Weeknotes 2

I already wish I had been doing weeknotes my whole life. Throwing down anything into a Markdown file once a week is a manageable schedule, it keeps the blog from getting stale, and it gives me something to frame events into. It helps time slow down a little.

Found:

Brian A. Anderson is writing a book on the Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound!

Bill Wear: Why I’m in Sync with Emacs

Emacs is just a text editor, right? A tool for writing code, drafting documents, or taking notes. But, as with most things that touch the depths of what it means to live authentically, it is much more than that. In my journey, I’ve discovered that Emacs is less a tool and more a philosophy, a manifestation of a way of thinking that resonates deeply with how I choose to live my life. It’s a digital reflection of my own approach to existence—one that prizes adaptability, continuous learning, community, and a profound respect for both simplicity and complexity.

Rnote

Sketch and take handwritten notes. Rnote is an open-source vector-based drawing app for sketching, handwritten notes and to annotate documents and pictures. It is targeted at students, teachers and those who own a drawing tablet and provides features like Pdf and picture import and export, an infinite canvas and an adaptive UI for big and small screens.

Austin Kleon and Jerry Saltz on being a good assistant to yourself.

AeroSpace is an i3-like tiling window manager for macOS.

Reading about BSAG exploring desktop Linux makes me want to explore desktop Linux. And:

Talking about my opinion on generative AI would be a whole other post, but let’s just say that I don’t like it, I don’t want or need it, and I don’t want to be party to wasting energy and water, just so that I can have AI summarise something for me that my human brain is already capable of doing pretty well. I certainly don’t want it forced on me.

Ultimate-64-Elite-MT is an FPGA implementation of an entire Commodore 64.

This person on Reddit uses Areas in Things as project statuses. Interesting way of approaching it!

How to live without your phone - by Sam Kriss

Technologically, there’s nothing your phone can do that an ordinary computer can’t. These machines haven’t changed the world because they have any very notable capabilities. They just have the right shape for latching onto the soft part underneath your mind. … Not using a phone taught me what a phone is really for. It’s not for communicating with other people, getting directions, reading articles, looking at pictures, shopping for products, or playing games. A phone is a device for muting the anxieties proper to being alive.

Music:

  • Obsessed with Shudder To Think this week after years of not thinking about them very often. Get Your Goat is perfect and better than I remembered. Especially love the re-recorded version of Red House on Pony Express Record where they just went full-on rock. Live From Home sounds like Niagara Falls. I’ve been listening to them so much that I haven’t played a podcast in the car in days, which is progress!
  • The Hard Quartet — Rio’s Song. Per Matt.
  • Throbbing Gristle: A Souvenir Of Camber Sands. A Souvenir Of Camber Sands is a live album by Throbbing Gristle released on the night of the performance - Dec 3, 2004.”
  • Quivers — Oyster Cuts. Per Matt.
  • Chad VanGaalen — Samurai Sword. Per Matt.
  • Roy Ayers — Everybody Loves the Sunshine. Per Sarah.
  • Mitski — My Love Mine All Mine. Per Matt.

Learned about:

All Projects” in Things | Reddit

Type All projects” when you are anywhere in the app (not in a text field). This will bring up the search menu and you can press enter when it shows up. It’s a hidden list you can only access via typing

How to get JPGs out of Halide’s Process Zero | Reddit

Process Zero is how Halide converts the RAW file into a JPG. Until you convert the RAW image to JPG in Halide, the image isnt Process Zero. Each app has to decide how to display a RAW image, and each one does that a little differently. Convert to jpg in Halide by using the +/- button at the bottom. If you open that RAW file in different apps, each is making its own decisions on how the image should look. The JPG should then look the same in each app.

How to log medication for past days in the iOS Health app | Ask Different

Chesterton’s fence

Chesterton’s fence” is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood.

From G.K. Chesterton: The Thing | Internet Archive

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

Saw:

  • PBS News Hour. Because we’re old now? It’s so slow and thorough.
  • Binge-watching Only Murders in the Building. It didn’t stick the first time we watched a few episodes. I don’t know what’s different now, but we’re hooked. Maybe because we realize it’s a drama set in a life-sized dollhouse?
  • WWE Bash in Berlin with our friends C + D.

Did:

  • Bought a lifetime account on Voicenotes. $50 was too good to pass up. This should be fun to play with.
  • Played music with my dudes. They indulged my request of Foreigner’s Hot Blooded”.
  • Walked up and down Cary St. before dinner at Pho Luca’s last Saturday. Spotted a man a little older than me walking with a mirrorless camera and long lens. He saw the X100T hanging on my shoulder and we gave each other The Nod. On our walk back down the street at Cary Court, we crossed paths again and he stopped and we compared cameras. I thought he had some flavor of Panasonic LUMIX but it was a Fujifilm X-M1. He said he had an X-20 before that. He was in town dropping off his son and said how much he liked Richmond. He’ll probably retire here at some point. If I hadn’t taken a camera with me, I would have missed that whole conversation!

Byrd Theatre

Tokyo Market

Lou Lou

Les Crêpes Carytown

Looking forward to:

  • Someday getting the Sony TC-D5 overhauled by someone who knows what they’re doing. It would sound so good in the car and through headphones.
  • Receiving in the mail: The Radio Phonics Laboratory by Justin Patrick Moore.


Date
September 1, 2024