plasticdino

My quest to get a job* has drained me, hence no substantial updates here. Where's that Tumblr post that's like "whoever invented the cover letter got no pussy". Truly.

In positive news, Perfume are releasing a new EP** to go with their new song Polygon Wave and this increased my will to live by 1000%. In celebration I remade the ugly cover and yelled about the news in the j-electro discord server I joined last week. Idk why I didn't join one sooner. I could only suppress the Aira Mitsuki hyperfixation in front of my irl friends for so long.

In conclusion, stream Polygon Wave. It won't help you get a job but it'll probably make your day better. The song has a nice french house vibe.

*Those familiar with plasticdino lore may remember I got a job just before 2021. I quit because I hated it and wanted one where I wouldn't come home and cry everyday. This is hard to come by these days.

**There is much debate in the fanbase as to whether this release should really be called an EP as opposed to a "maxi single". I prefer EP tbh because maxi single sounds like a menstrual product.

My friend dyed my hair! It's sort of moss green now. I've never dyed all my hair before and I love it! (they won't be reading this but thank you Ed 🥺) I'm not sure I'll do it again tho. My face and hands are now Doja-Cat-in-her-latest-music-video-esque and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

Not much else has happened tbh. I've been trying to use social media less. I've talked about this before but Instagram is hell. No one reading this needs to be convinced of why Instagram is bad, but I started thinking about how much time I've wasted over the years and started losing it a little. I'd rather use that time abusing HTML over here than scrolling endlessly. Also anyone who posts news about a hate crime on their story with no content warning owes me £10. Hell app.

Also speaking of abusing HTML... I've moved around the links on the sidebar and renamed two of them. "Websites" is now "links" and "extra" is now "sitemap". This is just to make it more obvious what each page is for. I feel like "extra" was super vague... Like what does that even mean. And uh if you're wondering yes I did have to change each page that reads off the main style individually. look, the way iframe works annoys me and I still haven't learnt JavaScript. So it's fine. It's fine. Didn't even take me that long 😎

But yeah, sorry if the change is confusing in any way. I put it off for a long time but I think it looks better now! I still like my current main layout overall tho, so that's not changing anytime soon. Hopefully.

pictured: new hair :) I also bought the jurassic park t-shirt last week

Got my first vaccine today and my arm hurts and I'm also kind of being a baby about it lmao as usual. In my defense ever since I had surgery my already pretty bad fear of syringes got worse. But it's ok! I got to lie down and the nurse was very understanding. I didn't want to make a fuss but I think I made the right choice. I probably would have passed out if I had been sitting up instead. It didn't even hurt that much lol, it's more psychological I guess.

But yeah this week was so busy. The reason I work on this site so much is because I have a lot of free time, but this week I did something everyday which is unheard of for me. So I went to two whole parties because that's allowed now. I got to hug people ;-; It was so nice. Plus, drunkenly yelling the lyrics to Literal Legend by Ayesha Erotica in your friend's garden just hits different lol.

Then yesterday I went to a Damien Hirst exhibition with my mum. I was kind of apprehensive?? I know his latest exhibition got kind of destroyed by critics because it was ugly. But this was his old stuff. They had lots of gross medical instruments which I like (syringes notwithstanding) and a lot of the works were really colourful which surprised me. You might have noticed from my collage art but I have a monkey brain when it comes to colour. If it's bright and chaotic I love it lol. So yeah it was fun! And I haven't been to London in actual years. I thought I wouldn't miss it at all but watching Jago Hazzard's videos have made me appreciate the city a bit more.

And in other news...NEW CAPSULE SONG. It's their first single in six years and I have to say it did not disappoint. I can't stop listening. Stream Hikari no Disco lmao.

Ok typing is kind of starting to hurt now I'm gonna stop.

pictured: here were my favourites from the gallery. I should really start compressing pictures more cause I'm using up all my storage

Last day of college ever. I think?? I'm not sure. I keep thinking I'm done then it turns out I have to spend like two hours organising files so they can mark my coursework or something. Good times. ANYWAY. While I was waiting at the bus stop a girl from the local secondary school complimented my outfit 🥺🥺🥺

This made me so happy because what I was wearing was kind of... out there I guess (the outfit involved stripey tights) The only bad part was when she was like "do you go to [other local secondary school]?" like no I'm 18 😭 In fairness I'm really short. like I am destined to look 13 forever. But she was really sweet. I love cute clothes but I'm so self-conscious so her saying that meant a lot. Plus it turned what was ultimately a pretty useless day into something nice :')

Also woah I've worked out how to use emojis on desktop now without copying and pasting. I am unstoppable.

Haven't been feeling great today so I don't have the energy to actually do anything... but it's the site's 2nd birthday!

As I said in my birthday post, it took me a year after I made an account here to start working on plasticdino in any meaningful way. So if you wanted to be pedantic, this day doesn't really mean much. Like I literally just made the background blue and made a list of my interests, then let the site rot for over a year. BUT. THAT'S NOT IMPORTANT. The date created says May 20th 2019 so that's the site's birthday.

Here's to more years of below average CSS, infodumping about things only I care about and frantically skimming w3schools. I wouldn't have it any other way. Neocities 4 ever.

bonus: here's a picture of the plan I drew in ms paint for the old layout.

Ok temporary hiatus is over! Had to take some time to finish overdue course work and revise for my three (3) tests. Neocities is my greatest distraction so I had to take a bit of a break. I'm not sure how much that worked because I've been distracted by making youtube videos instead (everyone subscribe to my channel go go go). But y'know. It's fine. I got the work done in the end lol.

I've missed working on this site so much. It's only been three weeks and I'm already like ;-; about it. Especially since Instagram upsets me daily. I'm gonna try to limit how much I use it and spend most of my time here instead. I won't rest until every wip page is finished. Prepare for six million updates. I'll try not to go too overboard because I used to work on this site like every second of the day and I got really tired of it. By this time I'm gonna at least try to pace myself a bit more. The keyword is try. I have a lot of ideas lol.

It was my birthday today! Today was nice actually. I'm back at college and it normally feels like I spend most of my time walking to get there and back, but I don't mind when the weather's good. Which it was today hehe. I like just putting my headphones on and zoning the hell out. I also bought Starboy (The Weeknd album) on CD today at a second hand shop. I loved it when it came out, mostly because of the Daft Punk features lol.

I actually had a party type thing on Sunday where I just hung out with my friends. Which was so nice after not being able to have gatherings and stuff for so long. Last year I hosted my party in Animal Crossing New Horizons because we were in hardcore lockdown by that point :')

Anyway, I'm 18 now lol. BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY. In exactly a month's time it will be this site's second birthday! It feels more like its first, because even though I made this site in 2019 I didn't start actively working on it until 2020. But still!! It's exciting. Neocities is like my main hobby now and it's crazy to me that people look at the stuff I make on here. We're nearly at 90 followers like. What. Thank you so much everyone.

I will leave you with a photo of my cake that I made. It's meant to be funfetti but it didn't really turn out properly. It tastes good tho!

I've literally tried to write a blog post like five times at this point lol. Normally I don't have trouble. Like, you can look back at my old ones and see that I just say random shit and complain a lot. Idk what's up.

Anyway, So far my personal 2021 goals of drinking more water and listening to more music have been going fairly well. Yeah, it turns out that the reason why my head would hurt at the end of the day sometimes is because I was dehydrated, so I've fixed that. that's something good right???

As far as music is going, I'm realising that my attention span is really bad. Like, most of my complaints about the albums I've listened to is that they are too long. Which makes me think the problem is me and not the album, since most albums I've listened to so far are under an hour. Anyway, I've found some pretty good new music thanks to doing this and have already met my goal of ten. I'm gonna upload all my extremely brief album reviews (emphasis on brief, they are all one line) to the writing section on here. That I have now. This blog is also going in the writing section, along with that hypnospace outlaw review and some other stuff.

I feel like having a writing section is yet another neocities cliche (I should add it to the bingo card) but idk man, it makes a lot of sense. I write a lot anyway and it's depressing just having it all locked away in my google docs. I want to share it with people! Look forward to more complaining, but in a formal-ish type way.

As is becoming a running theme with this blog, as soon as I published the previous post I managed to fix that problem I was talking about. Rubber duck debugging is real ig. Or I guess blog debugging in this case (?) Anyway, not to brag but now my sidebar isn't floating in the ether, I'm kind of obsessed with how my homepage looks. Like. I did that. I “popped off” as the kids say.

Also, new page report: neocities shrine! I wanted a place to put all the neocities themed memes I was making so we have a whole page for that now! The minimal css is an intentional design choice meant to mimic the old web please believe me.

I updated this page too! Now it's all cohesive with the rest of the site and shit. Also if you look to the left it's baby's first CSS animation! It could be a bit smoother but considering I just skimmed through the w3schools page I'd say it's pretty successful.

Ok now I'm going to write that hypnospace outlaw post.

So, I survived the surgery. Was I in the most pain I've ever experienced? PERHAPS. But we made it out the other side and it's all good now. I can get back to the task at hand of ruining improving this site.

Recently I keep running into problems where I will “fix” something that is wrong/not very effective in the css, only for the fix I've used to just cause more problems in the long run. For example, I finally got the sidebar to align properly with the main container. Unfortunately, now the page won't scroll and I know that if I take away this one line of code, the page will scroll again but then the sidebar will stop aligning. So like. What do I do. I mean the solution is to get better at html and css but idk if that is happening anytime soon.

Also, serious question: has kyle drake ever changed the design of this site? Cause I've been on here a lot lately and I've noticed that the UI for neocities is kinda ugly and also not optimal but then I think that's kind of the appeal?? Like, infinite scroll has kind of ruined people's lives or whatever. Neocities being kind of hard to use actually makes it better because you're not getting addicted to it. Actually, I kind of am addicted to neocities but not because I'm “doomscrolling” or whatever. Hmmm.

Anywayyy I finished hypnospace outlaw the other day! I'm gonna make another post about it because this one is too long. But in short, I liked it a lot! I have a lot to say but I'm going to save that for next time :)

I CANNOT CATCH A BREAK. I have to have surgery in a few weeks :/ Normally I'm a really healthy person and I've never had surgery before so the prospect of this is like AAAAAAAAAAA. I've always tried to write these posts in a kind of funny (???) non serious way but tbh I can't really joke my way out of this one. Uhhhhhh. Wish me luck ig.

On a more positive note, thank you for 50 followers everyone!! I feel like followers don't really matter here on neocities but it means a lot that people like checking out my site! I still have a long list of stuff I want to implement, so I'm not going away any time soon >:)

Also! extremely minor point but that whole thing about Spotify being broken just turned out fine in the end?? After my 6th re-install attempt it just randomly started working. Crazy.

Good news! I have a new PC. It's not even a laptop, it's like an actual full PC with a cool monitor n shit. I'm so happy!!! I can see everyone's websites in glorious HD!

I also worked out why my laptop ran slowly in the first place. Well actually, it ran slowly as soon as I got it BUT I have made a discovery, a terrible discovery actually. It turns out that in an attempt to block Spotify ads back in 2018 I unknowingly downloaded malware :/// Yeah, I was the world's biggest clown. The problems don't end there though, not only did downloading this malware break Spotify on my laptop, it seems to have broken Spotify on EVERY DESKTOP DEVICE WHEN I'M LOGGED IN. So even on my new PC, Spotify won't work :( I can't even load the web player. It has always worked on my phone tho. Don't know what's going on there. I'm pretty sure the only way to fix this is for me to make a new Spotify account so… look forward to me complaining more about that in the future.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE I can still do a lot of things that I couldn't before, like edit videos! And have proper drawing software! And play video games! The first game I want to play is Hypnospace Outlaw, since…. It should be obvious why. This is Neocities. The three people that actually read these blog posts have probably already played it. I will report my thoughts as soon as possible

Also happy first post of 2021! Completely forgot about that. My new year's resolution is to drink more water. Also to listen to more albums. Last year I did terrible because I listened to like 4 new albums then said aight imma head out. I think it's healthy to have diverse music taste so yeah I'm gonna try and work on this. Feel free to recommend albums I guess. If you want music recs from me in return (why?) then I have a whole page for that now. Good times. Look forward to more below average CSS this year :) I don't mean this in a self-depreciating way, I'm actually looking forward to improving my CSS ability. First order of business: the CD collection page.

I always feel bad about updating this blog/diary thing so frequently because I feel like it's the most uninteresting part of this site and I don't want to clog people's feeds. Then again, it's my site so I can do what I want ig. Also, I've realised I actually really enjoy writing non-fiction so this is a fun way to practice that.

Anyway, lot's of things have happened!!! This includes but is not limited to: my school going into like mini lockdown so I'm working from home, I passed my driving theory test, I got paid, I got accepted into the uni I wanted, I had a somewhat painful doctors appointment, I got major art demotivation syndrome and one of my favourite songs finally got put on Spotify.

As I'm writing this I'm realising none of this is that exciting, although you should absolutely listen to that song I just mentioned. I think what's getting to me is this all happened in the space of a week, or one day in the case of the doctors appointment, the theory test and getting paid. Seriously that day was an emotional rollercoaster. One minute it was like “yayyyy money!!!” and the next minute it was like “OH GOD I'VE FORGOTTEN HOW TRAFFIC LANES WORK”. Fun times.

Thanks to my job being extremely tiring, I spend a lot of my time just straight up asleep and I think this is affecting me quite negatively. This is probably why everything feels like a bit much. Hopefully thanks to the christmas holidays I'll have a bit of a break. I do feel like a bit of a wuss tho. Some people my age have two jobs and meanwhile I can barely do 3 shifts a week without wanting to die. I should really get used to it ;-;

In other news, remember my new IT teacher??? Yeah he's quitting lolll. The funny thing is I did the maths and it's been just under a month since he joined. Seriously, what is it with IT teachers and them randomly leaving??? I'm kinda mad tho because now I'll never be able to watch another Brian David Gilbert Video without thinking “wow this reminds me of my IT teacher who quit after less than a month”. Also y'know, I won't have a teacher anymore so that sucks.

Well, that's all I can think to write rn, I hope everyone enjoys the holidays!

I was really vague about this in another post but school hasn't been going great. One of the reasons being that my IT teacher just disappeared with no explanation?? Seriously it's been like 3 months and no one has told us why. The most likely explanation is she got sick but that's just a guess. Anyway, we finally got a replacement and ok no joke. He looks like Brain David Gilbert. What's even scarier is that as well as being an IT teacher he does graphic design for video games. Like what the fuck. I don't really have anything else to say about this. I'm just weirded out. I guess he's a pretty ok teacher lol.

In other news, I'm thinking of what to spend my first paycheck on. Currently I'm thinking of getting that aira mitsuki album that I've mentioned like 3 times now (it's a really good album and I want people to listen to it) so that's the priority. But recently I've been really into y2k era technology. If you don't know what I'm talking about gato salchicha has a good page on this, also there's the y2k aesthetic institute. But yeah, I love the look of technology like that and I think it would be cool to actually own some stuff from that era. Like y'know those really shit PDAs. I want one. I'm not very tech-y so I wouldn't do anything with it, I just like the look of them lol.

Ok after I wrote that paragraph I spent like 2 hours looking at stuff like this on ebay. Damn not to be like “I waS BoRn iN tHE WrOnG GeNerATIoN!!1!1!” but they really don't make tech like that anymore :/ Smartphones is the same. I'm glad we're getting a flip phone revival tbh.

So yeah having a job is really hard literally who would have guessed. More at 11. At least I'm getting paid.

Meanwhile, very exciting news! (to me at least) You may have already seen but I'm working on a new page called lostmode! My current obsession is Japanese electronic music and Yasutaka Nakata is one of the main contributors to the genre. Understandably, with a career as prolific as his, some stuff gets lost or forgotten about and this page is here to document it!!! The name lostmode comes from the name of Nakata's old label, contemode. I have no idea what contemode means btw but I always thought it sounded cool and the site had pretty sick design (up until like 2008) so I wanted to emulate that as well.

Some things to look forward to on this page will be information on a meme song remix that never surfaced, the legend of the Perfume music video that was only available on cell phones, a mysterious cancelled single and lots more!!!

If you for some reason are knowledgeable on Nakata's work and have any info to provide pls get in touch! I'm trying my best to document everything, but I'm not the world's greatest internet sleuth, also a lot of info has just gone (digital decay and all that) so anything helps. Also this is a complete shot in the dark but if you happened to be at Nakata's ‘Flash' DJ live event in 2010 and you recorded it you should contact me right now lol.

In other news I still haven't finished applying to uni. I should probably do that right now but. Nahhhh. Why apply to uni when there is lost media to find right????

Hopefully just a short post today lol

Damn not to repeat what literally the entire fucking world is saying but 2020 sure is a rollercoaster huh?

Last week I was feeling the worst I had felt all year. Everything was just piling up in a way that really didn't spark joy lol. Fortunately, I've finally finished some of the really important stuff and just doing that made me feel better.

Also, I got my first job! Now all I need to do is learn to drive and I'll be independent and shit. Unfortunately due to lockdown 2 (guy-jumping-into-the-air-at-E3.gif) my driving lessons are suspended :/ There's literally nothing I can do tho so idk I'm not gonna dwell on this.

Anyway, that is what's going on with me, I hope everyone else is doing ok

It's half term now so I get a week off to lie in my bed and do nothing but write these blog posts and rot my brain by listening to hyperpop for 7 hours straight. Ok I also need to finish my media project but this ain't about him.

SO HERE'S THE THING. MY CDS FINALLY ARRIVED!! I was going to do a long bit here where I basically just complain about the various problems I had with actually getting the package to my house but y'know what? It doesn't matter. They're here now and I'm soooo happy! They were exactly as described, undamaged, packaged really well and just. mmmm. so nice to look at. Which is basically why I bought them. Also maybe it's just the fact that they basically ended up costing me like £25 but I swear the songs sound better on CD than when I listen to them on Spotify.

I'm listening to one of them (it's Triangle, Perfume's second album, if you were wondering) as I write this and yeah. I'm happy. The little leaflet inside even comes with lyrics and everything like does it get any better than this.

Ok I am well aware that I sound incredibly sad right now but things have been kind of difficult lately so you gotta find joy where you can y'know. And sometimes that joy comes from listening to Night Flight on an old discman which yes, we still have a discman in my house for some reason.

Right. Since my first experience with a Japanese shopping service was a success, I am off to buy the CD of Plastic by Aira Mitsuki on Yahoo Japan auctions. See you guys next week where I will inevitably be on here complaining about not having any money in my bank account :)

Don't get me wrong, I love Neocities. The creativity is really inspiring and everyone has been really nice so far. However literally in the space of a week I have found a Covid truther, a thinspo blog and a site by an ancap with centipede anime girl art on their homepage. So yeah. Maybe the ability to see who literally everyone is followed by was kind of a mistake. I guess it's my own fault for being so nosy, curiosity killed the cat or w/e. Although “killed” in this context means I get subjected to anime centipede girl art against my will.

Now for something completely unrelated, my mercari order arrived at the warehouse! I'm mad tho because shipping was waaay more expensive than I thought it was going to be and I believe I am going through buyers remorse lmao. I hope it gets here without damage and everything works out ok. The main problem with CDs is they get scratched so fingers crossed that they are unharmed. I am excited for them to arrive because idk it's good to have something to look forward to in the midst of the shitshow that has become my college career. Ok it's not actually that bad but I am straight up not having a good time. I'll probably elaborate on this some other time but I don't want to now lol.

In more positive news I'm really getting into the artist ‘she' a.k.a. Lain Volta. Their music kind of reminds me of the shit I would listen to on Youtube when I was like 12 as in it's kind of dubstep but y'know. It's actually good. I think the reason why I like it so much is it sounds so bright and layered. I've listened to a lot of electronic music recently that is ok but it isn't really fun. Like capsule's last album is depressing as hell, the problem isn't even that it tries to emulate more generic edm trends, the problem is that it's so lifeless and boring.

Meanwhile, Aspire(she's latest album) makes me so damn happy, like I'm on a spaceship and I'm just vibing. My favourite tracks are Play the chiptek, automatic and falling for you btw. Would recommend it if you like electro. Anyway when did this become a music review page? I'm off to do media studies homework (unfortunately)

I should be doing IT homework but i'm writing this instead loll

Anyway my laptop took half an hour to load my internet browser. Then my laptop crashed and it took another 10 minutes to load again. You hate to see it. I kind of want to get an actual PC but I have no room and also not enough money for a whole PC so oh no. Maybe I should use my dad's old one that runs windows 98. I'd be getting the real web 2.0 experience then, huh? Tbh it probably runs faster than this laptop.

If you see this and you think I should use that PC please write in and by write in I mean leave a comment.

College today was not very eventful. I mean I had to interact with my graphics teacher so that sucked but I don't think anyone wants to hear me complain for paragraphs on end about him again so I am not going to elaborate. Just know I was frothing with rage and I wanted to go back to listening to my 100 song vocaloid playlist that I should probably stop listening to when I'm at college. Mitchie M's sick grooves are just too distracting.

Yeah that's literally all I have today except!!! You should check out my new and improved original characters page! It's based on a w3schools template but I feel like I modified it enough so that I can feel proud of it if you know what I mean??. It's also just really satisfying seeing all my OCs together on one page together idk.

ok I'm gonna actually do the IT homework now

I'm listening to komm susser tod while writing this so like. Imagine it's playing while you read this.

So there's the first confirmed student case of covid at my college… which is great. Love that. Exactly what I needed in my academic career. Obviously it sucks even more for whoever it is that got it (no one knows who it is tho)

To be honest I kind of wish they hadn't opened schools in the first place man. It just doesn't seem very safe. I know someone in Wales (shout out to Max… there is no way he will be reading this but thanks for not complaining when I made extremely lame comments while we watched the wrestling. ANYWAY) I think his college is basically closed because it's not going great over there. Even my other friends who go to a different college than me but are a bit more local have six cases where they are. Oh boy it sucks.

In other (more boring) news, I bought Game and Triangle on mercari.jp. These are Perfume's first two albums btw and I've wanted them on CD for the longest time.

I rarely buy things online and I've never used a shopping service before (I used buyee) so it was really daunting. I kind of hate how it starts off cheap (it was basically a tenner for two CDs- a bargain) but once you add the handling and shipping fees it doubles in price. Like bruh. Here's my logic though, it normally costs like £20 to import one Perfume CD, so if I'm buying two CDs for £20, that's like getting half off right???

It's also probably going to take a really long time to ship so I'm treating this as my reward for finishing my media studies coursework… which I haven't actually finished yet. But hopefully I will have by the time the package arrives. See? I have it all planned out.

Depending on how well this goes I think I could get very addicted to mercari. Like four people are selling Plastic (my favorite Aira Mitsuki album) for £3 and it's SO TEMPTING. There's also a bunch of other Aira stuff like t-shirts and autographs and shit. Someone needs to get me away from this website oh my god.

anyway catch me refreshing the buyee order page for the next month or so