HTML blog, 10/11 - 13/11

Tuesday, 10th of November

Pretty much because of kind of fucked up situation caused by everyone around and me too, I don't really have a lot of internet access. Not feeling really good right now, but you know, you choose to be miserable like Cammy said in rare moment I could hop on IRC and talk. I think it's best thing to push things through to the end of the week and absorb myself in some activities.

While feeling dead inside old bad habit came back and I went to watch TV for hours. Sometimes there is decent movie on some channel, but mostly I prefer having some music channel on. Heard on cable there are more music channels available, since on satellite I got pretty small selection and only like two fit what I like. Recently MTV 90s started and I liked alternative programming so far. I'd prefer to have cable TV (and a small CRT TV) when I'll be on my own I guess, though I wish analogue was still available. Fortunately radio is still analogue and it will stay like this for many, many years.

Hoping I'll still be able to work on weekends. I want to get some necessary things and also secure my domain for now. Still not enough money to have for 2 or 3 years of hosting paid upfront and I'm still debating about switching my hosting plan but seems to be too expensive for me now. Maybe if I got someone other to be hosted here it would be a good idea.

Listening to some things in my backlog and I liked some of this stuff. I don't know why, but most music I find and hoard for later just clicks with me and I enjoy it a lot.

Later this day...

Few days ago dcb dropped link on Somnol's IRC room to D&B mix and this made me to listen to a mix first time in ages. Though genres I like the most, mainly electronic are usually more of singles and mix thing, there are still lot of albums out there. It depends on genre mainly, since in more dance focused electronic there can be decent balance of albums, singles/EPs and mixes (like Techno, House, D&B I think), or some really seem to be mainly mix/DJ set and singles genres (like Trance from what I observed, Progressive House seems to be mainly mix thing. Really, honestly I know more Prog House/Trance mixes than albums). More laid-back styles like (trendy and sometimes nauseous) Trip-hop/downtempo (same thing, one is more instrumental though), ambient and different mixes with house and techno and IDM (somewhat overrated mixed bag of everything) are predominately album genres with decent amount of mixes.

(Yeah, dumb shit but it was in my head for a while. Probably I didn't dig a lot and this is just what I seen on the surface)

I started hoarding mixes again, mainly series I got some time ago in lossy formats and did ton of bad transcodes (some sound ok, some sound nasty) which survive on some DVD-Rs. Wanted to replace some for a while and revisit them, especially most of mixes released on LTJ Bukem's Good Looking Records (damn, they don't have site) which are some really good atmospheric D&B. I remember liking Artcore series too, so far my favourite was Artcore 4 mixed by Kemistry (RIP) & Storm. Shit gets even more darker when you listen it, especially 1 CD mixed version (unfortunately I can't find decent rips of it, gonna get it when money won't be thight I guess). Gonna revisit some Back To Mine mixes too, I enjoyed Morcheeba's and EBTG's ones back in the day. Kinda going back to my roots genre-wise.

For a longer while I was thinking about way I discover music, since sometimes I can't believe how quickly my music libary grows sometimes. It's hard to figure for me now how some things appeared out of nowhere, not sure how I found some thing. I think some came because I heard it's essential for some genre, is regarded as some important act in respective genre. Sometimes I just went through someone's [redacted] shares and was finding most random shit which sticked for me. Similar thing was doing sort of virtual crate digging on Discogs, I was getting things only because I liked the cover. Covers are really important thing, man. Some person I know said he used to do this in real life when he still was in university and was trading CDs with friends. Probably still possible in big cities with record stores compared to my little, sort of sleepy town where population gets even smaller and smaller with every year. Last thing, most recent method is just going through Rate Your Music charts or lists if I find interesting one, though now it's not really a good method after changes which hit it recently. That 00s layout was neat one, oh and it's even slower than it was.

In the end...

Writing comes now really easily and probably will start working on some planned things. I'm feeling that I could start writing some things about my lads, which got a bit re-developed recently. Some changes refreshed this thing a lot and maybe story will start making a sense. Another thing, was digging a lot around acient blogs and personal sites again. Gonna sperg about this tomorrow probably.

Got to know Chameleon was alias of lads from Global Communication, never thought they did Atmospheric D&B.

Wednesday, 11th of November

Thought a little ramble here about ancient sites and communities will suit this place instead of blog, but quickly I realized this topic is so damn deep, with every while I get to dig out another old site with some information about sometimes dead and sometimes just forgotten web services which didn't made into web 2.0, were suprassed by social media.

Sometimes I can't write properly when I open text processor, I usually prefer to write in great WP's block editor or straight while writing site manually. I think second one will be way in which I'll write something about my lads. I was thinking about doing it in form of early blogs, with separate subsite to keep things tidy. Narration in online diary, partially anonymized though still deeply personal matches thing completely. I wanted to tell this story by fake articles, mails, blogs and similar thing or in sort of fake documentary, recalling surface events. More of multimedia project, from start I wanted to make it just a graphic novel which I'd like to publish here, but I think I still need to learn a lot and characters and story need to be developed further and think it's a good way to figure out things by writing mostly.

By digging through ancient early 00s blogs I noticed one thing - they were sort of substitute of social media before social media. Blog posts were usually shorter and sometimes blogs were just used to link interesting things, which later moved to social media. When you did something specialized, for examaple a fan site writing html by hand still was best option to do this compared to early blogs. I think things started to shift a bit and some people with journals flocked to dedicated services since they were easier than setting up blogger or b2 on own hosting for some, blogs taken place of specialized sites which continues to today. Almost all personal rambling is now on social media I suppose.

When I started using Blogger in 2012 (after redesign unfortunately) and going by tons of blogs they were topic based, like less personal spaces now - small scale substitute of writing for specialized magazines I guess. I'm suprised how many early things are still in blogger, like classic themes which actually are pretty easy to break down and see how it worked - seems it was based around variable elements in html, like Tumblr does (and one another obscure website, now dead Mylog). Still digging how Blogger actually worked before Google acquiring it, though I know now how blogspot appeared and about their financial problems at the end, problems in general which made some people move to b2. Also I'd like to find theming documentation or some guide for both, since I want to write a bit how these early systems actually worked.

For b2 I think theming was really similar to WordPress, though I'd need to get my hands on archived b2/cafelog forums and old WP docs. B2 is direct ancestor of WordPress, as it was merged into it around 2003/4, around this time when it's developer abandoned it and later just came back to announce merge. B2evolution, a fork of original b2 is still around, though not really widely used (I guess user interface is too clunky, though I'd try it outside of demo tour available on site).

Last year I found somewhat still alive Diaryland, after going through archived old web communities. I found some group site somewhat related to ancient and controversial alt.holiday.suicide newsgroup, some of people used Diaryland separately as a journals to contain all of angst. I started quickly after digging some more information about Diaryland, there are some articles about it in general without a word how system actually worked or theming did. Mostly nostalgia stuff to be honest, but I probably will find more by going into old web rabbit hole again.

As I said, it's still alive though registrations are closed. Only people who used it before can recover their journals by paying 20$, before that it was smaller. Most of information I have so far are from around 2015, including interview with it's founder and (uh) Vice article which is actually decent. Need more to write these posts to be informative and do this well - wanted to do this already for a long while. Blogging as a thing is usually stupid, but underlying technology and changes, how communities formed around it, how people used this is interesting for me. It always did.

Writing about everything and nothing comes really easy to me, it just dumping random thoughts which I can rework later to turn this into something that's is fun to read and informative in some cases. On regular basis when writing random stuff like that I quickly hit 700 to over 900 words, before that I usually wrote shorter things. I'm getting more loose with this which is a good thing.

Finished listening to original Logical Progression mix, really good shit. Probably gonna give it few more listens to pick my favourite tracks and find more of this. Currently listening to Sasha & John Digweed's Northern Exposure mixes, I feel like these are classic and essential Trance mixes. It doesn't click yet, I like some tracks. Probably Trance still needs to grow on me as a genre, since it's dance oriented thing compared to what I usually like - like Detroit Techno scene really early on was playing with more home listening approach, which later was influential on IDM.

Later

I think I'll dump some old web finds too, since some are just really random. Write a bit about them probably, will go on blog on or on a misc page, maybe even links page? There are neat things which I dump mostly on IRC, it's time to collect them.

Artcore mix series is gold. Listening to mixes is fun actually, getting used to this again.

Thursday, 12th of November

Even if Pitchfork's is think I like to avoid and I think it's funny when people drone them, but their early 00s layout was glorious

I don't feel that I need to churn out some rambling now. Maybe I cleaned up things in my head, noted ideas for later. Was drawing again, this time to warm up I was drawing mainly animals and I think I'll draw more. Just fun to draw and I'm revisiting techniques from Keys to Drawing combined with enveloping/drawing planes methods. Starting with photos, though I'd like to draw some still-life soon.

I think I'll finish most of drawing pads I have around, except fancy ones. In next year I want to switch to getting printer paper and recycled paper pads mostly, because they are cheaper and are enough for my practice. Finished stuff on better paper if I'm doing it entirely in traditional media.

This really looks like something taken out straight from late 00s, though is from 2001.

Slowly planning my little project related to my lads, finally got idea for layout for fake ancient site. For historical accuracy will do this in HTML 3.2 or if I'm too lazy safe bet will be on 4.0. I wanted to switch site to 4.0 to get more browser support, will wait for next re-design. Would play with frames again for sure.

Got some doodles to scan, probably will finish them digitally.

Friday, 13th of November

I tried working on new bigger piece, but it was hard from the begining but at least I'll keep idea for later, it was for a while in my head, but I think it gonna wait another while.

Drawing more than I did and I think I'd like to keep this for now, especially mostly drawing random things from photos. Need to do some figure drawing too.

I still don't get painting, really. Tried many times but everything turns into shit. I can easily do a decent piece in pencil, maybe watercolor. Mixing and blending is just so weird. Digital painting is a bit better, I start getting better but tablet is working funny recently, need to check drivers again. Gonna do more digital studies.