frozen octopus

My plan for the next couple days is put some music on, get a bunch of the little things done, and weather the storm. I am used to prairie storms that roll in a lot quicker than these lumbering ocean ones. Example, I got emergency supplies 2-3 days before it is going to barely touch the city.

One typhoon observation I've noticed is the clouds. Before one arrives, there is an interesting two level thing that happens. There is a thick top layer like an overcast sky. There is also a really low layer of small pillow-like clouds that cruise by really quickly.

While rethinking how to dictate things into Drafts, I had an a-ha moment. I really just need to get a noun into the system quickly while I am out doing stuff. The nouns are the things that change the most in my tasks. The verbs are more or less kinda constant.

I set up a quick capture system using Drafts on the watch (dictation or typing), an Apple Shortcut to add a verb to the captured noun, and then the "sentence" gets sent to my to-do list inbox.

It isn't hard to type a verb for sure but this makes it so I don't have to type out hundreds and hundreds of verbs.

Very cool. ( ^ . ^ ) \m/

Finally saw the building that the original Three Monkeys are on at the Toshogu Shrine in Nikko, Japan. I wasn't expecting it to be as profound as it was. The area it is located in has thousands and thousands of carvings. It would take you days to look at all of them. Yet this one panel which is second out of five panels jumps out at you.

🙈🙉🙊

Shift-option-command-V is the shortcut for pasting text as Plain Text. If I was less lazy, I'd go change the keyboard shortcuts so that Command-V would paste as Plain Text.

Mac OS should have a game mode for Trash. The way trash is now, you get the pleasing sound but you don't get the thrill of making a basket. If there was a game mode for Trash, you could have random mini-games popup from time-to-time when you trash a file.

It would be set up so the game would only pop-up for files older than a certain date to prevent people from making new files and trashing them just to play the game. Gaming the Trash might also encourage people to clear out digital clutter too.

By the way, I have done zero searches to see if this already exists. ( ^ . ^ ) \m/

Through years of flipping back and forth between paper and digital for idea capturing, I know I am into digital a lot more. But I absolutely love crossing off things on a list with a pencil or crumpling up a note when it is completed.

Woke up today thinking I need to cyborg my idea capturing system so that I can enjoy both digital and analog. So I took a ton of scrap paper and cut it all up into approximately business card size. All ideas will start on a scrap and then will get reviewed to see which ones will graduate to digital storage.

Pros

• Ideas incubate for a while
• Ideas get looked at at least twice
• Paper and pencils get used so i can get more paper and pencils
• Less digital clutter

Cons

• Extra steps capturing ideas
• Risk losing ideas that I might find useful not now but later

Being from Minnesota, it's always interesting to me when I hear someone from Indiana or Ohio say they are from the midwest.

For about 95% of the year, living next to a temple is cool. We get the benefit of their trees and the vibe is mellow for sure.

The one by our place has a matsuri every year. This too is also cool because I am into drums so I get to hear a bunch of drumming at all experience levels for two days.

There is one drawback though. When they aren't drumming, they play the same 10 songs on a loop over the weekend. I think I heard the same Pink Lady song at least eight times.

The activities app that comes with the Apple Watch was recording when I play drums as an Outdoor Run. That was good enough for me to get some credit for the effort and didn't think any more of it.

I noticed the other day that a fitness tracker app I started using had "drumming" as a workout choice. That blew my mind because it was the first time I have ever seen that in any fitness related app.

Last night at rehearsal I hit the Drumming button for the first time. Today when I look back at yesterday's info, it's very cool to see the drummer icon.

When I receive an answer from AI, I respond with some sort of “thanks” cause it’s kinda fun. It responds with a pleasant "you're welcome".

Is all that extra politeness band for the environment in the end? If I don't do it each time then the server doesn't have to use extra energy.

Dunno.

After ten days of quarantine and then testing make sure I am good to go, we went to Hokkaido around Muroran. Even after one day, I can feel the fog, I was unaware was there, clearing.

We have recording time set up for October and we need three more songs. If we want them to sound natural when we record, we really should be rehearsing them and playing them live for two months. So that would mean we need to get three songs written by August.

I figure might as well lean into the pressure and enjoy it.

Things that didn't exist when Biden and Trump graduated from university:

- Hip Hop
- Heavy Metal
- Punk Rock
- Arcade video games
- Home computers

This is just a short list for context. We need younger choices.

When the brain is foggy (due to medications fighting off a virus that has me stuck in a room quarentining for a stretch), small, repetitive projects are a life-saver. Getting to feel like I am getting stuff done and slowly get back into reality is part of healing from both the virus and the quarantine.

Woke up today with some wicked influenza. I was up for about thirty minutes and then slept until Noon. Decided I needed to get tested and turns out I have the virus. I got my medications and orders to stay home and quarantine for around 10 days.

That means no show on Sunday so disregard the last three posts. Such is life.

Did the first rehearsal last night playing drums on iPad and the Koala app. I had to not bring drumsticks to force myself to not quit on the digital drum pads and jump on the kit 2 meters away. 60% of the songs were smooth and we both knew right away they worked.

The other 40% were clearly the wrong approach. Not a defeated vibe but more of a signpost to take this song a different direction. Also, the direction to take each song was pretty clear but I wouldn't have found it if we hadn't tried the original idea out.

I'm also glad I know to not try to force a music idea to get it to work. Try it, move on if it isn't happening, save your mental energy for the next song, and go rework back in the mental workshop with the notes from the rehearsal studio.

I've been watching random tutorials about the sampler app I love messing around with called Koala. I'm not watching the videos to learn the app but more for triggering any ideas I can use for our show on 06/30. Two things stood out to me as a drummer:

Grid

The sequencer in the app supports not locking to the grid. This is cool because you can place snare hits slightly behind or ahead of the beat. You can drastically change the vibe of the song if you rush or delay the snare hit in the right context.

Tuning

It's easy to overlook tuning your kit in a drum sequencer because it's so fun to just jump into it and start beat-making. If you take the time to tune the kit to the project it is in, the results are a definite level-up.

For the guitar-only project I am working on, the drums become the bass. When I tune the kick and snare to match the dominant notes in the song, the boost to the feel and power is noticeable. Things lock together better.
 

Our next show is at a place with no space for a drum kit. A good chance to bust out the iPad and get things done with the Koala app. The only tough decision I am facing right now is what kind of drum sounds to use.

The cool/difficult thing about digital drums is infinite possibilities. You can load as many drum sounds and kits as you want. That level of choice can be very overwhelming if you go down the rabbit hole of trying out every kit.

I've settled on my favorite drum machine which is the Roland CompuRhythm CR-78. It was made in the late 1970s and was one of the earliest drum machines ever made.

Instink = bad instincts 

I am especially calm right now. There is something about being in the mountains.