Trying the Internet Archive for video hosting. They generate a very small, low quality MP4 version of the MOV files my camera makes, so I’ll need to experiment with my own MP4s next time, but at least they also store the original files. I think I’ll finally get round to getting off Youtube.
Holiday Videos
May 28th, 2024Five songs from my holiday playlist
April 26th, 2024I never managed to settle on a set order for my holiday playlist, but the first three songs here are locked-in as the opening.
Also never managed to fit this in:
Perfume Log
February 15th, 2024I’ve started a new blog to keep track of notes on perfumes I’ve tried.
???? https://plog.ryliejamesthomas.net/ ????
I still have to add some features, primarily tags, but it’s working fine for now.
Also I finally got tags setup on my music blog. The only downside of Textpattern is that tag support isn’t built-in, and you have to fiddle with a not very well documented plugin to use them.
2023
February 5th, 2024Here’s my messy 2023 summary post ✨
I had good experiences watching a bunch of things I’d been meaning to watch for a while, or by directors I’d been meaning to check out for a while:
- Godzilla.
- Crimewave and Springtime in Greenland by John Paizs.
- 26 Bathrooms, and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover by Peter Greenaway (also Drowning by Numbers, which I didn’t like at all).
- Twisted Pair by Neil Breen.
- Lots of Johnnie To films.
- Shadows in Paradise by Aki Kaurismäki.
Lots of docos:
- Love and Saucers.
- Shinjuku Boys and Dressing for Pleasure that Trash Palace screened were both good.
- Watched plenty of bad music ones.
Highlight of MIFF was seeing Querelle again.
My 2022 post said ‘I didn’t listen listen to much I really liked’, but I guess I made up for it in 2023. Feel like I found some of my all-time favourite songs. Some highlights:
- Playback Part 2 by Momoe Yamaguchi
- Lots of karaoke videos off a YT channel that seems to have disappeared :(
- Remembered the Tina Arena song I Need Your Body.
- Heard I Wanna Be Your Lover by La Bionda in a mix, then YT led me to some good songs by San Giovanni Bassista, and Spacer Woman by Charlie.
- Listened to Midnight by Edith Bliss a bunch, I think that’s my fave of hers now.
- Stardust Sniper by Sayuri Kokusho.
- Goodbye Season and Mi-Ha by Chisato Moritaka. But almost that whole album‘s become a fave.
- Miss Liberty by John Sauli.
- Kiss Her by Jane Hill.
- 私Mailuwa by Yukari Yamamoto.
- Maybe I’d heard Give Me Up and I Don’t Know! by BaBe before but I listened to them a lot.
- Yoko Nagayama’s great cover of Big Love and Hidemi Ishikawa’s cover of Love Comes Quickly went together a lot.
- When I Spend My Time With You by Model-T is a real special one.
- Near the end of the year I looked into Dragon and Marc hunter and have listened to them a bit since.
- Can’t remember how I stumbled upon In Alto Mare by Loredana Bertè, but there’s a live version I really like. Notte Che Verrà too, actually.
- At some point I was trying to find a song I had vague memories of and learned it was by Ollie Olsen’s band No, and was listening to them for a while.
- Whoops, left off Cinderella Honeymoon by Hiromi Iwasaki.
Started enjoying singles last year, bought lots of 7″.
Didn’t release much. Was commissioned to do a game mid-year and started another one in December, messed with music but nothing’s really come of it.
Read shit all.
2024 is the year of perfume so far, look out.
Five songs I listened to a lot this June
June 27th, 2023The Great Order of the Universe
February 1st, 2023My game Touch Love is in the opening show of a new studio/exhibition space in New York. I was probably a bit demanding for small DIY space, but they’re kindly going to the effort of setting it up with two Wii nunchuck controllers instead of a keyboard :)
Also in the show is:
- Fess Plane, by Stranger.
- Southbank Portrait, by Ian MacLarty.
- Subway Adventure, by Increpare.
- to a jumbled slop of game assets i brought a certain… “order,” if you will. but now, alas, *koff koff*, etc, i will not …, by Marek Kapolka.
Meant to be a small thing. You have to RSVP on Eventbrite to get the address.
2022
January 16th, 2023I do rough drafts of these kinda posts every year, but this year I’m publishing one! Here’re some things I liked in 2022.
I was given a book for my birthday, which started me reading again after a long break. The one that’s really stuck with me is Border Districts, by Gerald Murnane. I saw a doco on him in 2019, and have been meaning to read one of his books ever since. I’m reading Tamarisk Row now.
None of the films I saw really-really-really stand out, but:—
The The Cleaning Company doco I saw on SBS about a trauma cleaning company and the life of it’s owner Sandra Pankhurst. Really heartbreaking in a life-affirming, encouraging way.
My favourite thing from MIFF was Demon Pond. The main actor, Tamasaburo Bando, has a background in Kabuki theatre and is mesmerising. There are also some really cool monster costumes in one part.
(I thought I’d seen August In The Water in 2022, but turns out it was right at the end of 2021.)
Seems like I didn’t listen to much i really liked, but I found a video for a great Nana Love song I hadn’t heard before called Dancing in the Rain, I think this was the year I listened to a bunch of Yasuha songs for the first time, and I keep getting this Doug Parkinson version of I’ll Be Around stuck in my head. Also finally went through the Talking Heads discography, but my faves are all obvious ones I’d heard before (Lady Don’t Mind, Girlfriend Is Better).
I mostly just played boring fancy game shit like Monster Hunter. One interesting one that stands out is Deity Driving. I like to be a car. I liked Domestic Dreams and Robots, too.
Five small pages from my wiki
May 25th, 2022Actually, my favourite part of having a wiki is all the small pages that barely have anything on them, but slowly grow over time. So here’re some of those:
Ｊ－ＰＯＰ ＬＡＮＤＳＣＡＰＥＳ
September 15th, 2021I’ve started a new blog to collect together photos from J-pop videos.
🖙 jpoplandscapes.ryliejamesthomas.net
Here are some examples from posts I haven’t made yet:
