I moved the three really long article-style trans voice posts over to the articles section of the website. Can you believe I'm still not using a static site generator? If I write any more articles, I'll have to rethink that.
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Trans Voice Log №1
It's never too late to start voice training, so here we go!
After watching FairyPrincessLucy's video on Bubble Phonation, I wanted to find something to back that video up. Luckily without much difficulty I was able to find an NHS article covering this exercise. While the NHS article is probably not targeted towards the trans voice angle, it does provide clear instructions. Additionally, the NHS article references the cheek wobble, which I had trouble finding at all in any other video or article published on this exercise. Here's a quote from the first half of the article:
- Half fill a cup with room temperature water.
- Hold the cup in your hand, level with your chest.
- Place a straw into the cup of water and bend it towards you. Do not rest the straw on the bottom of the cup.
- Start to blow gentle bubbles through the straw. You should feel your abdominal muscles working and your cheek muscles wobble. (Check by placing your hand on your stomach and then on your cheek). It can also be helpful to look in a mirror to check this is happening. Try to control the bubbles and don’t let the water overspill.
- Now make the sound ‘oo’ while you are blowing bubbles. Your cheeks should start to wobble more and you should feel a vibration around the front of your face. Repeat this ten times, prolonging the ‘oo’ for as long as is comfortable.
Another example I found that shows this exercise (but without cheek wobble) is Renée Yoxon's video on SOVT and Straw Phonation.
While I'm not sure I quite grasp what this exercise is trying to demonstrate yet, I'm going to keep playing around with it.
Today I learned that Fireworks & Flash MX 2004 works great in Wine on Linux. I now have Flash installed on a laptop that actually has a battery. This is a win for the me-using-flash-from-the-comfort-of-a-couch community.
Site minorly revamped! The navigation from the side pages has been brought to the tumblelog, and the aside is now just a small tile rather than a bar that spans the whole left of the page.
Other recent additions include a dark mode style if your browser/os is set to dark mode (Using the @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {} query).
I made this while at work (don't tell my boss).
I did one of those "hourlies" yesterday. Fully descriptive alt text provided.
First pass at a fictional transit map for a country in one of my OC universes/stories.
I sketched my outfit every day for the first week+1 of January. Lots of work clothes with the occasional fun outfit. Alt-text contains detailed descriptions.
Currently reading through a 2002 Flash & Fireworks handbook, which has given me some web/image optimization ideas. Photos exported from Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004 with the "JPEG - Smaller File" setting.
Hello, 2025! I made bread.
Other than that, I'm only slightly revamping the layout of the site to better accomodate adding non-tumblelog pages. I want to embrace the freedom of the website format and get a little silly with it.
A sketch of a Band-Tailed Pigeon.
A sketch of a cardinal. I streamed this piece, so it'll be neat to watch it back and maybe learn from my mistakes.
An eggbug sketch as we sail off into the sunset.
Drawn in Macromedia Flash MX, mid-processed with a brush engine I've been working on, then re-imported back into Flash MX for coloring. Exported to SVG!
I imported two more bird sketches from my tumblr to fill out the content here, backdated to their original posting date. I added the missing alt text descriptions for my images as well.
The pen for my normal drawing tablet is not working at the moment, so I'm going to continue experimenting with using an iPad as a cintiq alternative. The screen resolution over SideCar is so small!
In other news, I've figured out how to combine my retro computing hobby with my art hobby: Macromedia Flash MX, from 2002, running on Windows 2000. I don't usually do lineart, but this is a way to get me practicing with it.
A while ago I had written about how my brain has started to associate certain flavors of tea with certain feelings, emotions, or situations. Before I started teaching, Vanilla Chai was my favorite flavor. I just liked the way it tasted. Teaching was something I found quite stressful, so I started drinking Vanilla Chai before a lecture to hopefully lower my nerves. I'm not sure if it was the caffiene exacerbating the stress or simple the strong flavor of it, but my brain now associates Vanilla Chai with the sick-to-my-stomach stress I felt before teaching. Drinking it on a day off? Immediately sick and unable to stomach finishing the cup.
Today, I took a sip of Green Tea and immediately thought of my sketchbook. Thinking about it, I realized that the last few times I had Green Tea was while sitting down doing some sketches during down time.
This might be fairly normal for people to experience, but it's only recently that I've started having this association of flavor with emotions/memories. I wonder if the appearance of it at this point in my life is as a result of years of therapy to reduce the severity of my dissociation.
Testing out pixquare.
(Reference came from the public domain NCTC Image Library at USFWS.)
Reviving This Ancient Neosite
Hey, it's been five years. I have a Master's degree now. (And I still haven't voice trained...) Since cohost is gone, I need a place to dump my silly little art pieces. So here we are! Let's have fun!
I'm going to backport a few posts from cohost so that I have stuff here.
Yay another bird sketch!
(Reference came from the public domain NCTC Image Library at USFWS.)
I've been doing daily every other day bird sketches and dumping them on tumblr. I figured I might as well start putting them up here as well. Here's day five, the Altamira Oriole.
Reference material sourced from the public domain NCTC Image Library at USFWS.
Today's bird is the Acorn Woodpecker.
Today I sketched an Acadian Flycatcher.
New Layout & Promise to Start
It's been almost two months since my original post. During that time I fell into a pretty bad depressive spell, especially given that my family isn't supportive and actively tries to stop me from being myself. I've finally found the drive to start again.
The site is no longer a Javascript mess. I threw out the old design and made my own (horribly coded) static site generator. I could have used an existing one, but chaining batch scripts together in an attempt to generate html was much more fulfilling.
You can expect a post that actually covers voice training sometime in the next week or two (hopefully).
Introduction
Hello, and welcome to my Neosite. I intend to use this as a blog of sorts to document my progress in training my voice, as well as other transition related things.