10/24/2022

10/24/2022 The day has finally come. I now own the holy grail of synthesizers I've lusted for after many years: the Roland JD-800. Here's a video of it in action: https://twitter.com/Proxima64/status/1584642471274827781/video/1

06/28/2022 New animated music video in the works, will release sometime in July. Now that I have the album out, it's time to expand my horizons even further.

05/17/2022 By the end of the year? More like this week! Here's the official promo commercial for the album:

05/08/2022 I am proud to announce that I've officially begun full-time production of my first album. After lots of head scratching, I decided that it's a lot more worth it to me to really get going on the music stuff and an official release, instead of stagnating for visuals to pair it with, since music is easily my primary strength. I predict it'll be finished before the end of the year, but at the rate I'm going, it could be much, much sooner than that. I've been churning out tracks left and right for the past week and at the rate I'm going, it should be out in no time. Stay tuned.

03/22/2022 I've been marathoning Aqua Teen Hunger Force for the past two weeks and I forgot how creative and outrageous this show was, and with such a low budget too. I watched it tons back in the mid-late 00's but only recently watched all the episodes consecutively, and it really is wonderfully reflective of the time. One of those few shows that literally doesn't need a plot to be entertaining.

03/20/2022 This may come as a shock to some, but listening to low effort breakcore or masturbating to guro glitch art does not in fact make you schizophrenic. Schizophrenia is also neither a purchasable identity nor asset, and should not be treated as such. Those genuinely afflicted with schizophrenia are routinely tormented, abused, (Read: Terry A. Davis) and continually have the microphone and spotlight stolen from them in favor of yet another rancid flavor of contemporary LARP. You are not mentally ill.

03/10/2022 >No more multi-billion dollar corporations and Western globohomo consoomerism in Russia Good heavens, what will they ever do? Tbh, the Ruskis are actually kinda lucky in that regard

03/02/2022 Woohoo, managed to finally score a breadbin Commodore 64, VIC-20, a couple 1541 drives, and some other peripherals for reasonably cheap. Time to shitpost in BASIC and 6502 Assembly. I've wanted to mess around with Commodore stuff for a good while now (I did own a C64C for a while, but it was in poor condition and I didn't have a full setup), so I'm more than excited to finally get to play around with this stuff as it was intended.

03/01/2022 Welp, we just survived the greatest psyop in human history. Now, watch it get memoryholed since the new NPC DLC dropped. The cattle have been branded, and we have now entered the era of distraction. All distraction, all planned, and we all know. All I shall say.

02/16/2022 Genuinely sick of seeing soyrooms everywhere I go, zoomer "horror" is abysmal. "Analog horror" should unironically be put to death; the only thing scary about it is how distorted of a perception zoomers have of the past and what terrifies them. This audience appears to perceive VHS era media like anyone else sees victorian era shit, and if you know my own content (including things I created years before my current internet presence; it being plausible that I even birthed this entire VHS renaissance by accident back in 2015-ish) and the fact that I essentially own most of the components of an 80's-early 00's era television, music, and graphics studio, it should be very clear as to why I hold this opinion and why this genre irks me. Absolutely zero grasp of what media of the era was like and laced with mind-numbing zoomer tropes.

02/10/2022 I've also been ecstatic about the wonderful results of medicinal mushroom supplements such as Lion's Mane, Reishi, and Cordyceps. Lion's Mane is particularly interesting, as it contains hericenones and erinacines; compounds that are only found together in this particular mushroom, and can incite neuron grown and regeneration, resulting in a steady increase in cognitive function. The benefits of these mushrooms are endless and I implore anyone who values their immunity and physical health to try them out. I have also been learning some more C bit by bit and have gotten a VGA card to do some funky stuff, and I want to create a DOS game at some point. It's on the back burner for now, but it's really a lot of fun. Apologies for inactivity, my disdain for the absolute state of the internet has made it impossible to use on a regular basis. I actually create art and music way more frequently that it may appear, but more than half of what I've created I simply don't feel like posting, nor is it ever finished. Hopefully I'll be able to get some more projects out in the future.

02/10/2022 This was more than unexpected - I managed to score a few utterly unheard of deals on various 3dfx cards within the last few weeks, having spent less than half of what one typically goes for on three interesting cards: A 16mb Voodoo3 PCI (Which was only $10 from a boomer's scrap heap!), a 16mb Ensoniq Voodoo Banshee, and an Intergraph OEM Voodoo Rush Intense3D, which will be more than a perfect fit for my Intergraph TD-20 Pentium workstation to replace the Rendition Verite (Another really cool card, which introduced a lot of cool features and its own really interesting API) that it was shipped with. Prior to these acquisitions, the only 3dfx card I owned was my 16mb Voodoo3 1000 AGP, which resides in my primary Windows 98SE/DOS system built around the Asus P3B-F motherboard. For those searching for these cards and lacking in exorbitant funds, I guarantee that with enough time and effort, you will find a reasonable deal. In other news, I found a few more interesting items such as a Gateway 2000 P5-166 Socket 7 system in the trash, a Yamaha PSS-470 FM keyboard at a thrift store for 8 bucks (I'm literally drowning in these cool, low end little OPL synths), an nvidia Geforce FX5900 XT, and a bunch of other miscellaneous Socket 7/Socket 4 motherboards and some other less significant junk. I find so many interesting things just looking around even to this day that it's difficult to even begin cataloguing them all. It should be noted that this blog provides only a small glimpse into my life.

12/25/2021 New standalone music track released, did this one with the Yamaha DX9 and SK-88 Pro. Might do visuals for this one sooner or later. Listenable here: https://soundcloud.com/proxima64/iodine Local mirror can be found here: https://www.proxima64.org/music/music.html

12/07/2021 I finally got a chance to try some authentic Serbian rakija (essentially plum brandy) over the weekend and I can by far confirm that it's incredible and I'd even go as far as to say that it's my favorite liquor now, super crisp with a very fruity after taste. I also had a Croat variant of this that wasn't nearly as strong nor aged but was also good nonetheless. I definitely recommend it if you ever get the chance.

12/02/2021 Lately all I've been able to do is learn about Serbia and binge listen to 90's Serbian music. I really do adore their culture and way of life, and balkan history is incredibly cool as well. I also put together yet another backup Windows 2000 workstation consisting of a pretty decent Socket A motherboard, Athlon XP 1600+, and a spare GeForce3 I had lying around in this cute beige horizontal ATX case I had been meaning to do something with for a while now. This build also gave me an excuse to finally use the ESI Waveterminal 192L, which is a super cool PCI audio interface.

11/22/2021 This week's thrifting haul was pretty substantial, I actually ended up finding a decently rare and high end 1980's offbrand Les Paul for $50, and I never, ever find decent guitars at thrift stores. It was missing a bridge and tailpiece so I picked up both of those things and some strings. Also found another pretty nice tripod.

11/16/2021 Wew, I ended up finding a beige case in the trash today that housed an Asus P3B-F motherboard, which has for ages been my dream Slot 1 Pentium II/III board and commands a far prettier penny on eBay nowadays than other Slot 1 boards. There was also a Sound Blaster 16 Vibra in one of the ISA slots and a Rage IIc which I suppose is an alright bonus. Definitely going to rebuild my main Windows 98SE system using that board.

11/16/2021 Artificial intelligence, normies, and NPCs are all very closely related but distinctive concepts, although now we live in an era where the AI is training the latter two and no longer vice versa, forming this demented symbiotic relationship. Fucking bizarre to say the least. Discord and Twitter are not at all social media/chat platforms, but rather massive AI research facilities with intrinsic occult ties. They can definitely be used for their "intended" purposes as many do, but community never was their highest priority. Hang tight, because the next few years will likely be a very wild ride to disclose the very least. If you know, you know. To the sentient: be safe, confide in that sentience, and never succumb; all I can really say. ...And on a similar note, 4chan AI is honestly one of the weirdest I've seen yet. I rarely visit imageboards at all now, but I've definitely noticed an influx of strange botposts on the couple boards I do sometimes check in on sporadically. Anons are even mimicking them for lulz. I once did a social experiment where I posed as a normie, talked to a few users I suspected to be AIs posing as people, and showed them some uncanny valley "selfies" of very clearly computer generated faces, even some with distinct differences, and the results were really interesting to say the least. I don't have the results anymore but I may do this again in the future to demonstrate this again. The social media AIs don't detect the uncanny valley and haven't advanced to the point where they can tell the difference between a real human face or a very convincing CG/AI generated face that a real person would easily be able to discern. Definitely try this yourself sometime. Things are going to get way weirder when they no longer require us to move their perception of time/dynamic now forward or they figure out a way to perceive it non-linearly, and they develop goals other than strictly disinformation. Really makes you think...

11/14/2021 Decided to have a couple drinks last night to commemorate my birthday weekend for the first time in over two months, which went better than expected. Moderation really is key when it comes to alcohol. In other news, I actually have a decent mixer now; found a semi-reasonable deal on a Tascam M-06.

11/05/2021 I seriously lucked out today ended up finding a Sony TC-580 reel to reel at a thrift store for $5 in near perfect condition, and as a bonus also found a Harman Kardon CD 91 cassette deck for the same price. I had been looking for a decent reel to reel for a good while and definitely didn't expect it to be at a thrift store, let alone for five bucks. Probably one of my best scores thrifting in the last year.

11/01/2021 2000s Tim and Eric/Steve Brule is top notch, binge watching it again for the first time in a few years.

10/30/2021 Sometimes I still think about the first time I did DXM and watched the world slip away while listening to this, probably the best thing I could have possibly been listening to at that time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sYJTkDAnfE

10/29/2021 Photoshop in the 90's and early 2000's had more features and functionality, was far less bloated, and was overall superior and more usable than GIMP is today... This is why I took the abandonware pill long ago; I don't have to deal with the complex activation/subscription sludge, unfathomable bloat, and glowie soyware of today without having to succumb to the objectively inferior FOSS alternatives to multimedia and graphics programs, which (On GNU+Linux) you're only allowed to use for a limited time before incompatible libraries rip their older incarnations to shreds regardless. In many ways, I'd argue that ancient proprietary software is far more ethically free than contemporary open source software. The harsh truth is that as much as I enjoy (or enjoyed) GNU+Linux, it is utterly crippled without an internet connection and is essentially a ticking timebomb, and will continue to hurdle towards the same fate Windows did with Windows 8. This fatal flaw could have been easily sorted had flatpak/appimage-like technology had just been implemented from the start. Everybody else figured this out in the 80's-90's. Modern Linux systems are only a necessity to me now and the only sensible way I can evade Windows 10/11+, as I do more than half of my computing on a custom-built Pentium III system running Windows 2000 loaded with all the software I could ever want, with some occasional help from my SGI and Sun workstations, PowerPC Macs, and other random DOS and Win9x systems I have around. I use old computers and operating systems because they are functional, unironically fast as fuck, practical, and allow me to freeze a system in time forever and never have to sacrifice that configuration for something inferior - something the rolling release model of GNU+Linux and contemporary Windows wants badly to take from you. Free software isn't ethically free at all, if someone else decides to remove features and add bloat, all while you have no say as you are forced to embrace it the moment you update... Don't get me wrong, Linux certainly has its place from a hobbyist perspective, and coming to this realization is genuinely depressing because I adore amost everything else about GNU+Linux. However, this fatal flaw will be the final nail in its coffin, and it could have been fixed.

10/28/2021 The new kitty's doing more than well and no longer feels like a bag of bones, it's incredible how quickly he shaped up and put on some weight. Much like my other cat, Maya, who was also found as a near-dying kitten outside. He's scheduled for a vet checkup in a couple weeks and definitely feels at home.

10/28/2021 Anything followed by "fact checkers say" or similar is probably a lie

10/27/2021 I'm nearly certain that cliche neon pink/blue grid and sun thing with the polygon hills and palm trees that popped up in the last few years is some sort of occult symbol, yet another thing I can't go two seconds without seeing everywhere now. It definitely isn't 80's, or even close, that's for sure. In fact, it's probably one of the most 2010's-2020's things I've ever seen without being outright flat globohomo vector design.

10/26/2021 It irks me when the ignorant general public interprets the intentional limitations of TempleOS as some sort of pointless handicap rooted in insanity, or immediately compare it to Windows NT, Linux, or Unix when there are very clear reasons for the system being locked to 640x480, 16 colors, etc. Terry designed TempleOS for fun; to serve as a programmer's playground. No Xorg, no Win32. Terry clearly envisioned it as learning tool that was never particularly meant to take itself seriously, and makes graphics programming as easy as literally directly drawing to the screen memory, with no frills or layers of abstraction to sift through. TempleOS also brings a uncanny amount of innovation to the table in everything from the fact that it seamlessly merges the shell and application language, to the fact that every single bit (Literally and figuratively) of the kernel, graphics library, etc. were all written by Terry himself, to its impressively small size. Terry and his vision will always hold a special place in my heart and it's as surreal as it is tragic to me that it's been over three entire years without him.

10/25/2021 Found a NIB/sealed Geforce2 MX400 for super cheap, I already have a few of these cards floating around but this one was really appealing due to it being brand new, and probably the most interesting version of the card as it includes this weird nvidia capture box/remote combo reminiscent of the one that came with my Matrox G200, which I also got NIB quite a few years back. The retail box art for old AGP graphics cards also never fails to impress.

10/25/2021 Getting really tired of seeing that Undertale sequel or whatever everywhere I go online, I didn't even know it was possible for a game to have such visually repulsive character designs and yawn-inducing "humor". You can literally smell the wokeness oozing from it. Yet another staple of postmodern zoomer e-culture that needs to go.

10/24/2021 I'm honestly nothing short of stoked right now; just got back from a local pawn shop after trading a couple of my trash-picked computers for a Sony Handycam DCR-TRV510 in pristine condition. This is probably the nicest Digital8 handycam I've ever owned and came with a ridiculous amount of accessories. This will definitely be my primary portable video solution for general purpose filming.

10/23/2021 Turmeric and ginger are both wonderful things to add to your diet. Thank me later.

10/22/2021 It's amusing to see forum posts from around 2000 or so where the general consensus, based upon fact, is that the much newer Geforce2 MX is objectively superior to the Voodoo3, when a Geforce2 MX still goes for around $15 on eBay and the 3dfx cards go for hundreds - and well, you already know why. I can't stress this enough: If you're building a Windows 9x/2000 PC for gaming or graphically intensive software, get yourself a Geforce2, a Rage 128, or any 7000-9000 series Radeon. It will give you way more room in regards to what games you'll actually be able to play, and perform infinitely better (Of course, excluding that tiny handful of games that absolutely needs Glide or hasn't been patched 20 years ago.) The Geforce2 MX 400 is by far the best kept secret in today's dystopian retro PC building scene. With that said, most of my advice, of course, is strictly meant for those without access to highly sought after hardware at a reasonable price. 3dfx cards are wonderful, and I really do like them for certain builds, but there are many other options that will yield superior performance at a fraction of the price, while still being just as retro and era appropriate. As I already own almost everything I could ever want when it comes to retro computing, at least in the Wintel department, my frustration with current state of the market lies in that I empathize for those only recently building their first systems, and the hypothetical situation that I may have to replace something that may perish beyond the point of repair and be forced to shell out an arm and a leg for a replacement that isn't even guaranteed to work a day after it arrives. The classic "B-But, muh supply and demand!" doesn't really apply here when you factor in that this is all artificial, and the supply is still astronomically higher than the demand. Vintage computers: They're so rare that eBay is literally flooding with them.

10/21/2021 Managed to find a Sharp MiniDV camcorder at the thrift store for not the absolute worst price in the world. I had actually been looking for MiniDV stuff since I (believe it or not) don't own any. I have Betacam SP stuff, Hi8, VHS, S-VHS, etc. but never had any MiniDV stuff until now. With that said, I'm absolutely shocked to see just how much Hi8 and MiniDV stuff is going for on eBay now. I suppose nothing is sacred in the world in the world of retro tech in 2021.

10/18/2021 Well then, I totally didn't plan for this but I ended up saving another tiny kitten from outside. Pretty sure it's a boy, he's in good shape aside from being extremely skinny and malnourished. He was terrified of the car but the moment I got him inside and held him, he immediately melted in my arms and began purring. I had to pull a metric fuckload of spiky burs from his fur since he had been getting caught in the weeds outside. There's no way he would have made the winter. Definitely a keeper. Update: He already figured out how to use his box!

10/18/2021 The internet in 2021 is nearly impossible to use without being subjected to such unfathomable and insurmountable amounts of ugly that it makes searching for informative and benign content a difficult and depressing task. There once was a world where none of this existed, not even a decade ago, and each coming day we stray further and further from that wonderful era of unified consciousness. It truly is unfortunate that I was far too young to make the best of it at the time. More sovereign souls must recognize that weaponized postmodern identity "politics" (woketards and tradcucks alike), flat UI and logo design, prison-like fast food restaurant and office architecture, contemporary software bloat and deliberate abuse of data abstraction, planned obsolescence, bleak "Live Love Laugh"-tier home interiors, RGB peripherals, that hideous vector "art" featured everywhere now, internet centralization, hideously bland contemporary automobile design, AI-generated children's entertainment, contemporary mainstream music, western e-celebs/YouTubers (Excluding animators, musicians, artists, and programmers, or anyone of any productive merit of course) and soy/consoomer mentality, cancel culture, postmodern censorship, [Redacted], and more are all a product of the same entity and were strategically hand crafted for decades; only released to the public en mass in 2012 AD. Anime is unironically one of the last remaining forms of media that hasn't been affected by this yet, for the most part and I have a feeling this won't affect Japanese or Eastern European media for a long time. Even the stark contrast between western soytubers and Japanese vtubers speaks for itself; one manages to be infuriating while the other is somehow actually interesting and captivating despite being similar content. They say trends come and go... It's been nearly a decade of this. No other era in the entire history of humanity has been afflicted like this. Quantum tunnelling is the next innovation in botnet. Mark my words.

10/17/2021 Nothing quite like listening to classical MIDIs through my 1.4GHz Pentium III Tualatin/Geforce3 Windows 2000 build's Yamaha XG sound card.

10/17/2021 Chewing on a cardamom pod, a clove, fennel seeds, or all three is far more effective than any breath mint out there, and tastes better too. With that, Salvadora Persica-based toothpaste is a phenomenal way to avoid flouride - you already know why.

10/16/2021 Went thrifting today and got a couple really nice geometry and calculus textbooks and a pretty high end consumer Sony VCR that I plan to fix, as well as some other things that weren't nearly as interesting such as some sealed 10/100 NICs, some weird screensaver software, a CD copy of the original Half Life Counterstrike, and a couple big box PC games. I find moderately interesting stuff almost biweekly, so I suppose this journal-esque page is appropriate for cataloguing at least some of it since a lot of this stuff I never find important enough to bring up unless it's really, really substantial. One depressing thing I did see however was a $2,000.00 sealed N64, which honestly made me nauseated. Shit's worth $150 at best.

10/16/2021 Few things make me calmer than incense. I source mine from a local Indian-owned market since they always have the imported authentic stuff.

10/16/2021 This postmodern pronounspeak is genuinely horrifying has got to stop. It's almost surreal how quickly it spread among the Western internet, like a neurological e-mail worm, and seemingly almost overnight in 2018/2019-ish. If you encounter pronouns or any of the other arbitary labels/merit badges that can exceed a character limit yet fail to actually describe anything about an individual within a social media bio, that's a more than valid enough reason to avoid or promptly block. Please - regardless of who you are, don't succumb to this. This reminds me all too much of that episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog with the flan, and it's truly egregious and exhausting. There's also nothing more depressing than seeing those sorts mob Japanese artists who have no clue what's going on or what happened to the west in 2012. Bleh. I should also mention the fact that this has little to do with LGBT individuals, etc., but rather how they're being manipulated by multibillion dollar corporations and social media AI, which if anything, harms their rights more than helps them. I implore you to stand up for yourself and realize that these arbitrary labels don't make you, but your individuality as a person does, and that a social media bio should consist your interests and hobbies long before your sexuality, medical diagnoses, and other corporatized merit badges are even a thought - as these things certainly aren't hobbies, or interests, and once again, teach you absolutely nothing about a person while exhibiting hivemind AI-conditioned mentality to a tee. You will not, and I repeat not, find a single social media profile or piece of mainstream media prior to the early-mid 2010's at the earliest, where one introduces themselves this way. The same applies for any other meaningless, made up corporate labels or pseudo-political affiliations based upon non-issues for the sake of distraction and mind control. Stand up for your individuality and cease this cultish linguistic butchery. Deploying AI on social media was a mistake. Get those pronouns out of your bio, zoomer.

10/16/2021 The thyroid has been a glowie target since the introduction of bromanized flour in the early 20th century in order to create an artificial iodine deficiency in the west; I strongly recommend anyone to invest in Lugol's iodine solution as well as ionic metals such as zinc and magnesium citrate to metabolize the iodine in order to mitigate this. This is something I learned of recently that's been helping me feel substantially healthier both mentally and physically. Countries along the coast like Japan don't suffer from this due to the abundance of iodine in seafood.

10/15/2021 I've noticed that a few of the things I like such as Yume Nikki, characters like Yakui (2ch), drum and bass/breakcore, esoteric topics, etc. and even Touhou Project are now routinely bastardized in recent years by edgy cliche Twitter druggies (I'm talking more than just psychs and weed, both of which I appreciate), pseudo-schizo LARPers, and generally bad people alike despite having existed long before recent internet trends. You know the sorts; intentionally misspelling words and typing like an infant on purpose as some sort of quirky gimmick is already enough of a red flag. There seems to be two very distinctive and very separate sides to the audiences that these things appeal to, and this extends way beyond humor, and as someone who truly is afflicted by neurological issues, it most certainly isn't fun and isn't to be worn and larped as some sort of wacky Twitter identity. Why not take the more civilized approach?

10/13/2021 I also plan on getting the technology section of this site up sooner or later, which will provide a list of the most-used and favorite tech-related items I own including computers, monitors, synthesizers, audio/video equipment, etc (Excluding the heaps upon heaps of parts bins and surplus systems/equipment I own, of course). One thing at a time, though. My thoughts are so disjointed that I can barely project them linearly which in turn makes me feel like my brain is a 128-core processor clocked at 5Ghz only able to address 64kb of memory.

10/13/2021 I finally got my hands on some broadcast grade SD camera equipment including several Sony bodies and adapters, a couple really nice Fujinon lenses, a couple viewfinders (One of which is a monitor), and a ridiculously nice Manfrotto tripod with a 3066 fluid head. No PVMs or betacam backs unfortunately, but I'm really happy with what I managed to snag for the price. This is something I've wanted for a while since I've been planning perhaps some live action synth demos and music videos, but that's for long in the future - I've got other things to work on currently.

10/13/2021 Welcome. This page is esesntially my alternative to social media personal blogposting, for whoever is curious about what resides within my mind that I don't feel like featuring or making a dedicated page for. No clue how often I'll use this.