My story at STANCE
Here’s the story I recited at the One More Light TDOR concerts with STANCE. Specifically this is the version I performed tonight (which is slightly different than Saturday’s rendition).
Random updates
I figure it’s been a little while since my last random-updates update thing, so here’s what’s going on in my life. Because I guess some folks like knowing this stuff? Weird. Anyway.
House updates and other miscellani
My new roof is finally getting installed. It sure is loud and poundy. Supposedly this is a two-day project so theoretically they are around halfway done. Unlike most home renovation stuff I can’t easily take photos showing the progress. Oh well.
Also after trying to work on some music in my newly-rearranged basement I was finding that having the computer desk in the center of the back “wall” with keyboard way off to the left looked cool but it made actually working on music a major drag, since I couldn’t just turn and start recording, I’d have to get up and take a few steps over, and that made my workflow really frustrating. So since I couldn’t work on music today anyway (because noise) I reoriented stuff to be a bit more like how it used to be, with the desk on the left and the keyboard to the right of it, and now it’s way more comfortable to work on things.
Find me on Printables
I used to use Makerbot’s Thingiverse as my 3D printing sharing platform of choice, but it’s gone way downhill over the last few years. However, Printables, run by Prusa (makers of a very popular 3D printer), is quite nice, and provides way more functionality and way less jank. I’ve been using it as my primary source of STL files for quite some time now, and I’ve stopped bothering with uploading to Thingiverse entirely at this point.
I’d love to see more people move over there. It’s a much nicer community with better sharing, remixing, and commentary, and it’s also way faster and more reliable than Thingiverse. What’s also really nice is if you already have a Thingiverse profile, they will automatically import all your stuff over, too!
Anyway, check out my profile there.
Taking a break from stuff
So yeah I’m deep in a pain flareup right now. I made sure that all of the critical bugs in bandcrash are, to my knowledge, fixed, but I just am not in a situation where I can really work on stuff right now due to a massive pain flareup.
I was just starting to work on some music for a game jam game and Novembeat but I don’t think that’s really in the cards for me this year.
And of course now that I’m in agony, suddenly a lot of folks want to interview me for engineering roles that I’d normally be very interested in, so, thanks for twisting the knife on that one.
At least choir is going pretty well and gives me stuff to look forward to.
New pricing strategy
After years of constantly lowering my prices, trying to get a vanishingly-small amount of sales on things I care about, I’ve decided to raise everything and make it uniform, across all of my music storefronts, namely:
Here’s my pricing strategy and rationale.
épuisé
Has it really only been three days since my last random updates post? It feels like longer.
Well, here’s some more random unstructured updates.
Blorgin'
I feel like I need to come up for air, after some protracted busy-ness (not to be confused with business, which I have none of at the moment).
Random blogging
Just a random undirected ramble.
I did the thing
The plan went pretty much according to keikaku1.
I had difficulty finding the studs because there’s some particleboard behind the drywall for some reason. Maybe some half-assed attempt at a moisture barrier or something? It was pretty obvious that it was there since it was visible through the light wiring hole. I ended up using some neodymium magnets to locate some drywall screws and then verified it by drilling pilot holes. I’m not absolutely certain that they’re screwed into studs but there’s a lot more support than there was before, and those screws are at least held tight to the wall.
On the left anchor I thought I’d messed up and that there actually was a stud behind it, somehow, and I started to patch it up so that I could screw in a construction screw instead (which is why there’s plaster on the left hole in the first picture), until I remembered, oh yeah, there’s weird backing board behind some of the drywall. So I drilled a smaller pilot hole and, yep, it went through easily, so yeah, it needed an anchor after all. (I mean I already knew that based on what had happened previously, but, still.)
Also I couldn’t find the nice toggle anchors I’d bought a couple years ago, so I ended up buying some similar ones at Home Depot. Which aren’t nearly as nice. A couple of them ended up breaking off and falling into the wall, and they were just kinda not-great to work with in general. But they did their job, and everything’s tightly screwed down.
Leveling the cabinet was a pain in the ass. It’d have been a lot easier if I had someone to help me but I was being stubborn about just getting this done.
Also, I didn’t need to do any painting, as all of the paint damage happened to be behind the cabinet. Nice.
Hopefully this time it stays up for more than two years!
Also I decided to be fancy and whipped up a custom centering jig to draw the centerline for drilling the holes in the hardwood. It was absolutely overkill but it didn’t take me long to do. I’ll probably post it as a customizable object on thingiverse/printables or something.