EVs to look at in 2025

It’s been a while since I’ve done a roundup of current and upcoming EVs. Even though I don’t drive very much, I still like to keep track of where EVs are especially for everyday people who aren’t doing massive amounts of driving or cargo-hauling or whatever. I have no plans to upgrade away from my 2019 Niro any time soon, but I do know a lot of people who are EV-curious but not curious enough to do actual research, so I like to know where things are at.

With all of the FUD going around right now and the American auto industry’s hyperfixation on making everything into giant SUVs, I thought it’d be nice to raise awareness of the neat stuff that’s still happening.

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Sockpuppet website updates!

I finally got a bunch of stuff working on the new Sockpuppet website, including the music browser. Now people will have the ability to actually find something in my vast sea of content!

I still need to finish tagging a bunch of stuff to make it useful but having the functionality in place gives me motivation to do so.

I’ve also improved the “buy box” and added way more streaming providers to the sources (which of course requires more content to be filled out, too), and there’s a bunch of other functionality like being able to browse lyrics and song notes and such from album pages.

The really neat thing is that most of this stuff, even the dynamic stuff, is done using pure CSS! There’s a little bit of Javascript for a couple of things but I have some ideas about how I can remove that stuff, and it’s not like the javascript is particularly heavyweight anyway.

At some point I should release the templates as Publ samples, so that others can use this as a basis for building their own music sites too. Or something. I’m doing a lot of stuff that’s really taking advantage of Publ functionality under the hood.

Anyway, for those who follow me via a feed reader but haven’t added that site yet, it’s definitely ready to be added at this point, and I’ll be posting most of my music-related blogging over there from now on.

Tech wrangling

Just some random stuff about the state of media management in my life.

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Stuff, and things

Wow, lots of stuff happened today (meaning Friday).

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TODO

Gosh I have a lot of projects to think about right now.

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New music site!

Over the past few days I’ve been pushing myself to finally get a usable new music site and it’s finally at the point where I’m ready to have the tires kicked. There’s a bunch of stuff that needs to still be done on it but that can come later. For now it at least has vague parity with my Bandcamp page, and my wrists need a rest.

Herbie the Hornet

There’s a bit of a historical progression regarding my old high school’s mascot which amuses me quite a lot, and very few people know about it.

When I went there, the mascot was just the Highland High Hornet, our sports teams all being “The Hornets.” But nowadays it has a de-facto name of Herbie. And this has a very direct connection to me.

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The “Living Big in a Tiny House” drinking game

I watch a lot of Living Big in a Tiny House, and I have very mixed feelings about it. But there’s definitely a bunch of trends I’ve noticed with it (and also with other tiny house channels on YouTube).

  • “We aren’t actually living in it yet”
  • “My things were controlling me”
  • Moved in just one month ago, “loving it forever”
  • “We just got married”
  • Outdoor bathroom
  • “We found a great parking space”
  • “Our family had this land available”
  • “It’s a lot bigger than you’d think!”
  • Slide-out bed
  • Closet bed (especially for children)
  • Ultra-dense bunking for their five children
  • Kids saying: “We used to have our own separate rooms but now we get to play together a lot more”
  • Have to completely reconfigure your room every time you want to do something different
  • No kitchen space
  • “My smoke detector keeps going off” (or, alternately, no smoke detectors at all)
  • Super narrow, steep, tall stairs
  • Lack of accessibility in general
  • “It’s a bit tricky to do [thing that will become harder as they get older] but it’s not a problem”
  • “I don’t even miss having stuff”
  • Composting toilet (or no toilet)
  • Instruction sign on the wall for visitors to use the toilet
  • “Do you like this [composting/incinerating] toilet?” Heavy sigh followed by, “Yeah it’s pretty great once you get used to it”
  • “You totally get used to the smell”
  • Have to climb a ladder to get into bed
  • Changing bed sheets is also… interesting
  • “Close yourself off, retreat from the world”
  • Owner makes their living as an influencer
  • Owner got the inspiration from whatever YouTuber is interviewing them
  • Owner intends to start their own tiny house channel for an income source
  • “Everything I could possibly need I have right here”
  • Added storage by putting things on some sort of complicated hoisting system that totally would never fail
  • Owner lifestyle that’s one step removed from tradwifery
  • Peak Instagram decor (fake ivy vines everywhere, “Live Laugh Love”-type signs, no actual artwork anywhere)
  • General Wiccan vibes
  • Weird religious overtones to the story (got inspiration from God, prayed for a spouse, “all my prayers were answered”)
  • And of course the kids are homeschooled
  • Spare chairs as wall decor
  • Random appropriation of native culture
  • “I don’t need a TV with this amazing view!”
  • Is this actually being filmed in an Ikea model home showroom?
  • “This is really private” (usually in respect to the, again, outdoor bathroom)
  • Super water- and energy-efficient tiny house next to a gigantic swimming pool
  • Tiny house in the back yard of a gigantic house that the owners actually live in
  • Tiny house situated on a 5-acre lot otherwise used only for a fucking lawn
  • “I’m saving [tiny amount of money] on rent!”
  • Ignoring long-term maintenance costs especially for off-grid systems (batteries, septic, etc.)

Good show

I had my release party for Transitions today. It went pretty well! Around a dozen folks attended in VRChat, and another half-dozen tuned in to the stream. Everyone who came enjoyed it and had nice things to say.

I hope that over time I can get more attendance to things, but the time of day for this particular show wasn’t great, as a lot of people wanted to come but had other obligations (such as, you know, sleep). The time I chose was based on trying to split the difference between a lot of peoples' needs. But this is why I also record my shows for posting on YouTube.

This show was also really big and took a lot of work to put on and I am so freaking tired. What I’d like to do is to just start doing more frequent, smaller shows, instead of trying to do these big all-out things on a monthly basis. I should experiment with different times on day on both Saturday and Sunday (which is consistently the least-bad day for everyone) and see if I can get regular attendance going. These shows could just be for funs instead of having to be a big rigmarole.

Right now I’m super tired and I having finished the album I can at least take a break from music production for a while.

I’m also a bit disappointed with the world of indie music and the marketing thereof. I have a whole rant brewing about the asinine way that music marketing works, but tl;dr1: people only care about stuff that is coming out soon, nobody cares about stuff that’s already out. I hope I’m wrong about this. At least Transitions seems to have a bit more legs than my previous releases. (But my previous releases still exist! They’re still totally viable albums that you can buy and/or listen to!)

Anyway, I’ve submitted Transitions to a few different promo things but I’m not expecting a lot because they only care about stuff that’s upcoming or Brand New, and having been out for a few days it’s no longer Brand New. Which is just… dumb.

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The ongoing miasma that is life

Today I somehow managed to tweak my back, right before I was going to do some gardening. I ended up doing the gardening anyway. This was, as it turns out, not a greaet way to help my back to feel better.

I got yet another letter from Social Security today, which I was expecting to be one of:

  • Outright denial
  • Yet another “adult function report” to be filled out by hand at great length/pain
  • Yet another “work history report” to be filled out by hand at great length/pain

Instead it was a notice of yet another “psychological function evaluation.” On the plus side, at least this one is going to be done via telehealth, which is at least an improvement over the last time. On the minus side, it means they’re still trying to deny me based on ADHD as my sole disability, an given how the last one went I’m guessing that the ADHD screening is also going to be incredibly reductive and not actually reflective of what ADHD actually is or how it interacts with my other disabilities.

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