This is a Ctrl + F blog. What that means is there are certain tags for each post. There is a list of all the tags below. To find a post relating to a specific tag, just Ctrl + F!
| Emotions | Issues | Interests | Art |
|---|---|---|---|
| #Happy | #Transgender | #Community | #Writing |
| #Sad | #LGBTQIA+ | #D&D | #Poetry |
| #Angry | #Neurodivergence | #Ninjago | #DigitalArt |
| #Anxious | #Autism | #9 | #TraditionalArt |
| #Neutral | #MentalHealth | #Movies | #DIY |
| #Existential | #AI | #Videogames | #Zines |
| Programming | WebDesign |
OKAY HI SO
This is more of just an update than a blog
And also an excuse to share some art I've been working on !!!!
But anywaysss
So the last few days I've been on vacation and during that time I was setting up the RSS feed for my other site. (The End of the Earth) So yeah! I finished that, it's done. Woo woo!!
I'm super proud of myself! Not only did I do that, BUT I also streamlined all the various python programs I use to update my sites! What does that mean?
Well, time to talk about how I run my other site and how I make each post! And how it's changed over the last few days!
So, usually, the process goes something like this:
Depending on my inspiration, I'll do one or the other first. Sometimes the writing inspires the music, sometimes the music inspires the writing. Depends on how I'm feeling.
Pretty self explanatory, this is just so I can embed the music as an iframe in the page. I don't use audio tags because for whatever reason my computer doesn't like them, so I can't properly test anything if I use them. It's really annoying, but we press onwards.
This is where the first of the python programs come in. And actually, I use basically an identical program for these blog posts. All it does is take a document titled "input.txt" and manipulates it in a few ways. First, it wraps all lines with text in paragraph tags. And then it replaces all blank lines with line break tags. Finally, it strings it all together in one line and writes to the file "output.txt". This just makes things easier when I have to do the next step.
This is the second python program, and the most complex. (for now) It uses the python IDLE console to ask for user input (That's me!) and stores my answers as variables. What does this look like? I'm glad you asked!
Pretty simple! Once I've entered all that information, the program just plugs it into two templates. The first template is the little entry and excerpt you find on the index page of the website. The template is a little complicated, since it first has to take the HTML content and strip it of all tags and then grab just the first 150 characters to display as a blurb. The other template, the one that makes the actual HTML file for the individual post, is a lot easier.
I didn't mention it above, but the program also takes the YouTube code input. What that is is just the last little string of numbers and letters on a YouTube video link. I grab that from the music video I just uploaded and put it into the program so it can insert it into the iframe section. As simple as that!
Then, all that's left to do is open up Powershell and use the Neocities interface to upload all the files in the directory where I keep everything for this project. The only issue is that "input.txt" and "output.txt" as well as the python programs were all in that same directory. Neocities doesn't allow you to upload python files, so those just aborted. But the .txt files would upload, and I didn't like that. So what I'd end up doing is I kept all those extra files in a subdirectory called "Stuff" and every time after I'd push all the files to the site I'd run the command "neocities delete Stuff".
This wasn't very efficient at all. Also, the fact that I had two different python programs? And was planning to add a third into the mix for doing the RSS? All very bloated.
So, then we get to my wonderful vacation.
Me, being the little autistic recluse I am, did not go with my family when they went to snorkel. This is because I hate the ocean. Anyways. I had a few hours to myself in the hotel (which was very nice) and I spent all of that figuring out RSS. And then I used some more time to figure out Atom. And then I wrote a simple atom.xml file. And then I rewrote it like five times. And THEN I wrote a python program to write that file for me. And FINALLY... I added all the posts that had already been made into the atom.xml file. No big deal. (Seriously, it wasn't, I just had to run this python program a few times and input basically the same information as post-writer.py)
But that brings us to... today.
When I got back from vacation I just knew there was more I could do. Because now I had 5 unnecessary files in this directory. So, I did what any sane person would do, spend hours making one master python program that did all of that in one go. And I even gave it a GUI! Which I'd never done before in Python, by the way.
And I named it...
poster.py
Idk I'm really uncreative with naming python programs.
Anyways! Art I made on and off vacation of the two main characters from The End of the Earth (ER-F30A and MR-DA66):
Obviously very cartoony but I'm proud of them hehe. (Did them on my phone with my finger)
WHAT IS IT WITH ME AND MOVIES THAT HAVE "9" IN THE TITLE???
Okay, so, District 9.
Holy shit this movie hit me way harder than I thought it would.
Surprisingly, ALSO CAME OUT IN 2009?
District 9 released in Australia on the 13th of August, 2009. I'm too lazy to look up when it came out in the states. Probably like a month sooner or something.
The film only had a budget of 30 million USD. It's an action sci-fi movie with tons of cgi and pretty great action sequences. Marvel could learn something from this.
Now the funny thing is the director of this movie, Neill Blomkamp, also directed the recently released film Grand Turismo. A movie that I have not seen and don't intend to see. Quite frankly, it looks boring. Or mid. Whatever the kids say. (I am a teenager, and even I don't know.)
Quick aside of why I feel Grand Turismo would be a disappointing film to watch:
The first thing you need to know is that I think of Grand Turismo as a cross-section between two filmmaking trends. The "based on a true story" trend and the "product placement" trend. For the former, think of something like Hidden Figures as a good example. For the latter, The Lego Movie or the recently released banger that was the Barbie movie.
The thing that makes a good "based on a true story" movie, in my opinion, is social relevance. Take a movie like Hidden Figures. Released in 2016 at the height of the BLM movement and increasing concerns over police brutality and racial discrimination in America. Also at the height of intersectional feminism. A movie about three black women who made the U.S. space program possible is so incredibly relevant that it's astounding. Hollywood worked, for once. The story follows their vital roles in NASA, as well as how they faced gender and race discrimination throughout. Wonderful movie. The book is also great. Overall, a "based on a true story" movie must have something to say. Otherwise, you just end up with an "underdog story" movie that vaguely relates to real events. It's not useful. It's boring.
Now, a good "product placement" movie is composed of a few things. First of all, it needs to be overt in its product placement. Subtly trying to convince people to buy things doesn't make for a good movie, just a dishonest one. I won't deny that Barbie has a problem with this, (think of the car chase scene) but I still think it's a good example. Additionally, the movie needs to be self-critical. If you are afraid to criticise the product you are marketing that shows a lack of self-reflection. It is unrelatable as an audience to engage with capitalism on its own. We need something to hold on to, a greater message. And in some way, that message should be insulting to the very thing it is trying to sell you. Because, guess what, capitalism is super flawed and most of us know that even if we try to deny it. We don't like being shamelessly sold something as being "perfect" or "unflawed" because we know there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
Grand Turismo sits between these two. It tells a true story that doesn't have any social relevance. I mean, Esports? Really? That's the social justice issue we're focusing on? Oh, God help the oppressed gamer race. They try so hard but everyone tells them playing League of Legends for 50 hours a week won't get them anywhere. Jokes aside, seriously? Yes, the topic of Esports is gaining traction in mainstream media. But do we need a movie about it? What is there to say about it that couldn't be done in an article on Esports Insider.
Then there's the product placement angle. Ostensibly, this movie is trying to sell you a PlayStation. There is no downside to the PlayStation in this movie, it's just a vessel for the story's main plot to take place through. And yet, it's magnificent. Have you seen the CGI transition in the trailer where it goes from Archie Madekwe's character playing the game to being on the actual track in the car? All the car parts coalescing around him until he's actually there?? It's pretty cool looking, right? And probably comparable to the PlayStation graphics! Welp, better go buy one of those.
Tangent over.
District 9.
I got this movie as a DVD from a thrift store. My dad picked it out, he wanted me to see it.
Since I've come to Australia I've amassed a medium-sized collection of DVDs. Most of them from thrift stores, some from the time my school library sold them at a rate of $1 for 10, and like 3 from a little market stall inside a rainforest. That's a story for another time. I'm moving back to the states in...
So yeah. Fairly soon. (By the way, that day counter should be updating so to be clear while I'm writing this I'll be moving back in 80 days. If the number is smaller, it's because it's been a few days since I posted this.) I'm trying to decide what DVDs to bring back with me, since I only have so much room in my suitcase. I haven't seen a lot of the movies on my shelf, so I'm going through them with my dad now. District 9 was the first one we tried last night.
It was fucked up. In a good way. I felt like crying.
I don't have a lot to say about what the movie was trying to say. Largely because, and this is incredibly obvious if you know anything about the movie, it's an allegory for racial discrimination. Sort of. Maybe immigration? It's complicated. Like a lot of movies that serve as allegories, it's not a 1:1 thing. And, something you may or may not know about me, I am incredibly white.
Though technically I can say I'm 2nd generation American, and my Lita's immigration from Honduras wasn't 100% illegal so I have that going for me, I've never actually... been an immigrant. Unless you count moving from America to Australia for a year and a half as a big enough cultural transition. (Don't get me wrong, it was big, and people definitely do not like me for being American, but it's not discrimination by any metric.)
God, I keep going on tangents. Anyways. My point is. I am so underqualified to talk about this that it's practically comical.
Instead, I'll talk about how the story made me feel. With as little spoilers as possible. I'll spoil the first maybe ten minutes, but not in a movie-ruining way.
So the story starts when we learn about this alien ship that came down to Earth 20 years ago (relative to when this movie takes place) and just kinda... floated. It was above Johannesburg, in South Africa. We learn all this information through a sort of documentary format. We see this throughout the movie, with little talking-head interviews with various characters. It's an interesting framing device considering we also see a lot of non-diegetic kinda scenes. Things that in-universe aren't in the documentary, but did happen, in order to keep the narrative flowing. It feels strange at first, but it actually works quite well. Kudos to Neill Blomkamp for that.
As we learn about all this we also meet the main character of the film, Wikus Van De Merwe.
And let me tell you, he is such an interesting character. Your opinion on him will change a lot in the course of the movie. And that's helped by the strange tonal shift in the beginning, one that I'm not entirely sure was intentional.
It has to do with the documentary style I mentioned before. I think it's unintentional because it is just a documentary style played straight, but the concept is thrown at you almost immediately. I felt like I had no time to adjust my "suspension of disbelief" settings, so when I heard that the aliens lived in "slums" I couldn't help an internal laugh at the weirdness of it all. The aliens looked a little off too, but 2009 was 2009.
There is an intentional played for laugh bit with Wikus, he's sort of played as an awkward white-collar worker. Which is a fine way to start it out, the subversion in just a few minutes is worth it.
I won't get into it much more than that, but I will say the talking heads are incredibly effective in setting you up for what you're in for. You hear things like "It just didn't seem like him," or "It shouldn't have happened," and you can't help but think... What the hell could've happened to this guy?
I'm not sure how much of this is on purpose and how much I'm reading into. But, nonetheless, it's an incredibly interesting watch. I reccomend it.
However, there is a good amount of gore and graphic scenes. There's no sex scenes, (though there are a few jokes, and a censored image that's played for laughs) but some things fall off a human body that really shouldn't. Also, things grow out of the human body. A bit of body horror, basically. Viewer discretion is definitely advised if you're not too big on that kind of thing. Also, if something like police brutality would be triggering... maybe skip it? Just, be careful.
I think it's a great movie that people should watch, but I don't think it's for everyone, and it's also not a movie I'm going to watch again. Sort of a one-time experience thing.
Have you heard the name Shane Acker? No? Okay.
What about Tim Burton?
I'm sure you've heard of him. And I'm sure you have an opinion on him and/or his works. Even if you haven't seen any Tim Burton films, anyone who's so much as walked past a Hot Topic has some idea of whether or not they would like one of his films.
Now, for reasons I won't get into now, I don't like Tim Burton. I respect his style and his films, I just don't like him. And I like creepy weird shit, so that's saying something. Not liking Tim Burton makes it really hard to interact with creepy weird people. That's not the fault of those creepy weird people, I see it more as an issue of society's knowledge of all things creepy and weird beginning and ending with one creepy weird white dude. (Not creepy in that way.)
One of my grievances with Tim Burton is less to do with him as a person and more to do with how anything he touches becomes "Tim Burton's New Film" and no one else gets much credit.
So, 9.
9 was a sci-fi apocalyptic animated movie released on 09/09/09. Very nice. It was directed by Shane Acker, that nobody I mentioned before. He also wrote for the movie, in addition to Pamela Pettler and Ben Gluck. 9 is only an hour and nineteen minutes long, and it's based on Shane Acker's 2005 short film of the same name.
Tim Burton was a producer on the film, among quite a few others. But of course he still gets quite a bit of credit. Besides the point, just thought I'd point out how weird that is.
Last night, I watched this film. I had a really good time with it.
It's creepy, weird, atmospheric, and emotional. I was sad, and I was hopeful, and I was freaked out.
If you haven't seen this movie, you absolutely should. I'm not going to spoil the movie here, I might write a future blog going in more depth about the movie. Before that though I want to go more in-depth with this media and really wrap my head around it. I'm still reeling from last night's watch.
But what is it about? Why should you watch it?
What's so great about this movie is just how relevant it still is today. 9 has a lot to say about AI technology and human development in general. War, tyranny, humanity.
The movie is a bit janky animation-wise, but it was 2009. It's still a very beautiful movie. The setting, the character design, all the little details that go into every shot.
There's still so much more I want to say, and this blog probably comes off as a ramble. That's mostly because it is. It's also my first blog post. Again, I still need to wrap my mind around what I watched.
Seriously, if you have any interest in things weird or creepy, go watch 9. If you like Tim Burton, go watch 9. I mean, Tim himself liked the movie. That's why he was one of the producers. So, that's probably enough endorsement for all the Burton-heads out there. (I'm not sure what they call themselves.)