tiredof.technology

It happened... I turned 40 last week... time flies. I figured I should write a little something commemorating the occasion. To temporarily numb reality, I treated myself to two pedals. The first is a new TC Electronic "Infinite Sample Sustainer" along with a used Wampler "Ego" compressor I managed to come across in great condition (including the box).

To be honest, I'm not really bothered by my age. While still "young in my head," I'll take 40 over being a teenager any day. Here's to (hopefully) another 40 years!

I finally saw Oddjob play Fasching last night. Arriving late resulted in my being forced to the side looking between bald Nordic heads to see the band. Due to my positioning, I was unable to get a good photo. Otherwise, it was a very electric set clocking just under an hour.

The brain is anxious
My time too precious
It's why I get nothing done
Too old to lose
This feeling lingers
It won't stop until I'm gone

- Moi
                    

I got to sit up close and witness the brilliance of Jasper Høiby's 3Elements live at Fasching in what turned out to be a somewhat unpublicized and intimate show.

Set list (from memory, so not in order, was too immersed):

• "Illusion of Choice"
• "Fluid" which did lead into...
• "Like Water"
• "What it means to be Human"
• "Flying"
• "Never Forgotten" (in honor of his sister whom he lost recently)
• I think "Breathless" was played...
• "Her Deepness," he mentioned thinking about long range swimmers who spend days in the ocean.

At this point, I've been spending a lot of time at Fasching. I'm realizing I should have bought a year membership for the early access and ticket discounts...

Fire! came to my attention after the unfortunate death of Steve Albini. Bandcamp put out a list containing loads of great records he recorded and Fire! was one of the many (new to me) that stuck out. Hailing from Sweden I figured they'd pop up at some point, they fill so much with so little. A slow burn ending in an explosion.

As for the saxist Mats Gustafsson, see here.

The wife and I headed to Fasching for the WeJazz Records night to see one of my recent favorite contemporary jazz acts Unionen perform.

"Ladder of Lights" by Cypher 7 is PERFECTION. There's something about the authenticity of time and place in its timbre that is hard to match in modern derivatives of this genre.

There's nothing more terrifying than a blank notebook. While I was exicted to start a Bullet Journal, it has been sat staring at me the past week. Of course I fucked up some big headlines at the start, but I breathed, etched it and continued on. There's a control I need to let go of with paper that I don't have with digital notes since they can be easily "fixed."

A side effect of a new notebook habit is obsessing over pens. I found the Pilot Super Grip F I had laying around to be too thin, I think it's a 0.5? So far I'm liking the selections I made today:

• Zebra Sarasa Clip 1.0
• Pilot V Sign 2.0
• Zebra Sarasa Clip 0.7 in red (for marking)

Now I need to revisit some writing tips for left-handed people. I tick all the boxes regarding "hook style," "over-tight grip" and the worst, "smudging." This is stuff I should have been taught as a child. You righties have no idea.

Saturday, I took my son to see a brass quintet (target for a younger audience) at the Stockholm Concert Hall. Roughly 30 minutes with a host. He was most excited that a tuba was present.

Sunday, I had my first semla and managed to wrap up The Invincible by Stanislaw Lem. Exploratory sci-fi involving evolved incomprehensible life forms. The moral of the story being along the lines of not everything everywhere needing to be ours or understood.

Finally, Sunday night I was gifted a ticket to see The Chameleons (pictured above) play at Klubb DÖD. They played Strange Times from beginning to end.

Every time I tried to put together a "Top Albums of 2024" list it grew so massive I just gave up. So, seeing as I'm already late, here's my top 5 albums of 2024 in no particular order:

• Lust for Gold by - Starflyer 59
• Strawberry Hotel - Underworld
• Spot Land - Gnod
• >>>> - BEAK>
• Rampen (APM: Alien Pop Music") - Einstürzende Neubauten

Starflyer 59 dropped Lust for Gold a few weeks back and it's been on repeat. I don't remember the last recent sf59 album that gut punched me like this one. Maybe it's because I'm getting older and he's older than me, but it's nostalgia done right. The lyrics in particular are simple, yet so effective.

I'm on the lyrics phase of a new track and it's always been the hardest part for me. Not just in songwriting, but finding words in any situation. I think it's part fear of sounding "dumb" (or too simplistic) and part fear of opening up.

Did you have those parents or friends as a kid that said something along the line of "Just be honest, I won't be mad." So you open up and they immediately go on the defense, feel hurt and/or punish you? I'm thinking that's what messed me up early in life.

One recent review of the new sf59 album led me to another interview from 2021 and this bit of advice stuck out:

I'm always trying to talk to myself in all these songs; I get a tad of the blues sometimes. It's kind of been that theme forever: This is the way I feel, and this is the way I don't want to be. I'm trying to have the right perspective, which I don't have most of the time. I hate being too Christian and preachy, but this is a new day that the Lord has made. I'm just trying to make the best of it.

As an only child, I'm very good at talking to myself... I just need to make a habit of writing down those conversations.

via Stat Significant:

The pervasive nature of music paralysis across generations suggests that the phenomenon’s roots go beyond technology, likely stemming from developmental factors. So what changes as we age, and when does open-eardness decline?

...

Survey research from European streaming service Deezer indicates that music discovery peaks at 24, with survey respondents reporting increased variety in their music rotation during this time. However, after this age, our ability to keep up with music trends typically declines…

Charles Arthur ponders via The Overspill:

I wonder if it depends on the radio stations you listen to? Being exposed to different (new) musical styles makes a big difference.

While the internet has democratized (or ruined) a lot of our media, there is an onslaught of cruft amongst the true gems and (for better or worse) we no longer gather around the metaphorical "water cooler" having all tuned into the same channel. I remember when my parents had to be home at a specific time on a specific day to see the latest episode of whatever they were into. Otherwise they would "video tape" it.

Streaming services aren't easy to "discover" because they force feed you based on their algorithms. One of my larger gripes with these is the need to give them a few genres and bands as starting points. I'd much prefer a "leave me alone" option as I'm often "recommended" obvious artists.

It also depends on one's overall relationship to music. I'm a musician and still writing and recording my own music. Most people are either quite boring or simply have other interests and want to "just put something on" to go about other business. I think if you're a curious person in general, you will always be finding something new. Whether it's music, film, websites, software, gardening tips, books...

Take Radiohead's "Kid A," for example. I bought that CD on a whim when it came out not knowing anything about them. It was a bizarre album based on my tastes at that time but little did I know it was subliminally introducing me to the likes of Miles Davies (jazz), Krautrock (two genres I had no relationship to at that point) and Warp records. Car trips were long and the iPod did not exist, so there I was, stuck with that disc. I listened over and over to that album discovering it layer by layer and really taking to it. Streaming services create a passivity and endlessness where you're more likely to miss out on something great because it didn't immediately "click."

It's hard to say what the future holds for Bandcamp, but as of now they are still giving me interesting recommendations in their weekly newsletter based on my purchases. With Bandcamp I can also use their similar albums or find digital labels to which I can explore their other offerings.

If you haven’t read about “Taco Bell” programming I suggest you read Ted’s post in full. It’s short and enlightening, trust me.

Otherwise, here’s the basic idea:

Every item on the menu at Taco Bell is just a different configuration of roughly eight ingredients. With this simple periodic table of meat and produce, the company pulled down $1.9 billion last year.

The more I write code and design systems, the more I understand that many times, you can achieve the desired functionality simply with clever reconfigurations of the basic Unix tool set.

On paper I’m not a “developer,” but I can compile a Linux kernel, patch C code, script in Ruby, Python and get around any repo to read and/or make changes. Having spent too much of my career in Apple device management, most of my time revolves around shell scripting, be it POSIX sh, Bash or more recently zsh. I often get laughs, pity or looked down upon when I mention this amongst other tech workers.

However, from my point of view, I pity them. Why? Because I know that my scripts will work out of the box on every Mac. Hell, most will run on any Unix-based system as long as I’m not using a Mac-specific binary or file path. I have no need to include loads of 3rd party libraries, dependencies or runtimes prior to executing and as a bonus there’s no chasing trends.

There are times I want to use Python simply for a change, but alas, with my knowledge of basic Unix and shell, I often know how to solve the problem in a few lines of Bash.

This leads us to the next bit…

Taco Bell Programming is about developers knowing enough about Ops (and Unix in general) so that they don’t overthink things, and arrive at simple, scalable solutions.

I’ve dealt with a lot of idealistic bright-eyed, out-of-uni developers ready to “change the world with code” not having a single clue about the operating system(s) they develop for. I mean, it can’t possibly be their hulking Java monstrosity running via JetBrains causing their computer to crawl can it?

I hate over-engineered unmaintainable solutions bound to loads of extra dependencies across the vastness of GitHub and plug-in libraries to often achieve some mundane goal. The people who do these things are the same people that insist on fumbling with apps, home bridge kits, automation and location data to turn their lights off and on. Be wary of these people.

A huge gripe of mine in the tech space has been this nonstop reinventing/over-engineering of the wheel. The goal of computers were to free us, giving us time for more meaningful work and leisure. Yet here we are with the millionth JavaScript runtime guaranteed* to solve whatever problem didn’t really necessitate its creation in the first place because “we’re bored and want to feel important.”

Let’s conclude with a little pragmatism:

If you don’t want to think of it from a Zen perspective, be capitalist: you are writing software to put food on the table. You can minimize risk by using the well-proven tool set, or you can step into the land of the unknown. It may not get you invited to speak at conferences, but it will get the job done, and help keep your pager from going off at night.

I read a lot of tech history. Just this year I've wrapped up the founding of Compaq, microcomputers in 80's Britain and am about done reading a very thorough history of Commodore.

It probably sounds crazy to the unimaginative mind but I often get quite jealous, not so much nostalgic, of those who were able to experience the heyday of the microcomputer boom. Not because of any future riches (most companies went bust or were gobbled up on the cheap) but the fact that these computers (either assembled from a kit, pre-built or built from scratch) were a foundation, not a pre-packaged experience. The word "liberating" comes to mind.

Not only did people no longer have to pay for the use of a computer (notice how we've already gone full circle here with "cloud computing?") but these could sit in their homes. They could be extended, tweaked, optimized, bent and on and on. A working embodiment of the individual, not the corporation.

What does it even mean to "compute" these days? Consume? Already a generation is growing up never once having to open up their device to fix or install new hardware. Even Linux has much better hardware support and flashy UI's out of the box. More often than not, they are handed the "experience" and sold a "lifestyle" to which there is no VIP backstage access.

I think often about the "low-tech/high-tech" in Star Wars. All their devices seem to be very focused, highly repairable and interoperable. Anyone can hit up the Jawas and find a part to fix this or that and most seem to have enough knowledge to go it alone without needing to chase down a warranty or sit on an AppleCare line only to be told it's "no longer supported" or... god forbid... "VINTAGE."

The family took a brief visit to the Elektronmusikstudion installation at Scenkonstmuseet this past weekend. The museum was free the entire month of January so it was quite busy... I plan on going back.

Elektronmusikstudion EMS in Stockholm is one of the world’s oldest and most prominent centres for electronic music and sound art. This is the story of a utopian vision of the future, new technology that will save the world, and a major national initiative in electronic music.

Among a lot of tech I was already familiar with was a curious company called Dataton. I had never heard of Dataton until this visit, these modules were primarily targeted at schools for educational purposes. Unfortunately, the goal of getting a System 3000 to every school was derailed by a right-wing government.

The Dataton 3000 was a modular system designed by Björn Sandlund in the early 1970's. The system was small and portable Any number of units could be connected in any order, so that they interacted just how the user wanted. The idea was that schools could use it in their teaching and they did, all across Sweden. Later on, the company Dataton also developed control systems for slide shows - a genre that came to be of great significance for the electronic music scene in Sweden.