frozen octopus

I have a morning shortcut I run that runs a bunch of other micro shortcuts. An example would be one that selects a random verb for me to focus on today in Japanese.

Since I just moved over from Things 3 to Reminders, I needed to update a lot of shortcuts to add Reminders for today in from the the shortcuts. It took me a second to figure it out. Hopefully this will help someone else in the future with this too.

Reminder for Today (right now)

1. Add the "Add New Reminder" action to your Shortcut.
2. Add your text to the "Reminder" box.
3. Select where the reminder will go or leave it as Inbox.
4. Click on "No Alert" and set it to Alert.
5. Leave it set to "At Time".
6. Right click on the last box (2:00) and choose Current Date.

Other Idea

Play with the Adjust Date action to have the Reminder set to some time later.

I randomly generated this drum pattern to work on today.

LBBRLBRR

It was a little tricky at first so I broke it up into some chunks to let my hands get used to the pieces.

• LB--
• BR--
• LBB-
• BRL-
• RLB-
• BRR-

Did these for 5-10 minutes and then the full pattern was a lot smoother when I went back to it.

There were some missing description fields on a site I was working on. I filled them in because that is what one does when you find an empty description field or alt tag. This, of course, made me worried about all the other sites we maintain. So I started in on checking them.

Since the sites I am working on are with Drupal, I needed to figure out the quickest yet easiest way to get a spreadsheet of nodes with missing descriptions. Views popped into my mind right away because Views can make a table. You can quickly set up a view with the fields you need to check on.

Here is my hacky way of getting the info out of Drupal and into a spreadsheet. I was able to get all the information I needed from five sites in under ten minutes with this though.

1. Make a view and name it something you can remember (ex: junk).
2. Make a block in your view and set it to table under format.
3. Add the fields you need to check on. Mine are Title, Description, and Link to Content.
4. Set Link to Content to output the URL as text and to use absolute link.
5. In the preview, you will now have a table of all your content. Copy that table and paste it into your spreadsheet app.
6. Delete the view if you are done with it.

There are probably other ways but this gets the job done for me.

I am having good luck working with a couple simple drum patterns lately. On their own they are simple like lego blocks. When you use them together you can build.

RLLK or LRRK
RRLK or LLRK
RLK or LRK

I am practicing them as both straight and swing. It's good to be able to do both because I think the more solid my swing is makes straight more tight. That is just a theory.

Loaning my vintage Slingerland early 1970s Buddy Rich drum kit to a music school for kids was a good move. They were just sitting around in a MN storage locker. Now they are letting kids learn the drums on them.

They are probably a little too big for children. The kick drum is massive. But it is cool they get to use a classic drum kit before they move on to something newer.

I like practicing and studying things daily. I am not so into the guilt of skipping a day. My way around it is to make sure my daily practice tasks have a number like "five minutes". If I need to skip a day then I defer the task until tomorrow or some date in the future I know there is more space.

I don't mind arriving to a day and having three "practice drums five minutes" tasks. I can get those done at random times in the day and catch up. That way I know I did the work of drum practice. It allows me to keep on practicing without the daily calendar guilt of habit trackers.

A good system for rehearsal and study. Not a good system for things like taking medication.

This site uses the Drupal CMS (content management system) which has a vast amount of modules you can use to have your site do so many things. My thing lately is choosing one module and test/ruminate on it while working on other things.

So instead of just testing content migration using CSV files, I am daydreaming about as many ways to integrate that into this site (and others). Having a source of truth csv file is good way to work on content. It has made my band's website less of a nightmare to update and maintain.

The next module I did a little deep dive into was the Rate module. It lets you have things like five stars or a thumbs up feature. The Rate module is going to be fun for the albums i listen to. I want some sort of marker for albums I should revisit in the future.

The thing to ruminate on with the Rate module is when to use each feature. Do you go with stars or thumbs? If I add a star rating system to albums, am I really going to listen to a two star album in the future?

It's fun to ponder but it is also a little easier to ponder and test the modules one by one.

"Well done is better than well said." ~ Benjamin Franklin

I was doing some testing of a module called Feeds yesterday. I am migrating a ton of old blog posts to this blog. It is a perfect test for migrating data via .csv file with the module. The last time I tried it out with a large set of albums, the module choked on importing the tags. This time around, it imported about 90 plus albums I listened to with the tags in one import. That ruled. I tried it out again with a bunch of old blog posts, and it imported them all as well. That ruled even more.

Past is a Slight Pain

Setting up the .csv file to import old data isn't the most fun task. It is a lot better than doing things one by one, though. Since all my old info is in .txt and .md files, I am sure there is a way to get it into a .csv. I am actually having good luck doing that lately with various tools. This is a do this in chunks while listening to a long podcast or audiobook task. Lots of tidying.

Excited For the Future

Getting new information into a .csv file is a breeze. So many apps allow you to append to a .csv file, like Shortcuts, Drafts, etc.

For example, I can Shazam what I am listening to right now and have it append it as text to a .csv file with an Apple Shortcut. Now I can import the list of things I listened to with three clicks in the blog. That is magical.

When you start doing it with a Watch or voice command, then it becomes 2001: Space Odyssey level. You can start doing things like voice dictating ideas into blog posts. Capture all the thoughts from the day into a spreadsheet, edit all the random thoughts together, and set up a blog post. Again...three clicks to post.

Save the .csv file in the right spot, and you can post from a phone. That is wizard level. That is get things done on a train level or while you are killing time at soundcheck level.

Lately, I am all about having a starting point or anchor point. When I am stuck on where to begin tasks, chores, or errands and I can't decide where to begin, there is the starting point. Go there and head out.

In computer mode it is the to-do app where all things flow into. For home mode, I start at the back right corner of the office/living room and work out from there. On drums it is a paradiddle on the snare but lately it is a half-time shuffle.

The goal for me with a fixed starting point is to eliminate the "where to start" and "what to start on" decisions. If I can get moving on things, I'll keep going for hours. Getting going is the slog through the mire for me. 

Just got the proofs back from the factory for our new cassette. Everything seems okay, so they can start making them. Hopefully, we'll have them for our shows coming up in Ibaraki and Nagano.

Excited to see them when they are done and excited to get this album out into the world. It is a lot more raw and live-sounding than previous releases. We wanted to bash it out quickly and in as few takes as possible.

We left a bunch of little glitches in the recording because so much old punk music I love has glitches too. They make the recordings sound human, which is a valuable thing lately.

It has been a while since I posted anything here. It was an intense two weeks, and some areas got put on the back burner to simmer.

My friend's band, Flavor Crystals, had a short tour booked and needed a temporary drummer. I haven't been back to the US in five years, so it was a nice way to get me to travel back. I have made that trip so many times, but I needed a push to go this time.

Their real drummer, John Menke, is so good, so it made learning the songs and getting the shows a breeze. It was good times focusing in on just the drum parts on their songs. I'd put on headphones, take an urban hike, and sort out the vibe of each drum part.

My plan wasn't to copy each song note for note but to get the feel down. I figured that for the other members, if it felt right, then they could not worry about me so much. It seemed to work.

I am noticing a slowdown in my posting here lately.

I think it might be from having to post so many show promotions. I feel like I already wrote something, then I don't write anything here.

It also could be partly from the news lately.

Sometimes when the world news is really big/hot, it has a dampening effect on wanting to write.

It could be partly the weather. It is getting hot here quickly, and I am not used to it yet.

The humidity in Japan is a lot different than where I am from. It always takes a while to adjust.

It could be the device as well. I love my laptop, but I am a little sick of typing lately.

I should switch to the iPad and Apple Pencil, maybe. There is also pencil, paper, and then scanning with the phone, which works very well actually.

Not a huge issue, but something is off lately, and course correction is in order. Listing out all the excuses, gets them out into the light and they dry up.

Survived the MRI yesterday but if someone asked me for tips on how to get through one, of course I have a list. It was an experience for sure. 

eyes

I wish I would have had an eye mask like the ones people wear on airplanes to sleep. I wasn't in the machine all the way but I was in far enough. The roof of the machine is really close to your face. An eye mask would have stopped the temptation to look at the roof.

mind

20 minutes plus with nothing to look at or listen to. It is pretty rare in our daily lives. I got through it but practicing a complicated linear drum pattern. You can't move in the machine. I drummed by lightly squeezing my hands and feet. I got 20 minutes of drumming in and kept my brain occupied.

ears

You have giant noise cancelling earphones on. It is still pretty loud. Lucky for me I listen to a lot of noise music. It is what it is so embrace the noise and meditate on it. There were a lot of industrial beats in the racket.

Went to get a weird soreness/bump on my hip after rehearsal checked out yesterday. Off to get an MRI scan today. I think the reason it feels intense is all the build-up to the scan. I had to meet with a person that explained to me how loud and claustrophobic the machine is and had to sign off on it.

It kind of reminded me of old horror movies in the 1950s where they had you sign a release before you entered the movie to heighten the effect of the film.

Fingers crossed it is nothing.

Today's drum pattern reminded me that I should resist the dominant hand or foot. My body/mind wants to start with the dominant probably because it is easiest to get going. I should lead with the opposite of what my mind is telling me to go with. It is a little messier and chaotic but I usually find a pattern or fill that surprises me more than usual.

I went to a punk show last weekend. During a song, a cymbal stand collapsed. Someone ran on stage and fixed it, and no one blinked an eye. The person got a few glass raises in their direction.

Each type of music has its things that make the genre a genre. Someone from the audience going on stage to fix the drum kit is one of punk’s things.

The albums that I can remember what they sound like by just reading the title from last week. I really need to go back and relisten to that Jon Appleton album. It was interesting listening to all the snippets of sound back then.

• Jon Appleton Appleton Syntonic Menagerie #electronic
• Jo Ann Campbell I'm Nobody's Baby #rock
• Bennie Maupin The Jewel In the Lotus #jazz
• Booker Little Booker Little 4 & Max Roach #jazz

Other big news is I am thinking about changing the font for the blog. I really want to get the font sizes dialed in and I want it to feel more like a book. Research time.

I have a long list of albums I am slowly getting through. They come from all over the place. People tell me suggestions, find suggestions in blog posts, find lists of albums, hear things when I am out and about using Shazam, etc.

I love the list, but sometimes current me and past me get out of phase with what I want to hear. There is stuff from a couple of years ago that is kind of head-scratching to me right now. It's got me ruminating on how to handle the list.

Currently, it's being sorted from oldest to newest. While that is clearing out the albums I added from earlier, there is a lot of "huh" happening. If I reverse the sort to recently added to oldest, then stuff is going to be buried under the sediment of newly added albums. A brainstorm is in order.

Brainstorm

• One new, one old: evenly chips away at both ends of the list
• One new, two old: a little bit of me now and clears out the past quicker
• Two new, one old: a lot of now but slowly moves the old end of the list along
• MWF: listen to recently added on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
• M = old: have one day be the oldest albums
• Sun = recent Moon = old: this one is kind of tidal
• Decade = start with current decade and go backwards with each album

Half of me thinks either "two recent one old" or "MWF" would be fun. The second one is probably less thinking in the long run. The main point of all of this is having fun listening to music your own way.

Last weeks music I can remember by reading the name

• Pere Ubu Dub Housing #punk
• Mal Waldron Mal 2    #jazz

I wanted to make an "on this day in history" block to see if there are any interesting patterns with my music listening history. It is doable with a View block in Drupal with a little bit of setup. The block shows a list of albums that I listened to on today's date from every year in the past (5/15/2024, 5/15/2023, etc.).

You will be making a block with at least two contextual filters that look at the current month and current day. They will only allow content that match today's month and date. Setting up a block like this is excellent practice for working with contextual filters in Views.

Steps

Setup your View

Make a view with a block set to only show whatever content type you are posting (Page, Article, etc.).

Setup the Fields

Add whatever fields you want to display in your block. Title will work as a bare minimum.

Setup the Contextual Filters

You are going to create two contextual filters which is located in the Advanced area.

1. Select the filter for "Content: Created month" and click apply. Under "When the filter value is NOT available", choose Provide Default Value and set the Type to Current Date. Click apply this display.
2. Select the filter for "Content: Created day" and click apply. Under "When the filter value is NOT available", choose Provide Default Value and set the Type to Current Date. Click apply this display.

You should now have two Contextual filters:

• Content: Created month (Default: Current date)
• Content: Created day (Default: Current date)

Setup the Filter Criteria (optional)

If you are ok having this current year's posts in your block then skip this. If you need to NOT have posts from the current year in your block, you need to set up one more filter.

1. Add a new filter and choose what field you are using as a source for your date. Mine is "Content: Authored on".

• For the operator select "Is less than.
• For the value type select "An offset from the current time such as "+1 day" or "-2 hours -30 minutes"
• For the value, enter "first day of this year"
• For the granularity, select day.

Add the Block to your Site

Now you can place your new block wherever you want and it will show you a list of content from the current day.