Three days, one toilet.
July 30th, 2016New website
July 21st, 2016I’ve redone my website: www.ryliejamesthomas.com www.ryliejamesthomas.net
Also taken everything off SoundCloud and chucked it on /music.html
The Siege of Firebase Gloria
July 12th, 2016
My favourite part of The Siege of Firebase Gloria is this guy you can just catch spilling chunder in the background after he’s directed the army boss guy somewhere when the firebase is under attack.
Alfred and Lucy
July 5th, 2016Learned that I don’t even need a video editing program; FFMPEG does 90% of what I need :)
Touch (2009)
April 17th, 2016I 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.
Read the rest of this entry »Il Gattopardo
February 19th, 2016One 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.
Cumudgeoning about Internet
February 16th, 2016I’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~
Lake Tyers
January 29th, 2016And a cat
Williamstown 2
January 9th, 2016Youtube seems to have mangled this video. First time I’ve edited a video using Blender, and I probably wont be doing that again.