ey i'm blogging here a blog by alex daily

No more sundays

Posted on by Alex Daily

Just a quick little note today —

The Sunday format isn’t quite working for me — the mix of journal and media diet post doesn’t really work to begin with, nobody needs weekly updates on where I’m at with a book, and in the journal bit I keep complaining about my Mondays on my Sundays, which, you know, they do dominate the week, but also perpetuates a downwards spiral.

I also don’t like the way they highlight that I haven’t posted in a bit, but that’s a separate thing.

So, going forward:

  • One, if I have something to say I’ll just say it.1This was another problem with the journal bit — do I hold back something I could say earlier, or do I write something I wouldn’t otherwise be writing?
  • Two, monthly media posts. I think that’s a better pace that allows me more time to actually find things to say.
    • The Bits from Letterboxd section will survive in some fashion, either in those posts or on its own, which, you know, my original plan for this blog was to just syndicate what I was doing elsewhere, and I think it’s very funny that that almost fully has not happened and it’s almost all been original material.
    • I’ve considered whether I should Do The Letterboxd Thing on other sites for other media, but I don’t want to be on More Silos, and I don’t see myself having the relationship with those I have with Letterboxd, anyway.

That is all. The river flows the way the river flows.

  • 1
    This was another problem with the journal bit — do I hold back something I could say earlier, or do I write something I wouldn’t otherwise be writing?

Inktober 2023: Annietober (Week One)

Posted on by Alex Daily

Originally posted to Mastodon.

Having a go at Inktober this year. My self-enforced theme, ahead of actually showing you all Annie Forever, is, well, Annie. So here’s the first week of of Annietober.

Always to the best of my ability, with what whatever I had to hand.

A digital illustration of Annie, asleep, translucent, on a train. The ocean view outside is impossibly curved. A pen and ink illustration in a sketchbook of Annie using a magnifying glass to investigate a cute lil' spider. A digital illustration of Annie, wearing a tunic of some sort, and holding a long stick and a shield, looking up at a sky, in which we see a crashing plane, and the silhouette of Warbucks' head, surrounded by sparkling lights or stars. It's an ominous, heavy scene. A digital illustration of Annie walking along a grassy path. A bee flies past her face. A digital illustration of Annie falling behind a wagon, like how Calvin and Hobbes sometimes do. She's holding a map and reading it attentively, almost like she hasn't noticed she's falling. A digital illustration, on a black background, of Annie falling into or through a big set of teeth, the corners of which are sharp and made of gold. A digital illustration of a wee speedboat racing up a stream of water coming from a faucet. If you zoomed in you'd see the captain of the speedboat is Annie.

Sunday #6: Oof Edition

Posted on by Alex Daily

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.

First two Real Classes under the belt. It’s remarkable, one, how far I’ve come that I’m able to do this, and two, how much the human body will sweat suppressing a fight-or-flight response. Oof. They say you could smell me on the other side of the Forum.

Blogging has been defeated by school, but I do have eleven drafts sitting around, at various levels between “basically a post-it note” and “the first thousand words are done, now I just need to write the other thousand words.”

Below the fold: The usual.

Continue reading “Sunday #6: Oof Edition”

What the fuck is this little thingy? (Solved. Thanks, Reddit.)

Posted on by Alex Daily

Pictured, from the back and front, laying on a pink post-it note: A small, plastic thingamabob, of, in the front, two horizontal bars connected by a circular hole, and in the front, one horizontal bar through which the aforementioned circular hole goes. On the back it's also sort of a gear thing? It's holding two small metal wheels, keeping them in place with the little speedbumps that are on the back horizontal bar. Image descriptions are hard.

I’ve found at least one of these before, and last week I found this one between the shoe store and the gym. I’ve no idea what it is or what it could possibly be part of.

As far as I can tell, the plastic is all one piece. The metal wheels are easily removable by just peeling back the back bar a little. The vibe is more “RC car” than “serious equipment.”

UPDATE: Reddit got it instantaneously.

Sunday #5: First October Edition

Posted on by Alex Daily

Another week, another Monday, another Sunday.

Two recent teaching realisations: I off-handedly said to a classmate my usual line about how the world isn’t any different for me knowing about an earthquake on the other side of the planet. But she helpfully pointed out quite sternly that it might matter quite a lot when I have students who might be from or have family all over the world.

The other one is I tend to exaggerate a little for comedic effect when telling stories, but I absolutely can not and must not do that when I’m teaching art history that real, actual kids will have tests and exams on later. Pressure!

I’ll get there.

Below the fold: Bits from Letterboxd. Some TV, some Doctor Who, a book.

Continue reading “Sunday #5: First October Edition”

It’s just some web forum

Posted on by Alex Daily

In the ongoing evaluation my relationship with social media, today1Well, Wednesday the 27th, I guess. Dinosaur Comics’ T-Rex weighs in with a persuasive argument.

T-Rex: "Today is the day I remove the phrase "social media" from my vocabulary… and replace it with "web forum!" That IS basically what they are, after all! There's no magic trick to them — they're just some messageboard: a web forum you sign up to and then can see what other people said on said forum." Dromiceiomimus: "Okay, sure, but they're really important forums!" T-Rex: "Are they though?? REALLY??" Utahraptor: "T-Rex, did you see what today's main character posted on social?" T-Rex: "I try to stay above forum drama." Utahraptor: "Okay, fair, but did you see what stupid changes they're making to Twitter?" T-Rex: "Oh, no, sorry — I'm on a different forum now." Utahraptor: "Ah. Cool." Narrator: "Later, T-Rex considers tying the success of both his personal and professional life to posts on a web forum." T-Rex: "Hah hah hah! WHY WOULD I EVER DO THAT"

Dinosaur Comics #4104, Ryan North, 2023
And he’s right. Because framing is everything.

I often say I don’t believe in coming out, because I don’t relate to the premise, to the narrative. I’m queer, it’s not a secret, I’m not hiding anything, just because you don’t know doesn’t mean I’m putting myself or parts of myself in a box — and when I do tell you, I’m almost always just correcting an inaccurate assumption. “I’m non-binary,” no different than “oh, I’m Frisian,” or “I don’t have a drivers’ license.”2“When did you first realise you were a different kind of vehicle user than your culture assigned you at birth?” “When I nearly drove into a ditch one fucking minute into my first ever driving lesson.” It’s just a little correction.

When we talk about the large algorithmic generative models people call “artificial intelligence,” so much of the language is people-language. We “ask” these models things, we have “conversations” with these algorithms, when the words these things generate are not reflective of accurate information we accuse the models of “hallucinating.” All of these are real things people do, and not actually what these things do. I don’t want to diminish the sincere connections some people feel they’re making with these machines, but all that’s happening is the software knows how to put words in an order that seems plausible, based on your prompt.3Tip: Try prompting ChatGPT to tell you how many times the letter “N” occurs in the word “reconnaissance.” It’s just been well-tuned to follow your lead. We have to talk about these things the way they actually are.4I’m not innocent here, either — the Enemy has put the people-language so in my head that this was not easy to write.

Social media is no different. Framing is everything.

Twitter is just some web forum. You sign up, and then you can post, and see what other people are posting on the web forum. Truly, how is that different than the rickety phpBB forum you used to hang out on in 2006? What actually is meant to make it a really important forum? This or that number of posts per second? The famous people on it? The politicians? Frankly, I’ve never been entirely clear what these people are even doing on some web forum. Shouldn’t they be minding their business, shouldn’t they be sending memos to each other? Remember when the forum got real mad about some guy who was a little weird to his kid about beans? Just forum drama. It’s not the end of the world. Why would it be? Why would it be?

At my own little personal Mastodon instance, there’s no politicians, no huge number of posts per second. Nobody ever gets mad about the beans guy. It is actually just like the rickety old phpBB forum I used to hang out on in 2006. It’s not important at all. We don’t pretend it is.

It’s just some web forum.

  • 1
    Well, Wednesday the 27th, I guess.
  • 2
    “When did you first realise you were a different kind of vehicle user than your culture assigned you at birth?” “When I nearly drove into a ditch one fucking minute into my first ever driving lesson.”
  • 3
    Tip: Try prompting ChatGPT to tell you how many times the letter “N” occurs in the word “reconnaissance.”
  • 4
    I’m not innocent here, either — the Enemy has put the people-language so in my head that this was not easy to write.

The Locksmith

Posted on by Alex Daily

This anecdote originally appeared as my Letterboxd review of Wes Anderson’s The Rat Catcher.

My neighbour had locked himself out, no phone, no keys, so he knocked on my door to ask to use my phone to call his friend who, one, had his spare key, and two, was apparently in the Phantom Zone, seen recently by half the city and yet totally unreachable.

So we called a locksmith, just the top result in the search engine of your choice, who was here as fast as he could have been, and instantly jimmied his way in with some WD-40, a sheet of plastic, a rope, and my door as a cheat sheet.

Which we both found incredibly impressive — I applauded without prompting, which I never do — and also, our human doors might as well not be there for this man, nay, ghost.

Anyway, the rat catcher here looks like an English version of the locksmith, which is why I’m sharing that story here in this review in lieu of struggling to find something to say about this one. It’s good, it’s like the other Wes Anderson Roald Dahl shorts.

The locksmith was a lot nicer than this rat catcher, though. There was a fistbump.

The Bowl of Petunias (IV)

Posted on by Alex Daily

Thirty seconds after the age of magic came to an abrupt end, the City of the Golden King hit the ground. No, that was inaccurate. What it hit was the New Bureau of Access, the tiny little office that operated the flying chair used to send people up to the City of the Golden King one at a time.

The thing about this mode of entry into the City of the Golden King was, it made it pretty hard to invade it from the ground. The other thing was, it made it pretty hard to leave. Which meant that, for the most part, people increasingly didn’t. A visiting family member here, a member of law enforcement there. Ten people made a busy week. And so, the job of Director of the New Bureau of Access had, over time, become pretty lonely. So when Fred Patricide, on the occasion of her fifteenth anniversary on the job, took her first ever off-site break, she felt pretty much just… fine about it. There were no flights scheduled until well into the afternoon, the office could do without her for 45 minutes.

And so it did, for every single one of those minutes until the 41st, at which point the glass bottom of the City of the Golden King tore through every single plank, every single little window, every single shred, of the New Bureau of Access. And when the glass bottom was done, the brick foundation came in to smash what was left to a pulp that the… smears would never even reach.

People would go on to call Fred, inaccurately, the “sole survivor.”

So You Want To Watch The “Ring” Movies (Part One, 1995-2000)

Posted on by Alex Daily

I watch a lot of movies. On average, about 400 a year. That makes it very easy to just say, okay, I’ll watch all 20 movies in this franchise. I am, of course, aware of two things. One, most people are simply not like this. And two, I have a tactical advantage over those people which they can benefit from.

Whether you go in chronological or release order — maybe you do Machete Order, you do you — everyone knows about the various ways in which to watch Star Wars. We all understand that if you really wanna keep up with the MCU you should probably just watch it all, but if you just wanna watch what you need for the next movie, you’re probably good with three movies and three Disney+ shows, all of which have their own prerequisites and– Okay, yeah, cripes, that’s a mess. But most movie franchises are not that complicated.

Which brings me to the Ring movies. At 26 movies — including Ju-On, which I don’t even get into here yet, and the various international versions, but not even counting the short films or the weird Chinese crossovers, unofficial sequels, Bunshinsaba… — I can imagine “most people” who might want to watch these will want to know what chaff to cut.

This is part one, covering the six Ring films released in the 1995-2000 period. Ju-On also starts in 2000, but I think this is a clean enough block to write up on its own. Part two, when I get there.

Here are the six films I’ll be covering below the fold:

  • The 1995 Ring TV movie, also known by its home video title Ring: Kanzenban (or, Ring: The Complete Edition.)
  • The 1998 Ring film, its original sequel Spiral (or, Rasen,) its replacement sequel Ring 2, and the prequel film Ring 0: Birthday.
  • The 1999 South Korean film The Ring Virus.

Continue reading “So You Want To Watch The “Ring” Movies (Part One, 1995-2000)”

© Alex Daily. Powered by ClassicPress. The theme is Blogging Here by me, Alex Daily. More information in the colophon.