Cold wind, winter’s bite,
warmer seas, rising tides.
Shingle whispers,
A new wall stands,
holding—for now.
Wrapping Things Up
I spent most of last week wrapping things up for Christmas. Both literally and figuratively.
Much of the year has been put to bed already, I have a couple of things left on the ‘to do list’ that I may or may not get too before the new year. One thing I’m definitely not going to get done by the new years is the ‘Great Obsidian’ migration.
As I said last week, I’m currently in the middle of centralising all my notes from notion, drafts, google docs etc. I’m just trying to do a little bit every day to feel like I’m making progress – but I feel like I’m going to be at this for quite some time.
I started reading How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking by Sönke Ahrens the other day. I’m sort of flying though it as .. I am a compulsive note taker anyways, and i’ve used OneNote, Tiddlywiki and Notion at various times in my life. The main thing i’m reading it for, is the later discussion about the ‘System’. One thing I’ve taken away already is that I don’t need to get everything into Obsidian. Just all the notes for the projects that are in flight and might prove useful. What I need to do is have a system moving forward.
But all that can wait. I’m back home on The Chalk for Christmas and am really looking forward to being switched off for a couple of days. Before I left London, Eve and I had a little Christmas party and opened our presents to one another. She got me the Folio Society edition of Children of Dune, to go with the other editions she’s given me over the years.
Another incredible hardback:
I hope you all have a lovely break/week ahead!
On The Blog:
Been a busy week on the blog, also a big shout out to Patrick at Sentiers newsletter for linking to the Patchwork post below:
When preparing the newsletter, I almost skipped over this one by Jay Springett, since it’s nominally about Midjourney’s new Patchwork product, which I thought might be too niche for too many readers. Thankfully I changed my mind, since Jay actually spends more time on Frank Herbert and Max Barnard’s book Without Me You’re Nothing (1980), which aimed to “to demystify personal computing for a ‘computing-curious’ audience.
Without You, Patchwork is Nothing
I’ve seen a lot of (predictable) grumbling about Patchwork online from artists, authors etc. But, to me the tool feels like a big step towards Herbet’s Author’s Computer.
In the book Herbert spends considerable time describing features that are now standard in all word processors: dictionaries, spell check, grammar tools, note-taking, and organisation. He even predicts more specialised features of writing tools like Scrivener:
Apple Intelligence Is Fine
I just got Apple Intelligence on my MacBook, and I’ve spent today playing around with the summarisation, rewriting, and proofreading features.
My hot take: It’s fine.
I’ve had all these features and more running via my launcher, Alfred, for months now, so experiencing them doesn’t feel as magical as when I got LLaMA 3.1 8B running locally on my machine back in July. The model does a decent job—it’s not bleeding-edge for me, but for many people using it for the first time, it absolutely will be.
Podcast Recommendations (2024)
I haven’t done a podcast recommendations posts since the dark days of 2020, but I thought I’d do a quick one rounding up top 5 podcast series that were new to me this year.
Quarterly zine; my gift to you ✉️
Photo 365
The Ministry Of My Own Labour
- Monthly checkin with a project funder
- Team meeting for the above
- Begun working on an application with a tight Jan deadline
- Mostly been me and my computer all week. Working on/in obsidian getting podcast episodes into it, and all tagged up and referenced.
Dipping the Stacks
we have evidence of much earlier collectors. The curiosity and interest in keeping stones or fossils of different colors and shapes, as manuports, is as old as we are.
Is it really plausible that the UK’s low and stagnant productivity has nothing to do with the calibre of the people running businesses?
What is the ‘call of the void’?
Have you ever stood on a balcony, leaned over the edge and unexpectedly thought, “If I wanted to, I could just jump?”
The influencer lawsuit that could change the industry
Gifford knows, from experience, the exact angles she must capture to sell the items she features in videos: a slow, top-down panning shot of her coffee table; a few seconds of her stepping into the corner of the frame and placing cream ceramic pumpkins on her fireplace mantel.
The Intellectual Obesity Crisis
When you find yourself reaching unprompted for your phone, or hovering over the Twitter icon, invoke the “10-10-10 rule:” ask yourself, if I consume this info, how will I feel about it in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years? Doing this may help you realize that the brief sugar-rush offered by junk info is so transient and insignificant in the grand scheme of your life that it’s simply not worth your time.
Reading
I finished the book I was a beta reader for. Gonna feed a few things back in the new year.
I’m still listening to Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee. It’s just got very Dianetics heavy. Despite knowing how it turned out, The psychological/magical turn all these folks took in the 1950’s post the bomb and WW2, does actually seems super logical and understandable. We’re due another one.
Still reading: reading The Ordinal Society, Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World, and Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and the Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.
Music
كاديمية القمر الكيميائي by Dëgénéréscence
The other day my old housemate Phil messaged me to say “Heard this record and thought of you❤️” He was right. Wowowowow.
I’m going to give you a bunch of genre tags as this album is really really hard to pin down: Atmospheric Black Metal, Blackgaze, Hyperpop, Vaporwave, Cloud Rap, 90’s Video Game, Ambient Trance. That sort of gets you close to whatever is going on in this.
It’s an album thats full of sonic dream logic, just shifting and rolling though one genre and music idea after another. Incredible stuff. It sounds like something that could have only been made in 2024. Somewhere in amongst it all it reminds me of the Azerbaijani Blackgaze legend Violet Cold
Remember Kids:
Only think about the people you enjoy. Only read the books you enjoy, that make you happy to be human. Only go to the events that actually make you laugh or fall in love. Only deal with the people who love you back, who are winners and want you to win too.
Choose Yourself! by James Altucher
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