I rely on an Apple Shortcut to get the current album I am listening to into a .csv that I use to import into this blog. It's been working like a charm so I thought I'd share it here for anyone that needs this. You'll have a log of all the stuff you are listening to in a file you can open up in Numbers or whatever.

Steps

First, add a "Run AppleScript" action and add this AppleScript to it.

on run {input, parameters}

set formattedDate to do shell script "date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'"       

tell application "Music"

set trackArtist to artist of current track

set trackAlbum to album of current track

return formattedDate & "|" & trackArtist & " |" & trackAlbum

end tell

return input end run

Add an "Append to Text File" action that gets the results of the AppleScript. It up to you to figure out where the file lives.

A week or so into having a MacBook Neo A18 8GB 13” to go along with my MacBook Pro M3 36GB 14”. So far, bouncing between the two feels really seamless. I like having the smaller size for moving around our place to do random things in different places.

The only times, so far, I can notice a difference between the two is booting it up when it is powered off. It takes a lot longer logging in and connecting to the Wi-Fi.

I thought not having the keyboard lit up would bug me more. I got the indigo one so the keyboard is a little dark at night. Daytime it is totally visible.

I’d recommend it for sure to friends/family. Neo is going to rule for traveling with. We were a little anxious traveling with the fancy Pro. This little laptop feels made to toss in a backpack and go. Bonus points for not having a massive power brick.

Spent some time at the rehearsal space last night getting warmed up for a show tonight. Finally got around to practicing a thing I stumbled across online. You play steady 16th notes on the hi-hat with the snare on two and four. With your kick you cycle through placing a kick in each possible slot. It was interesting seeing which patterns were problematic. For me “-ooo” was really rough on the kick drum.

I am really starting to respect exercises where you need to cycle a kick or snare through all the possible notes in a measure. When I was studying jazz comping, there is a similar exercise. I go back to it almost every day when I am practicing on my legs or desk.

These kinds of exercises are wonderful because they expose the small wrinkles and help you iron them out in your playing. Pretty much instant results in your normal playing when you work on these cycles.

Recommend

Play each one slowly for a while and relax. Let the muscles get used to doing each one. 

Positions

Key: o = hit drum, - = rest

o---
-o--
--o-
---o
oo--
-oo-
--oo
o--o
o-o-
-o-o
ooo-
-ooo
oooo

Some call it runway and 10,000 feet. Some call it earth and stars. Some call it trees and forest. It goes by many names, but they are all ways of symbolizing perspective.

Coming up with the theme is the fun part. Actually taking the time to do the perspective work is the hard part. I use the GTD system, which has around five horizons of focus that I am supposed to review.

I have them dutifully set up in my tasks app, which I dutifully skip every time they come up. Then I feel guilty about not taking stock and planning ahead. I think the hurdle for me is actually asking myself the questions. I love reviewing, thinking, and planning. But being the interviewer and also the interviewee at the same time is too much for my brain.

I've been messing around with Claude Cowork lately. So I decided to build a skill for maintaining my horizons of focus (perspective). I'm have it scheduled out to ask me the questions I need to answer to figure out my horizons of focus. It then records my answers to a simple text file that is the source of truth for my perspective.

It has instructions to always read that text file before helping me plan my day. The results so far are when I get my daily briefing, it is adding notes to the tasks I need to do with things like "this task aligns well with something you mentioned in Horizon 3: Goals and objectives".

Being reminded of the horizons like that is giving me a little boost to get that one done or going. This is a work in progress, but it is fun slowly building this robo-friend.

A while back, I made a shortcut using Apple Script that opens up all the folders in Finder where stuff collects. When I run it, an obnoxious amount of folders pop up. I am forced to close them all one by one, which is really annoying. But while I am in each folder, tasks and ideas are getting into my flow a lot more. My folder structure is getting a lot flatter. A lot of images are getting converted into text and put into where they should actually be.

Weekly might be a lot more sane for a folder cleaning task like this. I do think daily is making doing this a little less anxiety-producing though. Making decisions on a couple of files a day is a lot less mental stress than a week’s worth of stuff.

As a bonus, processing image files is breaking me of the habit of taking a screenshot to remember something. It is quick to take one, but it is just kicking things down the line for future me.

Always be learning, right? The current thing I am getting my head around is how to use Claude Cowork as a personal assistant. I signed up for a workshop and I am slowly and intentionally getting things happening.

My end goal with the workshop is to have the robot assistant help me with all the band business stuff. Something like I add shows to a show spreadsheet and merch stock levels to a merch spreadsheet. The robot assistant would check them for changes or levels and then create tasks for me.

Getting merch, shows, and podcast minutiae more automated would help me so much. We'll see how it goes.

Tag files with keyboard on Mac OS

1. Select file with arrow keys
2. Click command-I
3. Click Tab twice
4. Type the Tag

Tagging is how magic happens on my laptop. I have the Hazel app watching my Downloads and other folders, like a hawk. When I tag a file with a context (e.g. work), Hazel moves it to a Work folder. That folder also has a bunch of rules that automatically organize the file where it needs to go.

So if I tag a file in Downloads with the "work" tag plus a client tag, Hazel moves the file to the work folder, then moves it to the correct client folder in a folder with the date as a name.

I had a keyboard shortcut set up to make the tagging so easy. I would select the files, hit my keyboard shortcut, tag the files, and Hazel kicks in. It is truly magical when you tag a bunch of files and folders in Downloads and they start flying around to the spots they need to be in.

That keyboard shortcut stopped working in Tahoe though. I have tried everything to get that shortcut working, but no dice. Nothing fixed the issue. When I relaunch Finder, the shortcut works for a bit and then just quits working. Even tagging in the Finder preview window isn't working 100% for me.

Then I remembered you can click Command-I and tag a file there too. Those tags are working 100% like before the Tahoe update. Then I started noticing that it is actually just as fast tagging this way as my old shortcut was. I hit Command-I, tab, and type the tag.

Why was I so hung up on getting my shortcut working for so long? This route is the same level smooth for me. Files get tagged without touching the trackpad. It also reminds me to quit being so hardheaded trying to use this laptop. 

Every morning I respect my brain/mind by making an Americano, putting on a jazz record, and writing 200 words of free writing. It is a really nice way to fade into a day instead of reading some dire news or sitting down and laboring right away on tasks.

So morning is pleasant. But evening not so much. I really need to get a night version of that happening. Some sort of fade out to match the morning fade in.

Reading seems like a good evening bookend for morning writing. Music writing also seems like a good thing to schedule. Like making the equivalent of 200 words in sound somehow.

Don't know yet but this is a thing that is brewing. It took a bit to become muscle memory but the 200-word morning writing took for me. Seems reproducible at other times of the day for sure.

I got a shortcut setup that I run daily that I am really into right now. It is for a daily review that I run first thing when I wake up. It sets me up a little better for the day, which I always need a little helping nudge with. When I get to the end of the shortcut, I have a rough list of where I am at and kind of where I need to be heading. The list is saved in Drafts but could go anywhere though.

The shortcut starts by getting the upcoming weather.

Next is a list of prompts that asks me various questions like these. There are more and I don't need to answer them if I don't want to:

• What was the very last thing you were working on yesterday?
• Do you need to "nudge" anyone on anything?
• Is there anything you noticed yesterday that you haven't logged as a task yet?
• Are you missing any content needed to finish a milestone today?
• Are there any messages or emails from anyone that you read but didn't actually "capture"?

Then the shortcut grabs all upcoming events in Calendar for the next seven days.

After that, the shortcut grabs all upcoming things for the next seven days in my to-do app.

The shortcut then uses the Apple Intelligence "Use model" action set to on-device. There is a prompt telling it to tidy up all this info into a plan for the day. Also, have it set up to add a next action for tasks where possible.

What I get back is a nice overview of what I need to do for the day. It isn't perfect, but it is really fun.

I finally finished moving 800+ album listens from my old blog to this one. While it feels great to have everything under one roof, the process was a serious slog.

The technical side was a mixed bag:

• Setup: It took several hours of spreadsheet slog to get the data ready for the merge.
• Import: Once the data was clean, the actual import was a breeze.

The "Water Torture" Workflow

The biggest takeaway wasn't about the tech, but about my habits. I have a tendency to take giant projects and drip-feed them over months. I’ll set a repeating task like "Add all albums from today’s date" to make the work feel manageable.

I used to think "five minutes a day" was the best way to keep moving pieces forward. I've realized now that there's a mental toll to keeping a project in "active" status for that long.

Lessons Learned

I got my head around a couple categories my tasks can get sorted into:

• Slow Burn: Things like drum rehearsal. Five minutes a day is perfect here; consistency builds muscle memory.
• Burn Through: Data migrations and administrative overhauls. These are better handled in one focused "sprint" rather than being dragged out.

Dragging out a "Deep Dive" task is just mental water torture. I’m keeping that in mind when I look at my task list. Are there any other lingering projects I can kill or complete once and for all?

When I want to open an app on the MacBook, I have a keyboard shortcut setup to open the app launcher. The key combination I chose is preventing me from using a different shortcut to open the downloads folder. Since I live in the downloads folder, I had to decide on a different plan.

I decided to go all in with Spotlight. It is weird, I know, that I don't use Spotlight or the Documents folder. So I started in on doing everything with Spotlight. My life is now command-space, a right arrow push, and type the first couple of letters of the app name. It is one extra click, but it is very smooth.

The only issue is my muscle memory keeps trying to use the old shortcut. It has been days now, and my fingers keep hitting opt-command-L. It has gotten to the point where I am noting each day I keep hitting the old shortcut. How long is it going to take to unlearn a keyboard shortcut I have used for at least 10 years? Probably more like 15-20 years, maybe.

On the topic of keyboard shortcuts, a shortcut I use religiously has stopped working. I had shift-command-T set up to let me tag a file or folder. It was amazing because I have the Hazel app set up on my downloads folder to perform magic when a file is tagged. Ever since Tahoe was released, that has stopped working.

I thought it was a conflict with the Better Touch Tools app. That is not the case after some troubleshooting. If I relaunch Finder, my tagging keyboard shortcut works. After a while, it just stops working. It is very odd. Shrug level odd.

Also, when I try to tag a bunch of files at the same time, none of them get the tag. Again, odd.

Being 9,550 km away from home is stressful. Being there is more stressful of course. The news gets into your mind through the same channels though. Once it is in it is in and bounces around your brain 24 hours. The tough part is your choices of things you can do to help are more limited. You can donate, read, watch, educate yourself/others, post, etc. Beyond that there isn't as much you can do in a different country.

That's why yesterday I was pleasantly surprised when a thing someone can do from afar presented itself. My partner teaches online yoga class to people in the US and Japan. One of the students in Minnesota thanked her for providing an hour of normal for everyone.

I notice that with people I talk to from there. They are very interested in what I am doing day to day. They like hearing the boring details of me going to get ramen or playing a show. Normal life details seems to help charge peoples batteries.

It is a small thing people living 9,550 km from home get to do. Provide a bit of normal and listen to people when they let out their stress.

ICE out now.

People who live in cold places know you need to warm up your car before start driving in cold weather. Morning writing is that for my brain and the 200 word goal is just enough warm up for me. The problem is the whole what to write deal. Doing a thing daily is tedious. That's why I crow so much here about a writing trick I figure out. I also know someone has figure out anything I just figured out previously. People have been writing a long time.

Discovery

I wrote a sentence and used the last word of it to start the next sentence. It was kind of amazing how quickly I got through the 200 words. Something about not having to figure out the first word really kept the momentum going. It also kept the writing moving towards more random places and thoughts.

ex: My brain is warmed up. Up to the challenge. Challenge yourself to write. Write the last word first in the next sentence.

That style of writing has a nice ratchet effect. I like how it keeps things moving forward.

It is 2026-01-14. There are 483 albums on my list to check out. If I want to get to zero by 2026-12-31, I need to listen to about 2 albums a day. It is really 1.37, but who listens to a third of an album? Listening to three albums a day would get me to the end of the list at around June 24th. Four albums a day would get me there on May 14th.

My list isn't static, though. I am always adding albums throughout the week. Especially if we play a show and I talk to other musicians and get recommendations.

Having a huge list of things to listen to should be a thing to look forward to, but there is always that vibe that I am giving future me homework. There is also the problem that what I was into at the time isn't necessarily what I am into now.

It might be time to start breaking out the d20 and picking albums at random to clear out some albums. For me, letting the dice decide forces me to put something on despite variables that might block me from pushing play. Things like bad cover art, cheesy band name, or even "this genre doesn't go with the weather".

Knowing that listening to 3-4 albums a day is going to clear out the "clutter" does inspire me to listen to 3-4 albums a day, though.

Making the Map

Started the morning mapping out where the sounds should go on the drum pads. There are two rows of four pads which is eight sounds on the AKAI LPD8. The issue I have with mapping is my drum kit brain wants the positions to mirror a drum kit. It is possible to do that but it would be tough to play on the pads.

I think I have settled on an order for now for a traditional acoustic drum kit. It allows me to do the linear drumming I enjoy playing.

Bottom row: Kick, Snare, Hihat, crash - low
Top row: Tom, Floor Tom, Ride, crash - high

The two pads I am on the fence about are the crashes. I have a feeling on of the crashes is going to change to hihat - open or a second snare sound. I also can see the kick and snare swapping spots. Going to use this setup for now and see how it goes.

Random Velocity and Tone

Patterning app has a way to add randomness to effects. I need to look into whether or not that can be applied to the pads. If you can add slight volume and tone randomness, digital sounds sound a little more "real".

When I hit an analog drum with a stick, I don't hit at 100% every time. It is more like 96%, 98%, 100%, 95%, etc. You get the picture. Same goes for tone. If I strike a drum over and over, it isn't the same pitch with every strike. There are subtle variations.

Be Ok With the Machine Being a Machine

My drummer brain wants to play the drums on the pads. That is a things these pads can do. But that is just one of the things they can do. I need to remember to keep an open mind on what is drumming with this tool. All that matters is a beat leaves the speakers that works. How it gets made is less than how it got made. If I somehow create a beat I like using the knobs, so be it.

I spent some time relaxing in our hotel by searching for drum machine sounds. My three favorites are always Mini-Pops MP-3, Roland CR-78, and Casio SK-1. I always seem to end up gravitating to them.

When I was loading them into the Patterning app, I was struck by how different the wave patterns look compared to sound wave patterns I am used to seeing. The kick and snare wave patterns for the CR-78 look more like modern art than sound waves. I was expecting to see “www” but they look more like “O o •”.

The other thing I was noticing is that kick, snare, and high hats sound like kick, snare, and high hat. The rest of the sounds in the kits are really cool but I find myself wanting to rename them.

I’m still working out how to map out the drum pads. There are two rows of four. For the bottom row, I can’t decide between:

- Kick, Snare, High Hat, Snare 02
- Snare 02, Kick, Snare, High Hat
- Kick, Snare, High Hat, Open High Hat

It will get figured out. Just got to try each one a bunch of times and see which one clicks. Right now I like the having two slightly different snare sounds. I think there is a way to do the same effect in the Patterning app with the velocity setting.

It took a bit to settle on the drum resolution for 2026, but I finally settled on it. I am going to work on drum pads or "finger drumming," as some call it. I ordered an AKAI LPD8, which is a tiny portable drum pad setup I can use on iPad, Mac, and even iPhone.

It's not like I don't know how to drum on drum pads. I just am not that fast and smooth at it. It would be nice to be able to have the option of playing drum pads at shows where the place is too small to have a drum kit.

The next step for this resolution is to determine what success looks like. It is kind of hard to determine right now because I think I need a day or two with the drum pads to get to know them. I want to say being able to play a 1000s of cats song from beginning to end is the goal. I don’t know if that goal is too easy or not until I spend a chunk of time with them.

I've also been doing some rumination about parameters. With anything that can play samples, the options are infinite. You can literally play any drum kit or drum machine ever invented. I want to eliminate that kind of choice and just get down to playing.

This means picking a couple of kits and just pretending all the other ones don't exist. So I've chosen an analog kit option and a digital kit option. I will be "stuck" with these two for 2026.

The digital kit will be the CR-78. It is a drum machine from 1978, which I love. You'll know it when you hear it in a bunch of hits from the late 70s and early 80s.

For an analog drum sound, I am limiting the choice to my kits. I can use any drum sound that is me hitting the drum. It can be from old albums, or I can sample myself.

Applications are infinite as well. I am narrowing it down to a couple to just get rid of choice paralysis. The two apps will be Patterning and Koala. Both are extremely well-made Apple apps that I have loved for a while. I am really stoked to mess around with them using actual drum pads.

Brainstorming what I should do for my New Year challenge for 2026. I like having a loose theme for the year that levels me up a bit. Usually it is some sort of drum thing.

Past challenges were stuff like learning jazz and linear drumming. It isn’t always drums though.

For the upcoming year I am kind of leaning towards a music listening challenge.

One idea is to only listen to music released in 2026. Another idea is to only listen to Japanese music. I haven’t settled on it yet and there are still two weeks to go.

I keep flipping sides on drum or listening even as I write this. I really should choose an area that takes something that makes me nervous or anxious and level that up.

If I went that route then it would be podcasting. Talking in a microphone makes me anxious for sure. We’ll see.

When I was trying to move my phone number to a new iPhone Air, I could not get a six-digit activation code from Softbank. I was stuck in a loop which my AI, and two staff members couldn't sort out.

Finally, someone at the Softbank store in Ginza figured out what was happening. I had Private Relay turned on, which was blocking the code from arriving via text.

We turned it off, the code came, got my phone number transferred, and I turned Private Relay back on.

Search for "Relay" in Settings and you'll see the spot right away.

Drafts application is where I spend a large part of my time on my laptop. In the application there are Actions that you set up to process the text you add to a draft. There are tons of them so you can customize your actions to be your perfect text command center.

One action I use so much, and take for granted, is the "New draft from each selected line" action. It takes a list and separates the list item into their own draft.

For example, in the morning I open up Drafts or a text editor and pour my mind into it to get all the things I need to do or are buzzing in my head out of my head. I do it in a giant blob of text because formatting interrupts the process of getting things out of the brain. The problem with that is I have a giant blob of tasks and ideas that should be a list.

Then I process the blob of text with Apple writing tools using the List feature. I processes the blob and makes a list. Using the "new draft from each selected line" action I make each list item a separate Draft.

After that I can go through the list and process each item one by one. Usually what I have to do is:

1. Store thoughts into their spot (reference file or list)
2. Make an event on the calendar
3. Make a task in reminders

For the third one, there is usually three or more things to get into Reminders. Drafts has a way to process them all at once. If you select multiple drafts, you can run an action on all of them. I have a "Add to Reminders" action I run that processes them all.

This looks like a long process but beyond typing out the things in my mind, this takes seconds to do.