Microblog

11-04-2025 I have been working on this website A LOT. I am not sure how productive I have been though. I'm revamping a bit of the home page and adding some about sections and stuff. I've also been adding animations to stuff. Surprisingly the css animations have been maybe one of the most mentally taxing things I've had to implement on here. It hurts my brain having to think about all these different elements nested in each other and how to like carefully manipulate them so it looks pretty. Its very confusing, and you will bang your head against a wall trying to figure something out for an hour only to realize the problem was due to some weird css quirk you weren't aware of. They do look pretty though! I should upload them in a few days I'm not sure tho 0-0 I've got some stuff to finish up on the main page, maybe some more styling, oh and I want to start work on my first shrine :))) sometimes I do worry that css animations might make my site look polished and almost template-y? idk if thats a valid concern or not I just love web 1 stuff and I don't want it to start looking like webiste builder slop. in my own life, I have two exams this week ;-; one should be easy and one very hard I might have to ban myself from working on this in the mean time but I'm not sure. anywayysss i hope this finds you well whoever is reading this
here is a picture from my camera roll:

11-04-2025 I have been working on music and such but mostly this website. I really really really like working on this. It is so much, but it has also been kind of frustrating. I will have like a big idea for something, and then when I try to think of how to do it I realize it needs tons and tons and tons of javascript that kind of just isn't worth it. Sometimes I will even go through the trouble, and I don't even like it in the end. So that is kind of lame. I guess I could work on a shrine? also regarding music, I feel a need to create but not a want if that makes any sense. Like I feel an internal pressure that I need to, but when I sit down to do it I just do something else instead. I'm not sure why that is. I really like working on this as a creative endeavor because I don't have to be creative all the time. If I'm not feeling especially creative, I can just do grunt work. Also I recently added a japanese translation of my home page. That was fun but also my japanese is so rusty. I hope if a japanese person comes across this page they can read it and it isn't atrocious :P　it was really fun to do as well because it taught me a lot about json and how I can use it! I also recently talked to an academic advisor and learned I am not as nearly as behind for my degree as I thought I was :D so that has relieved a lot of stress for me.

06-04-2025 It was cool seeing all the protestors today. It made me feel maybe a teeny tiny bit hopeful of where America is going. I hope this continues in the future, and actually does something. It didn't do much today I ordered an Ableton push 2 about a week ago, and it was scheduled to come in today, but the sender set it up so that I would have to sign for it (╥﹏╥). So I just waited in my apartment all day and when I saw it was getting close I waited in the lobby for like 30 minutes to get it lol. I have been using it, and it is super cool. However, I think its a little broken :( a few of the pads in the middle row will activate the ones next to them if I push too hard. I read this is normally caused by the contact pads under the silicone getting dirty and fixes for that. I tried take it apart and either I or the person before me stripped 3 of the screws :( I tried even harder but it just made it worse and now I probably need like a drill or something to get them out. Oh well... Its okay though its still really cool and I candeal with that for a little bit. I was also doing some web surfing today and came across some insanely cool websites. one of them was gogogal.online it has all these really cool links to websites that would've taken FOREVER for me to find otherwise if at all. I also recently discovered arataka. This website introduced me to the idea of fake banner ads for other personal websites 0_o (thats so freaking cool) and they have a super over the top super colorful way of laying things out and cool shrines ahhhhh its just really cool. In other news in my brain I've started to notice my japanese start to get rusty which means I actually have to practice again :(
まじでこんなことはめっちゃつまんないなーーーー
oki that's all I'm gonna go to bed now^-^

03-04-2025 I have been working on a lot of music stuff lately, and I feel like today I had a really amazing thought. I was working in the new Serum 2 (which is just amazing already) like oh my god. I thought Serum was good but this is just insane. I've been creating a lot of ambient, texture-y things lately and I stumbled onto something really cool. I made a really interesting flute ambient texture thing. Here is what the synth looks like for it: Its 3 granular synths and a sub that kind of acts as a foundational sort of fundamental pitch/tone for it. As I was playing around with this on a midi piano I felt really like amazed by it. Not in just what it sounded like, but I felt like I had accidentally stumbled into a sound that forced me to rethink how I think about pitch and composition in my head. I was just moving around in the same key and everything just fit together, and I had no clue what it would sound like before I just pressed the buttons. I feel like recently I have been relying too much on sounds I am familiar and comfortable with, like the piano, to write music, and perhaps it has been stifling me. Whenever I write it feels like all these paths are sort of unfolding in my head and as I go down one of these paths in my head I have to make assumptions about the vibe and texture and energy of a chord or note. Most of the time I am right-ish and it is pretty helpful for writing intuitively and getting ideas out fast, but I get bored with sounds or avoid sounds because I think I know what they sound like and they don't fit or aren't interesting enough or whatever. Whenever I am writing and picturing a C major chord I hear this in my head (these are all just different voicing of Cmajor):

But this is kind of reductive and oversimplified. so so so so so so oversimplified. Because a C major could also sound like this!

THEY ARE THE SAME NOTES! IS THAT NOT CRAZY???? like the same same thing. I wonder how many amazing ideas I totally missed or didn't even think of because I wasn't writing in the write timbre at that time. It is a shame but also super inspiring. Now I feel like I have added a "mess around with timbre randomly" tool to my toolbox to use when I am creatively stuck or to even make good ideas even better (˵ •̀ ᴗ •́ ˵ )

30-03-2025 I've decided I'm going to start a microblog. I really like the idea of just being able to make a small little thing thats untitled and to not really have any pressure surrounding it. I decided to first make this because I saw this microblog. I loved the formatting, the idea (obviously they didn't come up with it but still), and the person's voice in the writing just felt really soft, and I love that. On the same website I read this page, and it filled me with a lot of hope. I recently made a set I was really happy with for an event. I made so much music working like 8 hours a day or something for 3-4 days. I was so proud of the project not because it was perfect but because it had purpose and direction which is something I had strived for for so long but had always felt out of reach. After that I have been thinking about making that set into an album, but alas, once again it has become difficult to make music again >w< It's so tough to constantly feel like you are searching for yourself and your art, but maybe I need to stop thinking that I am searching for myself. I haven't gone anywhere. I'm right here :P I think I just want my art to be a certain thing. I want it to be this good or I want it to sound like this, and instead of admitting to myself that that's not realistic or even if I were to achieve it it would inherently not be as good as it could've been (given that I am me and they are them and we are different), I just constantly intimidate myself and never feel good enough. But my art doesn't have to be anything but mine y'know? It's tough to struggle with something especially when you know the answer, and it's really simple. I find it really frustrating and disheartening, but I will try to work through it anyways.