frozen octopus

I am currently working on a website that has a couple hundred music releases. Each release has a list of songs. Unfortunately the song lists aren't formated correctly. They all have a number at the beginning and a time at the end and they aren't in a proper html ol list element.

ex: 1. song name 2:34

I need the "1." gone and the "2:34" wrapped in parenthesis for each song in each release. Shortcuts has an Ask ChatGPT action that is perfect for this scenario.

Shortcut

1. Get Clipboard
2. Ask ChatGPT to "Convert these song names into html <ol> and put parenthesis around the times at the end of the song name. If it has no time, ignore that step. Remove the numbers at the beginning. Give me only the <ol>: "
3. Copy AskGPT results to Clipboard

There is a few extra find/replace actions I didn't include because they are project specific. I just need to copy the list and run the shortcut and I get a nice, tidy ol list of all song names formated like this...

song name (2:34)

If you have to do a thing more than 3-4 times, there is an automation. The beauty of Shortcuts is you can make one quick, use it, and then delete it. I don't save them because creating them is great practice. Over time you start to level up your building skills.

Sidenote: I did hit a limit with ChatGPT after a while..."You've reached our limit of messages per hour. Please try again later."

We are recording in a month which has my brain in recording mode. My vibe for this next recording is to try to document the place we are recording at. If we are going to travel all the way to a studio in the mountains of Kyushuu to track songs, the listener better be able to receive some of that mountain-ness.

How do we make a record that sounds "mountain-y"? We have about 30 days to figure it out.

Finally got the Things 3 app set up for GTD using the setup guide the David Allen GTD website provides. The setup was easy and intuitive but I ran into one tiny snag for my tasks.

I get a task from work that has multiple steps to it. According to the GTD philosophy, the title of the task would be the project. All the steps are next actions that go in the various contexts separately.

Example

Project: Add the image to the website

Next Actions: 1. Get the image from server 2. Upload the image to the site

So that part is easy. The project goes on the Projects list and those next actions go on the Computer list. All three get tagged with the Work tag as well as the acronym of the client.

Problem

The snag I was running into is when I click on the client’s tag in Things to get into Focus mode for the client, I got every Project and Next Action for the client.

That was unacceptable because it switched me from Focus mode to Sky Falling mode. I needed to find a simple way to focus on just the current task.

Solution

If SKU numbers work for record labels around the world, they should work in a to-do app. I tried giving a Project and its Next Actions a SKU number with the client acronym and a number like mpls–001.

It totally worked. I went into the Anytime section, clicked the tag for mpls–001, and I got just the Project and Next Actions for that tag. Totally blissful.

"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop." ~ Confucius

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for." ~ Epicurus

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.