busybee fluffy rambles

Bandcrash

I’ve been hard at work on Bandcrash and I’m glad to see it getting some amount of attention. Hopefully people are starting to use it for things! The next major thing I want to do is to add the ability to switch web players, and figure out how to make the UI more modular so that this can work well. I have a vague plan for it but I don’t quite yet know how I’m going to deal with the UI aspects in particular. But that’s okay.

In the short term I’ll probably just hardcode selections for Blamscamp and Scritch, and then make dialog panels for them that can be swapped out as needed. And then I can just like. Document how those work, and other people could presumably make their own plugins for whatever players they want to set up.

Food

It’s been nice spending more time in the kitchen as well. I’ve gotten a pretty good rhythm of meal planning and then executing on it and then using deli containers to portion things out for later.

I’ve also been enjoying roasting my own coffee and I really ought to write something up for the coffee blog.

Other programming work

I ended up getting pulled into doing some short-term contract work on a thing, which I ended up enjoying a lot more than I expected to, but it’s still not something I want to make a habit of. But as usual, it turns out that if I’m working on things I like to work on, I don’t get the hammering in my head and the pain in my body.

I actually am still pretty good at programming. Wish I could find a job that’s sustainable in the long term, though.

Choir

The spring talent show went really well! As usual I’ve volunteered to do the editing/mixing of the recordings for the YouTube channel, and I’ve started making progress on that. The talent show is way more involved, though. I also wish I had a bit more control over the actual recording setup, but unfortunately our resources are limited and the available hardware is less than ideal.

I’ve also auditioned to perform a solo in the November concert. I actually feel ready to do that sort of thing now. I love how supportive and inclusive this choir is.

Before the talent show I was hanging out in the greenroom with the musical director and chatting about music software with her a bit. I found it a bit funny how much of a disconnect there is in music software for choir/symphony people vs. digital music producers.

For my bit in the talent show I’d scored an arrangement of a cover of a song, and gosh, Logic’s scoring is pretty awful. Logic actually started its life as scoring software, but then over time it turned into a DAW, and the scoring engine isn’t all that different than how it was back when v1.0 came out back in 1993. I keep on trying to learn something more scoring-focused (and modern at it) but I just can’t wrap my head around anything, and Logic’s scoring is Good Enough and I already know how to use Logic pretty well since it’s been my daily driver music software for nearly 20 years, now. And for all its quirks it’s still damned good.

Other music stuff

Novembeat starts in a week and I feel way too busy to do my usual thing. My plan for this year was to use Novembeat as an excuse to finally record my next studio album rather than composing new stuff, but things have me so busy right now that I can’t quite fathom doing that, either.

Eyes

Also, today I got an eye exam, and specifically asked the optometrist to test me for binocular vision dysfunction, which is super common in people with ADHD for some reason. I’d been vaguely suspecting I had it for a while and, yep, turns out I do. My next pair of glasses will have some slight prismatic correction, which will hopefully cut down on vertigo when I’m driving.

The optometrist convinced me to go with their optician for a pair of glasses, so that ended up costing a few hundred bucks for the most basic pair. I also bought two pairs on Zenni (as usual) to see if they work as well.

Driving and anxiety thereof

I still get a bit anxious when I drive sometimes but I haven’t had a full-on panic attack in a while. And I’m actually finding driving to be fun again.

I keep on thinking about what car to get next but the Leaf is doing fine for me for my needs (and budget) and I hope not to have to consider replacing it until the whole CCS/NACS situation has settled down.