frozen octopus

Two things I need to get sorted out for the plain text drum tabs are accents and buzzes. I did a little soul searching and digging around in Unicode.

Accents are easy to do with inverted breves from Slavic languages.

L̑ (U+004C with U+0311 - combining inverted breve above)
Ȓ (U+0052 with U+0311 - combining inverted breve above)

For buzzes I realized that if I do them, they are natural so I probably don't need to clutter up the patterns. If I really need them in a pattern, I can type a note about it under the pattern, for now. This could change in the future.

When I am out and about, I get ideas for drum patterns. Sometimes I am without pen(cil) and paper, but I always have a device (phone, watch, etc.).

I could draw music notation in a sketch app; I can't do that on the watch. I could record the beat doing some sort of beatbox with a voice memo app, but I am not going to be doing that on a crowded train.

This means I need some way to get drum ideas out of the brain and into the inbox with plain text. Using R's and L's and any other characters to get them somewhere.

The patterns will live on their own page and there might be an RSS feed in the future. I am still trying to decide how to handle that.

Patterns

I switched from using a 5B pencil to an F pencil. F definitely sounds more pencil-y. The "scritch scritch" level is a lot higher. I do like the dark line of the 5B though.

My current pencil next to the laptop status is now:

• F
• 5B
• a 5B that is barely holdable

My watch has an action button. You can set it to do things like "turn on the flashlight" and many other things. One of them is to "run a shortcut".

I finally got around to making a shortcut where I can dictate (or type) into Drafts and make a quick note. I set the action button to run that shortcut.

It rules. I can get a thought out my head and captured in seconds. I can do it on a crowded train without pulling out a phone. I can whisper the idea and it can still understand me.

Steps

1. Make a shortcut called "Action Button"
2. Add the "Get Device Details (Extended)" action and set it to "Device Is Watch"
3. Add the Dictate Text action
4. Add the Set Variable action, give the variable a name, and have it accept Dictate Text
5. Add the "Create Draft" action and have it accept your variable
6. Set you watches Action button to use your Action Button shortcut.

The only way I could get it to work was by using a variable. I tried to create a a Draft by accepting the dictated text directly and nothing would happen. Adding the variable step made it work. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Woke up today thinking about how much money hotels in Japan hotels are leaving on the table because of their tattoo rules.

One of the biggest attractions for vacation in Japan are the hot spring baths. A majority of hotels have rules barring people with tattoos from using the bath.

Estimations:

• estimated percentage of Americans with tattoos is 30%
• estimated visitors from America to Japan is between 1 and 1.5 million

That means around 400,000 Americans that visit Japan can't use the hot spring baths. Most don't travel alone so it's probably likely their group will choose a hotel that they can all enjoy together.

Let's use an easy price, like $100 for one night, to calculate.

400,000 people * $100 = $40,000,000 (or ¥5,981,400,000)

Rooms are more expensive than that usually. That number doesn't include food and drinks even. That's a lot of money left on the table because of body art rules.