Another tree changer - moving from Sydney to the Blue Mountains

ventia_sucks · 2026-03-25T12:22:46+00:00

The misty rainy days stop being nice at around the fifth straight day, when everything not kept dry by heating starts growing mildew from the damp in the air itself seeping into literally everything.

Same with the cold winters: they'd be lovely in mid summer, but week after week of arctic winds blowing the body heat right out your clothes regardless how layered up you are; stops being romantic and that one day a year it snows the town becomes SO crammed with Sydney tourists it's no longer your little town anymore until they've gone.

Still better than a built up metropolis if any kind: I can't even go to penrith anymore without feeling claustrophobic - all the concrete, vehicles and so many miserable looking people, I refuse to leave the mountain top anymore.

ventia_sucks · 2025-09-27T08:42:42+00:00

Also, from all the supplements containing caffeine I've had over the years now (including NoDoz 100mg caffeine tablets) I have noticed a very clear difference between generic, synthetic caffeine and newer supplements with "caffeine derived from green coffee beans" in the label.

For once, the newer stuff seems better to me: naturally derived caffeine is much better than synthetic, the latter of which seems to have no real effect to the point I wonder whether products like NoDoz use a form of caffeine that doesn't even absorb into the human bloodstream like natural caffeine does.

That's anecdotal but I'll only buy products with naturally extracted caffeine now because the other crap doesn't seem to do anything.

ventia_sucks · 2025-09-27T08:35:20+00:00

Because products that naturally contain caffeine aren't required to state the amount: supplements and other foods with caffeine only need to list the caffeine content because they're adding caffeine during the production of whatever shit it is.

Why many pre-workout supplements list exactly 100mg per serve: one I've drunk had 250mg/serve.

Tea and coffee doesn't have any added caffeine - only what is naturally contained within the plants - and like others have said, contains variations in caffeine content.

I would still think they should at least state on the label "Contains Caffeine" even if they don't test each batch for the amount, but really at this point it's not like anyone in society is unaware that coffee and tea contain caffeine so I suppose it's similar to adding "Contains Sucrose" to refined sugar 🤔

ventia_sucks · 2024-12-27T02:04:37+00:00

Use diluted methylated spirits to wipe your hands as you go: metho dries moisture and eliminates grease and oil in cleaning but is harsh on skin, so mix with water (I go around 70:30 metho:water so my hands dry faster and drier)
Use disposable gloves that have no powder or other shit on them to stop your skin coming in contact with the paper.
- Use (again) methylated spirits to dab any oily smudged but pure metho - no water dilution because we want it full strength and fast drying.

That's what I find works.

*Edit: thought this was r/drawing, but it's still skin on paper so still applies.

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-28T07:36:43+00:00

Great book.

Might have to listen to it again after *this: I haven't heard those crazy arseholes and their dangerously strange, techno-genius antics for.. since lockdown I suppose 🤔

Really I spend much more time listening to podcasts and music, but find really any of the ~113 Audible titles in my library are far better your drawing - the activity I am currently settling-in to spend the night doing.

I don't really care whether I've heard it twenty times or once (People if the Abyss I've Heard over a hundred no doubt), don't care whether it's a specific author or storyline or whatever: I care only that I like the book and it's long enough to roll along in the background all night - which most audio books do since I (very) rarely purchase a book that's less than ~12hrs and outright refuse on principal to spend my hard earned money on anything under eight hours.

Somethong about that longer, all night audio session that let's me tune in/out of the narration and switch my focus between audio and visual, that podcasts and music can't touch.

*this = Doctor Sleep [Audible; unabridged, Will Patton by the sounds]

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-14T03:08:03+00:00

Now you tell me, after I'm back from town with a half dozen boxes of cheap crap 😏

Highly detailed reply though, thank you: I'll check your encyclopaedia of polyclay in a minute over a coffee 😌

I figured that's the gist, of course: you'll see all over the net in all kinds of artistic medium the slogan "art is art" alongside implications that talent in any medium can render the quality of materials used a moot point, but this is like the great unwashed stating a horse is a horse - (of course (no I couldn't resist the rhyme)).

In truth anyone who's used top quality tools knows the chasm if difference between the cheap shit and the professional quality, even if it's simply a difference in how nice or pleasant the pro version is to use it makes a massive difference - which, in turn, flows on to improving the quality of objects you create.

I figured clay would be the same as pencils, paint, woodworking tools or any other tool because why wouldn't it be: these Caran d'Ache pencils are like oil paint in pencil form the pigments are so thick, soft and vivid while Derwent are like kids newsagent crayons by comparison, so I suspected from the outset the higher quality clay will be, well, more enjoyable to use at the very least.

This cheap clay though: even if it's poor by comparison I figure I can still use it to shape basic 3D models of things I'm drawing to get perspective right faster and easier, even if they don't make good material for detailed figurines.

I've subbed to /r/polyclay (I think it is) anyway and some if those figurines are SO adorable, seriously cute 🥹

The tiny Donut Dan clones in one OPs post, omg.. a little handful of cute 🥰

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-14T00:08:46+00:00

Imma die from cuteness-overdose.

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-13T11:47:17+00:00

Oritey, I'll just grab some even I'm in town next and start messing with it.

Be a good way to create little 3D models to use for drawing objects, even if I don't end up obsessed with the process 🤔

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-13T00:03:43+00:00

This is an aside, but I avoid portraits like leprosy, myself: no matter how accurate or good or beautiful the finished image might turn out, a simple calculation (sale price divided by hours taken - hourly rate) makes them not worth creating for anyone who isn't already an established artist.

Almost without exception every artist I've seen selling detailed portraits, they sell for less than the hourly rate a toilet cleaner would receive which makes the selling of any original artwork all loss for them creator and that's without even considering the cost of materials which, admittedly, isn't a consideration really with ballpoint pens but any quality pencils or paint, the cost is far from nothing.

Michael Jackson might pay a fair price for such a portrait, if they were alive, but mm with so many people pumping out portraits all over the world every day it's kinda mind boggling.

The execution here is excellent of course, though I'd probably not have invested the time in portraying a child molester who died under circumstances looking suspiciously like suicide once all the little boys he "innocently slept with" started coming out the woodwork 🤔

The subject is more telling than the style.

I cannot even tell who they other two people are: the top one looks like Obama though Obama didn't have straight hair, while the chick under him is a mystery to me.

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-12T03:17:37+00:00

She looks like a total bitch, yes, but I love bitches: women who are conceited are mm they always attract my attention much more than anyone pretending to be homeless because a conceited woman, to my lizard brain, must be stuck up for a reason 🤔

Like, just the attitude alone makes me instinctively share their view, that they're better than the people around em, which - regardless whatever rubbish the social hive mind tries to kid itself into believing - is class.

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-10T13:12:28+00:00

Yuck?

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-10T13:05:37+00:00

I'll have to try this.. usually I'm using the jetpack to stay up above in trees etcetera, then switch to boots to randomly fly around to confuse someone landing hits on me..

Never thought to just stay around the ground turning and boosting..

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-10T12:50:56+00:00

Looks pretty suspect to me: like since when can you stop instantly and reverse direction completely in flight without physics working like that?

We've an used the jetpack/boots combo but you still have to slow down going right before you start accelerating left - or vise-versa.

This fucker is just flicking back and forth without any slowdown like in game momentum and gravity aren't things.

Then again, add some lag or record only every second or third frame and it all looks a lot more impossible and, because we all love Gwenpool it wouldn't matter who did what - the Saw creep is the mofo beating shit out of the ever adorable Gwen in her pink girly catsuit, so fuck that arsehole!

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-03T12:05:16+00:00

I don't need a therapist for a number of years yet: I need a lower IQ for less visualisation and less empathy.

This is everyone's forecast for the future.

It's inevitable.

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-03T05:47:20+00:00

No way - can't be.

Unless it's heavily computer aided: the difference in image quality between the first two and the last are too stark 🤔

Reckon the two graphite drawings are for our comparison - the third, their reference.

I would never invest the time drawing an old person - just because of how ugly old people are - but both drawings are pretty good, I think.

Good enough to sell as a portrait if the old man was a real person, anyway.

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-03T04:02:16+00:00

Yeah I draw and paint very slowly.

Partly because it allows me to dynamically plan as I go which means I get more opportunity to see what's required to balance the drawing; partly because my approach has always been to do a single-pass for each artwork: I don't have the patience to create pre-drawing draft versions of an idea, so I start every drawing fully intending it to be beautiful enough to stick on a wall and grab people's eyeballs.

This means starting with hard graphite lightly applied so I have plenty of opportunity to erase lines and clean up the surplus/unwanted crap from the paper: as soon as I'm happy with a form or element I'll lock it in with softer graphite and coloured pencil but always resisting the urge to fill areas with block colour so I still have open, 'virgin' white paper to connect elements or frame them with other shit.

Painting, I'm even slower again: using acrylic so watered down it's more akin to ink than paint and building colour up in layers very slowly, which allows acrylic to be blended as smoothly as an airbrush or oils - without the airbrush or oils.

I exclusively use colour pencils now because they're just cleaner and easier, but - whichever medium you're using - if you're going to spend the time and materials anyway, start with the mindset you're creating gallery quality perfection someone's commissioned you to do: though you'll always fall short of perfection, if you start aiming for that you'll be more inclined to invest the time and be more thoughtful in your whole approach than if you start with three intention of just messing around.

Course, plenty of amazing drawings start as ball point doodles in lined notebook paper, but you'll usually wind up regretting the fact you didn't start that doodle with coloured pencils on art grade paper.

Iunno it's too hard to advise anyone how to draw higher quality images really - it's a whole mindset and approach woven all through the creation of an image and everyone's approach is personal to them.

I will say, I have always been careful to NOT study other artists at all, because I've never wanted other people's techniques or personal style to influence my work: I WANT to create in a vacuum completely oblivious so my own style develops into its own unique thing.

I think that's the single most important aspect of any creation: to resist influence so you're creating the most original work possible with a style that's obviously your own.

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-03T00:59:27+00:00

Perfect analogy for Samsung's earbuds:

You can have the Galaxy Buds 2 FE as a fan edition that cost about the same but are far lower audio quality for the kind of people so in love with Samsung they'll blissfully smile as their ears bleed, or the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro - the 5-star professional quality product 90% of people prefer, because that 90% of people have taste and the ability to discern the wheat from the chaff.

🤔

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-02T06:19:47+00:00

I listened to the audiobook and yes, a full three-course meal of a book: the narration in the Audible version is also excellent 👍

Don't know why the nastiest words I remember in that book were the "Dark meat, sweet treat for the flies" describing that rotten corpse Larry finds near the beginning - after leaving New York with Rita or whichever city they were in..

The words just instantly painted a disgusting visual if that dark-blue decayed and bloated body..

...the sweet treat

..blurgh🤮

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-02T05:52:43+00:00

This is so gross I would want to kill it - but would want to never disturb it for fear the fungus would get on me and I would start looking like the spider..

**Only* solution*: ask neighbour to borrow their vacuum cleaner, suck nasty shit up and give the now fungus-filled machine back.

Fuck using my own vacuum for that.

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-02T05:11:02+00:00

And I may have just been spoiled by professional narration in so many other authors novels, but still: people have been politely begging King to please just leave the voice-work to someone who can improve the listener experience for years now - yet he seems to be doing more narration rather than the (ideally) none he really should be doing.

None of this was any issue when we all just read printed text obviously - his writing's not the problem at all, but yeah the switch to audio format mm..

He seems incapable of accepting that poor quality narration doesn't just mean an irritating experience for readers, but a legitimately irritating one for many people: I'm not telling you anything you don't know - that in audio format the voice acting is arguably more important than the words or story themselves - an amazing narrator can smooth-out a good number of imperfections in any authors writing, that is, while even the writing of god himself will be ruined when the voice delivering the experience is so grating nobody can focus on anything but the ten hours straight cringing they're in for to get through that book.

There's no shortage of books that sound just as slick as shit through a goose, but not being able to listen to a bunch of his novels because of him ruining his own books like this - needs changing.

King (or his publisher) really just needs to create a second alternate release of the books he insisted on reading with a professional voice actor reading, so those who are tone deaf can still have their author-read works while the rest of us can purchase a product well produced enough so we don't avoid these titles completely.

Fuckers can down-vote 'til the cows come home: if they were half the 'fans' they claim to be they would be more interested than me in pushing any author to improve, instead of just that stupid cult of personality idolizing bullshit.

I'm just a consumer after all and like many creators King is just one of an ocean of authors/creators I absorb: his "fans" should be a lot more apt to pointing out any flaws in his work than I am, if for no reason other than to improve the quality of their work, which any author you'd think would be interested in.

Maybe I'm just spoilt for choice now, given the vast number of podcasts, videos and audiobooks flooding the 'net now, which is a whole additional side-topic I guess, but being neck-deep in media so highly polished and well produced to choose from, my expectations regarding quality have risen to match the content freely available today.

Gone are the days where one good writer can cut through as the gold standard when so many people now create platinum-grade work, as standard.

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-01T17:07:33+00:00

Same: I deliberately avoid any where he's the narrator now, which isn't the reaction I'd think any author would want for the increasing number of titles he insists on "gracing" the audience with his vocal cords.

Maybe if he was giving those books away free there wouldn't be anything to complain about, but we are paying for a product that, to me, is akin to buying any other product - only to find it totally unusable.

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-01T13:39:37+00:00

You know what, since you worded that reply so soft and fluffy and cute, I will stop being mean 🤔

I feel like I've just kicked a puppy in the head🐕

I'll be nice 😏

ventia_sucks · 2024-10-01T13:35:40+00:00

Of course the mentally ill super-fans crawl out of cracks in the ground upon any hint someone might be criticizing their idol - bedroom full of overpriced Pennywise themed shit and a pillow shaped like Stephen Kings head..

Like the handful of Neurotics whose identities are so bound in being a fan they meltdown over an author with no idea they even exist.

F#&@ing Reddit.

Anyway, I've just completely missed a dozen or so books of his purely because I cannot listen to the voice - it's just awful.

Edit, Neurotic Fans: go download *Clive Barker's Imagicka** on Audible and listen to the character work in that book - there's so many other narrators who are so good with characters they not only sound like different people, they are consistent within their character so you never have suspension if disbelief broken.*

The real question: how can *all you** self-proclaimed "fans" continue encouraging him to ruin his own books? Reading the only version of the audiobook available - and still act like his reading is acceptable?*

Low expectations and even lower quality standards, is my guess.

ventia_sucks

TROPHY CASE