Learn about my albums!

I have a page dedicated to each of my released albums. These pages include the album artwork, a list of the titles of each piece, and my thoughts on each piece as well as the album. And links to the album.

Learn about each of my releases by looking at the pages or checking out these links:

Restructure

Moldies

Oldies

The list is organized with the most recent release first.

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* Copyright: GavOnyx 2020 *

Large 3D Print Project

 I've had a 3d printer for a while now (the FLSUN QQS). Ever since I got it I've wanted to make something big and useful. So I decided to try to print the helmet of a Scout Trooper from Star Wars ep 6.

I of course did a few test prints to work dial in the settings. I was using Cura and doing these tests on a new full roll of white PLA. The manufacturer was Overture and boy oh boy, it sucked! Under extrusion galore. I went looking around online to find out why and I came across an old reddit thread explaining that the user was also experiencing under extrusion with Overture PLA. The user decided to weigh the Overture PLA against a higher quality PLA brand and found out that the Overture stuff weighed less! Apparently this stuff is less dense than other PLA brands. Yuck!
I also tried printing it at .4 mm layer height but it never seems to work. I ended up printing the whole thing at .3 mm layer height and just doing that immediately helped. I turned up the Flow rate to 110% and the extruder temp to 220 C for good measure (the upper rating for overture pla).

After doing the test prints I was ready to print all the parts. I decided to try to print the thing in 4 sections. The Top half of the helmet, the bottom half, the mask and the visor. I cut the helmet in half using blender and removed the built in water marks (the link to the guy who made the model down below). I also cut a small concave area for my ears using the boolean modifier. 

Each of these 4 pieces took more than 8 hours to print. The mask was the fastest at 8 & 1/2. The visor took 9 hours, and the two halves of the helmet took 11 hours each! I had the speed at 60 mm per second for inner walls and infill, 30 mm for outer walls, and the infill as cubic and 12% density. I even scaled the models down by 5% to fit my head better. I knew it was gonna be a long print time but I guess I wasn't expecting 10 hours average per part!

At this point all the big stuff has been printed and I only need to print the details. I'm in the process of sanding and painting all the big stuff right now. Enjoy some pictures!

Yoink this guys Loink: Biker Scout Helmet (Scout Trooper) By SurfinBird132

These pictures are not exactly in order.

*Copyright: GavOnyx 2020. All Rights Reserved*

Smash BRUHs

I play the game Super Smash Bros Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch. It's a pretty great game and the team they have working on balances is really committed and on top of things. One interesting aspect about the game is something that Nintendo really touted as being a prime reason to play. There are so many characters and each one is so different that there is a play style out there for everyone.
They're right. There is a character who's kit and moves align with the general way a person goes about doing things. The annoying thing is that there are some just butt dumb ways people solve problems and there are characters who reflect that.

Take Incineroar for example. All you need to play him well is use side-B when a character is close, Use Down-B when about to get hit and then immediately use side b, and use up b whenever the crap you want to if your opponent is in the strike zone.
It's a little more complex than that of course but just knowing that is enough to give a beginner the edge in battle.
A character that requires a little more knowledge and skill is Lucario –my main. Lets look at what to do when an opponent is close, vs far, vs if there's a move you can use in any situation.
Close: Grab your opponent. Unless you're at a high percent. If you're at a high percent, it's different.
Far: use movement options especially B reversing to close the gap and use grab or nair. but if you're at a high percent, don't be so eager to approach and use aura sphere to keep your opponent at bay.
Any situation: . . . yeah OK, you got me there's no move to cover too many situations. Nair maybe?

So, I'm overplaying it a little bit because I do not know how to play incineroar. But my point should be clear. Some characters require a lot more knowledge about the character to play them effectively.
Let's compare some more.
    Lucario side B: it's a command grab if you're close enough but if you aren't close then it's technically a projectile.
    Incin side B: it's a command grab that makes you move.
    Lucario Up B: A recovery with no hit box till the very end. You can go in any direction and can swerve if you're good enough but the controls are very touchy.
    Incin up B: You go up and then down. and you go boom when you go down.
    Lucario Neutral B: A projectile you can charge. it deals damage as it charges and sets up for many options including grabs, aerials, up smashes, and shooting the projectile. Lucario's kit revolves around using this projectile and the charging hit box as well as using B reversing as some advanced and necessary movement options or kill set ups.
    Incin Neutral B: Haha me go spin spin

So I'm not saying that Incineroar is bad. But it seems to me like there maybe is a lower skill ceiling with this character than certain other characters. Maybe?

Really I'm not mad at Incineroar or other simple characters. I'm moreso upset that lucario is just freaking hard to play. I'm pretty darn sure that lucario is the most advanced character in the whole roster. You have to know how his famous aura affects him, you have to keep in mind your opponents percent and your own when pulling off combos, many of his combos are DI dependent, you have to have complete control over the movement options, most of his combos are frame perfect, etc.

Smash bros is a hard enough game as it is. It's suuuuper frustrating to deal with Lucario and his oddities and all the jank he's got. The worst part about it is absolutely no one has any guides on how to play him beyond the very basic stuff. Like, for other characters there are definite answers for what to do in certain situations. For lucario, there are usually no definite answers and no one that plays him well makes videos or posts on the topic. There's a good chance no one plays him because no one has any well presented and knowledgeable information on him. so its a crappy situation for Lucario Mains out there.

There's some hope however. I have some skills in the video editing and audio recording. I've taken public speaking classes. And I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about smash bros and lucario so I plan on making some videos on how to play him. Rant over.

Social media pretty much sucks . . .

I said in my very first post that I was fed up with social media. Now, I didn't really use social media in the first place. I used reddit for memes mostly, and youtube for entertainment and research. Beyond that I did not use twitter, no instagram, no snapchat, nothing. Just the reddit and youtube.
I was discussing this with a friend of mine and he said he didn't really think of reddit and youtube as social media. He's got a point. Snapchat is all about people posting videos for friends to see. Seems pretty social media-ey. Same story with instagram –but with more pictures, less video. Twitter is an obvious one. It's got the likes, the retweets, the peoples posting every kind of file type out there. Reddit, for the most part, isn't about the people because of the way it's set up. It's more about the categories than person to person interaction. Similarly with youtube, it isn't very social oriented because it's mostly an entertainment platform.
At least on the surface.

For the average reddit user who never posts, reddit is not really a social media site because the only interaction you have with others is up/downvoting (likes and dislikes). Reddit transforms into a social media site when users start posting and commenting. Once you click on a post rather than just up/downvoting it you start using the platform as social media. On the surface, reddit isn't very social but once you poke your head down there you find out it is.

Similarly with youtube, 99% of the content is the videos –mostly entertainment, but some educational or interesting stuff. Not incredibly social. But interestingly, the social aspect is much more prevalent than one would think at first glance. Under every video is a like/dislike button. And then below that of course the comment section where most person to person interaction happens. In many videos the creator says "make sure to like and subscribe and hit that notification bell!! leave a comment about this in the comment section below!" Of course those aspects of like/disliking and following/subscribing and commenting are exactly what makes social media social.
Of course reddit has all of these as wells. Following users/communities, posting and commenting, like/disliking posts and comments, and sharing/crossposting.

So in short: yes, reddit and youtube are full on social media sites even if it's not completely obvious.

There are many studies showing that social media is in fact bad for you and that it causes depression and all that jazz. So of course it seems obvious that one should avoid social media completely. But part of the problem is that we think that because it is "social media" that is can replace normal social interaction.

So there are 2 main reasons why social media is bad for you (as I understand it). First has to do with the way our brain experiences happiness. When we interact socially, the chemical serotonin is released. Like with any drug/chemical, we become desensitized to it when it is released often and the more it is released, the less effect it has.
Using social media releases that chemical, making us happy but desensitizing us. But the interesting thing is that our brain can tell the difference between social media and in person communication. So serotonin may be released, but it leaves us unsatisfied.
This is the problem. We use social media expecting our social needs to be fulfilled but they aren't. So after a while of using it, we go and try interacting the normal way –face to face. But because we are desensitized to serotonin, the real interaction doesn't release enough serotonin to make us as happy as we want. This inability to satisfy, and the inability to be happy, causes us to question ourselves and become confused and concerned and start the spiral into depression.

I do not want any part of that.
So I'm moving away from social media. The problem is that places like youtube can be pretty valuable resources. You wouldn't think it, but there are solutions to these problems. There is a site out there called Toogles that is a way to view youtube videos without comments and without the like buttons and without the subscribe button. It gives you the videos without the social media garbage.
Now, for memes and whatnot, that's a little bit harder. There is a solution however. The RSS feed. Using an rss feed you can get memes, news, and all that jazz. It's kinda like creating your own home feed like on reddit or twitter without the social media aspects. As to set an RSS feed up, I have no idea but I am looking into it and will post a summary on the blog here when I do.

There are some gripes I have with toogles. The main one is that the only categories you can access are the trending categories which all suck. There is a light/dark mode switch, which is great, but it covers up the very bottom left of the screen, obscuring a button. And I've had a bit of trouble using it on my mobile phone. It works for the first search but for the second it doesn't. But beyond that, toogles is great. There's no bullcrap social media garbage.

Anywho, I appreciate the whole idea of blogging because I would, on most certainly not be able to post this much information on other sites like twitter. Plus, there's no searching for users or anything. If someone wants to view the blog I don't have to say "oh yeah, look up my user name . . . oh, there's 35 other people with that username? yeah, im that one . . ." etc. It's all here, with searchable posts, and an easy to remember link.
Rant over.


Loink to Toogles:  Toogles - Browse

Western Tonality and Music today

I have some college education on music and music theory. For any composer I highly recommend looking for and buying "Tonal Harmony – with an introduction to twentieth-century music" by Stefan Kostka, seventh edition. (isbn: 978-0-07-802514-3 ).

That book is chock full of information and any level of composer would benefit from reading it. One of the interesting things I learned had to do with melody. Melody in today's music is often overlooked, not only in pop but in other common genres like rap, synthwave, chill-hop, electronic, and virtually every genre excluding jazz and classical.
This isn't a rant on "how terrible music is nowadays! Ooohooho nOoooo." Rather it is pointing out certain rules of melody writing and pointing out that most songs nowadays do not follow those rules.

The first rule of melody of western tonality I would like to discuss is shape. According to western tonality, a melody should have a clear yet interesting shape to it. A melody without a shape would be one note type melodies. If you were to draw that out, it would be a flat line. Now, flat lines are pretty boring so not only are one note melodies boring but melodies that only ascend or descend are also uninteresting.
Old composer melodies are actually fantastic examples of this. Bach, Mozart, etc. Here's one from bach.

Here's the lines but exaggerated a little for clarity

This shape as a melody shape is much more interesting than just flat lines. yet, they aren't complex. If you had to look at the shape for 10 seconds and then turn around to draw it from memory, everyone could easily accomplish that.
For most melodies found in pop music, there is either very little shape or they violate the second rule I will talk about.

The second rule has to do with the melody having a single focal point. And a focal point is simply the highest note in a melody. Looking at the above melody you'll see that it follows this rule as well. Bear in mind that while there are 2 lines, in reality it is one melody. The focal point for that melody is in the second line and it is a D. There is no other note higher than that D and no other D exists in the melody making that high note the focal point. (of course bach gets pretty close with multiple C's but there is only one D).
In today's music, especially pop music, this rule is completely left out. Many many melodies in tunes played on the radio have no focal point, no highest note, unless it's the end of the song where the singer jumps up an octave to make a huge finish.

Take for example the melody to Shawn Mendes' 'senorita'. For the main melody, if I counted right, there isn't one focal point. In fact there aren't 2, there aren't 3, and there aren't 4.  There are 9 focal points.  . . . which makes it so none of the high notes are actually focal points . . . meaning the song doesn't obey the rules of western tonality because the melody has one high note which it repeatedly comes back to but never goes above.
(I will not have a picture to demonstrate because of copyright reasons)

The biggest problem I have with this fact is that that song, senorita, topped the charts a while ago cementing it as a huge success and widely popular. But the song doesn't follow the rules of western tonality. So for aspiring musicians and composers of our time, many will listen to these songs and assume that having no focal point and having a shapeless melody is a correct way to structure a melody.

Some might ask, "well, why exactly is that bad?" And this question is mildly difficult. The best answer I have is that we have these various rules for a reason. That reason is mysterious to me but I do know that when humans create music they mostly all end up following these and other rules whether or not they even consciously know them. The reason to follow these rules is because they add structure, they help to avoid monotony, they make your music sound good.
That being said, music is of course an art form. And art, being subjective and totally controlled by the creator, is subject to the artists wishes and desires. If you as an artist want your music to have a good deal of repetition (like most pop music), or if you want it to have structure (by using these rules), etc, then do it. Nobody is stopping you. The only advice I have is to say that when creating a piece of music or a song, keep in mind your purpose. They 'why' of it all. "why do I want the melody to go up at this point?" "does that further the purpose or message I'm trying to get across with this piece?" "What does having one versus many focal points convey to the audience."

Really what I want is for people to think.
Don't do/create because it sounds cool. Do it for a purpose and really think about every aspect of your music.