November 20, 2008
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I hate the term ennui, but it only seems appropriate as it’s shown up in several other blogs addressing this issue. I originally had a bitchier & self pitying post drafted, but fuck that.
Traffic to my site has disappeared like the bees*. Like that interesting biological/ecological mystery, I don’t know the cause, but it certainly had contributed to my lack of interest in posting. Where did my readers go? I was glad to lose a couple of them**, but did I have have to lose everyone else as well?
I’ve let my blog go on autopilot with the Resplendence series. I suspect people don’t touch fiction that much on the blogosphere. Also, I abandoned my fun topics in favor of it.
It seems a lot of people do not leave the insular world of Facebook, even when I feed my blog posts to my profile. Oddly enough, I would get comments to a copy of a post to Facebook, not the actual blog post itself. So much for it serving as a relay station for ShindoTV.
Another thing about Facebook - there’s more instant gratification in making a note or posting brief updates than there is working on a blog post and waiting for any confirmation that your post has been read. I suspect one of my blogger friends has abandoned his blog in favor of this. A couple of my blogger friends have, however, have been more diligent with their blogs and they have profiles on Facebook.
Even though I have a seemingly active profile on Facebook, I’ve turned to the equally insular world of Twitter for online interaction. In the beginning, I was using Twitter once a month, but I increased use a few months ago and I haven’t shut up ever since. I’ve followed people here and there, but after meeting up with a lot of local tweeps, I started following more people and started interacting more. While Facebook feels very anti-blogosphere, Twitter compliments it . However, there’s still the challenge of utilizing it to promote the blog, and that’s something I need to work on.
I’ve thought about a few things regarding the future of ShindoTV. I’ve thought about shelving the blog until the new year and have a fresh start. I’ve also considered erasing everything and starting again. However, I figure the best thing to do is to proceed and go on. Set a course for earth.
*The bees haven’t completely disappeared, but there is a population decline.
**One or two online stalkers.
October 27, 2008
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When I told you about the Gold Lady kicking Dr. Marcus’s ass in his Banker’s Hill Home, I mentioned how she and the Man with the 4-Way Hips were coming to the hospital and they were taking me away to Santa Monica. Nothing has happened since. Edmund thinks this makes me another silly faggot who does nothing with his life and somehow thinks someone is going to discover him for the talented person he is without doing a goddamed thing about it. Edmund has often asked me, “Are you holding out for kept boy status?”
Of course not. I just want to live with my friends. When splendor comes, I will leave this place. Roger got it into his head that the Gold Lady will magically manifest herself on the lawn and that she will appear to all. I told him she hasn’t shown up yet in her Mercedes and that she will make an appearance in her own time. Unfortunately for me, the Gold Lady is busy gallivanting around the world with the likes of Robbie Williams, David Bowie, and Madonna. There has been endless gossip on the phone about what’s been going on her life, but not a chance for me to ask, “When are you coming?”
I’m tempted to call the press, tell them I’m a source close to the Gold Lady, and dish the dirt. Trust me, honey, there is a lot of dirt. I asked the Gold Lady if she was the beautiful black woman I saw in a red dress while I was in Santa Monica, and she said, “No.” I then mentioned the woman said Toshio on the phone and the Gold Lady told me she could not have been walking down Santa Monica Boulevard because she was in London that weekend.
I told her I tried calling her while my brother and I were driving up to L.A. and all the Gold Lady could tell me was that her phone was out of service. Oh, please! I know all about her and Toshio Tokage meeting at a café. I could not find her because I was too busy shopping with Dylan to notice her.
©2001-2008 shindotv
October 24, 2008
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In this music store there are headphones so you can listen to a CD before you buy it. I saw Radiohead’s Kid A by pair of headphones, so I put them on and listened to the first track. The music was kind of weird; the guy sang kind of funny, and there were a lot of weird and spooky sounds, but I think I could like it. I think it’s the kind of music Kid A would play himself, and if he played this music, I would say it sounds like he misses the Gold Lady.
When Kid A was studying at Tokyo University, the Gold Lady was his girlfriend. She inspired him when he did his MFA thesis, which was music about her, but they broke up because Issey Miyake discovered her and she became very famous. It would be years before he became famous as well.
As I said before, he must be famous because Radiohead named their new CD after him. I really like “Idiotheqe” because any discotheque that doesn’t have the Gold Lady dancing in it must be stupid. The words, whenever I understand them, don’t make a lot of sense, but it’s groovy nonetheless. The last song, though it’s weird and spooky like the rest, is beautiful like classical music, and it makes me want to draw pictures of the Gold Lady and Kid A with lots of color, kick ass color, and it makes me feel sorry for the Man with the 4-Way Hips because he will feel left out, because the Gold Lady and Kid A were lovers long before the Man met the Gold Lady.
©2001-2008 shindotv
October 22, 2008
creative writing, photography, technology
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Yesterday, I mentioned the CameraBag application for iPhone. I downloaded Photo Lab, which has some artistic filters one can apply to the photos on your iPhone. The options range from simply adjusting the color to rendering the image as a line drawing. For $2.99, there are 20 filters and it’s easy to use.
To show some of the effects, I used a picture I took of my friend Jaylen. First, here’s the original photo taken with iPhone’s default camera app next to one with the Auto Correction filter applied:
Left: Original. Right: Auto Correct
Left: Posterized. Right: Saturated.
Left: Line Drawing. Right: Line Drawing with Color.
Left: Stencil. Right: Sculpture.
UPDATE: While I enjoy using Photo Lab on my iPhone and tweaking the photos with it, the app has crashed on me a lot today. Please, developers of this fun product, please work things out so that there are less crashes. I will less likely bitch and moan and scream ‘FAIL!’ if you do.
October 22, 2008
blogging, photography
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Twiggs has recently opened a new location on Adams Avenue and Idaho. It’s a new haunt of mine and I’ve taken a couple of pics, with my iPhone, of course:
Twiggs in the late afternoon.
Across the street from Twiggs, the liquor store.
The liquor sign, very Americana.
October 22, 2008
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He wrote The Gold Sutras
a collection of electronic hymns
buzzes and whirrs
automated drumbeats
noises taken out of context
to command the listener
to have reverence for the Gold Lady.
©2001-2008 shindotv
October 21, 2008
photography, technology
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You can’t always say you get what you pay for with iPhone apps. Some of the best ones are free while some of the paid apps are utter FAIL (such as allRadio). Given that, I paid $2.99 for the CameraBag, and I wasn’t disappointed at all.
The iPhone’s default camera application is simply point and click. There isn’t much one can do with the “camera” besides have a steady hand and shoot. With CameraBag, that part is still true, but there are several options to manipulate the image for a “vintage” effect.
Here are some examples of the effects offered by CameraBag:
Jaylen in “Lolo.”
Amber and Julie in “infrared.”
Amber in “1974″
Sharon and Brian in “1962″
Casey in “Helga”
