#small study blog | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

loosketches · 5 months

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couldn't sleep so I made some iterations of my last work.

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xnesstudies · 5 months

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– Saturday studies!

Being behind in my classes means that Saturdays aren't so much for resting and relaxing but for studying and catching up as much as possible. I hope you all have a great weekend!

#study motivation #studyblr #notes #new studyblr #study blog #studying #books and libraries #small studyblr #study plan

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mono-no-ke · 2 months

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my cat is a model

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blubberquark · 3 months

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Are Game Blogs Uniquely Lost?

All this started with my looking for the old devlog of Storyteller. I know at some point it was linked from the blogroll on the Braid devlog. Then I tried to look at on old devlog of another game that is still available. The domain for Storyteller is still active. The devblog is gone.

I tried an old bookmark from an old PC (5 PCs ago, I think). It was a web site linked to pixel art and programming tutorials. Instead of linking to the pages directly, some links link led to a twitter threads by authors that collected their work posted on different sites. Some twitter threads are gone because the users were were suspended, or had deleted their accounts voluntarily. Others had deleted old tweets. There was no archive. I have often seen links accompanied by "Here's a thread where $AUTHOR lists all his writing on $TOPIC". I wonder if the sites are still there, and only the tweets are gone.

A lot of "games studies" around 2010 happened on blogs, not in journals. Games studies was online-first, HTML-first, with trackbacks, tags, RSS and comment sections. The work that was published in PDF form in journals and conference proceedings is still there. The blogs are gone. The comment sections are gone. Kill screen daily is gone.

I followed a link from critical-distance.com to a blog post. That blog is gone. The domain is for sale. In the Wayback Machine, I found the link. It pointed to the comment section of another blog. The other blog has removed its comment sections and excluded itself from the Wayback Machine.

I wonder if games stuff is uniquely lost. Many links to game reviews at big sites lead to "page not found", but when I search the game's name, I can find the review from back in 2004. The content is still there, the content management systems have been changed multiple times.

At least my favourite tumblr about game design has been saved in the Wayback Machine: Game Design Tips.

To make my point I could list more sites, more links, 404 but archived, or completely lost, but when I look at small sites, personal sites, blogs, or even forums, I wonder if this is just confirmation bias. There must be all this other content, all these other blogs and personal sites. I don't know about tutorials for knitting, travel blogs, stamp collecting, or recipe blogs. I usually save a print version of recipes to my Download folder.

Another big community is fan fiction. They are like modding, but for books, I think. I don't know if a lot of fan fiction is lost to bit rot and link rot either. What is on AO3 will probably endure, but a lot might have gone missing when communities fandom moved from livejournal to tumblr to twitter, or when blogs moved from Wordpress to Medium to Substack.

I have identified some risk factors:

Personal home pages made from static HTML can stay up for while if the owner meticulously catalogues and links to all their writing on other sites, and if the site covers a variety of interests and topics.

Personal blogs or content management systems are likely to lose content in a software upgrade or migration to a different host.

Writing is more likely to me lost when it's for-pay writing for a smaller for-profit outlet.

A cause for sudden "mass extinction" of content is the move between social networks, or the death of a whole platform. Links to MySpace, Google+, Diaspora, and LiveJournal give me mostly or entirely 404 pages.

In the gaming space, career changes or business closures often mean old content gets deleted. If an indie game is wildly successful, the intellectual property might ge acquired. If it flops, the domain will lapse. When development is finished, maybe the devlog is deleted. When somebody reviews games at first on Steam, then on a blog, and then for a big gaming mag, the Steam reviews might stay up, but the personal site is much more likely to get cleaned up. The same goes for blogging in general, and academia. The most stable kind of content is after hours hobbyist writing by somebody who has a stable and high-paying job outside of media, academia, or journalism.

The biggest risk factor for targeted deletion is controversy. Controversial, highly-discussed and disseminated posts are more likely to be deleted than purely informative ones, and their deletion is more likely to be noticed. If somebody starts a discussion, and then later there are hundreds of links all pointing back to the start, the deletion will hurt more and be more noticeable. The most at-risk posts are those that are supposed to be controversial within a small group, but go viral outside it, or the posts that are controversial within a small group, but then the author says something about politics that draws the attention of the Internet at large to their other writings.

The second biggest risk factor for deletion is probably usefulness combined with hosting costs. This could also be the streetlight effect at work, like in the paragraph above, but the more traffic something gets, the higher the hosting costs. Certain types of content are either hard to monetise, and cost a lot of money, or they can be monetised, so the free version is deliberately deleted.

The more tech-savvy users are, the more likely they are to link between different sites, abandon a blogging platform or social network for the next thing, try to consolidate their writings by deleting their old stuff and setting up their own site, only to let the domain lapse. The more tech-savvy users are, the more likely they are to mess with the HTML of their templates or try out different blogging software.

If content is spread between multiple sites, or if links link to social network posts that link to blog post with a comment that links to a reddit comment that links to a geocities page, any link could break. If content is consolidated in a forum, maybe Archive team could save all of it with some advance notice.

All this could mean that indie games/game design theory/pixel art resources are uniquely lost, and games studies/theory of games criticism/literary criticism applied to games are especially affected by link rot. The semi-professional, semi-hobbyist indie dev, the writer straddling the line between academic and reviewer, they seem the most affected. Artists who start out just doodling and posting their work, who then get hired to work on a game, their posts are deleted. GameFAQs stay online, Steam reviews stay online, but dev logs, forums and blog comment sections are lost.

Or maybe it's only confirmation bias. If I was into restoring old cars, or knitting, or collecting stamps, or any other thing I'd think that particular community is uniquely affected by link rot, and I'd have the bookmarks to prove it.

Figuring this out is important if we want to make predictions about the future of the small web, and about the viability of different efforts to get more people to contribute. We can't figure it out now, because we can't measure the ground truth of web sites that are already gone. Right now, the small web is mostly about the small web, not about stamp collecting or knitting. If we really manage to revitalise the small web, will it be like the small web of today except bigger, the web-1.0 of old, or will certain topics and communities be lost again?

#small web #blogging about blogging #link rot #bit rot #games studies

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izel-scribbles · 5 days

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eyes

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tulipsstudyblr · 27 days

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Painting Supplies for the studio <3

As I am in an open studio type painting class this semester, it presents itself with its own challenges. Oil paint in itself is a challenge because of its long dry time and the patience that is required to work with it. I have worked with acrylic paint for the majority of my time in the arts, but I do have a new found appreciation for oils. The slow dry time does help with blending when I'm figuring out colors and color schemes, but can still be a challenge when you're someone like me who makes plenty of mistakes while painting haha.

I am the stereotype of a messy artist; it's something I cannot help, but have learned to embrace. Hence, there is a need for the paper towels, since unlike acrylics, oil paint won't come off with water. The towels have to be replaced often - I love to paint with lots of paint on the brush, it makes it a lot more fun to move the brush around the surface.

#academia #painting #oil painting #art #art student #art school #contemporary art #college #college student #student life #studying #studyblr #study aesthetic #study blog #study motivation #studyspo #university #artists on tumblr #small artist

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taraneeno · 4 months

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a soldier's wish

Illustration based on a scene from a production by the Takarazuka Revue, the Japanese all-female musical theatre troupe, featuring Rei Yuzuka (uniform).

Some footnotes about this illustration: I changed the accent colours of the original uniform from red to purple/plum. Do not fret, I'm not romanticising war or acts thereof here, I simply liked the reference image and the energy between the two characters/actors. I am also just a big simp for Rei Yuzuka, but who isn't :') It was meant to be a warm-up sketch but then something came over me and I wanted to develop it further. I used Faber Castell polychromos on Fabriano 90 gsm sketch paper. This was a great exercise for me to practise my colour theory and shading.

#art #sketchbook #illustration #drawing #traditional art #my art #takarazuka #colour pencils #small artist #art blog #artists on tumblr #art study #character art #character study #character illustration

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french75studios · 1 year

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i'll be in this exact spot all week 🪴📚 falling in love with reading again has been my new favorite thing!

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hannablism · 28 days

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Still life

#art #artists on tumblr #artwork #original art #small artist #drawings #still life #art school #art student #art study #small art account #small art blog #charcoal drawing

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justanechoflower · 18 days

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I dare you, to confess your feelings about Frisk to Frisk and not us.

(Rest is under the cut in case some people don't wanna see ship posting- there is a kiss: )

13/25 - Daredevil

#undertale #flowey #ask flowey #ask blog #art #ask undertale #small artist #undertale fanart #undertale art #paper art #frisk #frisk undertale #its so FRICKING CRINGE #i need to study proper shipping or smth this is new to me too #it sounds so cliche #anon #Flowisk #I'm just not sure how they would react specifically

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caapsart · 1 year

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my top3 Doom's characters from the band's mv

inst

#christoph schneider #rammstein fandom #rammstein fanart #character study #style exploration #style experiment #my art 2023 #small art blog

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nihongoseito · 2 months

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How do you stay motivated in self-study?

メッセージありがとうございます！ thank you for asking!

this is an interesting question for me because i've been self-studying for so long...almost 12 years at this point(?!?!). i decided to learn japanese for fun and for no other reason than because i wanted to (i'm a big proponent of "if it sucks, hit da bricks" lol). i was just a kid, so i had no idea at all how much time and effort it would entail, and sometimes i think that back then, if i had known at the time how much studying and studying and more studying it would take for me to become conversationally proficient, i wouldn't have even started. and i'm really, really glad i don't live in that world, where i never decided to self-study because i thought too far into the future and tried to quantify my studying.

so i guess that's my biggest piece of advice, even though it sounds counterintuitive: try not to plan where you're going next or any specific long-term goals, because if you're anything like me, you'll scare yourself off. if you focus just on what's right in front of you—today's kanji, your current textbook, etc.—then you'll have a much easier time remembering why you like japanese (or whatever target language you're working on!). that kind of viewpoint on learning a language makes it really clear that you are building a beautiful structure out of many discrete pieces, not just out of thin air or sheer linguistic osmosis. not only has that attitude kept me motivated, since making decisions as i go always keeps things fresh, but i also genuinely think it's helped me learn better and remember what i've studied.

also, don't be afraid to give up on something, a book or a grammar point or even a whole routine/study plan, and try something else instead. you can always come back to it later, and in my opinion there's no point trying to quantify or quantitatively evaluate your learning in that way. there's absolutely no shame in admitting something is too hard right now. plus, letting yourself feel confident in what you do know is a great boost to motivation—every single little piece is an accomplishment!

does any of that make sense?? this is how i've handled it anyway! ofc, the nature of self-study is that it's different for everyone, but hopefully the things i've said here resonate with some people :) みんな、頑張ってね！！

#thanks again for asking!!#langblr #studyblr #motivation #also with regard to japanese in particular: consider this tag an official plug for wanikani #if you can afford it it WORKS #especially if routine is a big part of your self-study #i also want to write a small disclaimer here that i grew up in a bilingual household and #became conversational in a third (non-japanese) language by high school #my experiences are NOT universal and the truth is that i am faster at acquiring language patterns than some other people #so if everything i've said here sounds crazy: it may very well be lol #(on the other hand japanese has been my only target language for five or six years now) (hence this blog!)#answered #sasha.txt

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xnesstudies · 7 months

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I’m currently re-starting the 100 days of productivity challenge!