It happened that I stayed on the last post's editing pane; a five-minute buffer warning came up as I was about to give it one more tweak; and then--bah!--this had to happen. What I had in mind for the last segment will be transferred to the original item instead after this overwrite. (You'll see different content here instead; a thousand pardons.)
On the bright side--and now that I've learned my lesson--this gives me extra space for another week of items, on my birthday this Friday and afterward. I know, microposting won't cut it here and I must make up for it. That said, on with an overview of what you missed until the day of this update, August 5:
June 30, 11:30 p.m. Began another round of nightflighting with episode one of anime cult favourite Azumanga Daioh (J.C. Staff). Oranges & Lemons' end-credit theme, "Raspberry Heaven", deserves a place in Adanson's Jukebox in the months ahead (a bit more on that later).
July 31:
- 12:00 a.m.: Turned 34, and to celebrate, what else but "Birthday Bear's Blues"? (It should be obvious what fondly remembered Nelvana show I'm referring to here.) Followed by another from season one, "The Great Race" (or, the one with no stares), plus season-two counterpart "The Care-a-Lot Games". Afterward, more featuring Those Characters from Cleveland: An episode of 2010s revival Unlock the Magic; Nelvana's 1984 Get Along Gang pilot special; an S1/S2 pairing of DIC's Popples (1986/1987)…
- ~3:00 a.m.: and the far, far more obscure "Herself the Elf" from 1983, also made at the famed Toronto animation studio. Little known fact: Viewers and fans of 1986's A New Generation may be able to recognise a prominent leitmotif therefrom--and that's because early studio regular Patricia Cullen composed the scores for both. (The leitmotif plays during the bookends of said feature--when the Great Wishing Star rewards True Heart Bear and Noble Heart Horse for rescuing the orphan Cubs, and also as the grown-up team bids farewell to Christie and the summer campers en route to Care-a-Lot.)
- ~8:00 p.m.: Cut the carrot cake as the family members celebrated you-know-what.
August 1, 12:55 a.m.: On Disney+, the older sister put on Black Is King, Beyoncé's virtual album inspired by last year's computerised retread of The Lion King (complete with archive voiceovers). Takes a while to begin with the first two numbers (which I could otherwise do without), but the viewer's patience is rewarded as the songs and imagery improve, culminating in a choral-backed rendition of "Spirit". As went a critic quoted in a Rotten Tomatoes overview, the D+ original is basically The Tree of Life meets Black Panther--and that couldn't be any farther from the truth! Boasts a perfect 100% Tomatometer at this update, only the fourth Disney-branded feature to do so after Pinocchio, Toy Story, and Toy Story 2.
Weekend of July 31-August 2 (or the day after): This Captain's install of what was once the @eSteemApp quietly transitioned over to the new @Ecency brand--and no one told him until well after the fact. (Even resteemed [or do they call it "rehived" now?] relevant bulletins, a while before the time of this update.)
As for the offbeat picks from our next two nightflighting sessions during then (all works animated unless otherwise noted):
1-2/8:
- "The Box" / "La Boîte" (2017; Domenico Lombardo/ESMA)
- "El gatito" (2018; Game Ever)
- "The Goat" (1921; Joseph M. Schenck/Metro; st. Buster Keaton; live action)
- "One Small Step" (2017; TAIKO)
- Gimme a Break: "Nell's Birthday" (4.03; 1984; Alan Landsburg/Reeves/MCA; live action)
- Azumanga Daioh: "The Very Short Movie" (2006; J.C. Staff)
- "Billie" (2018; M. Yashikura)
- "Petals" (2017; Krale Zero)
- "Best Partner Ever" (2017; Seo Hee)
3/8:
- "Catsing Call" (2019; Khaliar)
- "P.J. Sparkles" (1992; Mike Young Prods.)
- "Really Rosie" (1975; Maurice Sendak/D&R)
- "Buttons & Rusty: The Honeybunch" (1992; Encore Enterprises)
August 4:
12:17 a.m.: Woke up to a belated present, fresh from the mail (and Amazon): That 32 GB SD auxiliary for my songfile cleanup backups. (Expect a couple of new gift cards from my relatives in due time.) Speaking of SDs and music, about time I scooped up a few new tunes for Adanson's Fourth of July special, coming this Saturday. While we're on the subject...
Late this morning: After not having enough heart to get anything going on this platform, this Captain returns to the newly renamed Ecency to finish up the next Notebook entry (now that he managed to recognise something of a requested sketch of Sam the raccoon almost a fortnight late, courtesy of u/BurningMyBread). Only one problem: A high-priority draft that took me portions of July to craft up…got swept away by the client's interface change as of late. Furthermore, the draft feature doesn't quite work right for the time being, only duplicating what your latest one includes across the rest of your previous queue. (I saw this bug in action earlier today after testing things out with a bit of dummy text.) To the developers at @Ecency (in case my ping does reach them): Should I wait till things get smoothed out, or do I have to recreate from scratch via a JotterPad backup? (The function's not even on the desktop/Web version, as far as I've looked.)
This afternoon: From the front page of r/GooglePlayMusic: The GPlay we've come to know and love is officially on its way out. Come August 31, the Play Music store--and the desktop Music Manager--are out of the question. (So will the app itself this October--but will options for local-file playback stay?) All this, all that the userbase has been dreading, as YouTube Music makes its presence known. No wonder I've all but recently sworn off streaming in favour of local storage, SD/USB backups and all--although I went back a little on my word last Saturday/Sunday overnight and gave Jpop intermission filler on Amazon Music a try. (Of course, through our Fire Stick.) The sooner I transfer (as in, before midnight), the sooner I'm moving out what I can through Takeout. (Received my prompt sometime last month after days of waiting.) Too bad our LFM log (read: the Jukebox) has been hurting a bit on account of the aforementioned (and then some)…
9:00-10:00 p.m.: Went ahead with the GPlay-to-YTM transfer, but with a catch:
Create channel to transfer
On YouTube Music, playlists are stored on your channel. To continue transferring your Google Play Music playlists, create your channel now.
All your Google services will display your channel name. Learn moreChose to register under my creative pen name, Reginald Routhwick (for consistency's sake)--but don't expect any uploads of my future miniseries or whatever there. Furthermore, I elect to leave that profile intentionally maintained. After all these years, I prefer to align with the Internet Archive for more good reasons than one--Content ID, copyright trolling, and "copystrikes" running rampant on the former among them.
Even better: Our transferred GPlay inventory weighs far more than a ton--~9.3 GB all told, and our spare laptop won't be able to handle that. Nor may our Galaxy Tab A for now unless I do some data(base) cleaning in a few days or after. Going ahead with 1 GB chunks at Takeout--but will I beat the one-week deadline when the time comes? As always, tune in to this feed and find out.
August 5:
10:30-10:52 a.m.: As we return to the Dixwell folk: Adanson/Autrison's Jacksonville affiliates, Vinyl Record Pressing (VRP), received their first two 7" acetates since COVID-19 brought down their workflow during March and April. The two selections, ABBA's "Eagle" (1977) and The Temptations' "Get Ready" (1966), were shipped by truck cross-country from a secret vault controlled by UMG employees in Los Angeles. (Remember the 2008 Universal vault fire, which was much later revealed to have wiped away a ton of label recordings old and new?) Both correspond to part of what the Nature Islanders will put in last-minute this evening, as post-production of their oft-delayed Revolution: An Animated Fourth of July special comes to a wrap. At this update, VRP is awaiting two more for Revolution: Queen's "It's a Hard Life" (1984) and Maxi Priest's "It Starts in the Heart" (1997; from Jungle 2 Jungle).
11:13-11:26 a.m.: Pressing of those tracks' Autrison masters, plus those for another two pertaining to the pandemic--Christina Aguilera's "Reflection" (1998; from Disney's Mulan) and Public Enemy's "Race Against Time" (1994)--took place inside an already heavily sanitised, fully disinfected quarters at VRP. The Mulan theme has lent its name to Adanson/Autrison's upcoming series of animated visual-album showcases, Reflections, whose first three-part volume Kino Lorber will premiere in a week or two across Vimeo Livestream, Pluto TV, CBS All Access, the Internet Archive, and select national broadcasters in over 120 countries. (KL will post highlight clips on YouTube for exposure's sake, three weeks after every volume.)
1:03 + 1:05 p.m.: My real-world nightflighting is so far doing wonders for the future Jukebox queue: A version of the Tamagotchi theme (as performed by Yuria Nara), plus the aforementioned "Raspberry Heaven", also dropped by at VRP's door from L.A. (Reserved for the first or second volume of Reflections, depending on the circumstances.) For the rest of the story, stay tuned as I reopen the Notebook.
Last but not least: You may have been greeted with the first few paragraphs of the original Wonderland tale as filler text, mere moments after the doubleposting accident described at the start of this account (and thus continuing the Carroll connection). I actually did something similar during NaNoWriMo 2012, as time--and ideas--began to run out during initial development of what was then Marigot Magic. Since we've gathered up enough substantial material for the update, I've effectively rescinded all but the famous opening sentence while retaining the callback references:
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"
And--along with restoring the new feature hashtag to our list--this is where we part. I'll see you back either for another regular bulletin, or after I muster up enough courage to rewrite or preserve my next Notebook; in the meantime, watch for the occasional resteem. Once again, take care, stay connected, wipe everything down, wash your hands...and God bless.
All of us, and Mr. Floyd's family.
From the one and only #WhatLiesAground
(2955 + 2960 + 2961)