justing.net

Week Notes No. 13

By Justin G. on 24JUN09SUN

So many pictures this week, among other things.

I1. Field Recording:

Recording collected in Gila Wilderness, NM. It’s from very near the Middle Fork of the Gila River. I think if our camp had been situated somewhere else, I would have collected something potentially more interesting. But, it is what it is, and it’s still interesting to me. At least you can’t hear us talking late into the night.

Copied the above files to laptop, and was reminded of the limitations of the pybub library. Namely that it can’t export really long audio files because of the maximum numeric value in python is too low. This doesn’t sound right to me, so maybe I’m doing something else wrong. If true, it’s an opportunity to improve the world, I think. But, but, the issue is in the WAV specification, and here is the issue in pybub repository.

GOAL: I would like to finish one recording this month (June), and share it.

I3. Photography:

Some more details on all those photos I mentioned in the last update.

A backpacking trip is an opportunity for several kinds of photography. There is the airplane, if there is any driving to the trail, there is the main event, and after party (whatever that is) and then the return. For this trip, SJC → BUR → ABQ, and then a 6 hour drive. Three days of backpacking, a day in Silver City, and the return trip: ABQ → LAS → SJC. The main thing was that I had really learned to push the kit lens I take backpacking a lot further. See below. It also means that there are a lot of photos to edit (clean up).

While in Silver City, after dinner, my friend and I did a walkabout and take photos. Just followed the energy around town taking pictures of whatever was interesting. There was a lot of interesting stuff! Met two interesting characters. I regretted not taking a picture of the first one, so I was sure to get a picture of the second.

I5. Plotting / generative art:

I picked my way through one of the problems I had and solved it over a couple of days during the week. That sort of freed up the space to solve several other minor annoyances over the weekend while integrating the solution into my current project. And, before I bashed my head against the next problem for several hours I stopped that and instead decided to be more intentional about it. It means stepping back and clearly identifying what the possible next steps are and what tools and pieces of informations I need to get a better understanding and possibly solve the problem are. In the past I would simply try guessing and checking and guessing and checking ad nauseum until I was sick of it. It pays to be more intentional, and careful.

This week I added: a saturating probability field based on parabolas with sane defaults, arrows with useful defaults for debugging, library documenations, improved preview gallery tools. Sane defaults are a friction reduction habit that I’m trying to institute that makes the old code more easily accessible to future me.

I6. Thinking

Writing

Reading and Notes

Some short notes on Darwin’s writing.

Seasons and Days

The last 30 day period ended while I was on the trail, so if choosing to be without internet for a few days counts as cutting down screen time, it ended on a very positive note.

I haven’t settled on the next one and it’s already 30% over. Maybe it means I should take a rest period and pick it up in July.

I7. Backpacking:

Clean up and storage of gear from last time. And capture any key learnings for the next one, possibly in August? Or early October at the latest.

I8. Cooking:

Small batch thin crust pizza. It means that there is only one day of leftovers instead of several. While it might seem like less pizza is a worse deal, it means that pizza will happen again sooner.

Some simple food plans this week: sushi rice dice from a random yt (I put the recipe elsewhere on this site), polenta and some sort of bean dish (email me an easy bean dish that goes with polenta, maybe? ), and two different chicken dishes. Some roasted broccoli. Surely we will order some food.

Planning to make a full sourdough loaf this week to go with some of the cheeses I picked up today.

I9. House Projects:

Pressure washed the back patio. It looks so nice. I have an appreciation for the work that goes into it, but I’ll probably hire out for this next time.

Got some paperwork taken care of. Several other paperworks to do still.

I would like to get started on the garage finishing project next.

Other Interests

Bought a couple of small midi controllers. They’re multi-use: I intend to attach some of them to my stationary office iPad for making synth drones, and using them as an input for generative art too.

Email me about that bean dish.