ISSUE 044

This year’s addition to the garden is a cobblestone path. Fairy tale vibes in May.

This newsletter is turning more or less into a yearly event… How are you all doing? Thought I’d do another one of these, as an end-of-year kind of thing.
As you can see from the picture above, in good tradition, we added something new to the garden again and proved once more that I’ve turned into a garden person.
That’s more or less it for the outdoor projects though. Well, that’s not really true, there is another bit of construction left to finish… but I’ll leave that for the next letter! 😀

Today’s topics:

• The dog’s snacks
• Crying about my art career
• Terrible games
• Great vacation
• Notable content
• Proof that I can read
• and am still boring

# Garden #

Continuing on with our theme: the greenhouse is now more or less dedicated to providing the dog with snacks in summer. We had 2 cucumber plants that gaves us these chunky mini ones until late October. I say ‘mini’ but you can see here how those turned out when I came back after a week’s vacation.
Besides those, we had a good harvest of peppers to make hot sauce with, this year. They’ve been fermenting in 2 big jars for close to 2 months now. So if anyone within travel distance wants some hot sauce, let me know. Not going to send it out by post 😀

# Made #

It pains me to say that I’m probably never going to top the painting I did of this rooster. I’ve reached the peak of my art work, and it’s a flat metal ornament on my father-in-law’s chicken coop, meant to scare away neighbouring roosters. I mean, come on, look at those impressionist brush strokes, the details on the comb, the tail feathers… all coming together to present the perfect archetype.
There’s nothing left now. I could cry but I don’t think I’d ever stop. Oh well.

Scream into the Abyss by rembrandx

Turn over your worries to the endless void…

Not that it matters any more but I made a mini game as well. Fittingly, it’s a scream-simulator. Go on and throw your deep existential fears into the abyss.

Summer was also a good time to experiment with photography. I dabbled in anthotypes: images you develop on paper using pigments made from plants and sunlight.
In my case, I used turmeric dissolved in alcohol to make a light-sensitive layer (that’s the yellow color you see in the photo) and printed an image on transparent film to hide parts of the paper from sunlight. The transparent parts get bleached by the sun and the rest becomes a reddish brown when washed in a certain solution.
You need a lot of sunlight though, that’s where summertime came in handy.
If you want to know more, I wrote a small post about it.

Then last month, for my birthday, I got supplies from my GF to make cyanotypes (a similar thing but with clearer and more stable images), so I can continue the experiments.

In more photo-related news, I had some of my Game Boy photos printed on canvas and brushed aluminium to see what that was like. The idea was to experiment on top of that, eg. distressing the print or adding something. It fell a bit to the wayside during my depression about the rooster painting…

Anyway, let’s not dwell on that! I’d like to do some sort of photo expo but I’m having trouble thinking of a way to organize that. Any ideas for that are most welcome.

# Retro corner #

Can’t have a newsletter without some retro talk, can we? I briefly got back into collecting Game Boy games. Mainly been looking for the Batman games I was missing but also games based on Franco-Belgian comics and cartoons I remember from my youth. A company called ‘Infogrames’ is notorious for making really terrible ones, but they also had some amazing music.

Give this track from ‘Tintin: Le temple du soleil’ a listen and tell me that’s not some of the best chiptune music you’ve ever heard.

A bit of news on the Game Boy front: a company called FunnyPlaying built new Game Boy hardware (it’s the one on the right in the photo).
It’s basically a Game Boy Color made modern parts, that still plays the old cartridges. It just has a modern LCD screen with some extra options (eg. brightness settings). Despite some bugs but I’m quite pleased with how good the handheld works. It’s replaced my black Game Boy Pocket to take photos with.

A friend on the Game Boy Camera Discord server also helped me build 2 new Game Boy Cameras. Well, they saved my project when I botched the soldering job 😛
It’s similar to the aforementioned ‘new’ Game Boy: old tech built with new electronics. There are now multiple people in the retro community designing & selling these as DIY projects. I believe there’s 4 variants, 2 of which are ‘mini’ sized.
What a time to be alive (and being into retro games)!

# Travel: Denmark #

We took a summer break in Denmark, here’s a handful of pictures of what that was like. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a place that was this quiet on the roads and this flat to drive through. I can most heartily recommend it if you want to get away from the busy life but still be within reach of a supermarket.
We mostly saw the west coast, starting out in Ribe. Visits included the island of Fanø (we saw seals!), the wadden sea (we saw seals again!), Blävand (where that light house was), the Lego house in Billund, …
I recommend going to see seals (bring binoculars, or a monocular).

# Note taking / organization #

A long time ago, I did a write-up of how I organize information. It was a combination of some digital tools (eg. Notion, Evernote, …) and paper notebooks. But with e-ink devices becoming more prevalent and powerful, I’ve been eyeing something that I can write and draw on, at a reasonable price. While I haven’t found the device that can bridge the paper-digital gap (don’t think that’s even possible) I found the Supernote A6X2 to be interesting enough to try as part of my setup.

It has sketching tools as well as hand-writing recognition. All in black and white so it’s not going to be great for final work but it looks promising enough as a quick sketchbook and for project notebooks. I’m also hopeful it can replace my e-reader. There’s no backlight but unlike my Kindle, it’s not tied to an ecosystem and it has an off-button, so its battery isn’t drained next time you pick it up.

If you have tried any e-ink devices, I’d be interested to hear your experiences. What do you use it for? How does it compare to paper for you? Would you find the lack of a backlight a dealbreaker?

# Read #

I can’t be bothered to look up what I read on my e-reader this year. I remember one was work related. Other than that, there were some oldskool paper books:

‘Exhalation: Stories’ and ‘Stories of Your Life and Others’

the 2 collections of short stories by Ted Chiang. You may know him as the author of the short story that ‘Arrival’ was based on. I like his writing a lot. He’s very adept at building a story around a very specific concept, keeping the story and characters engaging and the technical side clear. Not all of it is science-fiction, one of my favorites is a nice take on the tower of Babylon.

‘The City and Its Uncertain Walls’

Murakami’s latest. I bought the Dutch translation when I found it in my local book store. It was a couple months before the English one. Others had warned it reads a bit differently and it does to some extent. I think it’s down to the fact that the English translations are a very cooperative undertaking between Murakami (who was a translator originally) and his long time translator. The Dutch version is less lively but still fine.
I enjoyed the book, apart from the last chapter. Parts of it are a bit of a slog but then the ending wraps up way to fast and loose, so it’s a bit uneven I’d say.
It draws from the same short story that another one of his books was based on (Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World) so you’ll recognise elements if you read that.
The one thing that really irked me though is that there is a very cliché autistic ‘savant’ character with the cliché trait of ‘feeling no emotions’. Apart from savants being very rare, tying them to autism, is a weird stereotype that was solidified by the movie Rain man. Going further and bundling autism with lack of emotion makes it even more offensive and frankly, dangerous. Autism, especially in semi-successful people, has continuously been associated in the public consciousness with anti-social and even sociopathic behaviour. A week ago, I heard a leftist writer call the behaviour of Musk and his ilk of oligarchs, ‘autistic’ in this very context. Last year, a prominent media figure tried to use this potential diagnosis as an excuse for his years long continuous harassment of women.

‘The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic’

This is by Alan Moore & Steve Moore (no relation). I haven’t read it through yet, as I just got it.
The book tries to give a history of magic as we’ve known it in the West. From a first flip-through, there’s a lot of cartoon biographies of many of its charlatans, which is very amusing. It’s also about Alan Moore’s own magical order, called ‘The moon and serpent’.
Now, I’m not into the occult or magic in general but I know Alan Moore as a (comic book) writer with views on magic connecting magic to people trying to understand the world through language, and that is something I find fascinating. People tell stories to explain the world to themselves and through stories experience but also change the world (think of the relation between ‘fake news’, the media and politics for example).
For those who don’t know, Alan Moore is a writer who was part of the ‘British invasion’ into American super hero comics in the 80’s. He’s long since given up on the comics industry and has been very vocal about his distaste for the adaptations of his work and the legacy of his work. Look him up if you don’t know him, lots of interesting stuff.
But besides that, he’s a very entertaining human being who doesn’t take himself too seriously, became a magician when he turned 40 as part of a ‘midlife crisis’ joke, and it kinda stuck. Steve Moore was also an accomplished British comic book writer, with lots of work in the legendary magazine ‘2000 AD’, as well as a mentor & long-time friend of Alan. He died before they could finish this book and a lot of people have been hearing Alan talk about it for 15 years now. So it’s very exciting to finally see it come out.

# Watched #

Some newly discovered YouTube channels, mostly featuring the host walking around a particular place in England and talking about its local history. I found them while I was looking for info about ‘psychogeography’, which is this kind of study of how (mostly urban) environments affect people. Anyway, I find these very calming to watch when things are stressful while still learning a bit about the world:

• Tweedy Pubs: man dressed in tweed visits historic pubs and drinks a half pint while talking about its history. It’s a lot better than I make it sound, trust me. I don’t understand how he’s not completely sloshed by pub n° 6. He also has a channel where he walks the countryside, still in a tweed suit, cooking nice food on camping equipment and drinking wine. It’s the best.
• John Rogers Walks: Man with a beard walks through a part of London or some other parts of the country while talking about the location or route’s history. He joined writer Iain Sinclair on a couple walks and they even did a documentary about London places, this is where it ties to phsychogeography. Oh, and Alan Moore was in a couple of the videos too.

# Closing thoughts #

I’m writing this part as I’m sitting sick at home, antibiotics and corticosteroid inhaler not far away, binge watching Tweedy Outdoors videos. A good enough moment as any to reflect on the year.
Feels nice to go through photos and projects from the past year and see the good parts while you’re not feeling that great. Things have been stressful at times, regardless of illness, so this helps.

Here’s hoping everyone finds a bit of solace and gets a break as we go into the last month of the year and onto the new one. See you then!