I'm experimenting with RSS readers again, since everyone is scattering to the four winds and being able to keep track of people in one space even if they're posting to different websites seems like it would be useful right about now
Mostly pleased with results so far, hopefully things continue working
This is really nice actually? The RSS reader, not brushing my teeth with dish soap
It's not perfect but I'm honestly endeared to its quirks. And also there's zero chance of convincing people at large to adopt this, which is a shame because I truly believe that if use of RSS feeds was more common then we'd have a better internet. Unfortunately we've missed that window
So an unexpected side-effect is that the RSS reader has severely cut down on my, sitting around on the internet just looking at twitter/tumblr/whatever. Because all my feeds are in one place, I don't check one and then immediately go 'well maybe the other has updated' and open that up and get stuck in a loop of hopping back and forth between them, and because I can see when there's a new item in the feed there's not even any reason to open it up and see if there's anything there. I just, open it up when there's a notification, read through all the updates, and then close it and move on.
The downside to this is that I am so fucking bored. It will be a good thing, at some point, but right now with my hand and head hurting I'd really like to just zone out in front of the internet for a while.
The other issue which may be good may need fixing, is that I can't access the feed from my phone, and there doesn't seem to be a good way of being able to. I believe there are accounts you can set up that you'd be able to access from where-ever you have internet, but those accounts are limited in stupid ways and that's a whole 'nother rant for another time. In the meantime -- maybe it's a good thing if I can't access social media from my phone? Unsure! But the lack of phone access is also why I can't wholeheartedly recommend this to the average user, and why I think it's really unlikely anyone but me will be into it
I'm gonna keep experimenting with it, see if it seems worth sticking with.
Last week I finally got around to watching The Sweatbox, which is a documentary about the creation of the Emperor's New Groove, and how it transformed into that from Kingdom of the Sun.
Wikipedia describes it like this:
It illustrated the slow and painful transformation from Kingdom of the Sun to The Emperor's New Groove, including director Roger Allers, musician Sting, artists and voice cast being dismayed by the new direction. The film's major theme is creative-executive conflicts.
And
The crew then present what they have finished so far to executive producers Thomas Schumacher and Peter Schneider in the titular sweatbox, the room where they screen their half-finished product. However, the producers are harshly dissatisfied and demand that the film be redone, though they underhandedly admit that they liked the "love song" and the "llama song".
And that's the sort of tone I've heard about it having every time it's come up, that it's a documentary about producers Not Understanding Art and Almost Ruining A Project and whatever, but...
Okay, so to start with, all of the creatives in it to me give me a vibe of, understanding that this is just part of the job. Sometimes your project just isn't working and has to change. They talk quite a bit about how Emperor's New Groove in particular was a deeply collaborative project that they hoped people could bring up things that aren't working so they can be changed into something that does work -- Sting almost walks off of the project near the end because the ending isn't working for him, the creatives (and Roy Disney) read his letter on the subject, agree with him, and change the ending. This is not a project on which people were fighting over Their Vision
Also the producers seemed very aware that they were dealing with people's Art and tried to be kind when giving feedback -- the wikipedia note that a comment was "underhanded" is wild to me. And also that comment is very funny in retrospect given that both songs, and nearly all songs, ended up cut from the movie.
But also also... they were right. The movie as described before the producer screening is a mess. It's a Prince and the Pauper story in which the main character is a poor llama farmer who teaches the vain emperor how to be a better ruler and also the emperor is turned into a llama while the farmer has to rule in his stead while also there's a love story between a princess and the farmer who is pretending to be the emperor while also Yzma is trying to take over while also there's a god of bureaucracy while also,
There's so much going on in this movie, there's no way it would have succeeded if they'd run with what they were making. And the movie it became did extremely decently for itself, especially considering the environment it was released into.
The producers did their job. It's a necessary job for that sort of creative work. Y'all are just projecting your inability to work in a collaborative creative field onto these professional directors and animators.
I don't remember if I've said here but I've been working (slowly) on a, duolingo-alike-ish to teach teket, via twine. Today I made images to test users on the writing system
etc
I guess I could write with these
Forgive the low-contrast, the site they're meant for is (currently) on a black background.
Some day I'll get around to actually making the font(s), though I still need to use images for the game/quiz because it's going to look awful silly if the font doesn't load and it just asks people "which letter does 'g' represent" or whatever.
Also got part of the template for the quiz done. Need to get the CSS sorted for that, and figure out how I want the actual mechanics of selecting an answer to work
Anyway. Did some more Japanese lesson, and watched another couple episodes of Digimon-in-japanese. It never occurred to me before that it would have different music/sound cues from the dub, and it's interesting how different that makes it feel. At some point I should watch one of the episodes back to back in sub and dub
But right now I should go to bed
