dullneon.com

And so it begins with a conjunction.

My name is Jaffry Jalal and I don’t like links that open in new windows and tabs.

You are using a browser on a modern operating system and your IP address is currently unavailable.

But because I dislike having trackers following me around the web as much as you, I don’t save, stash, store, sieve, slice, shape, share, sell, or re-sell data about you.

As a young designer, Jaffry adopted the moniker of dullneon to front his non-commercial and experimental work. These pieces—manifested in a myriad of digital formats—explored the interplay of causality between humanism and technology, of the contemporaneous and contemplative.

Back in 1998 or thereabouts, the domain name jaffry.com had been snatched by a cybersquatter. So Jaffry opted instead for a cyberpunk-inspired low-life-meets-high-tech portmanteau for his domain name.

From time to time, Jaffry slips into the third person. This out-of-body framing builds a reasonable cognitive distance between my work self and my regular self, allowing Jaffry to, for instance, write my LinkedIn profile without me dying of cringe over-identifying with my work.

Please note:(optional) The views, opinions, and positions expressed herein are solely those of the author’s and do not reflect the views, opinions, or positions of the author’s employer, past and present. Use at your own risk. Parental guidance advised. Actual colours may vary due to display limitations or other vagaries of manufacturing. Do not use this product if you have high blood pressure, or difficulty in urination. If allergies occur, discontinue immediately and consult your physician. This product is not to be construed as an endorsement of any product or company, nor as the adoption or promulgation of any guidelines, standards, or recommendations. This product may also contain traces of nuts. Use only as directed. Action figures sold separately. Batteries not included. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Follow the white rabbit.

Oh well, whatever… nevermind

Jaffry designs things and non-things. Now and then, he also teaches design things.

0. Start with ideas.
1. Learn the rules.
2. Master the techniques.
3. Break the rules.
4. Rewrite the rules.
5. Remember you’re always learning.
6. Go back to (0).

There is this theory of the möbius. A twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop.

There is an ancient version of this site that’s archived on the Wayback Machine. The Flash player required to view my old sites has been largely erased from existence.

An obsolete plugin is the only thing stopping my cringey younger self from embarrassing me today.

It’s a wonderful day in Singapore where the time is now 23:55.

• It’s about 29°C with clouds out here in Malaysia.
• My Pixel 8 battery level is at about 30%.
• Learning to read a binary clock.
• Still thinking about the Wachowskis’ film The Matrix Reloaded which I rewatched recently. It isn’t really that bad, you know.

Updated a couple of days ago

• Wordle in the mornings.
• Tools for doodling within reach.
• A self-winding watch, thank you.
• Trying to be radical and rebellious.

Of late, I find myself saying tchotchke quite a lot.

Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino

Arctic Monkeys

In Rainbows

Radiohead

Moth / Wolf Cub

Burial + Four Tet

The Campfire Headphase

Boards of Canada

▸ Watch

I have been listening to I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME on repeat. Such a good tune.

A cat would say I’m a lazy human who’s too mentally preoccupied to properly care for a non-human companion. I would have named such a cat J’accuse. Since our personalities wouldn’t really vibe, I decided not to have a cat.

16 personality types to describe the complexity of human beings? Nope, not a fan.

Mushy fruit that smells of vomit?
Not a fan either.

Down by a goal or two?
Down by three?
Down by three again?
Down and out for thirty?

Always believe.

Before we started using computational power to make arbitrary money in the ether, some of us contributed our idle CPU cycles to search for extraterrestrials.

Because my drawing skills were shabby, I started sketching frequently to improve my technique. I sketched everywhere and on anything to visualise, brainstorm, or just let my mind focus.

This didn’t improve my drawing at all. Sketching, it turns out, got my hands to help with the thinking before the doing.

• Texticons
• Sportmanteau
• Can I Go (Archived)
• Random Notes (Archived)

Refer to Handmade products.

• Discovering joy in the daily grind.
• Tracking my music habits to feed my music habit.
• Films I would have bought on DVD if we were still in the noughties.
• For matters of profession on the odd occasion.
• Reminiscing sponsored content from the ’90s.

Refer to Advertising opportunities.

Refer to Sponsorship opportunities.

I had some ideas on creating content on OnlyFans. But I realised I didn’t have the balls for it.

Sometimes people—including you, dear reader—may have difficulty comprehending if I am joking or not. The likelihood of the problem being not me but you is positively non-zero.

I know π up to eight decimal places by heart. But however hard I tried, I could never get the subsequent digits to stick in my head. And yes, I admit trying to memorise the digits of π is irrational.

-1

The largest negative integer ever

7½

Hours of sleep I need to not be grumpy

50

Air quality index in Singapore now

183

Goals by Robbie Fowler for Liverpool

381

Unread emails in my mailbox

I subscribe to way too many mailings lists but never have enough time to read them all. This—like the unread books on my shelf—was a source of internal anxiety until I learnt about the Japanese term Tsundoku (積ん読). Now I just embrace my email hoarding habit.

If you have exceptional proposals relating to Nigerian wills, dating thrills, and Viagra pills, please send your email to honeypot@dullneon.com.

While I like it as a matter of style, I am not dogmatic about the Oxford comma though I have been made aware of its benefits by my friends in media, Zach Weinersmith’s comic and Ezra Koenig’s music video.

I love moving images. Especially artful music videos, still-­fresh classics, wonderful one-takes, conceptual typographic pieces, black and white poetry, or even the occasional lyric video where someone with good taste worked hard to make the world a more beautiful place. Also ads with that perfect song, ads that shake you to your core, that 2002 Spiderman Marvel intro which still dishes out the chills, title sequences, sweeping opening scenes, slick movie trailers, and emotionally loaded scenes that make me shed a tear take us to a place where we ache to go again.

I take lots of pictures in case I forget. (I am already forgetting to even upload them in the first place.)

But in attempting to capture a photo, was I really a part of the moment? Or did I realise I was in a moment because I was keeping an eye out for a good picture?

Is this considered ruminating?

Why am I really writing all this? What am I doing? Who am I? Where is this going? Are we human, or are we dancer? They are not all questions, but increasing so? So? So what has changed? Who knows?

If you’re in the know, know it all, or know someone who does, feel free to drop me a knowledgable note. While I do reply legit emails, I much prefer to read.

I last read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I used to read a lot more books and features. These days, getting stuck into long prose seems to require more effort. The irony is there’s an entire book about this.

The most sustained reading I do nowadays is with subtitles.

1. Really getting into Quantum Leap.
2. Studio 60 has also favourably hijacked my attention.
3. Trying to finish Beast Wars: Transformers but losing interest quickly.

You’ve spent 3 seconds here so far and your interest is—at best—flattering.

If you’ve been waiting for a twist in the narrative, well… I’ve got news for you.

There’s a clever idea I had for this part, but it isn’t here because I can’t remember it anymore. Maybe in the next version…

jaffry-2019-MBP ~ % ver_info 14.B.241220 (The Blue Screen)

jaffry-2019-MBP ~ % ver_info -a Encoding: UTF-8
Type: text/html
Caching: Operational
Validation: Complete
Colophon: Available (Classic)

jaffry-2019-MBP ~ % _

This compendium is composed with Florian Karsten's Space Grotesk and default type provided by your device.

Crafted with VSCodium, Firefox 123.0a1, Tachyons, and ECMA-262. Live data enabled by Tasker and WeatherBit.

Best viewed on a computer while listening to Floating Points.

This page of words, pictures, and code has no end — only the point where I stop talking at you.

In between watching Studio 60 and maxing out on life before the world ends, for the next version I’ll think of a better way than just stopping mid-sente

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