busybee fluffy rambles

Music stuff

After releasing Notions a week ago, I’ve been mostly working on my new music website; currently sockpuppet.us forwards to my Bandcamp page, but that wasn’t always the case, and I’m working on a site which will hopefully solve the problem of “there is a lot of music here, what should I listen to?”

I do need to get back to working on Transitions, but I’ve been feeling super busy with a bunch of other things right now. For example, the choir has started rehearsals for our next show, and I’ve taken on the role of the singer liaison which does occupy some time (although not too much).

But I’ve also been busy with Trans Academy stuff!

Trans Academy

I’ve been doing a bit more video editing, and of course working on music and sound for other peoples' videos as well. We’re in a mad rush for the Trans Academy Birthday (TABD) this weekend, which is also a nice milestone for me because the first TABD is why I ended up pursuing a position on the media team, which has been super great for me, mostly in terms of motivation to do more things for more folks. I am pretty much nothing without external motivation, and also the performances I’ve occasionally done at the Academy (or for groups that are primarily Academy-related) have been a huge source of internal motivation too, as it makes me realize that my music is worth working on after all.

I will also be on stage this Saturday for the big birthday celebration, as part of a Q&A panel for the media team! Where Azeal will be asking about what I do and what goes into making videos and streams happen. Hopefully it’ll be an informative and entertaining time!

That will be in-world at the Trans Academy group, as well as streamed on our Twitch channel, starting at 2 PM Pacific/5 PM Eastern on on Saturday, September 14. (It will also be recorded for later.)

Chronic pain

Of course I’m in pain, especially with all the stuff I’m doing! But it’s manageable for now and I’m doing a better job of stopping when things are getting too bad, rather than escalating in my usual nonsense cycle of “just one more thing.”

VR

I have some new VR toys that make my life there more comfy and also will improve my performing, when I get back to doing that. In particular, I got:

• The Bigscreen Beyond audio strap, which is a HUGE improvement over the Vive DAS I was using before, super worth it
• An alternate face mount that lets me actually see my guitar while playing it with my headset down (which will improve my eye contact and awareness of what’s happening during a performance, and also lets me do some useful things with my set list and stream chat)
• Some wrist braces and Velcro-style fastener fabric and some fabric tape which I used to make some custom hand-tracking controller straps, which work quite nicely! At some point I need to write up how those are put together, although it’s super simple

Right now I’m not quite ready to schedule my next in-VR concert but I hope it will go way better than the last one (which actually went pretty well, all things considered). I also found a much better venue which also happens to have a perfect name considering the name of my upcoming album. It’s pretty nice and also has all of the features I need to make it a good concert experience overall.

So yeah I feel like that fixes all of the issues I came across with the last one, and hopefully the next set of issues I encounter will be easier to deal with.

I also finally figured out a better placement for my base stations, which has improved my tracking (and reduced my frustration) enormously. It’s also meant that I can now play Beat Saber again.

Cooking

I still need to get around to writing up my amazing steak marinade recipe.

I also finally bought a gas grill; a few weeks ago I was looking for used grills on Facebook and most of them were pretty meh, but there was an interesting deal on a really nice one and I sent a question to the seller, and he didn’t get back to me.

Until today, when he got back to me, and an hour later I had a new gas grill.

Specifically it’s a Fuego F24C, which I got for $150, plus the seller sold me his propane tank for another $30. It needs a bit of repair work and a thorough cleaning before it’ll be super functional but as-is it works, and I’ve already ordered some of the replacement parts. So I’m about $220 in on it, which is still way better than spending $250 on a disposable piece of crap, and this grill still goes for $650 (without tank) new, so I feel like I made out pretty well on this deal.

Also! A month ago I finally bought myself a mini rice cooker and that’s turned out to be a really good investment. I used to feel like I had no reason to get one since making rice on the stovetop is super easy, but yet I wasn’t doing it very often because it’s a hassle. Now I’m just always making rice and that’s actually improved my dietary tendencies, and I’ve actually been losing weight fairly steadily.

Coffee

I’ve also been drinking a lot more coffee lately, as I’ve figured out the magic recipe for perfectly-roasted coffee: 5 minutes at 980W, 2 minutes at 1150W, cool for 3 minutes. It’s super easy to do without a lot of hassle, and always results in really good coffee. The roast level seems to be up to the beans themselves rather than the roast profile (so much for all the science I’d been doing!) but it also seems to always give me the best flavor for the specific coffee. I’m still tracking my first crack time (which seems to always be right around 5:30 long) but I’m not worrying so much about the stats.

Oh, also, I finally got myself a cheap phin (Vietnamese coffee dripper) and that’s been fun to mess with too. I’ve found that rather than using a spoon to dose the condensed milk, loading it up into a squeeze bottle makes for a much easier, cleaner process. Also I prefer having a smaller amount of condensed milk, so it doesn’t overwhelm the coffee and make it super syrupy.