frozen octopus

When I woke up, I wanted to dive into whatever was announced at the 2024 Keynote. Then I found myself wanting to go on Mastodon and reading all the knee-jerk complaints about said announcements. Instead, I grabbed some coffee, iPad with pencil, and a spot on the couch looking out at the Skytree. Giving myself some points for fading into the day today.

When someone asks me "how was your show last night?", I usually just say it was a good show and add some memorable details. On rare occasions, something annoying happens and I do a little rant to get it out. That's pretty rare though.

What I never do is include all the things I am actually doing for a normal local show in Tokyo.

- got all my drum gear and merch ready at home (30 min) 
- carried two heavy bags to the train station (10 min) 
- rode a crowded train an hour-ish to the club's station (1 - 2 hour) 
- carried the two heavy bags to the club (30 min) 
- wait to do soundcheck (30 min) 
- did a half hour soundcheck (30 min) 
- set up a pop-up shop at a merch table (30 min) 
- killed time til we played (30 min - 3 hours) 
- played a show (30 min - 1 hour) 
- wait until the show finishes and tear down pop-up shop (1 - 3 hours) 
- carried two heavy bags (hopefully a little lighter... ( ^ _ − )b) to the train station (10 min) 
- rode a crowded train an hour-ish to home (1 - 2 hour) 
- carried two heavy bags to the train station (10 min)

By the way, I love every second of it. I wouldn't change it for the world. I do need to appreciate the basic process and that it does require a lot of time and energy.

 Latest Project

• Bandcamp
• Apple Music
• iTunes
• Spotify
• Amazon Music

There are two Homepod Minis on my desk. Randomly one will stop playing but the other keeps going. If reach over and put my hand near the one that stopped playing sound, it suddenly repairs with the other one.

Problem solved...lol.

Here is the way I set up a view that lets people download media in Drupal. Not sure it is the" correct" way but it seems to work for me and it's very flexible.

1. Go to /structure/views  
2. Click Add view  
3. Choose to show Media of type whatever you want downloads of.  
4. Choose "Create a block" and click save.  
5. In your block add a relationship and choose Image file.  
6. In Fields, add "URI". Exclude it from display and make sure "Display the file download URI" is checked.  
7. Click into Media: Name. Make sure link to media is unchecked. click rewrite results and then check" override the output of this field with custom text.  
8. Add this code...

<a href="//frozen-octopus.com/%7B%7B%20uri%20%7D%7D" download>{{ name }}</a>

9. Click Apply
10. Save the view.  
11. Place the Block somewhere and people willl be able to download media.

There is other ways to do it but I like the rewrite the field way. You have a lot of freedom to get your link looking and acting how you like it. 

Day off today. Sitting on the couch zoning out. Watching the wind blow to the cover we put on the veranda. Listening to the rain. Trying to decide between ramen or pasta. I think I am chilling out correctly?

Trying to get myself to write a blog post with my phone. Something about it doesn't feel like I am writing.

Writing on the phone to me feels more like I am texting myself even though typing is typing.

Capturing a screen recording video with command-shift-5 is awesome except for one thing. Stopping the video once you start recording isn't that intuitive. The controls are really hard to find.

When you want to stop recording, hit command-shift-5 again and the menu will appear again with the stop button.

As much as I want to have all the CSS properties memorized, that isn't a nice thing to do to my brain. Instead I visualize my CSS snippets as a garden that I weed and prune.

My CSS snippets garden used to be a folder of text files which was fine. The key to that way was naming the files so they were easy to scan. Lately I moved to an app called Snippety that's a little more fun to garden in. It's quicker to search, prune, and the name is perfect. It also supports a way to export snippets to a file which is something you should always check before you fill up an app with your notes, thoughts, and ideas.

I had a some credit for the Apple Store so I got an app called Waterllama to remind me to hydrate. Wasn't sure if I was really going to use it but after a week of using it I am glad I got it. Before I was sure I was drinking enough water all day. Getting pinged from the app at regular intervals made me realize I before I was probably drinking a bunch of water mostly in the morning and evening.

You get to set up what you normally drink and then it has a hydration percentage that gets added and subtracted from your daily score. Water is 100% hydration, coffee is 60%, and alcohol is -50%.

Nice to get "am I drinking enough water" out of my head and into an automated system. 

My French press has a space of honor on the shelf with the coffee beans. We were cleaning out the closet and I found an old pour over coffee maker I got at the ¥100 store. I washed it out and made coffee with it just now.

The pour over one had a little more of a medium-roast, dry vibe than the French press. There is a lot more of the coffee oil with a French press. Good to know I can get bit of a medium skewing cup from a dark roast instead of having to get different beans.

Middle school me made me get Iron Maiden tickets for their show in Yokohama in September. They are one of those bands I've always wanted to see live but each time they played where I am living, something always seemed to get in my way of going.

The last large venue metal show I went to was a blast mainly because there were tons of metal fans roaming the streets of Yokohama before the show. I will always love seeing a band in a small club the most. There is something fun about the build up to an arena show too though.

( ^ . ^ ) \m/

It was the last day of the 30 day animation class yesterday. Waking up today with no animation assignment in my inbox is an odd feeling.

There was a survey at the end of it asking about what I learned. I think the thing that is sticking with me about the class is not going into an animation without a plan.

Before starting the course, I would go into an animation and start drawing frame one and then frame two. After the class, I know the animation technique deeper. I can get a point across with a lot fewer frames.

I setup an Apple shortcut that randomly selects a drum rudiment from a list of 80 stored in Data Jar. It's cool to have one rudiment to figure out each day instead of a huge, daunting list of all of them. I have a drum pad and sticks in the office so I can zone out and play the rudiment a little bit all day.

I find that if you do a minute here and there all day, the practice time really adds up. A fifteen minute practice session feels like a task. One minute micro sessions fifteen times doesn't.

Cliché lyrics are in the ear of the beholder for sure. We all have those phrases that make our eyes roll. It's impossible to write and make the whole world happy. You write what makes you happy and ignore people who aren't into it.

That being said, I do have a text file with a list of cliché lines from songs on it. I add to it sporatically and sparingly. It has to be a really high level cliché to make the list. I heard two today...

• "it's a choice I have to make"
• "get my feet on the ground"

There is an old way to slightly dampen the ring of a drum using felt and a clip. You take a strong clip and clip a stack of felt to the rim. The stack is made up of strips. When you hit the drum, the felt flies up allowing the drum to sound like a drum. As the felt falls back down it gently cuts of the ring of the drum.

There are other ways to dampen a drum for sure like putting tape on the head or detuning one lug. Since I am using the house kit at clubs in Japan, it feels rude to get tape gunk on their heads or mess with the tunings.

Clipping on some felt from the local 100¥ store could be the solution to reduce some of the clanginess. It was also cool that when I went felt shopping, there was a wide range of color packs. The only things I am wondering about is which kind of clip is going to be able to stay on. Might have to go hunting for some tiny clamps.

On the way home from our show last night, I kept thinking about how punk bands in the eighties spray painted bedsheets with their logo on them. My first band made one and it was SOOOO important to us to have it behind us at every show.

I kinda want to make one for our next show but I already have to carry 1000 pounds of merch on the train.  ( ^ . ^ ) \m/

Lately I've been experimenting with running in place during pomodoro breaks. It's blowing my mind how much of an energy boost you get after five minutes of desk jogging. Set a goal of 13,000 steps per day which works out to around 10 kilometers, I think.

Good for endurance and also works out the kick drum calf muscle.

There is so much in this article that helped clear some of the fog of CSS Flex and CSS Grid for me. For some reason over the years, I kept going back to CSS Flex to center things because Grid would randomly "act weird". I thought it was something I was doing but Flex would center every time.

Cool to know the reason why. See the "Differences from Flexbox" section under "Centering with CSS Grid"

[Whole article]

When I listen to an album, I like to post it on the blog. It's useful for me to have a database of stuff I have listened to at random times.

The slog is getting them into the site so I thought I'd make an Apple Shortcut. After some struggling, the closest I can get so far is to have shortcuts Shazam the current song. The shortcut then opens the album up on Safari in one tab and an empty blog page in another tab. From there I can copy/paste the album's info into the blog post.

It's clunky-level which is one above from slog-level¹.

¹ Since this is a Drupal site, I should see if I can get the current song into a spreadsheet and import it.

It was so windy today that it deserves a blog post. I was carry two heavy bags of groceries and they we’re getting lifted by the gusts.