Day 6: Windy #mbapr

Day 2: flowers 📷

Kite, with occasional symphony

Watched “Dune part 2” yesterday. In honor of one of my favorite websites of years past Review in Haiku by @mgs@me.dm , here’s my own review in haiku:

Lacks in gom jabbar.

At 3 hours, story is rushed,

Too abrupt, no vibe.

Not sure where I first saw this, I finally read through it tonight. Text editing on iOS and Android have been a source of frustration for me for many years and this is a great breakdown on thinking about the problem, from Scott Jenson:

But most importantly, fixing text editing isn’t seen as important enough in the war between Android and iOS. It’s not the flashy feature that shifts your Net Promoter Scores. What I find ironic is that a fundamental change, like fixing text editing, could make people feel much more at ease using their phones and could be an enormous reason to switch.

This is still a great book and such a fun operating system back in the day. I spent many hours on BeOS, using it full time and learning the depths of what it did. Foundation for my entire career in tech.

Listening to this Teresa Esguerra interview (drummer from Built to Spill) with Joe Wong from The Trap Set Podcast. She’s in a popular band and yet maintains her day job as an occupational therapist. Joe is a great interviewer and this is a lovely episode for anyone (non-drummers as well!)🎙️

Fixed my 1Password issues with Safari on mac OS by downgrading to 1Password 7 🤷

I’ve been keeping up with my drum playing regimen and challenging myself to learn a single song per week by listening to it for 5 minutes, jotting some notes on structure, feel, and potentially key parts. I record the performance in one take (mistakes and all) and spend some time listening back to highlight what areas I need improvement on or (heaven forbid!) what I did well!

I do this to practice my active listening skills, and really get in touch with what my body is doing during the performance vs. the final outcome. I’ve always struggled with mindfulness techniques (staying quiet some place, focusing on breathing etc) in standard settings. While playing the drums these days it has been a boon to mood, and has contributed not only to improvements to my playing but also my presence with my family and general life/mental health.

Here are some of the latest I’ve recorded:

Shout by Tears for Fears

I really enjoyed how this one turned out (and it is a great song). There is a blip at around the 2:28 mark that I’m positive is an issue with the bouncing of the track but I accept it as a performance gap on my part.

You Don’t Know How It Feels (To Be Me) by Tom Petty

What can I say about this song (and Tom Petty for that matter)? It’s a slow steady beat, a little behind the tempo (not driving) that is maintained throughout the entire song. I love the drum sound of this entire record and Steve Ferrone (of Average White Band fame among others) is an outstanding groove master. The Yamaha Rec ‘N’ Share app that I use to split instrument tracks does mess with original recording a bit (sometimes strips out too many frequencies that make the song thin or under water sounding) but certainly capable enough for me to insert my own drum track over.

In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins

This is just a snippet of the classic fill into the groove of the song. It had to be done 😂

I applied some effects and compression to try and mimic the original sound (Phil Collins uses concert toms and lots of compression in this song).

Verizon: Your bill is due.

Me: I can't log in to pay it.

Verizon: You can click the "One time payment" link.

Me: It won't accept my account number.

Verizon: That's because you cancelled your account with us.

Me: How do I pay my bill?

Verizon: Online

Me: . . . . .

I have a large phone, but c’mon Apple!

Waiting for the Sandhill Cranes to arrive

Tomorrow, Mario starts preschool. This milestone smacked me in the face tonight.

Summer can’t come soon enough. This was taken in August of last year. They are not shy and will permit close proximity.

When I was a kid, Ruben Blades was a staple on the radio and throughout our house. Love his music and his movies. Pedro Navaja

Improvisational duet between drums and gen AI: Jo Jo Mayer Me/Machine

Switched over all of my lines from Verizon to Visible. It was a very simple painless process through the app and I’m seriously going to save about $2400 a year for (seemingly) comparable service. Bananas.

I generally don’t download lots of apps on my phone or regularly try things but dammit, my mind gets twisted up over podcast apps for some stupid reason I can’t put my finger on and I cycle through using pocket casts, overcast and Apple Podcasts on a regular basis. Just me?

Make no mistake, Karen Carpenter was a master at playing drums

You know what? The sunflowers and the grasses are the creek’s popsicles…

My son, having breakfast at the creek one morning in September.

When I first began my PM journey, I felt this immense pressure of needing to know everything. Over time I have transitioned into being curious about a given use case and amp up the empathy around the problem statement. So glad to not have that pressure anymore.

I setup Starlink in September of last year and I am genuinely impressed at how it has stood up to storms, high winds, heavy snow without missing a beat on performance ~160 Mbit down/ ~18 Mbit up. Only had one outage and that was while I was sleeping.

I’ve been messing around with my drums and mic setup and I think I’ve dialed in the sound how I want it. One of the things I’ve been practicing is taking a song with lots of space and introducing little snippets of tension in the time without losing the pulse. Super fun exercise, and when done right, downright musical (not saying I have achieved this). Here’s a snippet of the song “Eat the Elephant” by A Perfect Circle that I played my own drum interpretation over:

“What are all of those pipes?”