Hi old and new friends! This marks my first blog post on my site, which I thought would be a nice start to #100DaysToOffload, which I'm doing this year. April 9(?) should be the last day. This post is larger in scope than the others, and the goal is just to improve my writing skills.
As many of my friends can testify, I am an fanatical LotR fan. I start a new reread attempt every few months at least. There's many paragraphs I can remember by heart, and so many quotes I recite on a daily basis. The film score lulls me to sleep, and I constantly compare the world around me to passages from the books. I've been a Hobbit for at least 4 Halloweens. I want to take some time and reflect on what draws me to this world and its inhabitants.
To start, I want to praise Tolkien's writing style for a bit. LotR is often criticized for the lengthy and flowery prose, and you know what? I get it! Everyone wants something different from reading and writing, that's what makes them so wonderful. The writings in these books just scratch some itch I'd never known before. I find a lot of the time the tone of descriptions and diaglogue is rather cooler than other comparable works. With careful word choice, Tolkien ensures that you understand all the protaganists, but that you don't feel entirely fit into their heads. This goes great with the rather fickle couse that some passages take. Tolkien isn't afraid to rip you straight from a conversation into a lengthy description of the scenery or vibe of a new region. As much as this illustrates the constant wonder of Frodo and his companions at the vastness and variety in their world, it plays with the reader's attention. To me, it's almost saying "Look how small they are. Look how little this corner of the continent cares for the stakes". This puts me in almost a "cinematic camera" point of view, detaching my train of thought from the party in order to apprecate the natural beauty of the world. It's well known that Tolkien was a nature lover, and passages like these are clear examples of how he incorporates this love. These devices lend themselves well to the overall themes of smallness and unimportance. The only way the Free Peoples were able to beat Sauron was by subverting his expectations and not sending a massive armed escort to destroy the Ring. This also manifests in smallness of ambition, where the Ring held more power over those who had massive plans for the world. Frodo only wanted to fix the whole mess as nicely as possible, and this is why he was able to resist for so long. This is why I love Tolkien's prose; it is a constant reminder of the nature of his world.
The "moral", if you will, or rather the main idea, that even the smallest and most unimportant people can make a difference in the world, is just perfect. Name a person on earth who doesn't wake up at some mornings feeling small and unimportant. That idea coupled with the theme of hope in dark places really makes navigating the modern world... not easier, but better to stomach, I guess. Ideas like this are what drive me to perform activism, to stand up for others who can't, and to stand up for myself. Another essential lesson is that of fighting for and saving things, even if we don't get to enjoy them. This one is something I need to work on myself. Sometimes it's hard to put energy into something where you're not sure you will see the outcome. It seems hopeless, and a lack of certainty on the outcomes of your work does little to hearten you. But this world goes round thanks to people who work tirelessly for fruits they will never taste, results never experienced. I deeply want every person on this world to have a chance at a long and fulfulling life in this beautiful Eden, and that's why I'm a humanitarian and an envionmentalist. No matter how hard it might become, these are the principles I want to drive my work, not the thought of personal gain.
Now about the films. As many Youtubers can more effectively tell you, the very fact that the films exist in their state is a miracle. Who in their right mind would give so much money to a relatively inexperienced director to make such a film, let alone a trilogy of them? What are the chances of such films being created at the infancy of realistic CGI, one of the most pivotal moments in the film industry? I mostly want to praise the beautiful sets and editing that make these films the way they are. The Fellowship of the Ring remains my favorite film, largely for the beautiful contrast. Going from the idyllic Shire hills and comfortable Bag End to temperate forests, uncaring mountain ranges, and wide rivers. Now that I'm getting into filmmaking myself, rewatching just brings new excitement as I'm able to identify styles and technique.
MUSIC. Oh my god. Howard Shore is a master composer and conductor to have pulled off this incredible feat. His knowledge on how to completely emotionally control a movie audiece should be illegal. Every measure is masterfully crafted and shows a complete understanding and fierce love for the works of Tolkien. As a big fan of charactarization in music, I especially admire how video game and film scores are able to subconsciously make the listener remember events or characters. Shore used dozens of leitmotifs to accomplish this task, and each one sends shivers down your spine with the absolute perfection. You can almost tell exactly what is happening on screen and how the characters feel based on the music. It's such a comfort listen for me. It puts me in a very mindful and thankful state, where I'm appreciative of even the smallest things in life. The vocal work with a variety of performers leaves each track feeling fresh and highlights the variety in the world (e.g. the Rivendell elves vs the Lothlorien elves). One of the best movie sountracks I've heard, and I love my movie sountracks.
Anyway, I hope this helped you and me get a grasp on how much this series means to me. It's highly likely I'll write more on LotR in the future, especially when I don't know what to do for a day. Don't expect this much writing next time, this took me about 4 days to get through. Goodbye and farewell for tonight, and happy 2024!
Footnotes/Unconnected thoughts I want to keep track of:
- Really not a fan of how Peter Jackson cut out so much of Fellowship. I mean, I understand why he did it (and if I had his knowledge I would likely do something similar), but it's a shame because so many of my favorite bits were in there. Notably, the entire element of planning and careful preparation and coordination with Gandalf and the elves and the rangers and the Hobbits to get Frodo to Rivendell. Always a comfort read for me knowing just how many people were out there helping off the page. I also lament the loss of Tom Bombadil and one of my favorite extended storytelling bits during the Hobbits' layover. He was not very important to the actual events that took place, but the things/themes they discussed come up lots throughout the story later. Someday I might write about a certain extended metaphor that comes to mind with him, but I'm not confident enough yet to name.
- I didn't mention the Silmarillion/other extended sources simply because I don't have that much experience with them. A lot of them I have started and not finished. I'm hoping to get a taste for even odder prose than usual to help me through them.
I loved this movie and I loved the way that it made me feel bad for loving it. Many reviewers had problems with the over-beautification of the shots, but I think it plus the amazing score lead to a brash feeling when you watch the movie. It knows what it's doing and I like it. With every shot looking beautiful and intentional, I'm really able to pick my faves and feel like my taste is refined for it. Here was my favorite shot from the film: (You can click it to view the full-size image)
Lovely! I also was a big fan of the use of the sky in a lot of shots. When I was in a photography class, I liked to take shots where the subject was in the bottom third and the other two thirds were the sky. Saltburn employs lots of these shots and is sure to mix up the weather and cloud formations to not leave the shot feeling stale. My praise to Linus Sandgren and Emerald Fennell!
I don't have a lot to say on the plot. I liked having a slow realization that Oliver was up to something, and then wanting him to succeed just to fulfill my morbid curiousity. By the time his plan was done, I felt like scum for ever rooting for him. He did awful things! It's really hard to watch that last montage where he recounts his friendship with Felix. Felix was dumb but was a good friend to Oliver, and I really can't see why Oliver hated him. Maybe because he never recognized the love. Strange way to let him know, Ollie!
My personal thought on the story is that Oliver manipulated the friendship into happening, and by the time things went belly up he had accrued the skills to bring things to fruition. I don't like the idea that he planned on destroying everyone from the start, it's too evil-genius for a fairly realistic movie like this.
Overall probably an 8/10 film for me. Watch it with friends, it makes the shocking scenes better, and the socially awkward ones more tolerable. I watched the first half on New Year's Eve and it was very hard to finish at home this morning without constant pausing and cringing into my pillow.
Engineering students are boring as fuck, and it's not really their fault.
Why is this? I've been doing some thinking and some googling and some getting angry in my head, and I think I have an explanation that satisfies me and perhaps only me.
(This information is really only relevant to engineering; in my discussions with other students, they are often regarded poorly and spoken of differently than the others. Just thought it was interesting!)
Reason one: Engineering majors are implicitly told they are better than others at the UW. I think back to Engineering 101 and how many times the speakers mention their high paychecks, the usefulness of their degree. How many statements they make to the effect of "Well there are other options outside of the engineering program that feed this interest, BUT..." and that's always a big but. Even the engineering peer educators aren't innocent, but I'm not sure what standards they have to comply to behind the scenes so they get a pass.
Reason two: The Engineering major encourages taking classes at a breakneck pace and maxing out your credit load. Your day to day is so packed with technical information and stupid junk that you don't have any time for hobbies or anything. Not making this up, I was able to hear several testimonials from later year students and this was basically the one thing in common. Get used to not having free time.
Third reason: Probably rarer, but a still present group of people who are 18 or 19 (or older!) and think that there's no point to learning a humanity or anything but STEM. I probably had a period where I thought that STEM was the only useful thing to learn. Yeah, back when I was in middle school or something. Grow up, you dorks.
I'm not thinking to leave the STEM sphere entirely, but I am planning on pursuing a very chill degree and I hear the people in it have some semblance of personality so that'll be nice. Only time will tell.
Anyway the moral of the story is that STEM majors and humanities majors are not enemies. In fact they are kissing, sloppy style, squishing boobs together, etc. Could this all be just a rant because I'm frustrated at trying to make friends in freshman year of college? Yeah maybe. I'm glad I have really awesome friends living near and far and don't feel like I need to start anew.
Thanks for reading this crap!
Out of not really having anything else to talk about today (It was still eventful but nothing I want to get into on here yet), I thought I'd diary some of the ideas behind and for this site just to get them squared away. At some point I should add them to About, but I don't want that page too bloated with all the blinkies. I shouldn't be scared of large pages. I don't know.
Most important, website architecture. I'm running a clean ship here: All HTML and CSS, no JS, no backlinking, and no large page sizes. Why no JS, you may ask. I'll preface this by saying I have quite of bit of JS experience. I know that it can be extremely powerful in the right hands. I just don't think my hands are the right ones! For one, I don't have any real use cases. I'm not implementing ads or popups, I don't need smooth animations and beautiful embedded content, and I certainly am not tracking you or trying to get you on my email list. Secondly, JS is pretty tight these days, but it's not foolproof. I'm no security expert (My friends will recall the time I uploaded a Discord bot token to GitHub) and don't really plan to be. This is a one person operation, and it's easier to just forgo the use. Besides, have you read that lovely article in the footer?
Of course, limiting myself to no JS is going to be a tricky road. Everything needs to be a static page essentially. I plan to continue this as long as possible, but cracks are already starting to appear. For example, this blog page is atrocious. Remind myself to redo it soon. Maybe tomorrow if I have free time. There are tools I am looking into that can automatically recompile a static webpage from dynamic specs you set, such as making a recent articles pane that updates by itself. Don't think that is possible to host on GitHub though, so I'd need to have an improved setup (Which may be possible as early as this spring!)
One last thing I want to talk about is the other content on this site. I hope I can get into the habit of blogging at least a few times a week after these 100 days are over, but I also want to have other things hosted here. I plan to expand/refurbish my Collections page soon, adding other media I like and perhaps separating it into several pages if the page becomes too cumbersome to navigate. I also want to host some of my artwork, such as my photography and poetry. I'll bet none of you knew I wrote poetry and never shared it with anyone, did you? Haha I sure got you there.
Sliding this one out of the oven 15 minutes before midnight. By the way, if anyone is reading these, do let me know. Screaming into the void is one thing but an echo is fun as well. Sweet dreams mis amigos.
Not much to report tonight, I'm a busy woman. I've decided to try using Eleventy to generate static pages for my site. The idea is that I write these posts in the Eleventy format and then run a script that will compile it all into pure HTML and CSS, which then get uploaded to GitHub Pages, updating the site without me having to change a ton of links and such manually. That's the idea, anyway. I'm optimistic, largely because this is a Node package and I trust Node packages for some reason. It's probably unfounded.
The results are looking good so far. There are a lot of fun tools to play with in this service, and if it becomes unsupported in the future it seems easy enough to migrate to another similar service. I'm tired and have homework and activism tomorrow so this is all you're getting. Bye bye!
I want to be dependable.
I want people to set their clocks by my routines.
I want them to entrust me with something precious, a secret, a date, a task, and know that I will take care of it.
I want a dozen arms to hold everyone. I want a hundred minds to remember everyone. I want a thousand bodies to be with everyone.
I want to understand.
I want enough pity for a continent, compassion for a world, empathy for the universe.
I want the patience of stone, the compromise of earth, the changing of water.
I want to listen to the land, the animals, the skies, and everything beyond.
I want to exist beyond my body, my spirit, my means, if only to bring others comfort.
I want to be a willow tree and yet be the storm battering it.
I want to contain multitudes and yet be approachable, real.
I want to be human.
I want every greivance, no matter how small, against my fellows to set my soul aflame, send tears down my cheeks, and embolden my body for conflict.
I want humanity's every triumph, no matter how small, to lighten my life like the setting sun.
I want to drink humanity in, understand the depths and heights that define us, the dreams that drive us, the things that hurt and kill us.
I want to feel my heart beat and my lungs fill and know that everywhere everyone's body is doing the same and will continue to do the same.
I want to LIVE, and I'm lucky to get to.
This was written after the Jan 7 blockade of I-5 in Seattle, attended by myself.
Triumph! It took a lot out of me but I managed to get the site working with Eleventy. I'd like to detail my working process here in case anyone wants an alternative way to how most internet guides reccommend doing this.
Most guides reccommend a process in which your main Github repo contains your entire node project, and you use Github Actions to deploy your site to a new branch that populates the Pages site. I found this annoying, as you need to work with a bunch of weird stuff like encryption keys. From the beginning I was thinking the best way would be to have your repo cloned into the project folder and then confiure Eleventy to build the site to the repo folder, and that's what worked for me.
To start, create a blank Github repo and name it whatever. As far as I know, your Github Pages repos don't need to be named [Username].github.io anymore. I like using the Github desktop app, because it's nice to see what I'm doing as I'm not that good with git. Clone this repo to your main eleventy project folder. Then edit your .eleventy.js file to include the following:
module.exports = function(eleventyConfig) {
return {
dir: {
output: "YOUR-REPO-NAME-HERE"
}
}
};
of couse replacing the capitals with your repo name. Now all you need do to update your site is rebuild your static site (If you followed the tutorials in the documentation you should run npm run build), and then push and commit.
I'd like to think that my morals are rock solid, but nearly everyday they are challenged by the reality of our world.
I love to have this grandoise idea of the innate goodness of humans in my head, but sometimes people do things I can't explain away. I'd love to ascribe all people's motivations to their environments (which can be flawed due to reasons outside an individual's control), but it's impossible to predict what people may do when exposed to certain things. The other side of the coin is that I don't want to say "some people are just born mean"; I don't think that helps anything either. I'm really only one person with one point of view in the end, and I think that's important to keep in mind. It doesn't mean having morals is a futile thing! I still think that assuming the best about people is the right thing to do, even if I get hurt doing that. I'd just rather live my life not second-guessing everyone, trying to read into their feelings towards me. Lord knows I spent enough time and energy doing that already.
Another example: I think about human rights a lot. I'd love a world with human rights for all, no matter what, but the reality of wanting to protect people is that you run into safety concerns, which can be other people themselves. Sometimes protecting the many means harming the few. But I don't entirely feel comfortable with judging who gets human rights or not!
I think the important thing is to be open to people and situations challenging your morals, and be aware when things aren't working. Use these times to reflect on your sense of the world, and think about areas for improvement in your ideology. That being said, don't be completely flexible, and listen to your gut when it comes down to it. The other important thing is that for the present, my morals affect a very very small amount of people, and for that I am glad. I am still a person in progress, and probably always will be.
Hello again everyone, I know it's been a long time! I was a little distracted by... *gestures broadly*... yknow. The 100 days challenge is very dead at this point, but I'm hoping to get back into writing things for this site, because my friends are doing the same. My pals Autumn and Neptune have recently began their own sites, so be sure to check them out! Lots of great stuff there.
As I always remind my friends, September 22 was Hobbit Day, the anniversary of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins' birthdays. I know it's a few days later and the hobbits are well on their way out of Bree with Strider, but something something a wizard is never late nor is he early. I was lucky enough to eat some great meals that day, both attending a family party and going out for sushi later that night. I'd like to think the hobbits would be proud of me. Anyway, I got to thinking about the seven hobbit-meals (Notice me use the Tolkienesque hyphenated compound noun?!?) and how they would work in hobbit society, and scribbled some notes down, which I expanded on later. I thought they would be fun to share, so enjoy my hobbit-meal headcanon!
Breakfast
Breakfast is not in fact the most important meal of the day to hobbits. Most will tell you that all meals are important! I imagine breakfast as being eaten during the getting ready portion of everyone's day. For day laborers or farmers this would be pretty early, probably 5 or 6 am and for other members of the household around 7 to 8. Breakfast is made up mostly of prepared foods and leftovers from the day before, such as buttered scones, cakes, dried fruit, leftover. Some breakfast masters pride themselves on seamlessly preparing small snacks while getting ready, for example toasting bread on the same fire they heat the bathwater on. The cooks in the house sample bits from their preparation of breakfast or elevenses foods.
Second Breakfast
Second breakfast is really what breakfast should be in any household. Held around 9 am, second breakfast is a hearty and nourishing meal featuring many typical breakfast foods and generally with the whole household present. Expect eggs, potatoes, bacon, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, and biscuits. The steam from hot drinks such as tea and coffee waft over the table. Breakfast is often associated with the most annoying dishwashing task of the day, as many household members will leave soon after this meal to to go work or play, leaving washing up to the few.
Elevenses
This 11am meal is often packed up and taken on the go, so portable foods are a must. Assorted nuts/berries/foraged items are commonplace, as well as bread, sausage, whole fruits, tarts, and honey cakes. Most hobbits will tell you that elevenses is best washed down with fresh, cold water, but don't expect this of everyone! Elevenses is one of the most social meals of the day, as it is generally eaten with friends and coworkers and is a chance to rest from the warming day under a hedge or beneath a tree. Afterwards, cooks begin preparing luncheon and tea snacks.
Luncheon
Expect almost everyone home again for 1pm lunch, except for those that work far from home, who will often be hosted by their employer. Hobbits love to have cold cuts, cheese, salads, meat pies, soups, bread, and roasted vegetables at their luncheon. This meal can feel rushed in some households, as everyone wants to get back to their daily tasks, so oftentimes the hosts make efforts to cull the rush with more dishes or a small entertainment. Those who leave again are loaded up with tea snacks for the road.
Tea
Tea in the Shire is very similar to what tea once was in our world. The main event is drinking copious amounts of tea or coffee with cream and sugar, accompanies by tea-cakes, small pastries, and sandwiches. The smaller scale of dishes for tea makes it a wonderful chance for more artisinal hobbit-chefs to hone or show off their skills. Tea is not always something you go home for, but every day at 3, like clockwork you will see hobbits slow their roll and glance towards the nearest kettle.
Dinner
As one of the Big Three meals, hobbits will go all out for 5 pm dinner. A Shire dinner is not something to be missed if you are passing through, and often many friends and other family members are invited. Prepare your stomach for a choice meat cut such as lamb, beef, or turkey, served with gravy and a selection of sauces. Small fowl like chicken, duck, or quail, hearty root and vegetable stews, nutty salads and pies, whole vegetables and boiled eggs are typical table sights. The cooks of the household will start preparing dinner meals early in the day, and work on them intermittently during their other tasks. Hobbit meal planners are truly masters of their craft.
Supper
Supper is a favorite meal of elder hobbits, as it is the one part of the day when their anecdotes and stories are in demand. Supper is the meal most people depart from only when they are headed to bed. Generally center stage is everyone's choice alcohols, often beer or porter, along with foods that pair well like sausages or smoked meat. Younger hobbits or those that dislike alchohol may opt for green tea or a mug of cocoa. Other small snacks include leftover bits of fish, meat, or cheese toasted over the fire, popcorn, and of course, mushrooms.
How do you think I did? I'm very open to suggestions or corrections, so be sure to let me know if you think anything ought to be changed. I hope reading this made you as hungry as writing it made me!
As I reach 2 weeks on HRT and several months out to my family, I'm beginning to have some deep reflections on just how fucked up it is to not realize you're trans all your life. Particulaly how it absolutely butchers your sense of self worth and any notion that you're a real person like everyone else.
This started while thinking last night how much of my life I felt like my only purpose was to help others. I know that sounds like a very noble pursuit, but I was doing a disservice to myself and my own life journey. Again with the serving others: I seriously thought a valid and healthy way to go through life was to ignore every part of myself just fill other's cups. I guess if that's how you find meaning in life, than great job for you, but I didn't get anything from it because I wasn't really a whole person. And I guess I thought that I just wasn't doing enough, which magnified and led to further pain and suffering... I'm just glad I know the problem now and am fixing it. If I seem more selfish these days I apologize but the whole self-care thing is new to me.
I've been wanting to create a directory of cool websites I find, but that's a lot of work with links and such and I've been doing so much large scale refactoring of the site that I'm a bit burned out on it. So I thought I would push out a blog post and get some of these down at the same time. Here are some cool websites I've bookmarked lately:
I've been into OSINT lately, which stands for Open Source INTelligence. If you've ever watched Rainbolt (Geoguessr guy) videos, it's pretty much the same thing. Generally a puzzle will have you looking at an image and attempting to answer some questions about it, most commonly the location or involved people/entities. You're allowed to use the whole internet, and there are a great number of cool tools for helping find things. It's intrinsically tied up in government work unfortunately, so a lot of people in the field have government ties or jobs to it. I think it's fun to do for fun without the aim of harming others! I hope to have some more on this later, but here are some cool sites in the field:
https://gralhix.com
Great repository of resources, puzzles, and more. Gralhix is one of the foremost figures and women in OSINT and her blog is great. I have solved Exercises 8, 21, 23, and 28 so far.
https://overpass-turbo.eu/
Overpass Query Language is used for queries to the OpenStreetMap "Overpass" API/database, and this website will OQL requests for you and show the results. The data is almost scarily accurate, very useful if you want to locate all post boxes in a small Scottish town, for example.
https://www.aware-online.com/en/
Website for an OSINT training company based in the Netherlands. They have a number of useful custom scripts and lists of tools available free to anyone.
https://www.catsoup.org
CatSoup is the blog for another OSINT hobbyist, contains walkthroughs for many online exercises, and I find the author's line of thinking to align a lot with my own. They have other posts compiling tools they have found, many of which I haven't seen on other sites.
I've also been exploring a lot of tech nerd's websites. In my mind, there is a very big distinction between tech nerd and tech bro, which generally aligns with how I personally feel about their work. Tech nerd is an affectionate term! Here are some:
https://boehs.org/
Cool web dev, he has a lot of good opinions and fun stories.
https://hacktivis.me/
Another cool site for some French dev, they compile a lot of fun links and older web stories (1970s to 1990s!!!). Still exploring here but a lot of fun things to see.
https://anders.unix.se/2015/12/10/screenshots-from-developers--2002-vs.-2015/
Beautiful post that demystifies the open source gurus who help things go round.
Here are a few more for good measure, some of them I found longer ago:
https://cinepedia.com/
REALLY cool site I found that explains how a lot of modern cinema technology works. I found them in 2021 while looking for information on how movies are distributed to theaters.
https://ooh.directory
Blog directory! Wonder if I could get in there...
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
And of course, what better way to end this than the original website...
That ends this post! Someday these may all be organized into a real page, but maybe not. ^^_^^
...everyone who ACTUALLY has it has it so much worse than me, right? Hahaha
...right????
No. No more lying to myself. I have profoundly felt excluded and like in imposter in nearly everything my entire life and it's time to stop acting like people were just being weird to me or somthing. I feel out of plcae in nearly everything I try or am in, and those places where I manage to feel like I make a place for myself, the feeling doesn't stay for long. It's nobody's fault but mine and I hate how it manifests in feelings like awkwardness, jealousy, and blame on the people I care about. I have people telling me they love me every day and every time my black festering heart turns it into a nasty lie. Nobody could ever love me. Why would this group of people want ME with them. It's ruining my self image. It's ruining my relationships even if there
s no evidence of that. I will keep being distant and apathetic and uncaring until everything I care about is ruined for real and then it will be a thousand times more devestating becuase I will know that it actually was my fault. I'm not well. I don't know what to do. I don't even entirely feel comfortable putting things on my blog because I'm afraid the people who do read it will think I wrote it straight to them. I can't even feel justified in posting on my own damn blog.
Therapy soon.