2/3/26

EEW 6.1 arrived, so I plied the BFL yesterday and got it washed today. Working with the 6.1 was fun (aside from the electric shocks) and it plied up beautifully I think - even though I was worried about the singles being spun unevenly, the yarn itself didn't vary too much in thickness. One bobbin was dramatically shorter, so I made a plying bracelet with the longer of the remaining bobbins, and when that ran out, I chain plied the last (very short) bit of the last bobbin so it's maximum 3ply throughout. I like the gradient and the bits where the plies are different colours. I think I'd really enjoy fractal spinning, so I definitely want to figure out how I can use that yarn.

Before washing, about 10-11 WPI. After washing...well, it hasn't dried, but still about the same. That puts it at between worsted and DK weight, leaning towards the latter.

Length about 95 loops of 178cm (also after washing). Due to using the niddy noddy it was a lot more tidy this time, although because it doesn't have a lot of horizontal width, I had to stack the wraps. Total length calculated to be about 169.1 metres in 113g, likely a little (just slightly) longer. It's pretty dense, unsurprisingly. Mill-spun BFL DK weight is around maybe 225 metres (246 yards) per 100g? I liked the colour changes (even though every time I look at this fibre I wish I got it on a whiter base) as I worked with it, but it sheds like crazy. I didn't even rest this on my table as I was winding it on my niddy noddy and it left some extra tiny fibres. Hoping that washing it got rid of most of the loose fibres, or I'll be suffering through the knitting too.

That said, I don't know what I'd make with it - I thought maybe some kind of amigurumi but I don't know what yet, and I'll have to try and get in most of the colour changes. Whale shark again is an option but 1. I've already made two, 2. it doesn't appear to use enough of the yarn to be worth it, 3. gonna have to think on what yarn I'd be using for the contrast colour there.

I could make a necktie - I have a couple bookmarked:

1. Tsubaki Cotton Necktie
2. Okehampton Tie

20/2/26

18.5 micron Merino, 3-ply: 31 wraps
Targhee, 3-ply: 59 wraps

14/2/26

1 round is about 189cm (can't get an accurate measure because my measuring tape isn't long enough but yeah). Better to estimate it a little shorter than longer.

Polwarth, 2-ply: 49 wraps = 92.61m in 19.0g / 487m per 100g
20cm stretches to 22cm, so ratio is 0.91.
Polwarth, 3-ply: a little less than 54 wraps = 102.06m in 31.8g / 321m per 100g
Mixed 3-ply: 26 wraps = 49.14m in 29.2g / 168m per 100g

13/2/26

Finished the 3rd part of the BFL gradient. Realised partway through that the reason I didn't feel too enthusiastic about it (apart from the inconsistent drafting due to predrafting unevenly) was that it felt kind of like the blended fibre that I learnt to spin on...

This section of the gradient came out a fair bit more inconsistently and overspun than the other two because I was kind of rushing it. Hopefully it still has a decent amount of length to make up the gradient, though...

12/2/26

Some updates...

• Did the mixed spin + plied it
• Used the remaining singles (all Polwarth) to make a short 4-ply section
• Plied the 18.5 micron Merino
• Washed all of the 3-ply yarns and the 2-ply Polwarth (and the 4-ply bit)
• Spun 2 sections of the BFL gradient, working on the 3rd

As it doesn't seem like the niddy noddy will arrive in time for me to use it to prepare hanks for washing (won't dry in time, probably) I wound up and washed some of the yarns. It'll likely still arrive by Saturday and I'll use it to get a proper measure of the yarns before I ball them up. It's a lot of yarn and was really tiring to wind with my setup so I didn't want to also go through the 2-ply yarns...I think I'd like to relax a bit and play games too, so I don't think I'll bring the other 2-ply yarns along.

The 4-ply hasn't fully dried yet but just for fun I checked its length and weight...
47cm x 4 = 188cm, 1.5g approximately.

5/2/26

Finished 10g section. This one felt really difficult - kept overtwisting even though I felt it wasn't twisted enough sometimes, lots of spots where it was difficult to draft. Switched back to short forward for a little bit because I found it easier to manage the twist that way. I think excessively fine wool has its own set of problems, which is that it compacts/pills really easily...it's not sticky like Targhee (I think) but feels sensitive to fibres getting crossed and whatnot. Lately I've been thinking Polwarth has the ideal balance of being soft and silky but also not finicky to spin, so if there's anything that I want to be perfect I imagine I'd like it dyed on Polwarth.

Split the BFL gradient braid - I was a bit nervous about it, and kind of worried that I wouldn't be able to split it into 3 sections evenly and maybe I should just do the 2-ply...but I really wanted to see the marling between the plies so I went with it. Couldn't fit it on my more accurate scale so I used the cooking scale. First split into halves - 57g and 58g. Split one into 2/3 and 1/3 sections: 38g and 19g. ...Ok, that's pretty cool. Split the next one. 38g and 20g. Weighed each section again - all 38g. Incredible split, and all I did was split it along a vertical break in the top. The mini braids are very cute. Excited to see the colour changes as I work them...

The only issue is that the 1/3 + 1/3 section isn't quite willing to stick together - I drafted the tips out a bit to see if it'd work and it fluffed up rather nicely, so I think I'll try and uncompact + predraft these ones before working with it. BFL feels coarse compared to what I've been working with lately but maybe I'll enjoy it...the gradient itself feels like it's less defined than I'd like. I thought I'd try spinning from the fold for this to try and make the colour separations more defined, but actually...I don't think it'll work like I thought it would because it's not a blended top, so I guess I'll do it normally.

I'll also need to make sure I only do 2 of these sections first because I haven't got enough bobbins. I still wanted to do a mixed 3-ply spin of all the semisolids, and I need 3 + 1 bobbins to finish that. And then I'd need my EEW 6.1 to arrive before I can ply the entire gradient...

2/2/26

Finished second 20g section, last part was kind of bumpy because of the separated bits.

1/2/26 - Update

Didn't keep a close log on what I'd been doing recently, but at this point, I've finished plying and balling up the Targhee, as well as finished spinning/plying the Falkland Merino. Started on the 18.5 micron Merino. All still continuous backward drafting.

On the Targhee - it was weirdly "sticky" when plying, in the sense that the singles coming from the bobbins kept sticking to each other if they touched accidentally. I also had some issues with the 3-ply bunching up, although this only happened towards the end of the 3-ply and I don't know what was causing it. 

On the Falkland - I noticed that the areas with more dye seemed to draft somewhat unevenly - it'd often come out in small bunches and/or be a little bit more compacted. Unsure if this is just what happens to dyed wool, but I didn't really notice it happening with the previous wools. In any case, the plying went more smoothly than the Targhee did, and the singles didn't want to stick to each other in the same way.

On the 18.5 micron Merino - it feels...kind of spongy to draft. Unsure how to describe it. The Polwarth in comparison was smooth like butter, and the Corriedale is toothy. I don't dislike it but I feel a little nervous about whether I'm in control because I can't feel the friction as keenly. I'm also unsure if it's just me but I finished spinning a 20g section more quickly than I expected. Drafting across the top was easy, maybe I've figured out how that works.

At the moment, I'm leaning heavily towards using Polwarth. The Merino is nice and soft, but I feel I enjoyed the experience of spinning the Polwarth most. I'll definitely wait until I'm done with the washing and swatching before I decide, though. As for the BFL - I don't expect to be going with this for the project, not that I won't be spinning it up regardless. I think I'd like to wait until my EEW 6.1 is in before I ply that, though. I've also gone and ordered a niddy noddy from Taobao as the cheapest/probably fastest option, because Twin said it's probably better if I want to have it by CNY, and I want to make sure all my yarns are washed and ready to knit before I go and potate in a hotel in Batam this holiday.

Thinking maybe I need a control card that can go finer than what's on the EEW card, because I always seem to be spinning a hair thinner than 40WPI...there are a bunch of worsted/aran weight cardigan/sweater projects I want to do though...

27/03/26 - Plied

Plied up the bobbins, forgot to take a photo before starting. I'm actually unsure which one was the longest...I THINK it was the short colour changes one but not sure. It ended up taking a really long time because I attempted to wind a plying ball instead of the usual plying bracelet and that got badly tangled, to the point where I had to remove a couple of little bits that got stuck together, and because of the fiddling, one of the singles drifted apart, etc. and I belatedly realised that I'd put one of the singles in the wrong slot of the plying tool, which I guess is why it wasn't plying as neatly as it usually does, though at least it doesn't seem to show too badly? I hope?

So in essence it was really fraught even though I enjoyed watching the colour changes happen. I really wanted to get as much 3-ply as I could out of it so after one ran out I doubled one single over and when that ran out I chain plied the rest, which was awkward and badly done but still a 3-ply nonetheless.

What surprised me is that the entire yarn occupied almost all of the bobbin. The BFL braid in contrast still had a fair amount of space left. Given there's not much variance in weight - the BFL weighs more, in fact - I can say there's a good deal more air in this spin, but I don't know how much variance in length there is yet. It certainly feels squishy though...I haven't done a WPI check yet, but somehow I feel it might come out thicker than a DK weight even though I thought I was going excessively fine in the singles. Will see when I wind it up...which is also when I get to see the full range of colour changes so I'm excited.

Update:

Sooo got this wound up and measured, still dry so it might shrink post-finishing and also possibly fluff up a bit.

Numbers:
153 wraps x 84cm x 2 = 257.04m
11-13 wpi, dk to sport weight
110g based on initial fibre weight, but somehow is 113g in the hank (with just a bit of cotton to tie it)
I will re-measure post-finishing and calculate the grist then. Since it's heavier than 100g, it's fallen a little short of the 250g/100m I was aiming for, but I did see that the singles were denser than the sample so it's not surprising.

It took forever to wind, but the colour changes were quite trippy. I think it'd make a fun scarf...might also be nice to work up together with a white yarn in a 2-colour pattern. It's even long enough to make an ABS kerchief if I so desire (which is my ballpark measurement for a skein of DK yarn...). 

Most importantly, though...the length! 🎉 It's not commercial yarn density, but it's so much longer than the BFL. I think BFL tends to be denser, in any case, but not by as much as I made it...anyway, this came pretty close to a commercial DK weight. It's not remotely close to worsted grist, either, so I think it will behave like a heavy DK weight. It's so squishy in the hank, too. Love rubbing my face on it. And pretty consistent as far as overall width goes...the twist is a little messy because of my struggles with plying, but I expect it to even out a bit in finishing. I'm just really relieved/happy that the grist did get better and my efforts were worth something.

I have washed it and it's now drying. The water seemed...dirty? Well, it seemed darker, so it's possible that the dye ran a little, but I don't see any difference in the colour so it's probably fine.

26/03/26 - 3rd bobbin done

Did the rest of the last bobbin using the diz-off-the-carder method. I think the only problems were neps (I tried not to force myself to use the bits that looked potentially neppy) and slightly inconsistent drafting while dizzing the top...and I think maybe a fair bit of this came out at a finer weight than I intended. The bobbin is roughly as filled as the second one. Uncertain if it's softer, but the texture is still rather different from the first bobbin's top layer, somehow.

Well...hopefully the plying reveals some insight because I really have no idea what I did differently, but if not, I hope it will at least be fun to look at. It should be pretty, I'm just concerned about how much yarn I'm going to get out of it...it would be disappointing if it ended up being no less dense than the BFL...

25/03/26

Tried a couple of prep options.

1. Card the top, about 3 passes as usual. Roll/folded over horizontally so fibres are aligned.

Given the length, this wasn't great but I think I've done this enough times to the point where it's just business as usual. It did fluff up quite a fair bit, but got neppy, so this drafted quite unevenly. Didn't like it.

2. Put the top on one carder, loaded up more than I'd do for carding, diz off the end.

This was actually really good - I think it made a very fluffy and loose prep while still preserving the gradient transition. Possibly a bit annoying when starting, because the last bits of fibre attached to the carder are more tangled. A little neppy during those bits; I should discard them but I don't want to waste that wool. For the rest of it, the drafting is really smooth and nice, though because I can't make a very wide top like this, the twist tends to go down a bit too fast and I have to pause every now and then to draft it out a little. But I do feel the singles made from this are closer to the first bobbin's. It'd be nice to be able to prep more of this at once to reduce joins, but it's kind of fiddly because of carder size and I also don't have anything to prevent the carder from moving around while I'm pulling...

But I'm really happy with this prep; it's smoothed out the combined top and made it more consistent to draft. Unsure if it's just me but it feels like this colour section has been going on for very long too...

24/03/26 - 2nd bobbin done, 3rd bobbin started

Finished the thinner section on Sat, it turned out less squishy than the first bobbin and also possibly finer and with more twist...it occupies less space on the bobbin so I'm worried I ended up making it too dense again. Kind of disappointed but can't do anything about it really, just got to finish it and see. There's maybe a gram's difference between both bobbins, but I kind of doubt it would've made such a massive difference in volume...

Now working on the last section of the braid. Trying to keep an eye on how much fibre is going in, but again it feels more compact/defined than I'd like it to be...I do plybacks and even though the WPI and twist angle is roughly there, it just looks like there's more fibre than in my target sample. The bobbin feels about as tightly packed as the second one. I'm trying to not overtwist, but the less twist there is, the higher the tendency for the single to get thinner because there isn't enough twist to pull on the fibres, and then I have to pinch hard to draft because it isn't drafting very easily.

The drafting is also a pain for this specific section (which is the doubled-over section) - I tried to combine the two separate sections together so they would draft as one, but sometimes getting the drafting section to move across the top doesn't work (a problem when it starts pulling out the next colour), sometimes it just tightens and I have to pull harder to get it to draft. I'm holding it way too tightly in order to try and guide the drafting zone into the correct place, so the drafting is really uneven. It definitely feels a little tight when I try to pull it more open horizontally.

In hindsight, I think it would've been smoother if I'd separated out the colour sections for both bits and spun them sequentially instead of trying to combine them. If it's still possible to separate them cleanly I'll try that, I guess. I could, alternatively, separate by colour sections and card lightly to blend them/open them up...

My running theory is that the top in its original form (not stripped down or combined) is about the right size to manage twist - the stripped down one is too thin to really draft across the top, and the combined one has problems because it's not blended together evenly. Because of that, it got the best out of being fluffed up. The problem is that if I want to be able to spin more fractals, I'll have to try and figure out ways to work with tops of different widths...I suppose there's also the possible explanation that I didn't move the hooks too much so the winding on the first bobbin ended up looser than the second bobbin did. I won't know until I ply...

I guess for now I'll just try and see what I can do to open it up/blend it better. At least I have carders on hand if I need to get aggressive about it. It does make me curious about how a batt would handle, but I have no way of getting one without missing the point (it would probably get compacted) and I don't want a drum carder.

Debating if I'd like to do the same distribution for the other BR braids as well. I'll decide after I ply, but as far as the spinning experience goes (aside from being perpetually worried about the grist) I like seeing the colours work up in the singles...if the result isn't too homogeneous I think I wouldn't mind doing this repeatedly. I think I should also label my bobbin weights since I keep thinking of measuring dry weight of singles...

15/03/26 - 1st bobbin started

I've been spinning only long draw from the fold or rolags lately, and just really wanted to spin something with clear colour changes and some measure of control. The braid I've been carding into rolags has been blended too much to get anything more than a vague gradient, and the Polwarth I tried sampling from the fold is uneven and difficult to pay attention to the grist. I also thought about it a little more and I think it would be nice if I practiced enough that my default spin has higher grist so that I can consider it for projects. So...now I'm default spinning this braid, starting from the normal colour length one. The goal remains unchanged; I'm shooting for more than 200m of yarn, hopefully more.

Just doing a little bit of prep in that I'm fluffing up the fibre as much as possible before I start spinning it - hopefully that introduces more air into the yarn. I'm also checking against the card a lot. It feels like it's taking rather a lot longer to spin than before...maybe...? So possibly, I am making longer yarn. Possibly. I might actually have succeeded, because despite the fibre used weighing about as much as 1 singles for the BFL, the bobbin is nearly full up and it's noticeably squishy.

The colour changes were fun to work with - nice seeing them layer onto the bobbin. Looking forward to working with the rest of it and plying...feel like I should do more fibre with short colour changes because it brings me joy...

04/03/26 - Started

Divided braid up. The amounts didn't quite match up so I did a little bit of shifting around especially on the ends where there was a tiny bit of colour change.

The braid is nice and soft and not particularly compacted even in the darker bits. I keep petting it. Some tiny bits didn't get dye due to the folding, though. I expect it shouldn't be particularly noticeable in the spin (I like these pops of nonstandard colour anyway).

Waiting to do concrete measurements before I spin. The as-is 1/3 of the braid is slightly heavier than the other two so I can take samples from it. I don't think it particularly matters which braid I start from, but maybe I'll do the thinnest one first and work my way up...

I'm working in the order of Corriedale -> Polwarth -> Targhee -> Falkland Merino -> 18.5 micron Merino -> BFL. All fibres will be worked as 3 bobbins of 20g / 20g / 10g, and then plied as 30g 3-ply and 20g 2-ply. Unfortunately not consistent with the drafting as I found halfway through that I'm more comfortable with continuous backward draw than short forward draw.

Since I think I'll be tight on yardage, I'm skipping one repeat of the last bit of the section before the end bits (and tempting fate by not skipping one more repeat).

They blocked a lot looser, unfortunately, so doing the gauge didn't quite help...I should have reduced the stitches some more I think, and next time if/when I do socks I will definitely want to do a tubular cast on or something.

Also, the Yesterweb webring has been defunct for a bit, and I never got down to removing the link. It's removed now.

And and I also updated the kiriban number again (someday perhaps someone will catch it).

That's all for now!

This was a family trip. We used to go to Australia (primarily Gold Coast) on family trips when I was a kid, and then kind of stopped before the 2000s I think, so I haven't been there for years and years now and was pretty excited to visit again. I don't think we'd been to Sydney either, so that was new. Honestly I think it was a bit of a waste that we didn't visit the Blue Mountains even though we'd talked about it before...but I feel that's just the family trip experience.

My X100VI (well, one of my preorders) finally arrived sometime in August, so this was my own unit. Again - it's a fun camera! It was great being able to move around without the weight of my DSLR and it made some really cool shots. The one issue I had was that I suddenly got into photographing birds and not having a zoom made it rather..........difficult. But that's what my DSLR is for I guess! I only brought it out on the last full day, so there aren't that many photos taken on it that aren't birds.

Speaking of - I have actually gone for years not really knowing how to use the manual controls on my DSLR, and it took practice with the Pentax K1000/X100VI that finally got me to absorb the exposure triangle (vaguely knew what it was, never put it into practice). It's actually difficult for me to switch back to auto now because I want control over everything...but I'm still new to manual on my DSLR, so some of my shots turned out pretty overexposed when I checked them on my PC. Still got things to learn...

Anyway, here's a mix of photos from both. All are unedited, and no pics of me or my family. About half of them are my quest to document every bird species I spotted...

Part 2 of photos!! I received my scans today. Straight out of the camera, there were some issues with exposure, particularly on the Superia Premium - I remember being completely mystified about why the sunny 16 rule wasn't applying on a bright sunny day and both my camera/phone light meters were telling me to expose...more or less, I can't remember. Anyway, those photos turned out disappointingly unfortunate. However! With the power of technology (tone curve editing) I have salvaged a number of them :)

The Superia Premium was spent on the day we went to the Edo-Tokyo Architectural Museum, and the Ultramax on Hakone. Fun fact: I actually brought 3 rolls of film to use on 3 separate days, and managed to load the Ultramax roll wrong on Yokohama day, so no pictures ended up being taken on film that day and I returned with an unused roll. Really glad I had the X100VI on hand, so it wasn't a complete bust.

Photos uploaded have been edited for mainly contrast, and a few have been tweaked for saturation. The ones that didn't turn out great also have a bit more noise reduction applied, so the quality isn't fantastic. Still, they're pretty atmospheric and I like them.

I have like 5 million things that I want to work on at any given moment, but today I felt like coding, so I sat down to do some things that have been bugging me for a bit. Full changelog:

• Project pages on the "plain" view have been added.
  • These are now entirely browsable I think. The only real thing that's missing from the plain view is the guestbook, which I ran out of time to implement.
  • I also think that maybe I should change the page background colour because it's...very...bright.
  • I don't know if I'll implement the other pages. I think maybe Firelizards because it's a chance to make something that looks period-accurate...but otherwise, this is pretty much it - a barebones version of my site that does not use Javascript and looks ok on mobile.
• On the main site, project/media log explorer windows no longer group by year.
  • I originally felt this was necessary because the sidebar felt kind of empty, but as the years go on and I don't really update THAT much, it just adds extra fluff and makes me feel bad about not updating, which is not the point of this website.
• Project pages now display the date of creation/last update in the top right under the breadcrumbs.
  • I'm not sure why I didn't do this before
• Log images now show earliest upload first
  • Previously they showed latest first, similar to the picture gallery page, but when looking through my photos I felt this was kind of counterintuitive to the browsing experience.
• Fixes for the image overlay when viewing images
  • Fixed bug with showing the full text of an image in the overlay if text contained double quotes. Amateur mistake
  • Show image title if a title is given
  • Some layout tweaks for better readability when the image is small, and also when there's a lot of text
• Miscellaneous small changes
  • Updated the kiriban number (thus far no one has emailed me about catching it...)
  • Added a button for Palestine aid resources

With that, it'll probably be a while before I add anything new again. That said, I've always been thinking of corow.net, and one of my current major long-term projects is an addition to this site. I'm grappling with the idea of keeping it a secret when the point of this website is so that I can share updates, but it's always been an issue balancing motivation and secrets for me...something about posting something publicly externalises the reward mechanism and makes my internal satisfaction stop working...so I understand devs who never share updates about their projects. At least no one is expecting anything from me, so there isn't like, kickstarter backer pressure or anything. (I have been keeping a private devlog though, so maybe someday, when I'm ready to put it here, I can also import the entire devlog as a project + logs.)

Oh, and also - since ditching deviantART, I've been feeling the inconvenience of not having an art gallery/portfolio. I've been thinking I should make one, but I'm not sure what kind of setup would be both fun and convenient to work with - my private collection of WIPs and whatevers is simply a Guilded forum where I toss a new post whenever I feel like, but that's not a great archive. I guess that's a design problem for me to ponder...

Incidentally, does anyone else also dislike the whole trend of art gallery websites looking like Instagram feeds? I have not migrated to a new art site because I absolutely hate browsing art on timelines - my ideal is the old deviantART way of sending new notifs when art is posted and being able to look through thumbnails before clicking through. Secondarily, the Pixiv way of just showing a page of thumbnails. I think only Toyhouse does this now, and it's not even that kind of art gallery site.

Maybe it's just because it's quicker for me to browse = less time wasted scrolling just to see everything I missed, maybe it's because I hate the pressure of knowing every single picture I post is being put front and centre on someone's feed...I'm still waiting for a new art gallery platform that gives space for people to post "scraps". I think it's so important to have the space to make and show things that aren't Instagram ideals...but I guess that's easy to say as someone who isn't trying to turn a profit on such a site that will have a majority of free users. Until someone else agrees and builds their own gallery site on these principles, I can only build my own...

Unrelatedly, this week's batch of firelizards is number 100. It seems that two white firelizards (1% chance to generate one) generated in this batch!! Woah!!

This year's Japan trip with friends (it seems to be a yearly thing now) was from May 11 to May 21! This is part 1, because I did have my Pentax with me on a couple of days, and I have not sent the rolls for development yet. A little backstory about the camera I used...

A few months back, 3 of us noticed the X100VI. One managed to get it from a reseller before the resale prices skyrocketed, the other two (including me) placed preorders a little too late because we were thinking about the price and didn't realise it was so popular...so even though we waited for about 2 and a half months, neither of us managed to get hold of it. The one I used for this trip was a rental camera, and they requested that I try to return the settings to their original state, so I didn't go ham on customising it.

I'm new to the Fujifilm system, so the idea of film simulations and recipes was very enticing and I did have a lot of fun with these. The ones I used most were:

• Reggie's Portra
• Glacier Blue
• Technicolor Dream
• Polaroid SX70
• Classic Color
• Natural Astia

All of these were inputted as-is except the clarity setting was always 0 because I didn't want the processing time. (There is indeed one more slot, but I ended up not really using the one I saved to that slot.) The rental came with a UV filter, but I swapped it for a Glimmerglass 1 filter (from my collection of accessories I bought for my own unit) pretty early on. Also for some reason I was using the camera in manual mode all the time - I guess I felt like I really wanted control over the exposure...

My thoughts on the camera are that I'm really glad I went with the rental. It wasn't exactly super compact after the camera bag's size was included, but it did what I wanted it to do - be easy to take in and out, be fun to take pictures with, make good pictures. I'm already missing it right now...can't wait for my own to arrive, whenever that might be.

As for the trip itself - which was brutal on the legs/feet, by the way - we spent most of the time in Tokyo, with a couple of day trips to Yokohama and Hakone. Our primary purpose was Design Festa on 18-19 May, but we did go to a lot of scenic spots for photos. We've been to Tokyo many times before, so in planning this trip we picked some places that not everyone in our group had been to yet, and also some of my...let's say...(relatively) secret favourite spots. Which was a good thing, because there were A Lot of tourists, and we managed to avoid a lot of crowds like this. More info in the descriptions of each picture...

Lastly...these are all straight out of camera :) I did save raws for once and there are some pictures I think would shine with a little bit of editing, but these are just as-is. I'm also not posting pictures of me and my friends.

I'm tired, and reading anything about the scraping of social media posts for AI makes me mad, so I'm not going to talk about that. All I can do is wearily try to protect this website - emphasis on "try" - so today's update is really just that. I've updated robots.txt to block major AI crawlers and also added a couple of meta tags. For reference, here are the articles I looked at for that:

• How to block AI Crawler Bots using robots.txt file - has the most comprehensive list of user agents to block, I think
• How to Block AI from Scraping Your Content - using a meta tag to stop Bing Chat from using the page, nosnippet for blocking Google SGE
• Google-Extended does not stop Google Search Generative Experience from using your site’s content - bit more info about SGE not being specifically blockable
• Block AI Crawlers: Here’s How To Stop Your Site From Being Used for AI Training (OpenAI and Google Bard Guide) - mentions using Google Search Console to force Googlebot to re-crawl for the updated robots.txt file; I think this is only necessary if Google has already indexed your website

A small personal website that isn't even indexed on Google is probably not very likely to get crawled for AI...but let's just say I'm doing it because I'm annoyed and tired. I want to make things without having to worry about...all this...and I can't imagine how much worse it is for people whose livelihoods are at stake here. Stay strong and stay safe, friends.

Up until the week before I went, I hadn't even heard of Peace Centre, and wasn't even certain about going up until late in the day before its last day open, but I was really glad I went. For those not in the know - Peace Centre is a defunct shopping mall that was repurposed into a community space. (More details in this Straits Times article.) In essence, it's a building that lived longer than it normally would have, and community-led events happened organically in the space, notably art-related ones. It remained open for activities up until the 28th of January (the day I went to visit), and at the time of writing, is slated for demolition at last. I honestly kind of regret not having heard about it up until then; it seems like something I would've really enjoyed checking out while it was open.

And how! Even my expectations for how the visit would go were completely subverted. I'd brought my camera along because I'd heard there was graffiti on the walls (a rarity in Singapore) and ended up taking photos I didn't think I would. My friend, who'd been there earlier in the day, told me there was stuff upstairs on the 4th floor (only the first 3 floors were open to the public), and so we (and a couple of our friends who were also there) hopped the barrier and went upstairs.

The photos aren't great, that's for sure - the lighting wasn't very conducive to anything and we were basically using our phone flashes to light the corridors. And as far as urban exploration goes, this was baby mode; it was noisy and crowded just a floor below, it was daytime, and it was dubious whether or not this place was even truly off-limits or if the signs were just for the sake of avoiding responsibility for injuries and the sort of people who would complain about that stuff. There were other curious people on the same floor, just checking the place out...taking cosplay photos...sometimes spray painting the shop windows. (To top it off, after I left, the building closed earlier than expected, with management citing vandalism in the 4th floor toilets...when there was broken glass on the floor in a corridor. The entire floor was vandalised, my dude...there were new words on a wall when I saw it the second time around. The toilets are the least of your concerns?)

Anyway, enjoy the photos. Some of these are in the public spaces on floors 1-3. The dark ones are from the 4th floor. Incidentally, the 5th floor was perfectly clean, if just deserted (which was somehow worse). The ripped ceilings, trashed rooms, etc. aren't due to the ravages of time - there was intentional destruction here (and a haunted house event at some point).

My closing thoughts are that I'm glad I got to experience this. Singapore is very...sanitised...to the point where it feels like we're very passive about political and social issues. You're not allowed to organise protests. You're not allowed to do graffiti unless specifically requested by the owner of the property. Don't rock the boat. Don't be loud. Don't do anything...weird. As my friend put it, it was really nice to get to be around weirdos like us for once. There was queer graffiti on the walls and graffiti in support of Palestine; notes anonymously confessing to petty crimes and people blatantly ignoring the "do not enter" signs. It was...art. 

In May 2023 I went on vacation with my friends to Japan - the first time in 4 years since I left. In that time so much had changed; it seemed like I'd mostly returned to my old life, but at the same time, it was different from how I lived it before. I think I was terribly anxious about how things in the placed I'd lived in had changed, if anyone remembered me, if they'd judge me for not using the educational experience for any practical purpose etc., but I think I found some closure on that front during this trip.

Anyway, that's not really related to the photos. As planned, we stayed for a few days in Kansai before moving up to Tokyo. During that time, my friends needed to visit a pharmacy, and I spotted some disposable cameras near the counter. These are the better photos I took with that one camera, developed at National Photo in Harajuku. We were pretty surprised by the quality and this directly led to 3 of us getting 35mm cameras LOL.

How time flies! I didn't realise it'd been quite a while since I'd last made any project updates. I have been doing things in the meantime, but I guess they don't fit that neatly into my website, and I also...don't know how I'd make a status update on anything without also updating a project haha. (Great design)

Anyway - at the end of last year, I visited the Gardens to get some practice on my Pentax. There was some Christmas stuff going on, hence the lights. I think they came out great on the whole! I'm surprised even the night shots came out well; I was expecting those to be either too dark or suffering from hand shaky but they were all fine. There was one shot that came out blank and I don't know why, but even with that blank and a laughably glitched first shot, I got in an extra frame on the same roll so it's cool. 

These are unedited photos (the scans I received without touchups), from the second and third rolls I took on that camera. The first roll (from a separate occasion, using Kodak Ultramax 400) came out with a lot of very underexposed shots, so I metered on the bright side for these ones (and used my phone to meter separately every now and then, just in case). 

• Added a link to my links page on the splash page
• Added a couple of social media links to the About page and fixed my FFXIV home world since I moved to Behemoth recently
  • Speaking of which, I should probably put up a media log for FFXIV

I've always had a mobile-compatible page on the backburner...but honestly I detest designing for mobile compatibility because it's annoying. I dislike browsing websites on mobile. Anything that can be done on mobile I would rather do on desktop, and anything that is mobile exclusive simply doesn't exist to me. It feels to me like a symptom of capitalism in ways that I don't really want to end up ranting about for several paragraphs in a website update. But I also understand that it's an accessibility issue - having a phone is more essential than having a computer these days, so having some form of my website be accessible from mobile (as opposed to completely inaccessible when the screen is too small) is ideal.

That said, this website is my house on the Internet, so to speak, so I get to deprive mobile users of rights if I want. I've added a "plain" version of well...parts of my site...and it's linked from the splash page. Not all of it has been done yet (notably, the projects/media log pages are still not done) and I don't know when I'll get down to that, and also I won't be making all pages available on the plain version (maybe I'll do a period-accurate page for the firelizards specifically if I ever do add that though). I know it's extremely petty, and I DO have the capability to make things look better, but whatever. No display issues whatsoever AND it doesn't have any Javascript!

Anyway, story time: I brought it out to work on while on vacation and swatched it at 18 x 25 stitches in stockinette per 5cm x 5cm (washed and blocked). Based on my foot measurements and the calculations in the recipe, I was supposed to cast on 96 stitches, which was...a little worrying! The writer cast on 68 stitches for men's size 8.5. My shoe size is larger, but not THAT much larger...I attributed this to maaaaaaaybe I just knit very tight? and went ahead with it. Main modification here was to do a ktbl/p1 ribbing rather than the suggested k2p2 because I liked how it looked, but it shouldn't really have affected the wearability of the sock...I think. I got as far as finishing the cuff and a little bit of the leg on vacation, then came back home and re-blocked the swatch because I was suspicious, and the stitch count didn't change in any way that would've affected my cast-on stitches. But the looseness was bothering me a lot, so I ended up pinning it tighter to figure out a better stitch count, then frogged it entirely to redo. I don't know why my calcs were so off the mark - I imagine it's probably because of stretch, but I already accounted for negative ease, so it's a mystery...it's a bit worrying for future socks.

tl;dr sock calcs gave stitch count that was very loose, unravelled hours of knitting to start over.

Anyway, now it fits perfectly - not too loose, not too tight (although the cast-on edge isn't very stretchy, so I have to be a little careful when pulling it on to test). Current stats:

• Cast on: 76 stitches
• Cuff: 24 rows
• Leg: 50 rows
• Heel flap: 48 rows in eye of partridge

Some things I have been thinking so far:

• Went with the k2p2 rib this time. I think the look grew on me and also: it's less of a pain than the ktbls.
• The rainbow stripes go out of alignment when my tension changes, so it hiccups a little where I went a little loose and went back into formation when I tightened up again. Not very noticeable though.
• I'll have to pick up stitches on the side of the heel flap later, so it bothers me that my edges aren't neat - I can't quite see where and how many stitches to pick up. Even though my tension is even across the row, when I purl it ends up pulling the knits between the slipped stitches out of shape, especially at the end of the row. This is something I'll have to work on most probably...
• The neat edges also is a problem at the end of a round for the leg - weirdly enough I don't have issues with ladders between rounds, but I do have issues with a column of uneven stitches where the last stitch is because of the tugging. It seems to neaten up by itself after more rows so hopefully not a permanent issue.
• First time doing short rows for the heel turn - these were fairly straightforward I think. 
• The rainbow yarn is a joy to work with - hitting a rainbow section is always exciting. 10/10 would buy this yarn again.

Next up is picking up the stitches...after which it should be fairly straightforward until it hits the toes (I don't want them too pointy so I'll have to figure something out here). Obsessed, honestly - I think I like doing socks? Maybe the 50 rows of stockinette isn't that fun but it knits up fast...

Anyway, here it is: https://links.corow.net/

In other news, there aren't any other project updates because I actually...haven't worked out how to post art and life updates here (or if I want to, in the case of life updates) whoops. They will just go into the corownet logs I guess: I've been obsessing over the idea of buying myself an electric guitar, a dream that I've had for maybe about 15+ years now, and only just realised I have the money and minimal amount of storage space to get one. Which has cascaded into a lot of extra costs, so now I'm drawing a lot of adoptables in the hopes that I might be able to earn enough to cover the spending. I'll probably make a project page for the adopts later when I'm ready to display them (and then write a whole lot of alt text...). I...don't know how to make "electric guitar" a project, however - maybe I should look into coding upload/display for audio media since I have other plans for that too.

(It's hard to not feel like I should meticulously dress up all the info I'm sharing here, care about metrics or whatever junk the social media companies want us to care about etc. etc. etc. but I suppose I'm trying to feel it's ok to update a lot sometimes and then make no updates for months on end. This (infrequent updates) is more like how it should go though, I guess.)

Done with the body of the mitten now. Picked up the stitches on the thumb hopefully correctly (first time picking up stitches, but I couldn't figure out what direction to arrange the needles/stitches so that I'd be knitting in the correct direction. Uh...hopefully all that works out...

Anyway, I'm making some progress through the pattern (currently finished 12 rows out of 62 in the main chart). I don't know if I carried the unused yarn over the thumb hole correctly but I guess I will find out when I have to pick up the stitches ! What I've made so far is too small for my hands but it's for a friend with small hands (and my hands are large I think) - my bigger concern here is that the tension isn't right and I might be knitting a bit too tightly because I can't quite control my colourwork tension yet. Some of the stitches are kind of uneven/awkward-looking but I'm hoping that blocking will help with those. If I'm being honest I would probably have sworn off colourwork already if not for the fact that a lot of the patterns I have bookmarked are colourwork patterns...so I want to get good at it.

Also initially I did both strands tensioned with my left hand (continental) but kept having to readjust and do some really weird twisting, which was taking time and I think made the floats tighter, so here was where I learnt to do English knitting. I'm still very awkward at it and it's caused a few stitches to pop off the needles, but I think I'm getting faster and it feels less impossible to manipulate now. The floats from this look a lot nicer/regular too. 

The ribbing is going slowly because ktbl is...quite annoying...it DOES look better than k1p1 rib but WOW I started this worrying about if I'd be able to do the charts and colourwork correctly and I am still slowly doing the rib. AND I have to do a second mitten... 😂 It will be worth it...

I think I could make another one of these out of the remaining yarn...although I'd have to use a different colour for the front fins since I'd run out of colour 2...

Modified the third stockinette section to have 2 extra rows so I can use more of the pink and also end off on the pink.

Reflections:

• The colour changes are wayyyyy too squished. I definitely should've begun striping in the new colours earlier, but I wouldn't have been able to guess if I had enough yarn left. Not sure if there's anything I could've done that would've solved all of these problems. It doesn't look THAT bad - it's just that the second and third colours have a fairly large jump in contrast, so it looks like the first colour abruptly stops, when actually that's the second colour.
• I did not swatch for this because again...I didn't know how much I could spare, also it's not a fitted garment so it's not terribad to be off. HOWEVER I did use smaller needles than suggested (4.5mm instead of 5mm), so the horizontal width (about 80-81cm on the blocking board) falls quite a fair bit short of the expected dimensions (though the vertical height is pretty close). I think it's still wearable, but it would've been nice if it were larger.
• For some reason my stitch counts were off and asymmetrically so. I'm...not sure why...I couldn't figure out where it went wrong...but also because I couldn't, I figured it'd be fine to just ignore it lol.
• First time blocking a project. It's still on the board but I already like how much neater the edges look like this - fresh off the needles it was curling a little and was a little hard to get a photo. I don't have a lot of physical space so the smaller size works in my favour...also I do not like the smell of wet wool. Praying it goes away completely once it dries.

I'm left with quite a fair bit of extra yarn - not enough for a decently-sized project, yet still Too Much. I think I'll do a swatch for swatching's sake, but even so, I'll probably have some left...

Overall this was an easy knit, aside from my worries over the distribution of the colours I enjoyed it. I'd do it again but maybe with appropriately portioned yarn and/or a solid colour - I like the heathered colours in the samples...will consider it...

The yarn was nice to work with, aside from the smell I suppose. Definitely want to buy from this shop again, maybe when I've chewed through more of my yarn stash......

Anyway, I made a new template by modifying the default one (mono). I'm not entirely sure what all these variables are (haven't gone into the backend code to look) and the indentation is, to put it lightly, not very existent...so getting it all cleaned up is a bit time-consuming. BUT I think I managed to have it looking cleaner! (Also woah I didn't know they got ShiPainter to work...please I would like to have ShiPro my beloved back...)

It's a bit of a cross between nostalgic BBS Note and Wacintaki...I actually thought of putting the navigation on a header nav at the very top of the page like the latter, but personally I wanted the top part of my board to be more open. I think I could make maybe 2 or so variants on the layout once I'm done wrangling the basics...

It's still not done yet - there are some half-finished pages, I'm making some design decisions on the commenting form/response pages, will probably do some language editing on the oekaki app instructions...possibly see if I can get the edit form working in a more intuitive way...and then work on colour schemes (I'm a little unsure, but I think I might be able to use CSS custom properties to make custom colour schemes possible to do without SASS)...and then do my own personal customisations. It's all very jank because I'm not really keeping track of which vars are available when, and I'm doing my best to separate bits out so I can reuse code...but I do plan to release this and possibly a couple of other similar themes on Github, since there aren't that many themes available for poti-kai especially after the conversion to BladeOne.

Also: I kind of want to see if I can hack the blank redirection page that shows after something is posted, so a dark mode theme could remain in dark mode...

Completely unrelatedly my 100th visitor kiriban was missed!!! The new one is 200!!!

It seems like there's a high chance of colour remapping glitching out on the outline when pidges are generated individually, so I think I might have to permanently fix it (layer the lineart in black on top of generated pidges). Unfortunate, because I liked the rare weird pidge, but they're no longer rare like this...

The page layout is inspired by wikified horrors (SCP, Backrooms). There IS lore behind this that's related to one of my OCs, but actually I made up most of the content on the spot, so I can't really talk about it...other than that, I'm quite proud of the gacha machine art and the combination of pixel art/css animation. 

I haven't on anything else site-related, so that's all for this update. Busy busy...

Progress for the second day of working on this - it's very simple so it works up fast. My main issues are that:

• My yarn over-purls are very loose for some reason (compared to the yarn over-knits on the opposite side), so I have to pull them extra tight
• Somehow ended up with 1 extra stitch on one side and 1 less stitch on the other??
• Should probably have started striping in the second colour earlier for better colour distribution...
• I'm on the 3rd and last stockinette section, have 3 more colours unused, and just started on the 3rd colour...that's only slightly above 21 rows left to blend in 3 new colours, so this is going to be terribly imbalanced. 

The yarn does get used quite fast in terms of weight (compared to when I was working with fingering weight yarn) so I think I should be able to get through the other colour changes...but it will likely look quite funky. Not sure how many rows I should expect colours to take...but it's fun working with these colours because I like them.

There are still a couple of things I'd like to do that are pidgeon-related, but they're on the backburner for now while I think about how I want to implement those. Next up I think I'll be plugging away at that oekaki skin, probably. And more desktop icons maybe...

Thinking also that the year grouping of projects/media doesn't really cut it because it'll get really long after a few years and feels really redundant before enough years have passed, so I kind of want to do some tweaks to the display. Much to think about...

Oh, and I got approved for the Yesterweb Ring. If you came from there: hello!!!

WHICH I HAD SO MUCH TROUBLE GETTING ON MY PC. I usually upload them in a private server on Discord because it's the fastest way I can think of to get photos onto my computer (I use an iPhone) that is also free. I couldn't do this because I had a lot of photos to upload and having to rescroll to get all the pictures I wanted sucked.

So I tried plugging my phone into my computer. I couldn't see the internal file system for some reason??? 

So I very reluctantly hooked it up to iCloud photos as an extremely temporary solution to this problem and that's how I got the photos on my computer, but I just really hate that I had to jump through hoops just to get some photos onto my desktop. How have we as a species not yet invented a decent way to transfer pictures from a phone to a desktop PC??? Actually, scratch that, we have - that was my second attempt (plugging the phone into the computer and grabbing it from the internal file system). There's probably some driver stuff going on that caused the files to not display and it should, normally...but it sucks that there's even a problem with this in the first place. This is why I strongly believe mobile (and especially iOS) is just a terrible device to do anything on at all...

Anyway that's not the point of this log. Have some progress photos.

Set up an oekaki board on a subdomain. I actually got a little distracted and started writing a new skin for it - the standard POTI-board layout isn't really to my taste and the theme I used on a previous board isn't compatible with the new templating engine. (The upside is that the new templating engine is exactly the one I use all the time, so I don't foresee many difficulties. I'll probably be working on that after the pidgeon stuff is done.

Speaking of pidgeons - I spent a lot of time preparing page text and layout graphics and haven't actually started working on the layout code yet.........next week I guess.........this one was REALLY hard to design and I still have yet to code the rolling generation, so it might just end up being another couple of weeks before it's fully complete. But at least I have the design done I GUESS. 

Apart from that, did some minor organisation of links, added some more new ones, and added the ability to..........not link. Just so I can create headers...

The website is no longer up, but the Internet Archive still has it and the download intact. I don't know Perl, but it's easy enough to make simple modifications, so I translated the text, tweaked a few things and so on. I might write setup instructions, but I can't distribute the modified code.

Besides that, fiddled with the splash page and the welcome page a little. I do intend to join some webrings later, so I wanted to make sure I had some space set aside for them. (Hopefully my merch shop self-promotion doesn't break any rules re: selling stuff? I feel it doesn't go against the spirit, but I am always nervous.) I have a lot of mixed feelings about explaining what "kiriban" means...uh...I hope I'm not TOO old. It's not THAT old of a concept, is it???

I was REALLY hoping to get the pidge page done but spent the entire day pixelling the gacha machine graphic I needed (and tweaking the animation) but at least next week...I'll probably actually get to work on it...???

I'm still missing a desktop background because I'm not entirely sure what to draw for it...it will most likely be tiled, but tiled backgrounds are REALLY hard to draw. I guess I'll think about it for a while.

Also, shuffled some of the links around. I don't really want to duplicate links in the Start menu in case it makes people overlook other links in the menu, but the menu panel doesn't look good if it's too short...so I think I might add a changelog that links here...I also still have a downloads page to make, so that's another item.

Besides that, also added a counter. FC2 has such a wide variety of counters that it's hard to decide even though I was already set on a specific look! 

It feels weird thinking about this as being an entire website that people can visit in this state. I'm afraid of losing interest in working on it...but I would still like to tell my friends...so I think I'd have to come up with ways to trick myself into thinking this is still totally under construction haha. Maybe the site will be considered "finished" when I do a wallpaper and replace the link icon...

Mostly worked on pidges though! I think next week I will be actually hooking up the pidge generation and making pidges available for adoption.

Got a lot of art to do, I think...

Pattern gen is fixed (turns out I introduced a bug while I was trying to get rid of antialiasing on the pattern) and it really adds a lot of charm/interest! I was initially going to restrict the amount of patterned pidges generated, but I think I'll let all pidges have patterns. Not all of them are visibly patterned, anyway.

I also tweaked part grouping a little, so that eyes will always be given a colour. This should reduce the occurrence of eyes blending into the base when it's uncoloured, especially if there's heavy dithering on the face. I think it also reduces the odds of void eye...which is a little harder for me to fix (don't think it's worth the effort, so there will always be void eyes).

I made an attempt at generating eggs that showcase the palette, but I'm not satisfied with them yet. While they do look consistent, it doesn't do the showcase bit very well, so I'm workshopping this.

Besides that, I also added a couple of new palette types - rainbow and vaporwave/retro. I think the rainbow palette might need some tweaking, but I went all out on controlling the parameters for the vaporwave ones, so they look fairly good across the board. There's a lot to talk about regarding palette generation here (a lot of it is worrying about the relationship between saturation and lightness + doing bad hacks to deal with chroma), so I think I'll write a page on it at some point.

The main things left (besides working out egg design and adding a watermark/url) are putting up a page for displaying pidges, and writing the cron that will make more pidges automatically. Soon...

Next week I think I'll continue working on pidges, but more on the site side. Maybe? I do want to generate eggs for them too, though, so maybe I'll end up doing image generation again...

I do want to open corownet up for visitors but there's still a bunch left to do, and to be honest, I'm afraid of calling it done, because that's the point where I'm going to say ok I don't have to think about this for a while and then forget it exists haha. It's a problem because I'd like to work on other projects, but not be gone so long that I can't get back to updating the site...

It's definitely not all bug-free - notably, I'm getting way less pattern application than I should be. I also need to actually hook this up to the scheduler, make a page, etc. etc. but! wow! I did NOT expect it to be working so soon.

My main thought is...these are really horrendously ugly LOL. Generating a new palette for each individual pidge looks really bad, even though the palettes themselves aren't that horrible...which is a little depressing given how much thought I put into trying to make these look nice (I will explain theme groups eventually). BUT...I think that's a given for random generation, and I think there are more hits if I repeat the same palette over multiple pidges...so I think I might do that! Sometimes the palette is good, but the generation uses only like, 2 colours in all the wrong places, and it turns out much nicer on another pidge. This is something that I enjoyed while doing the prototype/proof-of-concept, so I suppose it makes sense.

I'll also need to add a watermark or something, like for the firelizards...I really enjoy image generation, but don't want my art to be misused (like for NFTs, or sold as-is as adoptables) and/or untraceable. 

Had fun though! Love my ugly bird(?) children.

Due to time and money constraints I'm only adding 2 new sticker sheets (unfortunately neither of them are the ones I doodled whoops) and a stamp tape...and fortuitously, a sticky note pad that was offered by the manu for free due to the large order.

Also, I'm running low on packaging labels - that's almost 140 orders shipped! Wow! I ordered a new label with new art and tried to use corow.net's palette on it, but CMYK did unspeakable things to it. 😂 Still looks decent though, I think, and HOPEFULLY the white ink + printed colour on silver turns out nice.

Next round I definitely want to add more sticker sheets though! I'd like to lean into sticker sheets since people seem to like them and I haven't really had much luck with selling enamel pins. I'll likely need to bump the prices though, since it's getting more expensive...and maybe try out StickerHD's sheets...hmmm.

• Fixed clicking on folders in the explorer window - due to some changes they stopped working but they're now good
• Log links now jump to the correct log on the page, and will even open on the correct page if it's beyond the first page
• Added highlights for projects - will go through and add some later
• Added random projects - this doesn't actually immediately open a new project, but pulls a random few projects to click on. I thought it was more fun this way (and also, just easier to do)
• Added a bunch of links over the week
• Some minor fixes on the admin end of things

So in order to fill out the links page, I've been browsing around to collect links and buttons. It's nice to discover new personal homepages and...I kind of wish I could do this a little more guilt-free (from not doing all the other things I should be working on) haha. A lot of these are hosted on Neocities, no surprise...but it feels a little social media-y in the sense that...I don't really know how to word this, but quite a number of sites link specifically to other Neocities sites/reference features that Neocities specifically provides (e.g. mutual follows, comments, updates etc.). That's cool, but the centralisation of both the sites and the community kind of scares me. The thought sort of sits in the back of my head, like, will people find and visit my non-Neocities site? Should I make an additional splash page on Neocities that points here?

And then: Is being seen the point, actually? I'm already deriving a ton of enjoyment from just making stuff, and a lot of that comes from being able to make some poor decisions without being seen. I don't like modern social media because it feels like performing my existence all the time - I don't even tweet when I don't think anyone's going to react to something I say, and when I do and no one does, I just feel sort of embarrassed, like, that was a display of emotion that could've stayed in my brain actually. The potential of receiving feedback makes the lack of feedback exist and I hate that.

tl;dr not to say that I don't want to be perceived, but I don't want it to get to the point where I'm doing more to fit in with other people than for myself, I guess? And I'm constantly debating over where that line is.

Anyway, I've been thinking about that oekaki board project I've temporarily shelved but intend to work on. Today I was surprised to find that Wacintaki Poteto updated this year. It officially supports ChickenPaint now, which is a relatively new drawing app. It kind of diminishes the need for me to build a new board type, but I think my project has its niche...I was thinking of something more resource-heavy than Wacintaki and POTI-board (maybe I should write a dive page on oekaki boards), and could probably implement this as an oekaki package. The actual purpose here is to build an extension for Lorekeeper so that the site can host oekaki boards, which I've always thought were a perfect fit for ARPGs. And of course...host it here too.

I was going to write some notes about implementing PaintBBS NEO in Wacintaki (which I did successfully earlier) but this would probably take a lot more words than I have in me right now. I think oekaki boards should come back and Neocities cannot host them with the features they make available to users.

Anyway, for now - thinking I will consolidate the tools and toys into a download page, which I need to design. There are a bunch more art resources I need to make and some existing pages to pretty up. I tend to lose steam nearing the end of a project, but I hope that doesn't happen because I still do intend to make more stuff after this...

Anyway, because of that, I didn't really get to do accurate checks on the fitting of the cover because I didn't want headphone residue on the front of the covers. Still turned out mostly fine, size-wise. Getting them on without getting them completely covered in headphone residue was a feat and involved some sticky tape to peel off a lot of flakes. I feel bad intentionally damaging the pads but they're going to flake off regardless, and it's just cleaner to do it this way than let it get all over my stuff...

It seems to do its job of keeping remaining bits off my ears well, though it's a little warm if worn for a while. Not sure how it'll feel for a few hours. Having the centre hole blocked means the fit is a little odd; it sort of sits outside of my ears rather than cover them. Not terrible, but needs some getting used to. Without buying a new pair of headphones (which I am putting off because I have to do research and make decisions and spend money) I think this is an acceptable solution.

Also I confess I did not weave in the tails. Was too lazy.

It's themed on Google Sheets - no particular reason, just had the idea and went for it. Getting the borders and etc. lined up was a pain, so that's why the scrollbar is always displayed. Something I think about while making these "looks like x thing" layouts (like the project explorer/project pages) is the balance between adding unnecessary/distracting fluff vs. the minimum needed to resemble the layout vs. tweaks to bring the viewer's eye to where I want them to look.

So unnecessary fluff would be the f(x) icon and the bottom left icons, which mean and do nothing...the second line under the title isn't that necessary content-wise, but that line would normally be occupied by the File, Edit etc. menus, and there needs to be text there. I decided against doing the icon menu because that would be too much unnecessary fluff, but felt the function bar was kind of necessary. So on and so forth - it just really needs only the positioning of elements, but not the exact text and functions to be recognisable, I think. Then on top of that - because a lot of the visual fluff doesn't really help with reading, I lower the contrast for the unimportant bits. Tweaking all this stuff is where most of the time goes...but I'm quite satisfied with how this page turned out.

Unrelatedly I made the desktop icons smaller and properly pixelled them - very happy with how the Cove one turned out. Thinking about how to illustrate the other two desktop icons, and the start menu icons...

I'll still need to fill in the manually edited parts of the page and enter a bunch more links, but otherwise, I think I have just the downloads page left...? And a bunch of graphics to do, miscellaneous decoration etc. I think this will always be a work in progress but it'll be at a point where I'm satisfied enough to show people, I think!

I've been wanting to add an RSS feed, but couldn't really decide on how/what to put in it - page updates are separate from logs so combining them into a single feed requires a bit of messing around, and if I kept them separate, maybe it's weird to mix project logs and media logs...?? In the end I decided to separate it into 3 different feeds. I made the RSS icon myself because I couldn't track down the source of those pixel RSS feed buttons but I wonder if it's too small...In any case, I'm also not sure how I feel about it querying on every hit so tentatively I'm caching the results - basically it should update the results every 24 hours. There's no point in checking more than once a day.

I still don't actually know if this is a great way to keep track of updates, primarily because I'm not sure what constitutes an "update". To me it's when the codebase gets updated, but thinking about it more, shouldn't it be when any content is added? So initially I didn't think pages needed a feed, but those are not insignificant changes to the site even if I don't document them here in the corownet logs. Living with big social media kind of does that to a person, I guess - a new thing is only important if it updates the entire platform. Everything else is just "content". I'm not great at making "content" consistently, because I'm conditioned to think that it's all going to be forgotten anyway. Platform changes stay. "Content" doesn't. My thoughts, my feelings, my voice have no impact...and so I pour my soul into the platform to leave a mark on the world. There's little left to put into making art. ...And so I've been doing my best to avoid calling the things people make "content", and trying to believe there's a point in talking about my thoughts. Maybe something I write on here might be important to someone else...and so I invite you to subscribe to my feeds.

Back to the update - I also added a help window. This thing is a helper I knew I needed fairly early on because it's totally possible to get windows stuck/inaccessible, and I didn't really want to fiddle with making a custom right click menu to close/restore windows and such. Fairly simple stuff.

I'm still thinking on the links page - I've been hoarding links like shinies since I started paying attention to needing to put together a list, so there's quite a fair bit of stuff and I haven't had any layout ideas yet. But I'm considering...building yet another system for me to quick add links without touching the code.......LOL. I might actually do it??

Completely unrelatedly, sometime during this week I had a dream where I was sent back in time (a one-way trip) to prevent a crisis. I thought I'd get sent back to 2016 but I got sent to 2006 instead, and my immediate regret was that I hadn't backed up corownet and would have to recode from scratch. Worse, it was way too far in the past, and I wouldn't be able to make it in the same state because the tech didn't exist...so it would be years and years until I could rebuild a working version of the site...it was sad...

The guestbook's moderation tools are done but I ended up not doing the layout element rearrangement because it'd take more time than it's worth. Might do it in the future if it REALLY bothers me, but I don't think anyone's going to linger on the guestbook page that much...probably. What I DID do is pagination, though! It will be a while before it becomes necessary at all, but better to do it before I forget.

No new pages, but I gave the project pages an overhaul (and learnt about CSS custom properties) - the old layout wasn't designed at all and was OK for a while...until I tried to name a page "Ori and the Blind Forest" and found that it Did Not Fit. The dropdown bar was surprisingly hard to work out, due to some caching issues (the back/forward/refresh buttons currently do nothing because I couldn't work out the back/forward buttons)...and I think the updated layout...might be a little less easy to figure out hierarchically but I tried. Please click for more pages.

Aside from that, gave in and converted a bunch of fonts to MS system fonts with embedded bitmaps (i.e. mostly MS PGothic). The slight blurriness was really bothering me. Put in the Start menu, though I'm still waffling on the items to put in the list...and finally the little start bar icons. It really looks more complete with these in...I actually clicked my own start bar icon instead of the website's start icon a couple of times in development. Definitely still got quite a fair bit of art to make (cursing the fact that I decided to go with the 1:1 pixel ratio instead of a 1:2 ratio bc there's so much canvas space to fill) but the more stuff goes in, the better it looks.

Right now the remaining pages (minimum) would be links, credits, tools and toys. Plus a small help page for retrieving lost windows. I think I'll do the links and credits next week, since I definitely have enough material to fill out those pages...

I also made a guestbook! It's half-complete at this time; it works and it's styled but I'm planning to rearrange the layout elements so that posting doesn't reload the entire window, and need to finish my moderation tools. I considered getting an external guestbook but honestly...I just wanted to make it myself LOL.

Struggled a fair bit with this layout because the transparent parts didn't go very well with such a contrasting background, but I really wanted to use this picture. My friends and I climbed Mt. Inari in 2017 and I took this photo then...at Yotsutsuji we were tired, it was getting late, and the mosquitoes were biting, but we decided to go for the summit because we were there, and who knows when we'd ever have a chance to do the climb again? I think it was worth it, and it's one of the memories I think of when I'm trying to decide whether to go for an experience I normally wouldn't try.

The About layout background is the view from Yokohama Landmark Tower in 2018 - it's unfortunately obscured by my profile image, but that day there was a large thunderhead cloud on the horizon (I remember Twitter users joking that it must've been the location of Laputa). It was summer, a perfect summer's day, and I was out with my friend who wanted to see the sea. I don't really have any deep comments on this; it was just a really beautiful day. One of my favourite memories.

There are other stories to be had about the little rectangular photos I put on the About page, but maybe I'll talk about them next time :)