<a href="https://smidgeo.com/notes/deathmtn">deathmtn</a>

8/2/2021, 1:42:17 PM

We took the pedals off to make the bike into a balance bike. So far, it does seem like he is learning to balance. And even if it’s not any better than me trying to guide him with pedals on, this is way better for my back!

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8/1/2021, 10:51:32 PM

This song is called You Must Explain the Delta Variant to Your Parent and Reschedule Your Flights. (I drew from life experience.)

I wrote it in response to this Junto challenge, which asks you to play a theme as yourself, then as two other identities.

I've been mostly making music by programming and clicking on piano rolls for the last few years, but I feel like that gets you very diverse sounds, and my stuff doesn't seem consistent enough for an identity yet. So, I played the "self" part on guitar.

The other identities are a free jazz musician (I have no idea how free jazz works, but I had fun learning you can have a fast, aggressive trumpet sound) and a dumb computer program that takes rough directions for making riffs, then makes a bunch of random choices. (It's sandworm, a weird thing I made eight years ago.)

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8/1/2021, 4:08:06 PM

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence does not look like the kind of thing I’d like to spend 123 minutes watching, but I really appreciate that they actually say the title of the movie during the movie.

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8/1/2021, 1:56:37 PM

Ah, the sneeze was the catalyst for the back trouble, but I now realize with was really me leaning over to hold the guy’s bike up, which I’ve just read you shouldn’t do.

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8/1/2021, 10:46:48 AM

Heh, I sneezed unexpectedly in a way that hurt my back.

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7/31/2021, 5:43:24 PM

Terrible Father’s Day gift removed from my apartment! Hooray for accessible book disposal.

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7/31/2021, 3:58:50 PM

I think people forget that it’s not that fun to do the learning how to ride a bike part of riding a bike. We’ve been doing a lot of bike walking this afternoon.

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7/31/2021, 3:38:34 PM

This could be someone’s album cover.

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7/31/2021, 12:05:00 AM

It has felt like a hellish week. I feel both like I've been busy all the time and like I got nothing done. Here are the tasks I've marked as done this week.

Mix trumpet version of Operational
Record guitar for multi-voice song
cherry-picking on static-web-archive
Song site
Make music site presentable
Send soff to sites
Junto draft
Junto 499 final
Figure out 3.50 charge from Target
Look for goggles
Reply to ____
Reply to ____ email
Look for water on treadmill
Talk about moving condo bank account
Run conclusion of ice cream adventure with the guy.
Taleb redux segment
Read rest of Energy and Civ
Talk about birthday party
Get audio blend app to work
Blend field recording with voice
Detailed Illinois schedule
Ask about car seat
Figure out if parents have right car seat and order car seat
Shop for and get new car seat
Reschedule flights, communicate about delta variant with parents
Ask about pizza
Write D&D recap

What I actually bother to enter as a task into Taskwarrior is somewhat arbitrary, but generally, it's one or more of these things:

- It will take significant time.
- It will be painful.
- I might forget about it.

Looking back at this list, I probably feel like not much got done because a lot of it was "defense" — stuff that's important but isn't in any way "deep". Even things like building a music web site are sort of defense. You're not actually making the music when you do that. Nor are you making music when you send music you've already made to sites that have a small chance of being interested in it.

I'm a classic defense procrastinator, though, so I guess I just have to live with this until I'm caught up on being reasonably "defended."

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7/30/2021, 8:22:31 PM

I now have a Music site with its own RSS feed. You don't really need it if you already read this blog because I made that site by using a static-web-pick to grab posts from here to put over there.

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7/30/2021, 6:40:40 PM

13 pull-ups.

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7/30/2021, 6:28:36 PM

I don't know if I searched poorly, but it looks like I mentioned my album, The Sound of the Far Future everywhere but here! Well, it has been out, and you can listen to it on Bandcamp or hear a "live" version on the web. I also wrote about it in detail in my newsletter.

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7/30/2021, 4:10:23 PM

This is the best flower pot playing I've ever heard!

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7/30/2021, 2:49:19 PM

Interlibrary loan is real! You can actually get books only available in university libraries.

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7/30/2021, 2:35:02 PM

I tried to make a nice lunch for my kid by grilling chicken fajitas because he was tired of sandwiches. Some of the grains of rice (I attempted Chipotle-style) were hard, so he spit out a bite. Then, we got into an argument about whether he should have to chew rice that was hard. His conclusion was that this was the worst lunch ever.

I’d conclude that it’s not worth trying to make food, but I enjoyed grilling, and coincidentally, my headache ended while I was grilling, so I remember it positively.

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7/29/2021, 5:21:29 PM

The delta variant has made me tired of my upcoming trip before it’s even started.

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7/29/2021, 1:39:52 PM

10-4-4-4-4-13. I took an overly long break between the fifth and sixth set because I was distracted by this interview with Party Cannon in which a member talks about getting fired from his job as a microbiologist, then flying internationally to be in SF for ten hours to play a show, then getting interrogated by the TSA, then getting to Chicago for ten hours.

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7/28/2021, 7:20:52 PM

They have cubicles at the library now. You could live the privacy dream that was early ‘00s office life.

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7/28/2021, 2:30:14 PM

Helvetica

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7/28/2021, 2:29:34 PM

35-40 min. run, 13 pull-ups.

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7/28/2021, 12:12:52 PM

Quest skepticism

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7/28/2021, 10:52:10 AM

We’ve got a lot going on here. Convenient fact: Kids love recurring characters. So, bringing back old bad guys is actually a better value for effort than coming up with new ones.

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7/27/2021, 6:33:43 PM

My friend Sam does these videos in which he pairs original music with videos of himself drawing. They're very peaceful. This one has an adventurous feel. It's just a touch dungeon synth.

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7/27/2021, 10:20:56 AM

Earth looks like it has some fun.

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7/27/2021, 9:42:02 AM

I made this altered soundscape, which I call "Closing" (you can see why in the middle of the piece), as part of this challenge, which asks that you add an imperceptible sound to a field recording, then make it become more obvious.

I found the imperceptible part really hard because I know where the added sound came from, and therefore can always perceive it. I did run it by Katt, and it didn't jump out at her, so I counted it as good enough since I didn't have time to survey a whole bunch of people.

I don't know if I'll think of this as "successful" in a month, but it was indeed a good exercise.

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