• green house

    neon

    I’m attempting to propagate leaves from a lovely house plant our friends gifted us with. The planter itself was a gift from Anabel early on while we were dating and it has been my favorite ever since. We had a very long and leafy plant in there for a while but due to neglect it wilted away.

    We’ve taken care of the houseplant our friends gifted us with rather well, though. We’ve had it for quite some time and it has been growing to the point that I feel taking some clippings to attempt propagation with didn’t feel like it would cause much harm.

    The gifted plant mentioned above

    It’s been almost a week and the leaves have been looking healthy (as seen in the post way up top) so I’m feeling optimistic. I’ve had plants for a long time but I’m trying to be more attentive to them and care for them properly.

    Here’s to hoping the skull plant continues to grow.

  • Chrono Trigger’s 30th Anniversary and More.

    neon

    If you love RPGs and haven’t played Chrono Trigger I cannot recommend it enough. Releasing in 1995 on the Super Famicom/SNES, it is (in my opinion) one of the best games full stop. I could go on and on about the same things everyone else loves about it including the music, the characters and writing, the gameplay, Akira Toriyama’s art and designs.

    I considered finding a video essay on it to try and convince the few wayward readers of my blog but I don’t know that any of them would do it proper justice anyway. Check the trailer above and if you think you’d be remotely interested please try it. You won’t regret it.

    The reason for this post is that it’s not just the 30th anniversary, for which Square announced a whole mess of tributes for the year, but it also topped off 5 million sales worldwide recently. This might not be super impressive considering Persona 5 and FF7 Remake both sold over 7 million copies. Silent Hill 2 sold over 2 million within a few months!

    But it’s still cool to see that over the years people continued to come back to this world and these characters.

    I’ve heard mixed things about Chrono Cross but I’m stoked to dive into it (soon).

  • Patience.

    neon

    About seven years ago I wrote a track called “nanocarbon shrine” for my low.poly.exception project. It was one of my favorites from that album – it had a very chill vibe, a cool name plucked right out of the Lorem Gibson generator, and I mostly liked it.

    Mostly.

    That was the problem – every time I’d go back to listen to it, the parts I loved were great but the things I wished I had changed stuck out even more. Every time I heard it I’d think about going back and doing an updated version. It was usually a passing thought but after my blog took it’s name from that song, I thought it was a good opportunity to update the song.

    And it’s mostly done! That’s where the patience part comes in. I’m dead tired but I think I’ve got the song where I want it. For once I’m going to sleep on it and see how I feel tomorrow.

    Instead of rushing the song right onto the net I’m going to see how it feels tomorrow.

  • I’m in the middle of a post.

    neon

    Tom Scott’s videos are always a delight to watch. I only started really watching along with his videos a few years back. He has, of course, taken a very well deserved break as of a year ago. That said, with so much content, my wife and I like to throw his videos on now and again. You need not be picky about the topics either – trust me, they’re all good.

    The video at the top of this post was one in particular I found very interesting. It’s about a massive library preserving every book they possibly can. I’ll say no more, just check it out yourself.

  • phantom re:port 1

    neon

    “Phantom re:Port” is the name I’ve given to my zine series for Phantom Port (get it?). The first entry being “Ghost Mapping” — a concept I’ve mentioned in other posts.

    Per the Phantom Port instagram account: “Ghost Mapping is a zine by Phantom Port that tells the story of cloaked individuals appearing around a cramped city one summer. The mystery around the individuals unfolds via chat room logs and photos documenting the strange circumstances.”

    I’ve got a lot of fun ideas for it but I don’t want to spoil the fun. Originally it was going to be a part of a larger zine and it wasn’t going to be as long of a story. I started getting very enthusiastic about it and before you know it, Ghost Mapping became it’s own zine.

    I will add that it’s set in a futuristic cyberpunk style setting. I haven’t decided yet if it’s in the Cadence universe that has been the focus of other creative efforts.

    I will also share one other photo, however. The finished version of the “hallway” image I posted on instagram:

    If you’d like some insight into what inspired this project, Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex Season 1 (specifically the Laughing Man arc) is a good place to start. Additionally, Paranoia Agent, especially the opening credits, gave me huge inspiration for the vibes. See for yourself:

    Here’s a fun fact: the video I linked is one of the first anime openings uploaded to youtube.

    Speaking of Phantom Port – I’m putting in an order for lanyards and washi tape soon. Things are finally coming together.

    Now playing:

  • Superfast

    neon

    This article is fascinating. From Tom’s Hardware, a piece on SNES running faster with age. (If only that were true of humans too…)

    Long story short, “Alan Cecil discovered that Super Nintendo consoles have grown slightly faster because of one of their chips.”

    Apparently the “SPC700 coprocessor” is very sensitive and time + environment = a processor that has grown in speed over the years due to that conditioning. When I think of old consoles and games, specifically cart based ones, you kind of just expect them to stop working whether it’s the battery dying or other hardware failure.

    The article also notes how it could potentially have an effect on some speed running communities.

  • Time to get a watch.

    neon

    This article felt finely tuned to my interests being about both watches and Death Stranding 2. Kojima’s long time concept artist and illustrator of choice Yoji Shinkawa worked with watch brand Hamilton to design a piece to appear in the game. Not just in the game, but in real life too. While I’ve given my heart to Casio, this watch is gorgeous, however at a price tag of nearly 1.5k I think I’m going to have to leave that one admired from afar.

  • sunflowers.

    neon

    The weather has been getting warmer as spring approaches. Last week was very windy, which made for some uncomfortable walks, but this week has been amazing so far.

    I think seasonal affective disorder had a greater hold on me than I thought. Yesterday I stayed up far too late working in the image in the header. It was a photo I took in Shin-Okubo in July of 2023. It’s the Shinjuku neighborhood we stayed in during our 2018 honeymoon and our most recent visit.

    I did some light glitch designs on the left but felt the open space on the right needed something a little more. I thought the image of someone in light bending camouflage (think Ghost in the Shell or Predator) would be really creepy. I grabbed a stock image of an elderly man and followed this tutorial.

    With a bit of my own tweaking I think I got it right where I wanted it. I labeled it as a Phantom Port piece, but I am not sure I am going to actually sell any prints of it.

    A shot I took from Shin-Okubo Station in 2018.

    That brings me back to the weather. I’ve been on a creative and cleaning kick lately and I fully credit that to the change of seasons, and I say that as someone who loves Fall and Winter.

    I’ve been meaning to focus on learning more about design and drawing and I think this could be the boost I need to make progress in those areas.

    Here’s to hoping that Spring is just a little bit longer this year.

  • P.S.

    neon

    I should probably actually share some design work like I had intended to. Here’s a few lanyard designs I’m working on as well as the “logo/id” for this blog. Maybe I’ll do a breakdown of the process for that one in another post.

    The first washi type is more in line with my monochrome cyberpunk designs for Phantom Port while the salmon sushi design is a little more playful and outside the box. I think it still works for Phantom Port while standing out a bit.

  • Do your research.

    neon

    Some time ago circa Summer 2023 my wife and I bought a very small monstera plant during a trip to the city. We kept it in the bedroom lounge area since the lighting was great there and we figured we could use some greenery upstairs for a change. It flourished for a while but started to hit some road bumps. I tried to course correct without knowing what I was doing and while it didn’t get worse it certainly didn’t get better.

    I do what, apparently, a lot of other people do when I have zero clue where to start: I consult reddit. Not because I trust it as the end all be all resource, but because I know someone else has either made the same ill informed decisions I have, or at least knows how to fix them.

    While this generally gets me pointed in the right direction it does have some drawbacks. Namely the part where I share my bad decisions and get dunked on for it…

    Okay, maybe it’s not that bad, but one individual did point out that not doing my own research landed me there. I could argue that reaching out to a community of people familiar with my problems was research, but I was really taking a shortcut by crowdsourcing my question.

    I don’t necessarily think it was the wrong way to handle it. I know that my plant needs a smaller pot, more water, easy draining soil, and maybe a moss pole. I do think there’s something to be said of learning proper care on my own through books or other resources. I also think there were better ways to share that opinion with me instead of clowning on me.

    But you ask stupid questions you get stupid answers, I guess.

    Now playing: