hello hello hello you fellows, its ya frog, signfrog. i think i have an ear infection. i know you fellows would have been able to tell something was off about my demeanor right away, so i wanted to clear the air.
for the last 2 or 3 hours ive been reformatting things on here. signfrogs mortal enemy is busywork, but there are a myriad of things that have been mildly inconvenient around here that simply needed to be fixed. so now they are. things will be looking a little different now, but i think i like how it turned out.
my next big goal is to work on the grand library some, and get it into a nicer state. this project is meant to be really huge, so ive been putting it off, but now that i keep finding time to complain about how bored i am, i might as well just do it because i know it will be very cool and cherished for generations to come.
also, theres a new page on here! in case any of my friends missed it, you must look for the mailbox, theres a letter for you there
also also, yes i know, i abandoned the reviews page. i have been consuming media of many forms, but to be candid, i forgot that page existed. i intend to try and review some of the stuff ive been engaging with lately, and then hopefully keep it more up to date. you will forgive me, dear fellows, look into your hearts and know it to be true
idk if youve noticed, but i keep switching between saying outro and closing for these end bits. i think i like outro better, ill try and do that one.
i want to start posting polls in here to gather data on random things that i think of. this will both help sate my never ending curiosity about the world, also also to see how many of you actually read this. so you better keep your eyes peeled, fellows. the summer boredom is kicking in, so its time to devote myself to the keyboard. this carpal tunnel isnt going to hurt itself, we'd best get moving.
since i cannot hear shit out of my right ear, i will leave you with this song. it is two songs overlapping one another. fellows, in solidarity of my pain, i ask you to listen to this song with the right earphone off, but watch as the words on the right side of the lyric video pass you by. you must know my pain. see you later
you slowly rouse from your slumber once more. it is impossible to tell whether today is yesterday in the unchanging landscape. you dont want to check. there hasnt been an update in over a month. but what if todays the day... you turn toward the sign stuck into the ground at your left, and gasp in awe.
hello fellows. good to not see your face once more, i am back with another blog, where i find myself filled with passion about something inane and random and you must simply listen. i have been avoiding writing, once again, because it feels self indulgent and trite. but signfrog is nothing if not self indulgent, and he doesnt care if shes trite. grab a damn fly and take a seat, its time to be subject to my words
im in part convinced that i am fundamentally hard to get along with, and that i inadvertently push people away from me. i feel like a stranger to my friends. i feel like when im alone in a room with one of my friends, they frequently have nothing to say to me, and i have no idea how to enter into a conversation with them. i think ive offended people because im so scared of offending people. i dont know why its this way, but i am somehow always the creator of awkward silences. i feel like an outliar, and i feel like im not invited to the conversations i end up in, im too trans or not trans enough or not trans in the right way, or too offputting or too agreeable. in group settings i am often more akin to the furniture than a participant. and while much of this is true in part because the people i choose to spend my time with do not understand me, it is equally because i have constructed this narrative. yes, it is true that people often have no idea what to say to me, and there must be a reason for that, but it is also this way because i tell myself that it is, and then i am unable to escape the cycle.
recently ive been thinking a lot more about the role that sex and sexuality plays in my life. im coming to realise that i am, at least in part, a very sexually driven person. not in the sense that sex drives the decisions im making necessarily, just that it is a factor in how i percieve myself, society, and the world. for the longest time, i have felt that sex needs to be separate from the other aspects of my life, like how i express myself and how i create art. but im realising that by omitting this piece of myself then i am not being fully honest in what im allowing myself to say or create. im not saying im going full blown porn blog (youd like that wouldnt you), i mean to say that i want to be able to say whatever i want to say, and create whatever i want to create, even if that happens to relate to romance, sex, or kink. if you are a family member of mine who reads this, and this made you feel weird, well, maybe thats a sign that you are not the target audience for this blog, and might consider not reading as often. id like to set shame aside, and allow myself to be a slut alongside all of my other wonderful and flawless personality traits, and you will all happily indulge me. thank you for your understanding. now, onto what i actually started writing this months weekly blog to talk about.
i watched this interview with Aella, an internet individual with a cloud of controversy that follows her everywhere. and it made me think about a lot of different things. first, if you do watch the whole thing, id like to mention that she has some weird views. i agree with some of them and not with others. but this got me thinking about the state of our culture a lot. i think that people are allowed to have differing opinions. wow shocker. but really, it often seems like any disagreement is automatic grounds to dismiss someones opinion on everything else. thats not how living should work, fellows.
the internet and modern politics are a city of glass. we arrive at offense, dismissal, and hatred too easily. this is i guess parallel to conversations about cancel culture, but i think its more broad than that. ive talked before about how i think its wrong to judge someone just because they are a republican. its the same thing. in almost all cases, picking a thing and saying "you will always be wrong of you are/believe/do this thing" is incredibly distructive. if you disagree with someone on something, you can instigate a discussion about it if you feel that strongly. participating in discussion with people with opposing views is how we grow. if they just yell and argue, yeah ok you can go ahead and ignore them at that point, nothing productive will come of that. instead of getting offended at every little bit of friction in our lives, we need to just. discuss. who cares.
now you may be thinking "dearest sign, you are being an idealist moron." and to that i say, fuck youuu fuck you fuck you. as you may have been able to observe, that was a joke. a bit of clever sarcasm on my part. the point i actually want to make is that idealists do make change. it is essentially the responsibilty of people in their 20s and 30s to have an idealist view of the world, because sharing our ideas for a brighter future is how a brighter future happens. many of the largest countries (usa, china in the 1900s, joan of arc) were founded or fundamentally changed by idealists in their 20s. the future we build will always have flaws, and it is only natural to shift away from idealism with age, but it is nonetheless important. we will not arrive at a better future without this step in the process of human political development. and since signfrog says so, its a fact.
lastly, what is the point of making art if you cant make people feel uncomfortable, annoyed, disgusted, offended. removing anything that evokes these emotional responses takes the bite out of impactful art. i had more to say on this, but writing this section in getting boring to me. art should offend people, because it is arts nature to move people. just extrapolate from there, im moving on.
and this concludes another wonderful episode of signfrog. i once again find myself putting off finishing the blog, because i feel as though my words are silly. but as i have debated with myself on here before, it is signfrogs nature to give no fucks and to have bombastic opinions based on whims, and to always be objectively correct even when incorrect. so, i once again give you a lame conclusion following a stunning, masterful blog, and wish you well during your wait for the next blog entry. until next time fellows.
hello. this week. or month. or several months. has been horrible. however. the term is almost over now, and i have gotten over my self consciousness just enough to continue to write signfrog autism blog, so here we all are, thank you for gathering here today. welcome to signfrog autism blog, the blog where i just recently learned that flies live for over a month and i make it everyone elses problem now too. so grab one of those pesky flies, eat it, and enjoy.
a while ago i was looking for more things to write about here and i came across this story about the tiira aircraft series. at first i was hesitant to write about it, because intentionally seeking out subjects goes against this segment of the blog, but lately ive been looking for any excuse to get this segment back again so hopefully this gets the ball rolling in my brain.
the tiira aircraft series was this set of planes made by this random finnish guy, Raimo Päätalo. he built this craft from parts in his barn. after its completion in 1973 he appearantly successfully flew over 70 hours in it before his unidentified flights were reported, and the plane confiscated. he had no education in either engineering or flight. he just decided that he wanted to fly.
in 1983 the tiira 2 was built, but he was very quickly discovered. the plane was again confiscated, and he recieved a 4 month sentence, and promised he wouldnt do it again.
he did it again, btw, if you were wondering. and in 2010, an unidentified man in a nearby was fined for several counts of operating an illegal aircraft. and in 2014, a homemade aircraft was detected on radar in a nearby region.
i dont remember how this came up, but i am enamored by this man, i love him deeply as i think all should. he was born for the skies. he built at least 4 different tiiras. i think at this point, they should just let this fellow do whatever he wants, he has earned his right to fly.
recently ive been thinking a lot about this fellow. if i feel that i am destined to do something, then it will happen if i make it happen. even if i am deterred, my passion for my work is able to overcome those obstacles. i often feel that insatiable need to create. i love this fellows story. he inpires me, and i want to be able to weild my drive half as well as he does.
ok fellows i was about to call this weeks blog good, but then a dear friend asked me a question: do you think cold water is louder than hot water? this is an interesting one, and is going to require some digging and a little bit of preliminary research
Q: does sound change based on temperature? speed, volume? my hypothesis is that speed of sound will be different, but i think volume of sound might actually have an inverse relationship if it has any at all
i quickly found that yes, the speed of sound is higher in higher temperatures, because there is less stuff that it needs to go through. in fact i believe i wrote one the archaic google doc signfrog research questions on this same idea. not one of the original goals, but i found out that humidity changes the volume of sound. so when air is more humid, sound carries for longer, because when the air is drier it is slightly more dense. this is confusing to me still but i trust sweetwater after much more digging, i found that this appears to be part true and part false. i found an article talking about the effect that temperature and humidity has on sound, which i will get into now link sound attenuation is a big term here. it is essentially the rate at which sound gets quieter. this will be used a lot this study, which focused on the how temperature affects attenuation of VA systems in the london underground. the study found, or at least i assume from the snippets that are available to me, that sound does get affected by temperature. it doesnt exactly decrease volume, but it does attenuate the sound at higher temperatures. this means that some of the higher frequencies get lost at higher temperatures.
so in conclusion: pouring water (ie from a shower, which is what my good fellow was referrring to) changing the temperature of the air slightly would have a partial effect on the amount of high frequency sound you could hear. when the water is colder, there is less attentuation, meaning that there is more high frequency remaining, which may end up sounding like it is louder.
it is finals week here in college land, which means everyone is very stressed and studying all the time. like a bunch of squares... some of you may already see where this is going. but what if youre wrong? isnt the spice of life the not knowing? the uncertainty of every action? suspend your disbelief for one moment. close your eyes and take a leap of faith.
so anyway the snack is cheez its
im feeling a little bit better after writing this today. i feel a lot of dread about the near future in my personal life right now, and it is almost incapacitatingly daunting. but signfrog lives forever, even through mild inconveniences. talk to you fellows soon, thank you once more.
hello all you fellows out there. this intro is beginning to feel redundant in this format but i nonetheless enjoy it, which means that you will too. i am signfrog, welcome to signfrog autism blog, the only blog on the internet that your mom ever needs, its got everything.
i got through phases where writing blog feels like the most evil thing in all of existence and i curse the name of the wind for ever having me make a website that people read. but then someone asks me a question about web design and it gets me all excited and then i cant do anything else except blog immidiately right fucking now. its a weird type of whiplash.
a few days ago (5/19) was the one year anniversay of the inception of signfrog! its been a long time since i had that fateful dream. this has gone through many itterations in that time. from sharing google doc links on tumblr, to going on hiatus for basically half a year, to that little 3 day period where i set up a substack but i didnt like it, to now. where signfrog finally has a home. id like to thank myself first and foremost, for having the commitment and care to give this idea the space that it needed. and next of course, id like to thank, my self again, because i had a hard week and i think i need that. but at least of course i must, out of obligation, thank the people who actually read this. it amazes me that, even though you are few, you care about my words, and my performance, enough to return. i am ever grateful for your support, and i hope to continue to foster this community together. so tell your friends to read signfrog autism blog! tell your weird uncle gary, he can read too i guess, fine. happy birthday to signfrog, i hope to continue this as long as it remains interesting. enjoy the blog, i think this one is nice
recently ive been feeling a particularly strong wave of "why does anything i do matter." i feel that i will go into the field of art because thats what i have been doing, and i like it, but i frequently feel that it wont matter. there is so much in the world and art makes no difference. why make art when it changes nothing about the world. why make art when AI can do it for me.
i went to new york a few years ago, and it happened to be during the time that starry night was being displayed at the museum of modern art. growing up i was always fascinated with van gogh. first at how striking the globs of paint were, then later about his mental afflictions and his writings. i had a huge poster of this painting on my wall for close to 10 years, before i moved.
anyways, i got there and i immidiately tracked this piece down. i saw it, and i just stood there for maybe 20 minutes. at first i felt such nothing. it looked exacty like it had all my life on my wall. it was so much smaller than the version from my bedroom. but affer a while i began to soak in the fine details and i felt a deep whistfullness and wonder and sonder. the specific way those strokes of paint lay made me feel all of these things.
i wandered around the museum and saw many other amazing things, including the one with all the soup and the one with those wiggly clocks. i think now about all the movies that have made me cry, or speak out loud, or pay money to see for the third time even though i know what happens. of my favoeite film, Inside by bo burnham. about how for all of human existence, art has existed as well.
art matters because it always has. no one can know what people will be worshipping in 100 or 1000 years (except of course for this blog). but art has weight in this world. so even though these thoughts assault me, and i debate deleting this long winded rant, and i debate switching into a more profitable study, it remains true that art matters, and that there will always be a person at every possible age who is enthralled with our creations. so ill try and remember that
not sure ive already talked about this, but im in a lot of video making classes this term. last week i wrapped up the rough cut of a short biopic about the leader of the samba band i play in, and it was quite fun. once i have a more finalised version ill put it on the page somewhere. more projects are coming soon.
this weekend im driving to arcata california to watch the kinetic grand championship! its a bizarre event where people construct these weird bike sculptures and then race them through all this crazy terrain. ill upload photos at some point but this year is exciting, because i get to make a documentary about it! i checked out camera gear and ill be shooting a short doc about the race, and i am very eager to do this even though it will kind of suck to run around everywhere with all this bulky equipment. but. signfrog perserveres like she always does.
recently ive been so obsessed with real bird fake bird. its a game where you have a category and you have to guess which names are actually real things in that category. its fun, but i am frequently humbled. please play it.
i was reading previous blog entries to see what section titles ive used before, but appearantly i change it every time. i need to come up with more cohesive structure here. thats a mission for this summer ~
the one ever present category, the monolith of truth and democracy, is snack of the week! this weeks snack of the week goes out to an all time classic: the very first snack chosen for the very first snack of the week: cheez its. cheez its are the perfect snack for every occation. bring em on the plane. bring em to maine. bring em in the rain. bring em to t-pain. cheez its will always be there in your time of need, unless you live in the uk, then youre fucked.
i am once again truly grateful to my friends and fellows who have spurred me forth, and contributed so much love and worship to this dream. if you read this far know that you are almost as amazing as signfrog is, and thats saying something. thats a compliment i dont wield lightly. until next time
whats up froggers and floggers, its signfrog, welcome back to signfrog autism blog. today i ventured for about half an hour to find the very most perfect spot to write this entry from. i am currently sitting in the music section of my library, and there is a man rapidly losing his hearing to a john mayer record over at the vinyl station. i am feeling frogging weird this week, i thought it would be a very laid back time but i have been immensely busy for most of every day, which is draining and makes this website feel like an afterthought rather than the focus id like it to be. im gonna post this after i finish setting up rss to see if it actually works, ill update you fellows in the diary on that. ok fellows its been two weeks since i wrote this and i am just. so tired. of thinking of how to continue writing it. so its getting posted.
mellow: samia just came out with a new album bloodless and it is so fucking good i simply must recommend my current favorite song, craziest person, its weird but great
upbeat: hate it by chloe moriondo is great, i dont normally go for her stuff anymore but i enjoy this song a lot. and catch, from the same album. both so yummy.
the other day i was walking around on campus. now you have to understand, when i walk i do not simply walk. there is frequently hopping, skipping, dancing, lip syncing, choreographed hand movements, randomly stopping in place... im an enthusiastic stroller. i never go anywhere without some music: a fact that lately ive been wishing were a little less true, but fellows we are getting distracted from the point, stop getting me sidetracked. i saw. the most amazing thing. somebody walked passed me and was doing essentially the same thing. i stopped in place. she looked back at me and smiled, and i smiled, and then she crossed the street and looked back at me and smiled and then i smiled, and then she was gone. i have never before so quickly fallen for someone before. its bizzare. ive seen her in passing twice since then and both times ive jumped slightly, then hurried away trying to not look like a fool. i think we should either banish her or perhaps somehow befriend her. i just need to either know more about her or never see her again. fellows, this is your mission. you have no choice but to accept.
it recently came to my attention that my diary is more like a blog, and my blog is more like a newsletter. but do i really want to change up my whole system to make a few words happy? ive decided that i dont particularly care.
ive been thinking about uploading some of the little side jibbets that a lot of people have, but i always stop myself because so many of them are just stupid. i would never use imood in a million years. the biggest one i keep considering is the adopt a panda webrating thing, but i just think the sprites are sort of ugly so i keep putting it off. maybe ill add them at some point. but really, what are the chances of a 6 year old finding this site? and if they did, would a little "14" icon really deter them? anyways to all my 6 y/o fellows reading this: santa may be real, but are your parents sure arent. i made them out of clay to see if youd notice, but you never did. oh "how do they move?" havent you seen stop motion, idiot? i just move so quick that you cant see me got a little sidetracked on that last one. also meant to add sitemaps. the point of my website is (or will be, once i get around to it) to be a little weird and hard to navigate. and to have little secrets. doesnt a sitemap defeat the point of discovering the secrets?
im at a weird crossroads right now with social media. i now only use tumblr and youtube. but i still feel like i use them too much and they do not improve my day ever.
however. tumblr is where i encounter a lot of information about whats happening in the world, and is also a place where im sort of friends with people, whose connections i would almost definitely lose if i stopped using it, because its those kinds of relationships where you like the person but dont really talk, but still like each others posts, and theres kind of a relationship through that. idk. so thats how i feel about that.
youtube is the real problem, i use it entirely too often or how i want to be living. but i frequently learn new things, whether its political news, game industry news, or interesting facts/tips for a trade that im into. youtube is also just a very essential part of how people interact on the internet. but i just dont like being on there anymore and quitting entirely would be easier for me than limiting myself. so im not sure what to do.
i was browing one of my favorite sites (https://olliveen.neocities.org/) and i saw that their favorite snack is cheez its, so this weeks snack goes out to cheez its! the favorite of webcrafters everywhere
i wrote this blog like two weeks ago and ive been wanting to post things about my recent life, so im just posting this so i can actually use this blog again. bye, see you very soon
hello fellows, new and old, past and future. welcome to signfrog autism blog, the blog you love to hate to love. my glorious and holy website just passed 1000 views on neocities, so in honor of this momentous day i will sing a song.
alright i went and sang a song, it was great, you just had to be there it was awesome. i had an ok week this week, for once. there were some very amazing things that happened, which i shall discuss, but i was once again shrouded in bad thoughts, so it evened out. i am going to start actually trying to reach out to my fellow web creators and exchange links this week, so wish me luck as i boldly email inboxes never before touched by frogkind. until then take a fly and grab a seat, and enjoy the blog. or else.
since i still havent set up a music recommendations page, ill give some recs here just like in the old doc days. mellow rec: i am coming to paris (to kill you) - timber timbre has been on my mind almost constantly since i first layed my ears upon it. do frogs have ears? its a haunting song masquerading as a love song. upbeat rec: not exactly the most upbeat, but you can certainly dance along to hollywood forever cemetary sings - father john misty. its a weird one but i like it, it fits well on my pacific drive radio playlist.
in honor of me starting hrt, and having to chug carbs to get the changes i so desire, i put a lot of thought into this weeks pick. i weighed many different options, interviewed brands, ran weird experiments in test tubes, and ate a lot fo snacks. when all is said and done, the winner of this weeks snack of the week goes to cheez its. cheez its: whether the weather be cold, or whether the weather be hot, you absolutely must eat cheez its, else your day is shot.
i do not like formatting these blogs into html. its really annoying. if anyone has any recommendations for programs to do it for me plz let me know, it is seriously deterring me from writing updates more often. hopefully youll be hearing from me again soon, i do hope to write to thee dear readers more often, and further overtake your hearts and minds, to be even more powerful and unstoppable. always remember that i love you and that i am evil.
hello fellows, this is the first real post upon my new webpage. if youve found yourself here, welcome! i am swamped by a bog ton of finals, but i am still finding time for whimsy where i can. now if you domt mind i have something important to talk about so lets get this over with. take a fly and grab a seat or whatever and listen
im writing this as i wait to return a wallet. i was in class and i found this lovely leather wallet with a horse on it. but thats not the cool part. i tried looking this fellow up to find a phone number to call them but instead i found thier band?? its a small folk band made up from a group of friends at uni here and it kind of slaps its really good. so anyways i emailed them and now im waiting to return it to him, ill let you know how that goes. let this be a testiment to how new music is everywhere.
update: they were so so cute on their instagram but was slightly less cute in person. they were very happy to see their wallet and also very happy to hear they had a new fan. i feel at peace with the world as i ahve done a righteous thing and everyone should thank me
here at signfrog i ask the important questions. like why are 2 dollar bills still being made, and how did a fellow invent the toothbrush. but what i want to know today is how the heck books are made these days, because surely they dont load them into the individual printing presses anymore or, frog forbid, have your squire scribe the entire thing by hand. theres gotta be some more advanced way of doing it.
Q: how are books made in the modern age?
A: big factory! of course, there was no other solution.
but really, they have lots of conveyor belts and things as you might expect. i found many different places doing it different ways. appearantly most books are not made in the US, but there are many examples of US book makers, here is one of them.
the almanac has a very large faucility that seems to be primarily machine run. they have some classic "its this many football fields long" measurements which i always find very annoying, because how am i supposed to imagine that. like really. just say miles, its easier. anyway the coolest facts are that both sides of a page are printed similtaneously, and the rolls of paper they use are 6.6 miles long.
but other than that its basically just a printing press but a lot bigger and faster. the binding station is neat, it seems like the glue is applied and then they send the books along a track to dry before getting boxed.
kind of anticlimactic if im being honest, i was ready for some true wonders but i guess some things are pretty ordinary.
as the term enters its final stages and i near my last wits, i feel that i have a duty to shout out the most fundamental, the most universal snack of all time. cheez its. cheez its: a snack to fill the square shaped hole in your square shaped heart, that is only slightly bigger than the hole, because cheez its are just that important to you. trust me, i know, i asked you and you said they were.
i am very excited to finally have the time to do interesting things and be loved by all once again. ive debated starting so many new hobbies in the last week, you will congratulate me on my colossal restraint. talk to you fellows soon, until then, hop safe.
hello fellows, welcome to signfrog autism blog, the only blog inconsisent enough to change formats twice in two posts.
its been a minute since i last put something here, so this issue will mostly be me just updating you on how things are going in my life.
should be kind of a short one this week but i think youll be hearing from me again very soon. until then grab a fly, take a seat, and enjoy.
as you may have noticed, i started this website! ive been planning to do this since day one (back in may, whoah its been a minute) and im very excited to finally be spreading the good word. i have a million projects in mind, since i am a very chaotic fellow as i am sure you fellow are all too aware of now, and having a website of my own will allow me to explore all of them and put them all in one place. i like this blog. i hate google docs bc of how it uses my words for its ai. i hate tumblr because social media makes my life feel less worth living. so i just. stopped doing it. but now signfrog will have a true home on the internet for all to see and marvel at.
i will continue to update and make minor and major changes to the website as i go along. its rather unfinished right now, but getting it published will encourage me to actually continue to work on it, and get feedback from people.
in honor of the launch of this wonderful project i thought id celebrate by honoring the snack that got us where we are today, cheezits. cheez its: the only snack you can eat while still convincing yourself that geometry is real.
slightly shorter issue this week but i intend to update this pretty frequently in the next little bit, so keep an eye on this page for me, it might run away if you dont. thanks for all the encouragement, i hope you find something fun to do on here once i start to add them. bye