I think he is. The original review and follow-up are not making the point that the social media element is a core element of his work, but rather the core element. Davis' says things like the work is not presented in an "actual gallery." Describes his work as "conventional" and a hand in one of the works as looking "like a small rotisserie chicken." Beyond saying that Rodriguez is a good a technical painter, Davis doesn't really say anything much positive that would imply he thinks the works have value. Really, both articles pretty clearly state that the paintings don't have enough value to stand on their own merit, and are instead only popular due to the way Rodriquez has marketed them. Which Davis' then presents that as problematic due to the fact that the situations are faked. So if he thinks the work is lacklustre, and then also find Davis' social media problematic, then he's essentially calling the whole thing shite. Then he acts surprised about backlash from his fans...Was he really arguing that the art lacks value, though?...the original review seems to be more making the (obvious) point that the social media channel and performative use thereof is a core element of his work.
It's been awhile since I sat down for a drink. A fair bit has been going on. I'm 9 months into the first serious relationship of my adult life after being intentionally single for quite a few years. It's nice, feels surprisingly natural. We get on well and balance each other out, finding ways to help each other grow. And we're quite balanced in long-term life plans: not favouring casual relationships, no desire for kids, indifferent to marriage... It's an adventure I'm enjoying and learning a great deal from. The last few months has also seen me learning to drive and I passed my test a couple of weeks back with 0 faults. Now I just need to find a car. A large part of the motive was so I could be more self-sufficient with getting out to kayak. I want to get some coaching qualifications and help out at the club, especially with coaching people who are held back by their mental game. That's an area I think I can bring valuable experience and learnings to. It's also nice to be able to help out driving in the relationship. Progress on the album release is slow but still moving. I have officially finished all the shortlisted tracks and the label are now deciding the final track-list. Some tracks will inevitably get cut as they want it to all fit on one vinyl, but we should be able to release the spares as digital promo EPs. Exciting times. I've got a fair few friends in various creative industries, so we have some cool plans cooking on how to present and promote the release. B2B sales is hard. The marketing I've been managing for family the IT business has gotten us a fair few leads now for our flagship product, but we just can't get anyone over the line. It's not like B2C where if you can just convince someone to click 'buy' for a second then it's job done. With businesses there's multiple layers of approval, contracts, security questionnaires and all this other random shit. I think we might have to change which product we push the hardest, as the current approach is just not viable for much longer.
1754 days ago, I made a comment on here about how my music of the past seemed a lot more popular. And how each new track got fewer and fewer listeners. kleinbl00 responded by saying this: Today, after 3 years of sending tracks across, I got the go ahead for an LP from a label I have great respect for. Needless to say, I am thrilled. I remembered the above comment many times during those periods where I doubted myself. So thank you for that, kb.
Damn. Sorry to see bfv go. I was always impressed to see the post up every week. I can keep the weekly post going if no-one else volunteers.
Youtube inventor/tinkerer Colin Furze has an ongoing series where he's building a tunnel underneath his land to link up his house, garage, and underground bunker. Quite an entertaining watch if you're interested.
----- Feed ----- 1. Increase font size to improve readability 2. Increase spacing between elements to improve readability 3. Domain and tag information moved over to the right to unclutter the left side of small text 4. Increased margins on main div to focus information into the centre as it stretches wide on larger displays ------ Posts ------ 1. Increase title and body font sizes to improve readability 2. Increase spacing between paragraphs to improve readability 3. Limit body text div so it averages around ~15 words per line. This makes it easier to track writing line-to-line and maintain focus ---------- Comments ---------- 1. Similar font and div size adjustments to posts 2. Increase spacing between comments to let them breathe more ----- Chat ----- 1) Import modern font and force it to override retro font 2) Reduce main div width and centre it to focus information 3) Increase font sizes to improve readability. 4) Increase spacing between messages so it doesn't look like one massive block of text 5) Move usernames and timestamp above the message. This gives separation between the username and the message and unclutters the start of the message.
I dislike it. I think it makes things more complex. And in the history of attracting users and improving their experience on a website, the answer has rarely been: "let's make things more obscure and add more option toggles." Not to mention, if you need to introduce a core piece of functionality with the option to turn it off, it's probably not the right direction. You say that people have complained to you that comments are tiring. Isn’t that just a consequence of ‘thoughtful discussion’? Thoughtful discussion demands time, effort and the willingness to be open to and understanding of other views. And sometimes it requires you to look at yourself and reassess what you thought and believed. Sounds tiring to me. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile. So it seems to me that by introducing this functionality, you’re trying to open up spaces where people can more casually chat without the worry of being called out. That’s fair. But the solution to that has little to do with governing the way we share posts and comments. Instead, it’s about increasing the amount of content on the site that offers those opportunities. That either has to come from the existing user base or new users. I do not believe that this experiment will address that. All it does is risk segregating an already small community. Also, I agree with kb. My suggestion for any immediate change would 100% be the UI. I've complained about it before, but it literally goes against a lot of the most basic contemporary UX guidelines. I inject over 100 lines of custom CSS just to make this place look okay. That's not right. Those of you older than me who grew up at the beginnings of the internet may think it's not that bad. But bad web design will absolutely drive newer generation users away before they even look at the content. And if users view the design of a website negatively, that will tinge their experience of the content. I mean, default Hubski is 9pt body text and 30 words per line (though the latter differs based on display size). That is egregious. Not to mention that it defies basic web accessibility standards.
I don't like it. I feel as though I should be able to remove as much as my presence as possible when I delete my account on a website. It's one thing that comments remain. Now usernames remain attached to them? You may as well not have the delete account feature because at this point all it will do is just remove access to the account for the user in question.
I engaged my dad in a discussion about systemic racism and racial inequality in the UK today. He doesn't believe it exists. It's only a problem in the USA apparently. Most of the arguments I made were dismissed with the reasons of "that's the way they choose to behave" or "they're genetically predisposed to be that way". I pressed him on evidence for those claims but couldn't really nail anything down. I was more forthcoming with the basis for my claims but I don't think my arguments were good enough. I am committed to reading more and gaining more knowledge so that next time I am in a better position. Still, I was saddened to see this reaction from my dad, even though I half expected it. The 38 days since I posted this poem have been a blur. I wrote it not long after we got the news that my aunt had committed suicide. I live with mum and game daily with my cousins so I encountered a lot of powerful emotions in the weeks following. Never have I felt empathy-based emotions so strongly before. The initial rawness appears to have passed now but I have no doubt that there's a lot of healing still to happen. Otherwise, things have been good. My exercise and strength training has been going well. I'm really happy with how my music is sounding at the moment, even if I could be working harder. Nearly all the houses surrounding our communal garden are now occupied, which is nice. It really feels like a community now and seeing people in the garden every day helps lessen the isolation of lockdown. But most importantly, I am going to go kayaking again soon. I can't wait.
I use the Stylus extension to inject the CSS. It is available for both Chromium and Firefox browsers. Here's a pastebin of the code to import. It's fully commented, so you can edit it to taste.
Name: Jez Location: Brexit Age: An expensive bottle of whiskey Current Preoccupation: Trying to distill some sort of personal essence into music; challenging and bettering myself through kayaking, yoga, and strength workouts; creating and implementing new processes at work to improve things for both customers and employees; mostly lurking on Hubski. Previous Preoccupation: Anxiety and panic attacks, getting high all the time, student, more music
Pubski on my birthday, aw yeeee. Drinks are on me. I've always loved bonsai trees and I was gifted a 5yo Chinese Elm. Unfortunately, its potting situation is a bite dire. It's all pot-bound and stuck in a compacted, organic nursery soil. This makes it more difficult to keep it watered correctly and it will also hamper its growth. What's more, it's too late in the season to fully re-pot it. I'm going to try to slip pot it, which consists of just lifting the whole thing out, placing it into a larger pot, and then surrounding it with new bonsai soil. I've got some molar clay for this purpose, which will allow for much improved drainage and aeration. Usually a soil mismatch like this wouldn't be advised as the roots might not grow into the new type. However, there's lots of long roots hanging loose out the bottom of it currently, so hopefully they should take to the new soil without too much trouble. I'll also gently rake the edges of the root ball to loosen some of the smaller roots to help them find their new home. I'm going to let it live outside too, which I hear they much prefer. Fingers crossed I can turn it into a happy little tree.
Has anyone else here played Outer Wilds? I completed it a few days ago and I can't stop thinking about. Plenty of games have had an emotional impact on me, but none quite like this. I feel a sense of emptiness now that I've finished it. Perhaps that sounds pretentious, but it is genuine. It's hard to talk about it without spoiling it. Every moment is filled with such imagination and depth that a relatively small game world feels huge. It puts most sprawling open worlds to shame. I think it may have become my favourite game of all time. Play it. I've been training pull-ups for the last few months and progress has been pretty good. It's interesting to see the sharp initial rise in reps as your muscle memory improves and your body gets used to the movement. Then increases become more gradual once improvement comes down to strength/muscle gain. I've also been blasting the core workouts which are never not brutal. But it's all to keep me in good stead for when I can get in the kayak again. I was supposed to be going to Slovenia in June to kayak on the literal paradise that is Soča river. Oh well, maybe next year... I've been taking an online course in logic and critical thinking. It's something I've been meaning to do for a while, but the comment that johnnyFive left on this article I posted was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was at that point that it became too clear for me to ignore that it's unsatisfactory to read an article and just think "hmm that's interesting" without really examining it further. So thanks for helping me push back the dark. I'm coming to the end of the first part of course and I've already learnt a tonne. It started from the very basics, but it's been super useful and I dig the conversational, in-depth style it has. I'm looking forward to learning more.
I've been writing music for over a decade, and I can tell you that this never stops being the case. To quote Leonard Cohen: To find a song that I can sing, to engage my interest, to penetrate my boredom with myself and my disinterest in my own opinions, to penetrate those barriers, the song has to speak to me with a certain urgency... To be able to find that song that I can be interested in takes many versions and it takes a lot of uncovering. But why shouldn’t my work be hard? Almost everybody’s work is hard. One is distracted by this notion that there is such a thing as inspiration, that it comes fast and easy. And some people are graced by that style. I’m not. So I have to work as hard as any stiff, to come up with my payload. Ultimately, it is this process that makes creating art so rewarding.My process feels very slow, as I need to carefully listen and do a lot of experiments to get the sound that I have somewhere in my head.
Before I can discard the verse, I have to write it… I can’t discard a verse before it is written because it is the writing of the verse that produces whatever delights or interests or facets that are going to catch the light. The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines
I like how this is now a video game thread even though that's not what the OP is about. I'll join the derailment. I've played quite a few games since the last one of these threads. Rocket League remains a daily driver for me. Nothing else scratches quite the same itch. The complete control you have, the endless sense of progression, and the perfection of the physics sim make it all something completely irreplaceable. I achieved my goal of reaching Grand Champion rank a while back, which was the highest rank at the time of setting said goal. But now there's four new ranks above me, so I guess the grind never stops. Here's a nice clip I hit yesterday. OlliOlli World is a fantastic momentum-based platforming game with skateboarding mechanics laid on top. It's pretty tough but I got a bit obsessed with this one and got the 100% completion. It's so satisfying to master nuances of the levels and get the perfect run. However, be prepared to say goodbye to your thumbs if you like chasing the high scores. Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye DLC. I was apprehensive about this one. The base game is an all-time favourite which felt perfect and complete. How do you expand on that without risking comprising the original? Fortunately, the DLC was beautifully made, offering the same sense of wonder, surprise and revelations as the original. Not only did it achieve that, but it also managed to redefine and elevate the base game in a wonderful conclusion. Bravo to Mobius Digital, I can't wait to see what they make next. Pogostuck: Rage with Your Friends is another platformer. This time, it's in the vein of the Bennet Foddy "rage as you lose the last two hours progress in an instant" design philosophy. What makes it different from Foddy's Getting Over It is that the platforming mechanic is actually quite intuitive and fun. This is countered by absolutely brutal level design. I had fun completing the first map, which is the easiest of the three despite only 3% of the players ever completing it. Gorogoa is a wonderful puzzle game with a completely enchanting and unique presentation. You have up to four drag-and-drop panels in a 2x2 grid which act as portals into different parts of the universe you're exploring. The game is about diving into each panel and finding the ways they link, offering surprising ways of changing your perspective and travelling through time and space. Dorfromantik is cute "city-builder" tile-based puzzle game. It's fairly simple on the surface, but requires a some patience and planning if you start trying to get those high scores. This is a good one to fiddle with in the background whilst watching a show or chatting to friends. Hell Let Loose is a fairly hardcore WWII sim. I didn't like it at first, but once you get into the groove of it the immersion is second to none. Best played with a full squad of friends with comms.
Kayaking https://www.instagram.com/p/B4qIFpSArVO/ I've been going from strength to strength with my kayaking. I got a new boat that has a lot less volume and is a lot more playful. It's added some excitement to some of the easier rivers around this way and punishes mistakes more. That's meant that I've increasingly had to rely on my roll and it's feeling real solid right now. The interesting thing about rolling a kayak is that it starts off as a mechanical challenge most often practiced in the relative serenity of a swimming pool. Once you have the mechanics dialed, there's no reason you can't apply them to real whitewater with equal success. But then you're disorientated by the water rushing around you, the welcoming dark brown of the UK's rivers swallow the light, and the cold bites at your body. But still, the required movement remains the same. So at that point the roll becomes a head game instead. Right now, I tend to feel pretty zen when I flip over,, which is cool. I take a metaphorical breath, then just roll up on autopilot. Maybe that's due to the cold showers I've been taking. Music https://clyp.it/clroh5d1?token=0bfc978c628c7d6cc74dc203e7ca92d4 I finished a new track today. It's a different direction to the jazz fusiony stuff I was doing for the last couple of years. I only have one other track in this vein and I don't plan to focus on this style exclusively. But it's been fun to make purely electronic music again, especially as it gave me a chance to actually make use of my Behringer Neutron.
I think that some people have a mistaken belief that the only thing standing in the way of them being productive is the amount of free time they have. Then suddenly they have all the time they could ever want and they realise it's not that simple. Yeah, it's easy to be productive at work when you have a load of external motivations imposed on you. But working hard on personal projects during your free time requires intrinsic motivation. You have to build up a different sense of discipline and new working habits. Often it's not going to be fun, even if its something you love. And all the time your brain is trying to convince you just to chill with a video game or TV show. It's hard. oyster also makes a good point about productivity being different for each person. If you don't define those expectations for yourself, you're going to be lost from the start. To top it all off, we're all feeling extra anxiety and stress from the current situation. That's been enough to stymie people who have already built up that discipline. So having a load of free time due to being quarantined is not some golden ticket to productivity.
Social distancing is going pretty okay for me. I already worked from home. I always did my workouts and yoga from home. It's sunny here at the moment, so I'm getting a nice lunchtime walk for my government sanctioned one form of daily outdoor exercise. On Fridays I jump onto Discord with my friends to chill and play some Jackbox games. DnD is still going strong via group calls too. The only thing that sucks is no kayaking. That sucks pretty bad. But I appreciate that it's barely even a footnote in the grand scheme of shitty things at the moment. For now, the wooden toy I bought in Canada has me dreaming of the good times to come.
I need a better chair. This one is getting uncomfortable and I'm sitting on it now more than ever.
Commonwealth Range by Fraser McGurk. I came across this guy's work during my last time in Canada. What's really cool about it is that all the different shapes you can see are carved out of wood. Though I'm not sure whether he's carving lines into one big piece of wood or if they're like giant jigsaw pieces. Either way, it gives his works a real presence when you see them in person.
I've got some beans that seem to me Reminds me of childhood memories where everything was as fresh As a red baked bean Now and then when I see her face She takes my beans to that frozen place And if I'd stare too long I'd probably break down and cry oh, sweet beans of mine
A lot of the people who voted leave are in relative poverty. Barely living paycheck to paycheck in rundown ex-industrial towns where half the shops on the high-street are boarded up. No opportunities, no prospects, having to use food-banks and community projects just so they don't go hungry. Since 2010 there's been 8% cut in education, an almost 3000% rise in the amount of necessary foodbanks, and a 169% increase in homelessness. The government 'broke the contract'. It's a bit rich to expect a person who may be wondering where their next meal is going to come from to be clued up on geopolitics and the intricacies of economy and trade. To expect them to understand a process which has reduced the UK parliament into chaos and a laughing-stock. It serves no purpose to liken them to school children and call them pathetic. All recent history has shown them is that the rich get richer and nothing improves for the working class. Then the 'Vote Leave' campaign comes along and is the first thing in a long time to speak directly to them. To directly address their problems and struggle. It doesn't matter that it's all bullshit and populism; you'll grab onto any ledge you can when you're in free-fall, even if it's just to bring the person who pushed you down with you. The Guardian has been doing a great video series called 'Anywhere but Westminster'. It's certainly helped me with empathise with those I had no understanding of back when this all started:Leavers are like fucking schoolchildren... just no clue how the world works. It's just so ... pathetic. You watch the kid tie a sheet around his neck like a cape, climb up onto the roof, and he smiling and so excited as he runs to the edge of the roof and...
The UK general election is today and the likely outcome is a conservative majority. People have been given plenty of opportunities during the campaign to see Boris Johnson for the lying, homophobic, racist, manipulative, double-crossing, floundering, selfish, bully that he is. A man whose own Chief of Staff said of him: "A compulsive liar who has betrayed every single person he has ever had dealings with: every woman who has ever loved him, every member of his family, every friend, every colleague, every employee, every constituent" Yet, people will still vote for him because "get brexit done" That people are stupid is a thought that's been caught creeping around the borders of my brain a few times recently. And as much as it feels distasteful, it's hard not to still believe it.
I'm half-way to completing my goal of meditating every day for a year. Speaking of which, Frankie Boyle had a funny bit about meditation in his latest stand-up: "I'm having all these terrible problems with my thoughts." "Yeah, what you need to do is go and sit over there and be very, very quiet for an incredibly long period of time. It takes a really long time to get this right. Concentrate on your breath, rather than your talking... In fact... GO TO CHINA, SIT OUT ON A MOUNTAIN, AND SHUT THE FUCK UP OVER THERE! I've also been getting Piano lessons which i'm enjoying. That's about it in terms of updates. Life continues on a steady path.
I think meditation is just something we came up with to get rid of people that are annoying us:
I've been continuing to learn my front-end web development stuff. My first website, the idea for which was indirectly courtesy of flac, is now well underway. Here is a screenshot: It's also fully responsive, though the specifics aren't quite nailed down yet: https://streamable.com/e3y3z Still, i'm pretty proud of how it's looking. Though I must say that the design of the site was done by my brother who is a professional UX Designer, so the layout looks infinitely than my initial version! I don't know if it's just because I'm wrapped up in learning something knew, but I've played hardly any games for the last 2/3 weeks. I've just been learning and playing around with making websites. I just need to find a way to redirect some of this energy back into my music as that's been neglected as of late. Though I do have one new track finished if you mighty fine hubski folk fancy a listen.
I did manage to catch up with him. I don't think it's my place to be his spokesperson here; if he wants to come back and talk about things then that's his prerogative. However, I will say that: 1. Whilst his exchanges with kleinbl00 did come up, they were not ultimately the reason why he left. 2. He has no intention of returning.
I'm probably back off to Canada for 3 weeks later this year. This time exploring the east coast. We'll be starting in Toronto and following the coastline round to Halifax, then back to Toronto via train or plane. So that should be pretty great. I've just gotten over a bit of a unproductive/unenthused slump of a week or two. I've got about 5 tracks finished of the album I'm working on (from a composition standpoint, they still require post-production) and I've just started another. However this new one accidentally has a very similar motif to the track I just finished, albeit in a different key and time signature. I'm going to keep it though and make one track the opener of the album and other the closer, so a sort of reprise. I've been unhappy with my contribution to Hubski recently. I really wish to post and talk more with all the great people here, and foster stronger relationships. But at the same time I rarely have anything that worthwhile to add to the majority of conversations on this site. And I don't want to just comment for the hell of it. Part of it is I that don't have that many strong opinions on things. I find a lot of the topics discussed interesting, but when it comes to having a say I don't feel that I have a strong enough connection to them to make a valid contribution. I guess that's personal issue to explore.
I'd be honoured. Stylus lets you target styles to specific URLs, which you can't do in pure CSS. So I'll create a version that works without that. I'll also make sure it doesn't break the mobile styles as it's only aimed at desktop at the moment. Would it make sense for it to be an optional 'modifier' to the user selected style? That way the user can still choose their own colours.
The new year ticked over whilst I was doing some JavaScript tutorials, because I'm just that god damn radical. Yeah yeah yeah, everyone else was 'having fun' and 'socialising' and 'doing the worm', but who's the one who knows all about event listeners now? Me, baby, me.
I've got all my own kayaking gear now. I got to try it out on my first class III rapids the other day and it was blast. We did a 10k trip down a river which started with some gentle features and then built up as it went on. It was great to navigate the extended runs and feel all the things I've been practicing really come into effect. Bouncing up and down on waves, going down drops, and having to paddle to avoid real danger really gave me some excitement that I'd been lacking in my life. Also, it's awesome when a big wave splashes you in the face. I used to do a lot of board sports in my teens and feeling that rush again was like the embrace of an old friend. Here's a video of one of best rapids of the day For scale, a picture of me entering the top of it: I just got a raise at work. I'm transitioning into a new position which entails a lot more responsibility and direct communication with the customers. That's something I've shunned in the past, but I thought I'd take it as opportunity to grow. It's a 3 month trial and still the same hours, so we'll see how that goes. Taking the entirety of December off from everything was definitely a great idea. Though it came about through necessity as I'd forgotten to take any holiday this year so I had to use it all up. I took a step back from my music during that time too and it's really helped me come back with a refreshed perspective in what I want to achieve.