I received a Apple Gift Card from work for Thanksgiving which was a cool surprise. I used it to get four apps I've had my eye on lately. Very fun to mess around with over the long weekend.

1. MusicBox: An app that is basically a listen later list for music. You can tag albums and it has built in Shazam support which are both handy.
2. Stop Motion Studio: An app for making stop motion videos that I am going to use for flyers and videos.
3. When Did I?: A reminder app but in reverse but telling you when you last did something.
4. Logger for Shortcuts: A console type app for debugging Apple Shortcuts. Cool for the really long Rube Goldberg-esque shortcuts I make sometimes.

I met some friends in Asakusa and we went souvenir shopping for them. We kept seeing people walking around with Kumade (lucky rake). After no luck finding where they were sold, I asked someone holding one where they got it. Turns out it was from a temple called Otori about 10 minutes walk from where we were.

We took sort of a back way to get there and found a ton of street food and shichimi stands. They got shichimi to take back friends and we got to the back of the temple.

It was amazing. There were endless stands set up to sell the elaborate rakes. It was like you were in a glittering tunnel of rakes. The din of the people selling was incredible too. Every time they sold a bigger one, they'd do a chant for the buyer.

My friend got one and then they got some beer to celebrate. Totally fun. Then we went out to look at the front and realized there was a line blocks long to get in. We'd skipped maybe two hours wait unintentionally by going in the back way like total amateurs.

For this blog, I am only allowing myself to fix, add, or update one part of the site per day. When I come here I want to mess around in the admin area so much. I need to post a post when I come here not click all the fancy buttons.

Today's update, for the record, was to get the genres in the albums in more of a cloud instead of a list. Yesterday's was to add a recent album list on the album page. Little by little this space is filling up.

Each time I listen to an old record, I try to note an interesting bit of typography on a blank business card. I'm slowly building up a nice deck of design cards to reference in the future.

The plan is to use them in the for vignettes on websites. There are a lot of interesting ideas on those covers that could be done with CSS and CSS variables.

I am up a mountain in an onsen town. That should be enough so why do I feel like I need to type something more deep?

I am up a mountain in an onsen town.

There is something about the arc of going to and coming back from a show that resonates with me.

It isn't just being at the show itself. It is the whole process of thinking about the show, studying up on who is playing, exploring the area around the venue, time tables, talking to people, thinking about future music, and things like that.

Then when you get back there is stuff to put away, things I've gathered to check out later to peruse, choosing wind down music, and things like that.

You change slightly after going out for some music. It's like you are a meteor and something bumps your course slightly. It changes your orbit a bit.

Took advantage of the dollar to yen exchange rate and leveled up my winter coat. A random fashion reset which is rare for me. Enough so that my significant keeps asking me "who are you". Nothing too crazy but it's for sure a departure from previous vibes. Getting used to the length but have a longer one is already better for waiting on a train platform.

Got four meters of green fabric in Nippori's fabric town the other day. A two meter sheet of at a photo shop is like 10000円/$100 or something. I got the four meters for 400円/$4.

Finally got around to doing a green screen chroma key test and it totally worked. Just need to figure out some way to do the lighting better and in a way that is portable. Also, need to get my head around getting the edge on the video being cut out.

I couldn’t resist the temptation to take photos of the fireworks tonight. I am never going to look at them or use them for anything.

I started the NaNoWriMo writing challenge a week late because a family member was in Tokyo for the first week. The writing has started and it's both mind-opening plus a slog at the same time.

I am averaging 1604 words a day so far on the NaNoWriMo challenge. My total word count is 8024 words in five days.

One thing I've noticed so far is my writing pattern has a distinct pattern to it.

I start slow and rambling for 300 words. Then some idea I should probably do someday comes out and I flesh it out for the next 800 hundred-ish words or so.

The remaining words is usually me trying to keep the ball in the air while I try to slog on to get to the 1,667 goal.

Wexwwac w wwwwwww CC W ww eves is Swwt www wwwYés what y aww weed. Wwww V w *

This was in my spot of things to post someday so it is now posted. Hopefully someone finds it useful. 👆🏻

My band's RSS feed stopped being valid. It took me a while to see what was breaking. Something with my date format was causing things to not validate. Once I spotted it, things started validating.

I had this for my date which seems correct...

Mon, 30 October 2023 08:00:00 +0900

Turns out that you need to use the short version of the month...

Wed, 02 Oct 2002 08:00:00 +0900

So use "Oct" and not "October".

My bandmate has an emoji system for keeping track of how far a long a song is. I am totally going to steal it for my random projects:

• 🥚= a new idea is beginning
• 🐣= a new idea in process
• 🐥= a new idea is finished

This blog is definitly 🥚. Not even close to 🐥.