Two Studio Days

Two Studio Days

This weekend just gone was also non-stop. As I said the other week, my band is recording a new EP(?) Album(?) – we have enough material for an album. Saturday and Sunday was two 8 hour days in a windowless room. We managed to get 6 songs of Bass and Drums recorded.

Our guitarist and lap steel player are going in to the room over the next weekend to start recording their tracks and vocals etc. Despite the long days, everything went very smoothly and I think across all the alternate takes we got enough recorded to build something really cool for the final record.

We have our regular rehearsal tomorrow night and, despite having just spent two days playing the songs over and over I’m looking forward to it. Mark (drummer) and I are obviously super tight together right now and it’ll be cool to bring that to the space and be really locked in for the benefit of Paul and Matt. Who obviously still need to rehearse for their recording dates coming up.

I was thinking that I might do 301 this week on recording/being in a recording studio and how experiences of them has changed since I first went into one in 2001 when I was 15/16. But I might come up with something better to talk about – who knows!

Today (Monday) has been mostly spent catching up on admin and domestic things and also little bit of work. Definitely not a day off! Back into the swing of things tomorrow.

On The Blog

Reaching Enlightenment on Todoist

I recently reached ‘Enlightenment status’ on my productivity app Todoist. An achievement unlocked by only 0.05% of users apparently. I wrote about the software and why I love it so much.

Speaking of getting things done, here’s the one core truth I can impart from my enlightened position:

If It’s Not Written Down, It Doesn’t Exist.

Start Select Reset Zine | NOTICING

Issue #11 of my zine went out to paid subscribers on the snail mail list last week and further mail was sent in the post today to new subscribers! I have a few copy’s left (So subscribe today! big things coming next issue).

Noticing is a solo mapping game encouraging mindful exploration.
The goal isn’t to travel far, but to observe deeply.

This issue contains another ‘Quiet Quest‘ I’ve designed. I’m really happy how it’s turned out. big thanks to Paul Czege for giving the draft rules a once over and asking some valuable/obvious questions as feedback.

Permanently Moved

No show this week! I’ve been too busy! Soz. Why not check out the archive if you’re missing me!

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Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• PROJECT ENTRY has a big deadline next week, so i’ve been writing reports and design documents
• Ran out of free space in notion for PROJECT DIVE – I forked out for both of us. so i’ve made an investment in the business now lol.
• Calls so many calls
• Had my winter flu jab on Wednesday and felt rotten for days afterward!
• Spent ages futzing with my local deployment of PROJECT DIVE’s codebase. But I have some how ‘malformed’ the database. Might need to roll back some git changes.

Terminal Access

I don’t have a direct link but Klint Finley mentioned in the most recent edition of his newsletter MUTATION VECTORS that he has been reading Book of The New Sun by Gene Wolfe. A book I mentioned a few month ago seems to be having a moment – settling in to culture.

Here’s what Klint had to say:

Obsessed as I am, it’s hard to recommend. Wolfe megafans will tell you that you need to read the whole series (which they actually regard as a single book rather than as a series of books), probably more than once, before you can judge it. I’ve still only read it once. But reading the whole thing, let alone reading it twice, along with commentaries and such, is a tall order.

Dipping the Stacks

Under the radar?

Current policy proposals allow companies to selectively choose what evaluations to conduct, and fail to ensure evaluation results lead to meaningful action that prevents unsafe products from entering the market.

We should take awkwardness less personally, and more seriously | Aeon Essays

Rather than being a cringey personal failing, awkwardness is a collective rupture – and a chance to rewrite the social script

Overthinkers Anonymous

I also don’t go down the “what if” anxiety rabbit holes. I don’t do the imaginary conversations in my head with my perceived “enemies” because I don’t foster the kind of resentments that I used to. I’m much more grounded with what is going on around me than I am wondering about whether I’ll get a raise on the next round of evaluations

Why is Britain poor?

This has contributed to Britain becoming ‘the most energy-starved nation in the developed world’, hammering our industrial sector; they cite the ammonia plant in Billingham which recently shut, citing high energy costs. ‘Deindustrialisation was not the inevitable result of economic progress,’ they argue, and even services-based economies like Switzerland and Sweden ‘have kept their energy costs well below ours and avoided the erosion of their industrial base that we have experienced.’

Western game studios should be very nervous about ‘Black Myth: Wukong’

“Black Myth: Wukong” was just one of over 100 domestically made titles the Chinese government approved this year. There’s a lot more coming, which should make the gaming landscape very interesting.

Reading

I finally got round to starting: Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America by Alec MacGillis. It’s a fantastic book about ‘Amazon’s impact on the wealth and poverty of towns and cities across the United States.’ It uses Amazon as a centre of gravity to tell a much wider history and has so far covered history of cardboard manufacturing, Seattle house prices and corporate lobbying and tax breaks, steel production in the late 1800’s. Its super good!

After finishing Artifact Space by Miles Cameron last month, I read Beyond the Fringe: An Arcana Imperii Collection. A collection of novella length stories set in the same universe. Just this morning I started Deep Black – book #2 in the series.

Still on deck: Wisdom – Letters of St. Joseph the Hesychast, Puppets, Gods, Brands: Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan, Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life by Kenneth Gross

Charli XCX – Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat

I mainlined the Brat remix album this weekend on the bus to the studio. There’s some song on this remix album which in any other circumstance, would have been a legit hit.

I really like the new version of Sympathy is a Knife

Remember Kids: