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2024

Tuesday, January 7th, 2025

I thought I’d start a draft and do this over a few days, but I puked it all out in one go.

✾

I don’t think any films really impressed me. I guess The Look of Silence got to me. Plenty of films were good, but that’s it. I watched a lot of cat docos.

– –

Music: I spent a lot of time in the first couple of months making a holiday playlist and then trying to get it into a proper order, so burnt out my tolerance for some of these songs, but I’m enjoying going through them again. Like 2023 some of these have become all-time faves.

Links go to Youtube.

  • Notte Che Verrà by Loredana Bertè.
  • Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac. This guy’s drumming is so daggy, the little fill he does at about 2:15 still makes me laugh. I think I listened to Seven Wonders a bunch too.
  • 将冰山劈开 (Break The Iceberg) by Anita Mui. Still listen to this at night some times. I keep trying to find more Chinese music to listen to, but haven’t had much luck finding stuff I really like.
  • Cruel Summer by Bananarama. I knew this one before, but I don’t think I’d heard it since whenever the last time was that I watched Karate Kid.
  • Absolutely by Eurogliders. This is just sunshine sparkling on clear blue water.
  • Looking for Clues by Robert Palmer. Good live version of a song I wasn’t that into before.
  • Tonight by Tina Turner & David Bowie. Another one I didn’t like much when I heard it at first.
  • Bring Me Closer and Don’t Talk To Me About Love, by Altered Images. Singer’s pouty baby voice bugged me at first, but these songs really grew on me.
  • Swimming Mix by Hariyo. Started cleaning up some old bookmarks and rediscovered this music blog: Fond/Sound.
  • ねらわれた少女 by Chiemi Manabe.
  • Aimer D’Amour by Boule Noire.
  • Smalltown Boy by Bronski Beat. Someone never paid attention to this one before. Got really intrigued by his delicate falsetto. Good head too.
  • Tell It to My Heart by Taylor Dayne. GOAT.
  • Saturday Love by Cherrelle & Alexander O’Neal.
  • No Lies by Tina Arena.
  • Who’s Your Boyfriend by Eric. Oh yeah, I went through lots of HiNRG stuff. 23/24 conspiring to get me to buy an old sampler. A lot of it has a great DIY kinda vitality to it.
  • IOU by Freeez.
  • Run To Me by Tracy Spencer.
  • Mažytė by Soniclove. Listened to a bunch of Lithuanian songs like this: big techno beat, weedy singing.
  • I Never Dance by Crysalis. Egregiously unrelatable.
  • I Don’t Want To Talk About It by Pamala Stanley.
  • 你就是你 (You Are Who You Are) by Kay Huang. This was meant to be my Spring playlist song, but I never made the playlist. I was really excited for some Spring/Summer last year.
  • 水晶球 (Crystal Ball) by Kay Huang. I liked this song by her too.
  • 影子，請我跳舞吧 by Li Ping Lan. This is about as far as I got with Chinese music. It’s been like 50 bland ballads for every fun song.
  • Coffee by Waterfall Person.

Maybe this year I’ll listen to some music that’s not from the 80s~

– –

In the 2023 post I said ‘2024 is the year of perfume so far, look out.’ I tried a lot of things. I feel a lot clearer about what kinds of things I like, mostly citrus when it’s hot; sharp, smokey, mediciny things when it’s cold; pink and powdery and musk sticky when I’m alone. I never seem to like leather, vanilla, nor white florals, but I think I’ll be able to find something flowery I like eventually.

  • Cedrat 37, Limette 37 and Bergamote 22 by Le Labo are my fave citrus smells so far, Bergamote especially I love (and I got a little bottle for Christmas). I miss the cheap bergamot soap from my hotel in Florence.
  • Musk by Lorenzo Villoresi and Musc Ravageur by Frédéric Malle are two very pink perfumes I like a lot. Their vetiver ones are kinda similar to each other too. Powdered Veil by Miller Harris is my fave of these though, has a bitter rhubarb smell in there. I got a bottle cheap because it’s been discontinued :( I liked Divin’Enfant by Etat Libre d’Orange too.
  • I got some samples from the Lorenzo Villoresi shop in Florence, and apart from Musk I really like Spezie (really nice cardamom smell), Vetiver (really vetivery and sharp), and Piper Nigrum (strong black pepper). The shop was so pretentious though—
  • I tried a lot of boozey ones before Winter: 1270 and Bonne Chauffe by Frapin, Gris Charnel by BDK, Pardon by Nasomatto. I thought there were more—
  • Really love Black Calamus by Carner Barcelona, smells like a medicine cabinet. Ended up ordering a bottle on sale. Still need to try more from them, some of the other black bottle sound good. Didn’t like the Fig Man one, have Salado and need to try it again.
  • I tried lots of local ones, like ordered complete sample sets from every house that sounded interesting, but I think Wood Infusion by Goldfield and Banks was the only one I liked, and there were none I loved.
  • Was looking for a good fig leaf perfume at the start of the year.

Going through all these samples I haven’t smelt in a while, smelling the bottles, getting me all excited.

– –

I always forget games. But I really liked Cape Hideous by Jake Clover. Otherwise I think I played Earth Defense Force 4.1 and Earth Defense Force 6 a lot. I was enjoying Yakuza 0, but it killed my computer’s motherboard somehow. I swear last time I got into a Yakuza game it fucked my computer too.

– –

I made a little tap/click-on-things game when I was away: Sea of Earth. But that’s it for me and games.

I’d wanted to make an album last year, but only ended up finishing one song, and that was made in a few days for someone else’s game. And it wasn’t even really complete, I wanted to make a longer edit but then my computer broke. Still, I’m feeling pretty comfortable with the process with the gear I have here, and made plenty of bits of songs. This year . . .

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2023

Monday, February 5th, 2024

Here’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:

Lots of docos:

Highlight of MIFF was seeing Querelle again.

My 2022 post said ‘I didn’t 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:

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.

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2022

Monday, January 16th, 2023

I 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.

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Nine videos found through Default Filename TV

Tuesday, July 16th, 2019

Default Filename TV is a website by Everest Pipkin for browsing videos on Youtube that use the camera’s default file naming convention. I used to like browsing these kinds of videos; I guess because my videos are framed in such a careful, cold way, I like seeing photos and videos whose composition is a product of different motivations.

(edit: turns out there’s a similar site called Astronaut that does a similar thing, though it plays videos only for a short time.)

Knowing that these, often mostly unwatched, videos are out there somewhere makes me feel good things about the world.

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CHAI

Sunday, March 10th, 2019

Been mostly just listening to this one band for the last bunch of months (also Zombie-Chang and a bunch of different African disco and soul and funk, but—). Can’t remember where I heard of them, but I found フューチャー in my bookmarks and followed it round Youtube. I think I’d listened to it before and kinda dismissed it for being too cutesy, but hearing more of their stuff it made sense and the positivity and enthusiasm and the rhythm section really stuck in me.

Also I love this lyric:

Jellybeans, lollipop,
Chewing gum, ice cream,
Beef, gyoza, fish, oranges,
Everything yummy foods!

There are some real good live videos on YT too.

Here’re some Miis I made of the group:

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Touch (2009)

Sunday, April 17th, 2016

I wrote this in TAFE, and according to the date on the file it’s from October 2009. Stumbled upon it when tidying up my computer (preparing for Linux D:) and quite like it! I remember writing it in a bit a bit of a frenzy, just getting it done before the last minute it was due. I remember holding and fiddling with something small in my hand (a pen lid? that little red dinosaur I used to have on my keyring?), and writing then removing a post-conclusion based around that.

The senses are the tools organisms evolve to give themselves an understanding of the world around them.

The dominant sense, by a long margin if we measure by our cultural output, is sight. Regard television, the Internet, advertising, the emphasis on the visual facet of architecture, cinema, Youtube, fashion, the written word, and so-on. Secondary is the sense of hearing: Music, spoken language, police sirens. The other three—taste, smell, and touch—are relegated to acting as support senses. Probably, non-coincidentally, because they are the slower of the senses.

Of course, to expect to understand a sense in isolation of the others is against their function. The written word is more powerful when we hold a book in our hand. We have more than one sense because we need more than one sense. They are primarily a preservation mechanism. They are able to act as failsafe to each other. We can smell rotten meat before we can see it; our ears become primary in the dark. The system has evolved to cover its own arse, like any pre-modern engineer, or builder will tell you a system should do.

Touch, in fact, is not even a product of evolution. It is present even in single-celled organisms1. Touch is the point from which the other senses emerge, and is still existent in their function.

Touch is the first sense we develop, in utero. It is comforting and submissive; and also dominating and discomforting.

(more…)

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Il Gattopardo

Friday, February 19th, 2016

One thing struck me when watching this, and stayed with me:

Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga com’è bisogna che tutto cambi.

If we want everything to stay as it is, everything will have to change.

(My translation’s a little different to what I found on Wikipedia, etc., and I guess what’s in the film. They have ‘things’ instead of ‘everything’ in both cases.)

It’s actually been floating round my head more like: If we change (give in on) this one thing, everything can stay as it is.

The guy in the film who says this is a prince, thinking about the coming revolution/unification. It reminds me of Australian politics. How we’re given just enough concessions, made just comfortable enough, that no one cares about getting any of the  bigger more important things we still need to fix / no one will risk losing things for bigger gains. ← speaking from the white middle-class here. The land of the mediocre status quo.

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Cumudgeoning about Internet

Tuesday, February 16th, 2016

I’ve had this list of dot-points sitting here, slowing growing, over the past few months. Though I’d wanted to turn it into a little essay, I think I just need to post it all before it rots.

So here are an assortments of thoughts on Internet. Mostly about my ideal Internet and knowledge sharing.

  • A website’s markup (the HTML and CSS) should be able to be understood. Far too many pages are completely incomprehensible when you look at their source. I want to learn things, and get an insight into the page’s maker when I right click > view page source.
  • Links should be descriptive; link shorteners are awfullllllll.
  • Websites should never block downloading images and other elements, but it’s something I see so much now.
  • ISPs should always provide free webspace.
  • There should be WAY better free tools for site making—every OS and browser should have them built-in.
  • Programs that run in your browser are kinda handy (Google Docs/Drive, for example), but most websites should not be these!
  • Pop-up messages asking me to subscribe to your newsletter :/ Remind me of the ol’ splash screen days, though I can’t even remember why those were considered annoying anymore.
  • Internet is about sharing information, distributing information. This Internet seems to be about hoarding and controlling information :(
  • Wikipedia should be much more inclusive.
  • We are sticking our toe into an Internet that is just a bunch of corporate intranets battling for your attention and sabotaging you internet usage outside (and inside) their boxes.
  • Why are all UIs so awful and tablet focused? Fuck hamburgers. Fuck every UI improvement which seems to hide everything behind more and more clicks.
  • I suspect that the Internet I’m all nostalgic for was actually mostly white dudes though.
  • Pretty sure if books were invented now, libraries would be illegal.

Only solution I have to this is help people make websites. I’m slowly planning a basic HTML/CSS workshop, which I hope gets people playing with websites and gives them enough basic info to teach themselves further.

Also I’m redo-ing my own site so it’ll be a bit more fun~

I really wish my address was a .net instead of a .com. Maybe I’ll have both~

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2012 / Dialogues

Tuesday, August 18th, 2015

I was going through earlier work, and was pleased to all the work I had made in 2012, in my second year of University. most of those things I’d never posted here, I assume because some I never finished properly (a series of clay heads), and some I thought were too personal (the Dialogues). I made a lot that year. Also a lot of drawings/rubbings, wood carving, and the performances I, at the time, called Monologues (they were made after these Dialogues).

I’ve made a web site for the Dialogues, and I might make a general 2012 one to link all those works together.

You can reposition the video windows by dragging them with your mouse.

ryliejamesthomas.net/dialogues.html

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Hito Steyerl – Too Much World: is the Internet Dead?

Monday, November 11th, 2013

I am reading this on e-flux: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/too-much-world-is-the-internet-dead/—

[…] it has become clear that images are not objective or subjective renditions of a preexisting condition, or merely treacherous appearances. They are rather nodes of energy and matter that migrate across different supports […]

[…] artificial islands mimic genetically manipulated plants. Dental offices parade as car commercial film sets. Cheekbones are airbrushed just as whole cities pretend to be YouTube CAD tutorials. Artworks are e-mailed to pop up in bank lobbies designed on fighter jet software. Huge cloud storage drives rain down as skylines in desert locations. But by becoming real, most images are substantially altered. They get translated, twisted, bruised, and reconfigured. They change their outlook, entourage, and spin. A nail paint clip turns into an Instagram riot. An upload comes down as shitstorm. An animated GIF materializes as a pop-up airport transit gate. In some places, it seems as if entire NSA system architectures were built—but only after Google-translating them, creating car lofts where one-way mirror windows face inwards. By walking off-screen, images are twisted, dilapidated, incorporated, and reshuffled. They miss their targets, misunderstand their purpose, get shapes and colors wrong. They walk through, fall off, and fade back into screens.

In the past few years many people—basically everybody—have noticed that the internet feels awkward, too. It is obviously completely surveilled, monopolized, and sanitized by common sense, copyright, control, and conformism. It feels as vibrant as a newly multiplexed cinema […]

—and these things have stood out so far.

After printing and reading the whole thing I am a bit put off by the—I guess—anthemic tone to a lot of the writing (see one of the quotes above). But that final quote got me thinking about fashion and its appeal (which has always seemed odd to me): perhaps fashion acts as a sign for a fracture in the status quo and perhaps this is also behind the (short term) attracting force of Internet services (Twitter, Vine, Facebook, etc.) that seem to open up the Internet and how we use it, though they also strive to box it in, almost construct their own meta-Internets.

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