Acoustic panels

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I’ve been building some simple acoustic panels to improve the acoustics and aesthetics in my recording studio. Mostly the aesthetics, really, but still.

I have a pretty good process for something that’s easy and cheap to build. And it doesn’t hurt the sound, at least.

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Today’s accomplishments

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I managed to actually get a lot of stuff done today, and I’m feeling quite tired, but in a good way.

  • Assembled three of my acoustic panels for the studio (and then ran out of adhesive, oops)
  • Assembled my new fire pit ring (still need the brick surrounds and probably some gravel for the bottom)
  • Set up a photo shoot for album cover art (pending the completion of the acoustic panels and some general tidying up of the studio space)
  • Got caught up on a week’s worth of dirty dishes (oops)
  • Made some more tiny tweaks to the album track ordering, and got a couple folks signed up for the listening beta (but I could still use more!)
  • Glazed my two pots
  • Also somehow managed to get some piano practice in, too???

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Album almost done — test listeners needed!

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Several years ago I started an album called “Instrumental,” which was meant to be a showcase of my game and video music production skills, and a place for all of the little leftovers from canceled projects and one-off tunes to live. I’d been considering this to be “on the backburner” for years, but a few days ago a thing made me realize that I actually had a lot of music ready to go for it, and a reason to finally get it completed.

So, that lit a fire under my ass and I’ve been working hard for the last few days on finishing up the songs that needed finishing, and pulling in a bunch more music that’s suitable for inclusion too.

Anyway, I’m looking for a few test listeners to give it a once-over to get feedback.

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Initial slipcast success!

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Today my first two slip-cast pots were unloaded from the kiln and I picked ‘em up. They came out great!

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My mold positives are 60mm across, and the bisqueware measures just under 54mm after firing, which tells me exactly what I need to know going forward. Basically anything I model needs to be 1.11x the intended final size. Easy enough to remember.

I’ll be glazing these, of course, although I’m not quite sure what to use them for. I’d only intended them for calibrating my shrink factor and they’re not really a useful size for anything. Maybe they’ll become the world’s worst cortado cups.

Diagnostic dilemma

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Okay, so, I’ve been having a lot more frustrating issues as of late:

  • Whatever my connective tissue issue is, it’s getting way worse
  • My kneecaps love to dislocate while I walk, and after 1.5 miles or so my knees start to give out under me
  • My toes also love to either dislocate or weirdly cramp at random, which is quite painful, and getting them back in place is challenging
  • My other joints (wrists, shoulders, TMJ, and sometimes elbows and ankles) are also in pain a lot of the time, and are possibly getting inflamed
  • I’ve been having frequent bouts of vertigo (which are especially troubling when I’m driving)
  • My tinnitus has gotten a lot worse recently
  • Also my GERD is back, and my usual dietary measures to keep it at bay aren’t working
  • I’m also getting occasional unexplained itchy rashes that flare up and subside after a few days
  • And I am fatigued all. the damn. time.

Yesterday I had a doctor appointment to try to figure stuff out, and while the appointment itself was pretty unproductive due to the usual crap with modern healthcare practices, the doctor did at least run a lot of labwork for me, including checking autoimmune and inflammation factors and the most common connective tissue disorder markers. It all came back negative.

She did at least refer me to a rheumatologist, but I suspect the rheumatologist is just going to look at the labwork and say there’s nothing they can do for me. Most likely the answer is going to be the usual “diet and exercise,” when my diet is already pretty decent and I have difficulty doing exercise because of the very problems I’m complaning about.

The only thing that was even slightly out of the ordinary on the bloodwork was a borderline c-reactive protein, which indicates either systemic inflammation or coronary artery disease, and given that I’m a bit overweight I can guess which of the two the doctors are going to assume it is (especially without any other markers indicating underlying causes for inflammatory disease).

There’s got to be something causing all this but the state of the medical industry means that it’s unlikely that anyone I talk to in the medical field is going to come up with ideas on their own, they’re just going to tell me “diet and exercise” and to do BPPV exercises. During the Epley maneuver the vertigo does get way worse, but completing the maneuver doesn’t resolve it.

And of course none of this even comes close to addressing my joints not moving the way they’re supposed to. I love walking but I sure don’t like the feeling of my knee bending backwards when I do so. Nowadays I need knee braces and a cane whenever I go out, if I want to have any chance of making it home without being in agony. And never mind playing DDR.

It’s just, gosh. I wish someone out there also has these problems but also knows what the cause is so that I can find some hope of understanding what I can do to make things better. There is so much more I’d rather be doing than what I’m currently capable of.

Today’s wins and frustrations

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The work on my bathroom is nearly complete. The wall is patched, the tile is fixed (and it went surprisingly well with no additional damage from the broken tile’s removal), and all that’s left is replacing the baseboard and painting. I don’t even need to be without a shower while anything cures, as it turns out.

Then I had a massage appointment out in Tukwila (across the street from the hotel I was staying at during the original bathroom remodel from hell, coincidentally enough). I felt the start of a panic attack when I was close to the end of the drive, but made it there fine.

The massage therapist’s office was upstairs, in a building with no elevator, and his office was locked and the instructions said to wait out in the hallway if that’s the case. My knees were acting up much more than usual today, so of course I got to sit out in the hallway while I heard the massage therapist just chatting with his previous client for 20 minutes about fishing. And then when they finally decided to end the yammering and he saw that I was out there he said I should have just knocked on the door to be let in. Oy.

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The return of panic

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Wellp, I had another big panic attack while driving today. Worst one I’ve had in around a year, and my usual grounding and mindfulness things didn’t help. I had a vertigo attack while entering the tunnel to the I-90 bridge, and this very quickly cascaded to a full-on panic shutdown.

I managed to make my way to Mercer Island and stopped at a Starbucks to collect myself, and then was able to get back across the bridge to make my way to Rainier Ave to drive home via surface streets, and had a good cry when I got home.

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To-do list recommendations

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Hey y'all, I’m looking for a better way of managing my to-do list for managing commissions and such. I’ve been using iCloud Reminders since it has good integration into macOS and iOS, but it has a few shortcomings, such as being a little annoying to manage nested tasks, and not having a good way to share things publicly.

I am looking for some combination of the following:

  • The ability to have nested tasks/subtasks with tight coupling between things
  • A public view where I can ideally also mark some items as private (showing as a placeholder just without any details)
  • A tagging system
  • Rough progress indication
  • Time tracking and estimation

I am NOT looking for the following:

  • A kanban board
  • Full-on project management

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