope googles' servers burn under the weight of my 800 variations of "EP001_seqB_ROUGH_v04.mp4"s).
it's honestly really helped my productivity to be able to update my animation completion tracker without opening the internet and facing the temptation of distraction! so if you're like me and were stuck between the rock of google and the hard place of microsoft office, i really recommend OpenOffice!
and here are 2 songs that have taken over my brain this past week!
march 3, 2025
Holy shit, i spent alllll of my sunday reading this insane saga about musician Emilie Autumn:
parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 4.5, 5, 6, 7, 7.5!
TW for pretty problematic discussion around mental health, SA, and ED (from Emilie and her supporters, not from OP!)
I was in the "nerdy theater kid goth" online circle when I was growing up (yknow, the kids who used to roleplay as vampires on xat but also ran poptropica blogs) so a lot of my friends were super into her music, especially FLAG. i personally wasn't interested in anything but Enchant, but I remember hearing rumblings of drama floating around tumblr.
even if you have never heard of her, it's well worth a read just for the tour through the 2000s and 2010s online fandom world!
unrelated, but wanted to shoutout this single by Citadels, "Kinetic/Frenetic". it has a very chill and nice summer afternoon feeling!
feb 28, 2025
i've been on a bit of a crafting binge lately, and just wanted to shoutout this program i LOVE for creating custom machine embroidery designs:
INKSCAPE!! it's a free vector-based graphics program that's compatible with windows, mac, and linux!
it's also great for vector-based graphics! overall incredible program, i've used it to make logos and stuff too.
but what i mostly use it for is embroidery!! there's an extension called "ink/stitch" that allows you to convert your vector files into embroidery files!!
i created this design to try and fix some holes in my jeans--didn't work too well but at least it looks cool!
it's the program i use to make patches and embroidery designs! if you're interested in making a batch of patches or making your clothes look extra cool i recommend playing around with this!! a lot of public libraries or maker spaces have embroidery machines you can use, so you can make your design in inkscape and take the file to the machine and boom!! make some cool shit!
feb 19, 2025
MORE NEW MUSIC!! WE ARE LIVING LIKE KINGS!!
Boy Don't Cry is Sterling Gavinski's project, he composed the music for Pixie Park! If you like his stuff, please check out the new collab single! Northbound also fucking rules.
feb 13, 2025
Joanns is bankrupt again, and closing so many stores--and i'm SOOOO sad about it!! I think every time a brick and mortar store closes, even if it's a big company, we still lose something. Now an entire population of hobbyists is going to have to buy products for their art online, taking away the ability to touch and feel material out of the equation. Taking away the ability to speak to a human about a passion project, or their experience. Taking away the ability to address concerns with a real life person and not a virtual chatbot or telephone menu. I'm pissed and think it's a huge loss.
However!!! Not all is doom and gloom in craft land. I just found out about: CRAFT REUSE STORES!!
There's one near me, and I think it's fucking awesome. Need just 1 hook and eye instead of a pack of 100? You can get that there! Want to use acrylic yarn someone else already bought instead of buying a new skein and generating more plastic waste? You can get it there! The one near me also has bolts of fabric, as well as pre-cut and pre-measured pieces and scraps from other peoples' projects. Even electronics, stuff for scrapbooking, used notebooks--they're SUCH a cool resource, and someone has taken the time to put together a comprehensive list, at this website here:
They're obviously very limited and will not be able to replace Joanns, but if you're planning a big project and have the time it might be worth it to seek out one of these! They won't necessarily have exactly what you need, but personally I get a little extra enjoyment from that forced creative problem solving!
feb 4, 2025
DOOHICKEYS ALBUM RELEASE!!!
THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!!
it's so gooooooood
Favs so far: