notes on media, bikes, and work (?)

write a subtitle

written on 2020-07-02

what's the best format for a blog?/updates on blog infrastructure

this blog is up and live as of last post — there are still some things that i'd like to fix (eg: real styling, clunky code, and the possibility of theme toggling/client-side customization). some residual thoughts i have:

assumptions about who's reading / what things are for / what's a website for? how should something be read? bookmaking <-> web design
thinking about type hierarchy and form/content relationships
fuck graphic design whatever
i'd like to do more study of early web designs/read more on that...missing spaces like gaia online + neopets + deviantart (not really) and learning early styling thru those places

a bit more on technical stuff: i'm mostly struggling with local storage and javascript styling — i don't want client-side applied styles to be inline, but the idea of calling a stylesheet + dynamically writing styles is a bit iffy to me too, also the local storage layer makes it kind of difficult too; i might just drop this for now...

other than that, most of the features i want are kinda there!

media i watched in june (started and maybe finished)

let me be corny about the anime i'm watching for a bit (some spoilers)

the amazing world of gumball

i didn't watch a lot of this — it's cute, i'm watching the canto dub on a hk vpn and it's really endearing to me how gumball is called "ah-gaam." also gumball sets a police car on fire (although by accident) in one of the episodes :)

wondering how childrens media forms/presents new possibilities of relating to others, the world, and ur own emotions...

mob psycho 100

a new favorite anime; ONE really said be kind to each other or else! i love mob and his ever growing community of friends/loved ones, and his journey to accept and express his emotions more freely. do you ever think about the people you change through acts of compassion? mp100 really made feel stuff about interdependency + loving acceptance, as well as allowing kids to be kids (and what that means for the shounen genre/see reigen telling mob it's okay to run away in s1). i guess what this is about...also the animation is so incredibly beautiful, and the running gags (percentage meters and reigen using his fists) are so good!

fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood

a classic i put off watching for a while because i didn't like the style (i accept that i was wrong); i think has a lot of meaningful anti fascist/anti imperialist (?) messages in it and is also just so well written (like incredibly tight storytelling and narrative/character development). also the animation is sickass at some points (though not as consistently amazing as mp100, which to be fair came out like a decade later).

i do think the worldbuilding of fmab, while great, does undermine a lot of the ideologies/stances arawaka asks us to consider in the work, like fmab is fundamentally about state violence, genocide, displacement, racism, it says fuck the military/fuck the military regime, then halfway in pulls a big twist about the history of the state/its founding and tells us oh, it's not that the military or the state is a fundamentally violent structure, it's just that the military is being manipulated/has been corrupted by a team of villains behind the scenes. and while i think it works narratively, it makes a lot of these anti state ideas a lot flatter and limits the imaginary alternative worlds expressed by the characters/in the writing (eg: scar becomes kinda reformist by the end of the series, like his arc is really great but i think is ultimately disappointing/is shuttered out in favor of other more central characters, don't get me started on roy mustang lol). i have this similar (kind of) problem with media like parasite + mr. robot, both of which take explicit anti capitalist stances but don't move beyond that (though i know i'm just clowning if i think i'm gonna get media that does/media is not hte answer?) and make their ideologies more palatable/attractive to those in power? if that makes sense

anyway i'm glad i watched it, it was fun, scar was right

avatar the last airbender

rewatching as a zukka fan
jet deserved a better redemption arc/dare i say the redemption arc zuko got/how many times did someone get hit w a rock onscreen and didn't die or visibly sustain injury i'm calling bullshit on his death especially since atla goes lengths not to have any major character deaths
aang doesn't use his speedy run enough in the series
toph should have killed azula ON SIGHT on the day of black sun or at least whirpooled her into some rock
zuko could have ended the war when he faced ozai on the day of black sun even ozai was like why don't u just kill me now hee hee haa haa
i love toph so much that hasn't changed
toph's best earthbending scene (i haven't rewatched sozin's comet yet) is when gaang has to fight their way into the ba sing se palace and toph uses the stones in the pavement as a rotating shield then converts the stairs up to the palace entrance into a slope
sokka is the nerd/jock combo of my dreams
sozin and roku were gay for each other but sozin's a piece of shit
ty lee has a huge (unrequited ?) gay crush on azula but unfortunately azula is annoying
everyone on this show is so short? or at least drawn that way?
the use of early cgi/3d effects is so jarring but also pretty fun to look at
considering making a twitter just to post shitty tv/movie commentary

fixing my bike

last summer (i think?) i purchased a used commuter bike from facebook and promptly neglected to ride or use it for the next year (hahaha). i recently reclaimed it from where it was being stored (on campus) and found the tires were completely deflated. in the process of looking to restore the tires i learned a few things:

bike tires (at least the ones i have, which hold air) have inner tubes (these are where punctures and deflations happen). my inner tubes both had significant punctures; they ultimately needed replacement (fortunately they are very cheap) but i found out can be quickly patched if needed/the punctures are smaller
in the process of replacing the tubes, figured out how to remove both the front and rear bike wheels! it's pretty easy so long as you don't fuck up the order/placement of parts
realizing a lot of the grime was oily, i had to figure out best practices for cleaning bike parts/safe dirt and rust removal. i learned more about specific parts (eg: the chain, freewheel, derailleur, hub) and their assembly and disassembly (in order to clean more thoroughly, not documenting how things were assembled was particularly foolish of me when attempting assembly). i also ended up buying chain lube after scrubbing stuff off with degreaser
i accidentally tightened the hub too much (the rear wheel wouldn't spin) on reassembly and had to ask a friend for help because i had a bike with a bolt-on axel and every video tutorial was for bikes with different axel mechanisms (eg: skewers). after adjusting the tightness of the hub, i accidentally reinstalled the wheel in such a way that it rubbed against the frame, and then realized my frame was crooked. (unfortunately that really can't be fixed i think!)
on a test run, i noticed that the front wheel was rubbing against the brakes; this led me to learn brake adjustment (eg: cables, spring, pad position)
i continued to have a bit of rear wheel wobble (i know there's a specific term for this but i don't know what it is) after adjusting the hub; hopefully when replacing the bearings (see below) i can figure this out and fix it

things i still need to fix/adjust:

on a second test run, the cover holding all the bearings in the hub got jammed and like 70% of my rear wheel bearings fell out haha; i need to figure out how to restore them and in the process need to take out the freewheel (so i might as well clean it better too!)
gear shifting is broken; there's a problem with the derailleur!

miscellaneous thoughts

slowing down, looking at things one thing at a time vs. scattering myself across hyperlinks and tabs: i'm trying to get less information at once and i take the time to understand and document things as they come up
thinking about politics out of fear and shame and guilt (vs. desire) and how its kinda ruling/ruining my life
i wanna go back to school but the school i wanna go back to doesnt exist yet or maybe it exists in imagination or in fragments

🕳〰️