T w e n t y S i d e d
The last few weeks have been awful, weather-wise. See the splash image above? That’s the sky. That’s dust. And the image pictured is on a good day. We’ve had a couple of 40 – 60mph days and probably six 20 – 40mph days. A dozen or more 15 – 20mph days. I’ve been dusting most of the house every couple of days. Running the vacuum a lot, and pulling pounds of dirt out of the carpet. It’s tiring. This also has been awful for everyone’s health. People are literally sneezing dirt. I am so looking forward to moving away from here.
Most of my week has been occupied by dealing with the effects of dust. Everything I have done is done in light of how the dust is impacting everything. In that regard I have done very little game-playing. I log in to SWTOR for an hour or two in order to achieve the weekly list of Galactic Seasons rewards. I spend time cleaning, as I mentioned. Disassembled, cleaned, and rebuilt the vacuum cleaner to take it’s performance back to new. Which is only about six months old…that’s how much dirt we’ve been moving. Made one trip to pick up meds for my mother. And we’re planning for a medical trip soon because my mom is having a benign cancerous skin growth removed and she’s not sure how the meds they may give her will affect her ability to drive. I’ve only done a little bit of work on Final Fantasy 1, not enough to post the next episode.
I did have a thought to play Guild Wars, the first time in a while. It wouldn’t start, and I suspect it’s because I first installed it on Linux back when I built the computer. I’ve updated the graphics card and the Linux kernel since then, and already have had to redo the WINE settings to get some other games to work. Or, in some cases, just re-install; which is what I did this time. Guild Wars installed readily and played immediately on finishing the install, but I noticed my armor settings are all wrong. Trying to figure that one out as I type. My first thought is simply that not all the graphics are installed yet, as one of the things that isn’t showing up is secondary dyes. I’m not even sure all the primary dyes are showing up. (double checking an image from a few months ago, it’s all *way* wrong) I’ll put it this way: I went to log in and immediately got hit with a huge download. It’s been going for a while. I know the servers are set to not expect much traffic, and I’m connected to a VPN at the moment, so my bandwidth is probably severely limited. It’s probably only a gigabyte or so, but when the connection is throttled it can take a while.
I’ve mentioned previously my computing needs include a side screen or second computer/laptop that plays YouTube (or something else, but usually YouTube) while I type or play, or read, or whatever. I turn the YT off if I *really* need to pay attention to what I’m doing, or if I *really* want to catch what’s in the YouTube video that’s playing. One of my less-common viewing habits is big equipment repair. You know how a big trend in automotive videos is “barn finds” and getting old cars parked next to manufactured housing to run? I watch some of that, at times; but I find it more interesting to see someone get a D8 Caterpillar tractor that’s been sitting in a marsh for 30 years running. And then seeing if it’s worth fixing up and selling on, or using, or junking. I’ve been catching up on the Diesel Creek channel because of that. It is a bit shocking to see how much the proprietor/host of the channel, Matt, has grown. The second episode on his latest D8 (not the first one he’s picked up) has two other people mostly just doing filming.
A recent YouTube find that is fascinating is Thai car shows. Not a “Concours d’Elegance” or anything like that. Apparently the trend in Thailand is to mod a car, mostly pickups and vans, with a truly unbelievable and unusable amount of speakers, amps, and lights then show off your skills in a car display. And have a woman in a carefully-constructed outfit of swimwear or lingerie and pantyhose or tights, plus some extra bits to make sure no “accidents” happen, dance in front of your speakers. The YouTube videos all seem to be overdubbed with a playlist of recognizable re-mixes. The music is pretty good, although I’m pretty sure I’ve sampled just about all of every playlist. The dancing women, and at least by presentation and allegation it’s always women; the only dancing men are visiting the car show, are of varying ability. The repetition and music makes this good ASMR, or at least it does if it fits one of the patterns you enjoy. Some people like mouth sounds and that is an immediate “no” for me. Rapid movements are also very popular, though I rarely enjoy it. Oh, the point is these dancers, the women who perform for car shows, have a “name”: Coyoty Women. I checked far enough to know the “Coyoty” is supposed to be “Coyote,” and you will see the correct spelling used sometimes. But usually it’s just “Coyoty.” This trend goes back to around 2012, 2014; I think. The original idea seems to be an adaptation of Japanese “race queens;” you can look that up yourselves. The dancers apparently started out wearing team outfits and even dancing in groups, but that evolved into solo dancers at community shows and increasingly(?) less clothing. Stick-on tattoos also seem to be fairly common. It’s so bizarre. The image below is, understandably, a very tame representation.
I also tend to watch air disaster videos. I was once a big fan of the Mayday television program, although I tend to seek out sources that more informative or insightful these days. 74 Gear is a good option, as the presenter Kelsey is actually a 747 pilot, primarily 747 cargo variations. For the best insight on various accidents, Chloe Howe’s Disaster Breakdown may be the single best source. She engages in a lot of independent research that includes traveling to the sight of accidents. DB is quite binge-able, as Howe has been making videos for several years and only reached the level of success to fund long videos the past year or so. Many of the early videos are only about 15 minutes long.
For car-based videos, I’m very picky. I have tried a lot of the standard and popular vids but apparently my tastes are a bit different. While I do watch the occasional Doug DeMuro recording, most of the YouTube creators that got popular about the same time really turn me off. And I don’t watch for self-help, either. There are things I can do, and things I can’t, and sometimes I go looking for new information; and I’m happy to leave it at that. What I *do* watch regularly are Dead Dodge Garage and Sarah-n-Tuned. Both hosts/presenters center their own interests and goals, and therefore their own personalities which I happen to not find objectionable. The style and the personality, that is. They also both have fairly distinctive Intros…maybe *that’s* the secret. (“Hi. I’m Jamie. This is Dead Dodge Garage.”and “Hello! People of the world on the internet watching internet videos that have to do with cars. Welcome to this…-points to subject of the video-.”) Jamie spends a lot of time getting Chrysler engines running that probably shouldn’t ever be run again. He takes an approach similar to the diesel rebuilds I like to watch: clean it as little as possible and just try to get fire, gasoline, and air to meet however necessary. Sarah, by contrast, CLEANS EVERYTHING CONSTANTLY. Her project cars take forever and every day you could eat off of any given part. How Sarah has gone for years without any major, ongoing sponsorships is honestly a tragic story, really. The sponsors who pay for a car to be re-built to give it away (she’s tried a couple of times) aren’t compatible with her perfectionism. The sponsors who want their product centered and talked about don’t like that she won’t promise to only use their brand. Basically she’s not brand-friendly, and that means she has worked 7-day weeks for years to keep her video output as high as possible. This is another channel I started watching about the same time it started. It’s also notable that Sarah *does not* supplement or incentivize her channel with “cheesecake” in any way…despite even some friends pushing her to do so. The closest you could even imagine would be the occasional pic that could be used as a desktop wallpaper:
The rest of my current YouTube playlist has a video on a scam that involved the actor Tom Bosley (I’m guessing he was hired to advertise something…that happens a lot), the latest from comic creator Ryan George, something new from Aging Wheels, a guy in Missouri who primarily shows off rare, cheap import cars and tiny commuter cars, Geo Girl and Scary Interesting, a recent VWestlife who is a second-tier Techmoan, and a stack of ASMR videos to try.
Tomorrow maybe the dust will finally be gone for long enough I’ll have some interest in accomplishing things again. It doesn’t hurt that most Spring Breaks will be over this weekend, I think. One school district that affects us had Spring Break two weeks ago, but most other school districts in the area used this past week. So, here’s hoping things get back to normal.
That’s it for now, see you next week!
My Music
Do you like electronic music? Do you like free stuff? Are you okay with amateur music from someone who's learning? Yes? Because that's what this is.
Ludonarrative Dissonance
What is this silly word, why did some people get so irritated by it, and why did it fall out of use?
Project Octant
A programming project where I set out to make a Minecraft-style world so I can experiment with Octree data.
Patreon!
Why Google sucks, and what made me switch to crowdfunding for this site.
A Telltale Autopsy
What lessons can we learn from the abrupt demise of this once-impressive games studio?
I’m the same way, although I’m old-school on this, as I have my gaming stuff set up so that I can see the TV, and so now tend towards leaving a PlutoTV channel on or sometimes running movies on Tubi. Generally, stuff that will run on its own without my having to pay attention to it or change it.
I’m curious about this, as I like that show as well, and didn’t have any issue with it. That being said, in watching it I found that I was more interested in the investigation/mystery parts and how that gets solved (or doesn’t, on a few occasions) so it might just be the case that we are looking for different things.
I play Tubi a lot, too. In fact it’s my goto source for movies. I’ve got a PlutoTV account but it’s been a while since I logged in.
I don’t have anything against Mayday, or any of the other names the show or it’s clips have been broadcast under. I still watch it, although at this point I know their presentation pretty well. A good example is the MH370 disaster and mystery: two of the channels I watch, Mentour Now! and Mentour Pilot (same guy) have been pushing for the MH370 search to be restarted, and recent news says that it is. He had a video only a month or two ago that had an update on the various signal tracking methods. It turns out that the new search is based on information that many people ignored previously, even though it was known and argued for by some, that indicate the plane turned left and flew in a figure 8 for a bit before all signals were lost. The new search is planning to go over *that* area.(NOTE: just double-checked and that video he made about MH370 updates ‘a few months ago’ was actually a year ago. Oops.)
I didn’t include the Mentour channels because he talks about a lot of current events in the aviation industry and common practices and procedures, while I was focusing more on ‘when accidents happen.’ :)
I relatively recently created an account on Tubi to get access to the watchlist thing — and through Roku it’s one of the few services whose watchlist is unlimited, while the others simply start replacing things after a certain amount — but don’t have an account on PlutoTV because I just toss the channels on and don’t do the streaming part. The nice thing about PlutoTV is that it is more like TV: sit down and toss something on to watch or half pay attention to without caring much about what it is. It IS very repetitive, though, but then its advantage is that you can just change to a different channel and watch it until you get sick of that and maybe cycle back to other channels once you’ve gone long enough to not be sick of them anymore.
I admit that I didn’t care much for the “Mayday Files”, because while those combined thematically similar accidents they also trimmed them down a bit, and what I really like is the detailed investigations. I’ve watched the Mayday stuff hit and miss over the past while, when I had a channel that had it or watched the PlutoTV Disasters channel that ran them. Last time I checked, Tubi had some of them so I am thinking about watching those at some point, but I have too much to watch as it is. Tubi is really good, though, for getting some older shows that you might not be able to easily get anywhere else, and at least a while ago they didn’t run commercials in cartoons and kids shows, which was interesting (I watched the original “Transformers”, “Archie’s Weird Mysteries” and “MASK” that way).
I’d be interested in these Thai car channels, featuring lady models, got any links?
I don’t think I have anything saved, but I know the mixes that come up a lot are JME Club Radio. I know that because they break in and say it every five minutes. Just searching YouTube for “Thai Coyoty Dancer” will get some results, but an awful lot of them are nightclub dancers…doesn’t have the same music or vibe. “thai car show dancer coyoty lady” as embarrasing as that phrase is seems to work the best for going straight to the more recent car show stuff. Finding pre-made playlists actually seems counter-productive, as a lot of the video will be quite old and sub-par. You kind of have to feel your way to getting good recommendations. And considering a lot of people would consider this nothing but purient content, and can feel a bit icky. EDIT: “coyoty HD” is actually a good search term.