Weeknotes 2
I already wish I had been doing weeknotes my whole life. Throwing down anything into a Markdown file once a week is a manageable schedule, it keeps the blog from getting stale, and it gives me something to frame events into. It helps time slow down a little.
Found:
Brian A. Anderson is writing a book on the Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound!
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Bill Wear: Why I’m in Sync with Emacs
Emacs is just a text editor, right? A tool for writing code, drafting documents, or taking notes. But, as with most things that touch the depths of what it means to live authentically, it is much more than that. In my journey, I’ve discovered that Emacs is less a tool and more a philosophy, a manifestation of a way of thinking that resonates deeply with how I choose to live my life. It’s a digital reflection of my own approach to existence—one that prizes adaptability, continuous learning, community, and a profound respect for both simplicity and complexity.
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Sketch and take handwritten notes. Rnote is an open-source vector-based drawing app for sketching, handwritten notes and to annotate documents and pictures. It is targeted at students, teachers and those who own a drawing tablet and provides features like Pdf and picture import and export, an infinite canvas and an adaptive UI for big and small screens.
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Austin Kleon and Jerry Saltz on being a good assistant to yourself.
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AeroSpace is an i3-like tiling window manager for macOS.
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Reading about BSAG exploring desktop Linux makes me want to explore desktop Linux. And:
Talking about my opinion on generative AI would be a whole other post, but let’s just say that I don’t like it, I don’t want or need it, and I don’t want to be party to wasting energy and water, just so that I can have AI summarise something for me that my human brain is already capable of doing pretty well. I certainly don’t want it forced on me.
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Ultimate-64-Elite-MT is an FPGA implementation of an entire Commodore 64.
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This person on Reddit uses Areas in Things as project statuses. Interesting way of approaching it!
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How to live without your phone - by Sam Kriss
Technologically, there’s nothing your phone can do that an ordinary computer can’t. These machines haven’t changed the world because they have any very notable capabilities. They just have the right shape for latching onto the soft part underneath your mind. … Not using a phone taught me what a phone is really for. It’s not for communicating with other people, getting directions, reading articles, looking at pictures, shopping for products, or playing games. A phone is a device for muting the anxieties proper to being alive.
Music:
- Obsessed with Shudder To Think this week after years of not thinking about them very often. Get Your Goat is perfect and better than I remembered. Especially love the re-recorded version of “Red House” on Pony Express Record where they just went full-on rock. Live From Home sounds like Niagara Falls. I’ve been listening to them so much that I haven’t played a podcast in the car in days, which is progress!
- The Hard Quartet — Rio’s Song. Per Matt.
- Throbbing Gristle: A Souvenir Of Camber Sands. “A Souvenir Of Camber Sands is a live album by Throbbing Gristle released on the night of the performance - Dec 3, 2004.”
- Quivers — Oyster Cuts. Per Matt.
- Chad VanGaalen — Samurai Sword. Per Matt.
- Roy Ayers — Everybody Loves the Sunshine. Per Sarah.
- Mitski — My Love Mine All Mine. Per Matt.
Learned about:
“All Projects” in Things | Reddit
Type “All projects” when you are anywhere in the app (not in a text field). This will bring up the search menu and you can press enter when it shows up. It’s a hidden list you can only access via typing
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How to get JPGs out of Halide’s Process Zero | Reddit
Process Zero is how Halide converts the RAW file into a JPG. Until you convert the RAW image to JPG in Halide, the image isnt Process Zero. Each app has to decide how to display a RAW image, and each one does that a little differently. Convert to jpg in Halide by using the +/- button at the bottom. If you open that RAW file in different apps, each is making its own decisions on how the image should look. The JPG should then look the same in each app.
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How to log medication for past days in the iOS Health app | Ask Different
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“Chesterton’s fence” is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood.
From G.K. Chesterton: The Thing | Internet Archive
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ’If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
Saw:
- PBS News Hour. Because we’re old now? It’s so slow and thorough.
- Binge-watching Only Murders in the Building. It didn’t stick the first time we watched a few episodes. I don’t know what’s different now, but we’re hooked. Maybe because we realize it’s a drama set in a life-sized dollhouse?
- WWE Bash in Berlin with our friends C + D.
Did:
- Bought a lifetime account on Voicenotes. $50 was too good to pass up. This should be fun to play with.
- Played music with my dudes. They indulged my request of Foreigner’s “Hot Blooded”.
- Walked up and down Cary St. before dinner at Pho Luca’s last Saturday. Spotted a man a little older than me walking with a mirrorless camera and long lens. He saw the X100T hanging on my shoulder and we gave each other The Nod. On our walk back down the street at Cary Court, we crossed paths again and he stopped and we compared cameras. I thought he had some flavor of Panasonic LUMIX but it was a Fujifilm X-M1. He said he had an X-20 before that. He was in town dropping off his son and said how much he liked Richmond. He’ll probably retire here at some point. If I hadn’t taken a camera with me, I would have missed that whole conversation!
Looking forward to:
- Someday getting the Sony TC-D5 overhauled by someone who knows what they’re doing. It would sound so good in the car and through headphones.
- Receiving in the mail: The Radio Phonics Laboratory by Justin Patrick Moore.
September 1, 2024 weeknotes music Carytown Fujifilm X100T Grateful Dead Emacs Linux Commodore 64 Things TV
Weeknotes 1
I wouldn’t say I’m doing weeknotes now, but boy have I taken some inspiration and stolen some ideas from three skilled weeknoters:
Did:
- Tried the AirPods Pro 2nd gen at work and the ANC does an amazing job. Nearby coworkers on video calls sound like they’re in a conversation at a far end of a plane, so you only have to play music quietly to make them disappear. But most of the day I don’t wear them. I generally like to be aware of what’s going on around me.
- Played with Dr. Drang’s Tot Notes shortcut to convert a short verbal note on the Apple Watch to a time- and location-stamped bullet on the last page of the Tot app.
- Worked a lot outside of normal work hours learning new stuff.
Music:
- Laetitia Sonami / Éliane Radigue: A Song For Two Mothers / OCCAM IX
- Fontaines D.C. — Favourite
- Chris Corsano’s list of guitar-influence records for Dusted
- So much mentally and physically replaying Echo & The Bunnymen’s Seven Seas.
Learned:
Isn’t my entire corpus of plain text notes just a schemaless database?
When using an RSS reader, reading blog posts in their native habitats is more enjoyable than the app styling everyone’s words all the same and stripping them of their personality. And all this time I’ve been using NetNewsWire on macOS, I didn’t know that you could open an article on its original website just by hitting
Return.You can arbitrarily select a bunch of notes in Bear, copy them to the clipboard, and paste their contents into a new note or somewhere else. Like, say, if you were collecting items for weeknotes.
After you’ve checked “Auto-expand tabs” in BBEdit’s preferences and you wonder why it doesn’t do anything, do this to convert tabs to spaces in the currently open document:
At the very top of the Document in BBEdit in the left hand corner, you will find the path of the file you are currently editing immediately preceded by a small gear icon. Click the gear icon and place a check in the box next to “Auto-expand Tabs”.
Found:
- Molly White’s static-timeline-generator. I would like to use this for… something.
- Tom Waits talking about his wife and collaborator Kathleen Brennan in the 1999 Mule Conversations interview.
- Want: one Pilet open source cyberdeck for org-mode everywhere, please:
Saw:
- All four long nights of the DNC convention. I selfishly wanted Beyoncé to make a surprise appearance, but in retrospect it’s a good thing that that was only a rumor. The focus was on Kamala, as it should have been, and not on just making it a show, although it was a great show.
Looking forward to:
- Watching Enchanted April again soon.
August 24, 2024 weeknotes music Tot AirPods RSS Bear.app BBEdit NetNewsWire
My questions about “Somewhere in Time”
I still dearly love Somewhere in Time (1980), even with all of its gaping plot holes. I watched it again this past weekend and it remains in my head. So here are a bunch of mostly questions and a few observations. These are almost entirely spoilers, so be careful.
Did Richard (Christopher Reeve) take any dollar bills with him to the past? If he didn’t, how did he pay for his hotel room? And if he did, why didn’t looking at those dollar bills from 1979 cause him to lose his place in 1912 like the 1979 penny did?
Susan French is a terrible choice as the older Elise. She has dark eyes and looks nothing like Jane Seymour, who has lighter eyes.
Elise’s manager (Christopher Plummer) was a huge dick for sending that politely worded note to Richard to get him to duck out of the play, only to have him beaten up and left in the hay (bound and gagged) in the horse stable, to… die? Be pooped on by a horse? What?
Did Richard really drive his convertible all the way from Chicago to Mackinac not knowing where he was going to go, and then he just happened to drive by the Grand Hotel sign, and decided to stay there? I guess the past him was telling him where to go and he didn’t realize it.
How was Elise still at the hotel to hook up with Richard when her theater company was supposed to have left for the next city the night before?
Why did Richard not realize earlier that having a 1970s General Electric cassette recorder would keep him from going into past-hypnosis? And what about the two mid-century modern lamps above the bed? Why couldn’t he get rid of those?
Richard had some serial killer eyes, especially when he was trying to literally put his foot in the door of Elise’s housekeeper/companion in 1979, and when he stubbornly loomed in the hotel door of 1912 Elise. Would not fly today.
How did Elise’s manager “know” that someone like Richard would come into Elise’s life and steal her away? Did he have a warning from the future somehow?
Did Richard buy vintage underwear in 1979 to go with his old looking suit or was he wearing 1979 underwear the whole time?
Kamasi Washington — Dream State (feat. André 3000)
Sarah introduced me to this tonight. What a journey!
Twen at The Camel
Saw Twen play at The Camel last night. Doors opened at 9pm, show started at 9:30, and we left the house around 10:30, which felt surreal and unnatural. That’s when we’d normally be thinking about getting ready for bed on a weeknight, or deciding whether to stream Ghost Adventures or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia in the background while we puttered on a Friday night. But we made it and I was glad once we got there. They were fantastic. Played every song I wanted to hear, and with a presence like they were in a bigger venue. All the vocals were spot on (from both Jane and Ian), and Ian is like his generation’s John Squire from The Stone Roses. They were really chatty and gracious when we met them at the merch table. Only wish the crowd had been a little bigger and the sound had been run better.
Jane ran her own vocal effects unit, which I can tell by my other photos is a TC Helicon Voicelive Play. Ian used the same thing probably for his vocals and/or guitar.
Thursday, June 13, 2024
All those people that I used to call on the phone to keep up with during college and post-college years — the ones I’ve almost totally lost touch with — do they care? Is that just the natural state of things and would have happened regardless of the “advances” of the internet and communications tools? Or am I a neglectful, narcissistic “friend” in name only? I feel like a call out of the blue to someone I haven’t even direct-messaged on any platform in years would be received the way it would if I they were calling me: It’s nice to hear your voice, but what’s happening here? Why are you calling? Could you have warned me first?
I like using TiddlyWiki for daily notes, but I don’t like that all these paragraphs may be perceived as related. I don’t necessarily want to put horizontal lines between thoughts. Maybe some fancy decorative character goes between each one?
Yesterday was the second day in a week that I forgot the Apple Watch and left it charging at home. Also notable: the sense of relief I had at not having it on my wrist. Hmm. To that end, I’ve finally turned off notifications for iMessage. What a self-punishing thing to have enabled.
Signed up for a Microsoft Enterprise Skills Initiative (ESI) account through work so I can learn Microsoft Power Platform stuff. I love studying new things, but how do people have energy for anything after they get done with a day of work?
June 13, 2024 TiddlyWiki Apple Watch Microsoft Power Platform