easier than expected

GTE was delivered yesterday, and is pretty fun. I’m not entirely in modular experimentation mode because I’m wrapping up mastering of XQSTCRPS, but I gave it a whirl and did some crazy PWM stuff, the expected gate extraction from LFOs, and a bit of recombination of gates to alter sequences. It’ll get more of a play soon since I’m done with mastering and art and on to writing up the notes — I have a list of ideas and experiments.

Yesterday I did two interviews for potential new developers at work. It was the first time I was the (primary) interviewer rather than interviewee, and I had a sort of second-order concern that I was going to be nervous — either several days in advance, the night before, the morning before, or during. As it turns out, I faced it all with calm and had a fairly chill day. The only thing that went wrong was I forgot to take my meds in the morning, and found that Lexapro at 4 PM does indeed contribute to insomnia.

(This, after having a fairly bad time of it for several days when the previous team lead announced she was leaving and I’d be taking over. This work on dealing with my anxiety has really gotten somewhere.)

(Both of the interviewees did well, and I think either of them would likely be a good addition to the team. Choosing one over the other is a challenge; I have my opinion but it could be swayed in the meeting we’re about to have to discuss them.)

done and done

I went ahead and bought Make Noise GTE. This means, if I stick to my No New Gear Year pledge, there will be no more changes to my modular setup (aside maybe rearranging) for at least 280 days.

Honestly, that feels good. I hope it will continue to feel good later in the year if there’s something else really cool that I could use. But I repeat:

  • I definitely do not need another oscillator.
  • I don’t need another filter.
  • I don’t need another modulation source.
  • I don’t need another effect.
  • I don’t need another controller.
  • I don’t need more stuff to explore, to provide inspiration, or to get music made.
  • 🎵 We don’t need another hero… (sorry)

I have also finished the recording phase of the next album, XQSTCRPS.

I’m not generally that big a fan of disemvoweled album names, and my process differed from the the surrealist game. But I did want album titles for every letter of the alphabet. 😉 Also I hope the album title makes more sense if you catch how the song titles work.

First I recorded something. Then I took that something and sampled it, borrowed bits of its rhythm, melody, and sound design, and made something new (in the same tempo and key). Then I took parts from those two somethings to make the third something, and so on. I started seeing it as imposed continuity, as the encrustation of momentary improvised phrases into a kind of norm or tradition, and also as a process of decay and evolution… plants growing in the mulch of their ancestors.

“Gee! No, GTE.”

My almost-no-new-gear pledge has been going great, and I haven’t been tempted by any new or old hardware or software… until now.

Yesterday, I had the thought that Walk 4, and to a lesser extent Nibbler and Clep Diaz, might benefit from a clock multiplier. Each of those modules takes an incoming clock, and uses it for partial steps toward a slower whole. Walk 4 divides the frequency by several octaves (or non-octave intervals) if you want more detailed, less steppy outputs… it’d be nice to generate harmonics and subharmonics rather than sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-subharmonics.

I started thinking maybe 4ms SCM (Shuffling Clock Multiplier) would be a good candidate for my one (not preordered in 2025) module acquisition of the year. With multiple rate outputs, and CV inputs to both mess with the rhythm and to rotate the multipliers around some of the outputs, it could be a little extra fun. But I thought: first I’m going to experiment with what I have, because I know some of my modules have a limited ability to multiply clock timing…

Today, Make Noise announced a new module in the NUSS line. GTE (Gestural Time Extractor, or GaTE) is an analog module that takes an input CV and switches on one of 8 gates depending on the level; it also generates a couple of extra outputs that can detect level changes, and has an optional clock input so the gates only change on a clock pulse. The Space knob changes the ranges of the 8 levels, so you can have it rapidly fire off some triggers and then go silent… lots of rhythmic control is possible. There isn’t any single prescribed usage for it, but there are a lot of possibilities. One of those happens to be clock multiplication, but only assuming your input is a linear saw or triangle wave. (Like the Triggers module in Bitwig Grid: a “phase” input is subdivided into trigger outs.) It’s also perfect for the NUSS index CVs, such as the one that Multimod generates.

(The name reminds me of the old telephone company. Apparently through a couple of steps it was absorbed into Verizon.)

The more I thought about it, the more fun I started to think this could be. Not necessarily to use with Multimod’s index output, but for all manner of other things.

I tried that clock multiplication experiment. Stages was my best bet, and it operated okay but can only multiply by 4, and only if the input frequency isn’t much more than 1KHz. Marbles had a lower maximum and seemed less stable. Mimeophon also wasn’t too good at multiplying clocks, even though it’s capable of short enough delay times to generate nice audio itself. But K-Accumulator…

Yes, it’s overkill to use a mega-flagship oscillator as a clock multiplier. But its tracking mode is adept at keeping up with audio rate input and responding a few octaves higher. And then you can do some extra tricks with the patch anyway. So I think for no more often than I would want to use multiplication, I’ll stick with that.

Giving serious thought to declaring GTE as my 2026 module though. On the one hand, maybe I should wait to make sure there isn’t something even more amazing that I will want. On the other, isn’t that just another kind of FOMO? Hmm. I really don’t need other oscillators, filters, modulation sources, controllers etc., and this is exactly the kind of interesting, multi-purpose/no-purpose experimental semi-utility module that is probably the only kind I should even be looking at.

Speaking of music, I now have about 42 minutes recorded, a plan and material to record the final track, a nice progression of track names that fits the theme, and some general ideas about artwork. If I didn’t have to sleep last night and work today I might have recorded two tracks in a single night and had it finished. But there is no rush other than a creative rush 🙂

On the diabetes front, I am not quite as liberated from insulin as I hoped I might be. What I’ve settled into is checking my blood before each meal (or before we go somewhere for dinner) and making a decision based on that number vs. what I’m probably about to eat. Sometimes my fasting or pre-meal number looks great, and if unless I’m going for something very carby, I can skip the shot. I might take less than my old dosage if things seem intermediate, or make a different decision about what to eat.

This has the side effect of keeping me more aware of what I’m eating and what it does to me. Ideally, I’d count carbs, and either use a continuous glucose monitor for a while, or measure at intervals after eating as well as before, and use a formula to determine dosage the way folks with Type 1 do. But I think this is going to work out fine.

I’ve now had my Oura ring for a month, and the first subscription payment went through. I’m actually OK with the subscription fee, though of course I’d love to not pay it and still get all the features 😉 There are minor software updates approximately weekly. While sometimes advice/insights conflict a bit, I feel like it does a pretty great job with the data it can get just by shining some lights at a small amount of skin. The sleep tracking is especially good, and is leading to better habits that have led to better sleep. The heart data it gives me has turned out to be more reassuring than not, once I got used to a few surprises. And it confirmed that yes, I absolutely was overdoing it the other day when I cut down the remaining unhealthy bit of tree in my parents’ back yard and helped break it down to put in yard waste bags.

I’ve noticed a couple of other people wearing them now that I have one. They’re a little discreet but not that discreet. My doctor was one of those people, which is kind of encouraging.

a winner is me

I had my diabetes checkup yesterday. Check this out:

6.1. This is the lowest it has been since… probably since I was diagnosed actually.

6.0 or less (or 5.7 according to a stricter version) is considered totally normal. Up to 6.5 is “prediabetes” if you haven’t been diagnosed yet, “well controlled” if you have. Above 6.5 is where there is risk of complications in the long term.

This doesn’t mean I’m “cured” or almost cured. But my doctor said I don’t need to take fast-acting insulin anymore. (Or “as needed” but he thinks I won’t need it.)

It took a while for that to sink in. Instead of 29 injections per week, now I probably need just 8. I don’t have to take an insulin pen, a needle and that bulky needle clipper with me to restaurants. I don’t have to reject spontaneous “let’s stop for dinner on our way back” ideas. I don’t have to lift up my shirt and inject myself in public or go do that in a bathroom. I don’t have to carry used pen needles around in my pocket until I get it home, or risk tossing it in regular trash. I will have to deal with 75% fewer of the stupid little foil tabs and plastic dingies that like to scatter everywhere. The supply of pen needles I just restocked is going to last almost two years. The supply of Humalog I have… I just restocked it recently too, and if I end up going a few weeks without needing it I’m going to donate it.

(Notice how pain isn’t even really a factor here? The injections almost never actually hurt. In fact, I’m going to be testing my blood sugar more at least for the next few days just to make sure things are fine. So far though, things are indeed fine.)

Whatever mud people want to sling at Ozempic, or people taking GLP-1 agonists solely for weight loss… it was meant for diabetes first and it works. (It also helps protect against stroke and cardiac events as long as you take it, which its competitors don’t.) That 2022 number is when I first went on Ozempic, and 2024 is when I went on the higher dose. Far more effective than just “exercise more and eat a healthier diet”. I did a pretty intense few months of exercise and diet (10 hours of taiko rehearsals a week plus jog/walking with ankle weights, low-carb and calorie restricted), the improvement was limited and temporary, and I was also kind of miserable and felt like I had little time for myself. Such things work better when you don’t force them too hard. The actual weight loss effects of Ozempic have been minimal for me. I was actually planning to ask my doctor about going to Wegovy instead (the same thing in a higher dosage) but when I saw that test result and he said drop the insulin…. I’ll just leave it where it is.

Since A1C represents about 3 months worth of blood glucose, I also wonder if dealing with my anxiety (and also gut health issues) has helped with blood sugar. It’s very possible. It’s good to know all the bread I’ve been making hasn’t messed me up 😉 It’s quite possibly healthier than other things I was eating anyway, carbs or not.

accumulated awesomeness

I didn’t end up doing much last week because I was feeling a bit under the weather. (And we did have some “interesting” weather… gloom, then a really lovely couple of hours, then strong winds and thunderstorms and tornado warnings followed immediately by a band of snow. This week it hit 15 degrees and it’s aiming for 81 by the weekend. But that’s neither here nor there.) But I’ve recovered, and I recorded 3 more tracks.

Full Catastrophe Living, that massive tome about mindfulness, is at least a pretty swift read. It’s pretty much the book version of the 8-week MBSR program (Mindulness-Based Stress Reduction) — and either other mindfulness books have borrowed from the same material, or they share enough common ancestry that it’s almost reading like a review of the same material. But it’s kind of encouraging that multiple books are in agreement about the fundamentals.

The void in my rack has been filled; K-Accumulator came on Monday. It is as amazing as I had hoped, and probably the most complex of complex oscillators while having a very knobby, minimal-fuss interface. No cheat sheets!

First, the feels: I like the sound quite a lot. As I explore it, I’m delighted over and over again by the surprises it has in store, but it also does plain simple workhorse tones readily enough, and plenty of the sorts of things you’d expect from FM/PM and pulsar synthesis if you’ve worked with them, and chaos and growls and weird formant-y things. While I don’t feel like having it will cause a huge shift in my music, it will fit in well into my toolbox, and offers me much more than what I’ve given up to fit it in. The minor design/feature nitpicks I have are super minor. Bravo, Fancyyy & grrrwaaa.

A typical “complex oscillator” configuration consists of a primary oscillator that does the main business, a second one intended mainly to affect the timbre of the primary, and a waveshaper. In K-Accumulator, this is one of 8 different options in a matrix of phase modulation and amplitude modulation, which you can dial in and crossfade between with a Morph knob and CV input. Other positions in the matrix are either variants of that scheme, or feed back the primary oscillator’s own output as its own modulation source.

Normally, if you FM a sine wave oscillator with its own output, it bends the shape of the sine toward a more sawtooth-like shape (while also disrupting the tuning), but that’s all you get. Here though, the primary oscillator has harmonic shifting and stretching as well as harmonic wavefolding — novel features which make feedback more interesting and varied. (These features make me wonder if internally it’s using some specialized kind of additive synthesis.)

That is essentially the core of the module. There are three more things, all very well integrated in the interface: the UFG (additional super-useful source of modulation, with a dedicated knob for AMing the main osc), Delta-Sigma pattern generator (like a mini Turing Machine), and a pitch controller which offers useful quantization options, flexibility for however you want things to track or be independent of each other, and makes finding FM ratios easier.

words on pages

So, The Untethered Soul overall didn’t turn out as bad as I thought it would when the chakra stuff first came up. But I’m not particularly going to recommend it, either. In the way of some self-help books, it tended to be repetitive, making a few points several times over from just very slightly different angles. And it didn’t do much to present practical advice or exercises like most books on mindfulness do, but a sort of mindfulness end goal that… honestly I’m not sure is a particularly good one for everybody.

I found myself questioning the premise that the “observer” self — the self that is aware of sensations, thoughts, feelings, as opposed to the noisy commentator that we don’t want to dominate everything when practicing mindfulness, is the “real” or “true” one. I thought about how several psychology models and religions believe in multi-part selves in one way or another — none of them consider any part “false.”

Moving on…

Figured Stones: Exploring the Lithic Imaginary is a short book, but also my second DNF of the year. It describes… figured stones, which seem to be small rocks with interesting shapes and patterns and textures eroded by natural processes (and in some cases, enhanced by human artists?) Supposedly a “masterpiece of natural philosophy”, I found it light on introduction and explanation, and just… poetic and fanciful in a way that didn’t really grab me, for the most part. There was some stuff about erosion, water and time that… let’s say had a nice flow to it. But it didn’t tickle my sense of wonder like reviewers suggested it might.

Next up was a book by a senior colleague of mine. I’ll remain vague to preserve anonymity, but it was intended for a particular specialized segment of an industry, which has been relying on habits formed when the science was in its infancy. I was not in the target audience, and I did a lot of skimming because I was only going to get the vaguest of general ideas from it anyway.

Now I’m reading Ice Massacre by Tiana Warner. A desperate group of North Pacific islanders (I don’t think the island exists in our world, but it’s apparently south of the Aleutians but not part of North America), whose fishing industry is under siege by human-eating mermaids, trains a group of teen girls to seek out and massacre the “sea demons” with the assumption that they won’t be seduced the way male fishermen and warriors were. But of course the protagonist is going to discover that she’s not heterosexual. It’s been pretty good so far.

I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 a bit more lately; I decided to reroll my Scrapper who didn’t get that much playtime and start up a greatsword-wielding Reaper. It’s gone quite well; she’s easily one of my top characters for soloing either lots of trash mobs or the tougher champions. She’s been downed zero times so far.

There’s been an update to Soulstone Survivors, with two new titans and a bunch of classes getting their weapon #5. I haven’t found it in me to be that excited about it though — I’m losing my enthusiasm for the game. I’ve had a good run with it, I guess. But I feel like the introduction of the relatively overpowered Blacksmith, capable of going much further into Titan Hunt than anyone else but only with specific, limited types of builds and yet without any real motive to push further, signaled a sort of end. The new weapon skills that I’ve tried so far don’t feel like they are different enough to make them exciting.

My spouse is on a road trip to visit her family for our young nephew’s birthday. I’m gonna hang out with my parents a little bit (tomorrow night at least), might go to the frame shop Saturday to get this cool Egyptian-style mermaid print framed, and otherwise will try to get myself back into a solid music-making habit. I let the momentum go a bit, though I do have a solid foundation for launching into the 4th track.

Bitwig 6.0 released, and… I’m not even going to do the update until after I have finished this album, I think. There are no features I’m excited about, and I don’t want to risk disrupting things — especially now that I’m actually working on something where I do want to revisit “finished” project files to reuse and reinterpret pieces of them.

My K-Accumulator is, if the tracking is correct, somewhere between the UK and US right now. The sooner it arrives, the better. Fancyyy posted another video where it’s all just no-commentary knob tweaking and self-patching. A lot of it feels like there’s so much going on that it’s hard to follow, but there are some amazing gorgeous tones as well as a lot of chaos and complexity — and incredible potential. I’m still hoping they publish a real manual soon, but there will be no substitute for getting my hands on it and exploring.

ringing the bell

I’ve now had a few days with the Oura ring and have some thoughts.

The ring itself is pretty neat. The brushed silver finish has a way of catching the light like tiger eye does, a sort of subtle texture that seems matte until suddenly it hits the right angle and is more of a satin finish look. The battery does indeed last a few days — I let it run from its initial maybe 70% charge down to about 30% before charging it at all, and it looks as if simply popping it on the charger while I shower is good enough to keep a useful level of charge.

The app is a bit scattered and requires some exploration to make sure you’ve found the relevant permissions, settings and features. Also some data requires a few (or several, depending) days of data before it starts to appear.

The ring measures a few things with optical and thermal sensors, and from those uses statistics-based analysis to figure out all kinds of stuff. What sleep stages you go through during the night, regularity of breathing rhythm, overall sleep quality, possible indicators of coming down with an illness and so on. There’s some AI involved, and I feel like some of it is useful and some is more questionable. You can take a photo of a meal, it’ll try to figure out what it is and comment on nutrition but there doesn’t seem to be too much regard for context, portion sizes etc. — just “food A good, food B bad.” Some of the rawer data (like heart rate) is more visible and some (like HRV, SpO2, skin temperature) is only presented in certain contexts. But for the most part, it does give quite a lot of data, quite a lot of analysis — some of it very specific, some of it on a more general level. You’re likely to find useful insights among it, even though you’ll probably figure out causes and effects better yourself than the app will.

The step counting doesn’t seem at all accurate, and the amount of activity it wants me to do doesn’t seem realistic. I might get up, go to the bathroom, go downstairs, go into the kitchen, fix breakfast, and go into the “office” and it’ll say I took two steps. When I walked 2.4 miles at a good pace for 40 minutes, that was… not quite half the day’s activity goal. But when I walked around the plaza more casually for 18 minutes at work, plus some other low-impact walking around, that was roughly half the activity goal. I’m just going to ignore that section, but I do appreciate the insights into heart rate zones and cardio vs. metabolic benefit.

I was somewhat hesitant about getting this ring because I’ve seen where people with health-related anxiety do worse when presented with all this data. And I kind of get it. HRV (heart rate variability) is supposed to be a sign of both good physical health and relaxation; athletes tend to have a relatively high HRV, and the parasympathetic nervous system (which calms you) is also supposed to increase it, observed during meditation and deep sleep. Mine’s quite low — due probably to some combination of anxiety, diabetes, obesity, a generally sedentary lifestyle, and maybe-or-maybe-not heart anomalies which may or may not be completely benign — and it tends to get lower or stay the same while meditating or using the Zenowell Luna, even while other factors such as skin temperature go the expected way and I feel more relaxed. So that’s weird. But in terms of how relaxed or stressed I am, I think where there’s a conflict between my feeling and the app’s best guess, my feeling wins.

I also had a stressful moment that led to heart palpitations (this is apparently the term for that “pounding”; I thought it was something else), but my heart rate wasn’t actually faster. I have been told multiple times my blood pressure is fine. Even when I had that pericarditis scare last year, the thing that was mentioned was sinus tachycardia — 108 BPM when I had the ECG. I am well and safely below that now, so that can easily be chalked up to the stress and pain of the moment and untreated anxiety. I’m reassured that palpitations generally are not dangerous in themselves (and some people experience them a lot, but have gone to multiple cardiologists and gotten their okay).

The “daytime stress” section just opened up yesterday, and other items such as sleep health, heart health, better calibrated analyses, etc. require more time yet.

I think generally I’m more reassured than worried by having this information. And overall it’s leading me to seek better sleep, more physical activity, healthier eating, and checking in on myself.

So that thing that caused me stress? The unprovoked, unnecessary, unauthorized, unwarranted, underhanded, unwise, but unfortunately not that unsurprising, attack on Iran. People of the world, please understand that most Americans think Trump is an absolute tool, a corrupt, incomepetent, negligent, small-minded, insecure, evil man. (There is a small minority of people who like him because of these things.) When he campaigned for President, among all his other lies he claimed he wouldn’t get the US involved in wars. And then his administration renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War, showing the true intention. It’s been murder and kidnappings and destruction and dirty dealings outside our borders, and murder and kidnappings and dirty dealings and tearing down our best institutions inside our borders. Trump doesn’t actually care about anything other than his own ego and wants everything else stomped flat; he has only the most tenuous grasp of reality and is easily manipulated by the equally corrupt, grasping, hateful and immature people surrounding him. Hegseth likes to play soldier. Miller is a Nazi. Vance is a disturbing sicko with a cruel streak. Rubio just wants to feel important. They all know their days are numbered (to the extent that Trump is cognizant of anything) and they’re flexing while they can. This is all deeply upsetting and embarrassing to us all. I don’t understand how people were fooled into voting for Trump a second time, but it feels so much worse this second time around. More reckless and desperate and vindictive.

Deep breath…

So that was a lot of what I talked about in therapy yesterday. And I’m not alone; most of my therapists’ clients have been adversely affected by the fact that an unstable, demented criminal is running the show and is willing to sacrifice lives, peace, stability, the economy, the environment and goodwill without any clear reason or goal. Of course it’s upsetting to people who don’t have anxiety as well.

We talked about coping strategies. Mostly it comes down to: set and keep boundaries. Find the balance between staying informed and being hurt. Get away from news and social media when needed. Talk about it with a sympathetic person if you need to, but recognize when the talk is getting to be too much. Distract yourself, touch grass, and/or practice mindfulness.

I talked with my mom last week, and my therapist yesterday, about when I was about 9 or 10 and my parents took me to a child psychologist (or whatever he was). My memory of that: I was a very sensitive kid, I could not regulate my emotions well, I was upset and frustrated a lot and cried a lot. I think now that I was easily overwhelmed/overstimulated, had anxiety, did not fit in with other kids (as a nerd, fat, gifted, and unbeknownst-to-myself nonbinary). And they wanted to help me with that.

Mom’s recollection is that I “wasn’t settling down in school like everyone seemed to want” me to and… maybe they took me on a teacher’s or principal’s recommendation? I need to ask her more about this.

What I remember from the one appointment was that I didn’t like the guy, and I was upset about having to demonstrate walking in a straight line in my underwear (that one seems really weird in retrospect; I don’t recall if parents were there for that part too but I think so). I recall Dad telling the guy that sometimes when I was supposed to be getting ready for school, he’d find me sitting on the floor reading a book (I’m not sure that was actually true, but I did love reading and I did have focus issues with homework.) The doc said I needed to build up my self-esteem and should work on hand-eye coordination as a means to that, and recommending that I take karate lessons. That also upset me because I associated karate with violence. I wound up in YMCA judo classes for a while instead. And I was prescribed… something. Which I vaguely remember taking briefly and then not refilling because something the doctor said to my parents set them off — something about “that’ll keep him quiet” in a smarmy way? –and they decided he was a quack and that was the end of that.

My mom says it was Ritalin. And she was convinced I couldn’t have had ADD/ADHD because the son of one of her coworkers had it and I was nothing like him. Of course, there are different kinds of ADHD, two main ways in which it expresses in people, and people just generally have different personalities in the first place. There was a public scare about Ritalin being “overprescribed” which… probably it actually wasn’t, and in fact other stimulants are still used and prescribed more than Ritalin ever was. She says whatever it was, I seem to have outgrown it or gotten over it.

The therapist thought it was odd that I and my mom had different impressions of why I was there, and that “self esteem” and “hand-eye coordination” and Ritalin kind of don’t go together. But I told her about my focus issues and she said, yeah, you quite probably do have ADHD. She asked about how I deal with it, and pointed out that a lot of folks of our generation went undiagnosed (lacking the more socially difficult signs of hyperactivity in school) and there was a stigma around it — and built up their own coping skills instead. I’ve got note-taking, reminders, GPS (or my spouse) to keep me on course, etc. and my reputation at work is “the person who gets a lot of stuff done fast” (*), so… no need to get an official diagnosis and treatment.

(*) despite blogging on company time ::cough::

Of course there’s also the factor that gifted kids often get bored of normal lesson plans, and that leads to bad study habits and lack of focus. Some claim that ADHD is overdiagnosed among them for that reason… but I think, bit of both here.

So anyway, that was an interesting bit of insight and validation.

Recent reading:

Jeff Noon, Automated Alice: weird, funny, punny. Alice (of Lewis Carroll fame) accidentally time-travels to alternate 1998 where the Civil Serpents have accidentally unleashed “the Newmonia” in an attempt to pacify the population, and termite colonies compute using “beanery logic” (a bean is either there or not there), and the author self-inserts as “the writer of wrongs.” My experience with reading it was somewhat hampered by it being an Open Library PDF title and the app is not great. But I still had fun with it.

Frances Trussel, You Are Not Your Thoughts: a very short book on mindfulness. As in, not many pages, and a lot of empty space on those pages due to most chapters being a paragraph or two. Seriously in need of copy editing to fix grammatical issues. I don’t think it really presented anything new that I didn’t already get from Fully Present or other reading on the subject. But I did like one quote in particular: “There is nothing in this world that can happen to you which can’t be made worse by thinking about it.”

Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul: I’m partway through but am finding it to be a mixed bag and I don’t like some of what’s mixed in. It turns out to be mostly from a yoga mystic perspective. At first there’s discussion of the self, and the difference between the voice in your head (what the book calls “your roommate who won’t shut up”) and the “you” that observes sesnations, feelings and thoughts. That bit was pretty interesting and ties in well with mindfulness. But then it got to a second part where it launched into talking about “energy” and chakras and I started to get a sinking feeling.

Any sort of claim that people have access to infinite energy, all they have to do is keep their heart open to it, is immediately suspect… and kind of offensive when you’re a person who has issues with fatigue. There’s even a point where it almost claims this energy is enough to live on and you don’t need food…? Come on. The book apparently was beloved by Oprah and Ray Kurzweil, and… that’s not really doing its credibility any favors either, honestly. I’ll go ahead and read the rest in case there is something practical to be found, but I’m fully prepared to hate it.

accumulation

There were very light flurries yesterday morning but no accumulation.

However, I got an email with the link to pay the balance on my K-Accumulator pre-order, and that should be shipping next Friday. Super excited…!

Also my Walk 4 (“Quad Brownian Accumulator”) arrived yesterday and I spent some time playing with it. I was inspired to record something, using offsets into the Value inputs to generate chords, giving it some rhythmic texture by sending rapid triggers to Reset, and mixing/reverbing/rotating the outputs through Silhouette.

I’ve mostly been feeling good and happy over the past few days. I’ve got a nosebleed this morning — the air in the office yesterday was super dry and I felt dehydrated — and kind of a headache to go with it, and that’s not great, but I’m still fairly happy.

We made a Thai curry with kobocha squash last night. The lemongrass and basil smelled amazing during the process, the sauce was super flavorful and right on the edge of too spicy but not quite over it. I wasn’t a fan of the skin on the squash, and it was a lot of work, but we can adjust how we do things when we decide to do this agin.

I finished Fully Present. Mainly it comes down to (A) why mindfulness is good (and where more research is needed) and (B) advice on mindfulness meditiation. The latter ends up being a little bit scattered through the chapters, due to the organization of the book. The first exercise has you doing things a specific way, but then later you’re shown other ways and told why you might want to choose one kind of meditation over another. Still, it was a useful book to have read.

One of my favorite quotes from the book: meditation is simple but not easy. (Some of the mind’s major functions include making connections, analyzing the past, preparing for the future, finding connections, telling stories. This is all great… except when you’re trying to just observe your own breath, sensations, emotions or thoughts in the present moment in a non-attached way.)

I’m currently in the middle of The Heartbeat of Trees. Written by the author of The Hidden Life of Trees (not to be confused with The Secret Life of Trees…!), a German forester, it’s mainly about humanity’s relationship with forests and trees. Through several short chapters we learn lots of cool stuff about trees and ourselves, and both known and speculated connections between us. At times it does get a little woo-ish, even while the author talks of his love for science and disinclination toward religion — and I say that as a person who definitely gets woo-ish themself, in a different way. But it’s neat stuff overall.

it works now

It took a few days to hear back from Zenowell support. They asked me to test the electrodes with my fingers, cranking the level up “above 20” (it goes to 30)… and lo and behold, I felt it.

I tried it in my ear again, and it took a couple of tries and some wiggling but worked fine once more. Go figure.

And having just done a session, I think the Relax program does work.

I bought a used Oura Ring 4 sizing kit, and have been wearing a test ring on my left index finger for a day now as recommended. I just bought a deeply discounted but new/unopened box one in brushed silver off eBay. I was debating with myself between the brushed silver and “stealth” (matte black) — I think either would work for me and the other rings I wear. The stealth one apparently shows scratches more and also tends to scratch other things more.

The ceramic ones look really nice but cost significantly more… and though they tend not to scratch, with the wrong kind of impact they can chip and then quickly degrade after that. Doesn’t seem worth it.

I have a couple of tracks recorded now for the next album. Project idea confirmed, working, and… a bit different. But the train is underway now.

It took a few days but I got a shipping notice on the Walk 4. Also one of the K-Accumulator batch 1 folks has been sharing some sounds from the basic “getting started” exploration and there were some surprising timbres there — almost physical modeling, overblown flutes etc. Delicious stuff.

utinni…?

Saw the trailer for The Mandalorian & Grogu. The title feels awkward, like it should be “Grogu and the Mandalorian.” Also it’s apparently The Mandalorian season 4 reworked into a movie, which… I’m not sure how much rework happened and whether that is bad news. It’s not as if major decisions were poorly made about Star Wars movies in the past or anything ::cough cough::

I like Pedro Pascal. I enjoyed season 1 of the TV show, and its theme music. But I’m finding it hard to summon more than a “meh” for Star Wars or Marvel comics at this point.

My Zenowell Luna stopped working after 11 days. The screen lights up, the buttons work, but the electrodes don’t do anything. I sent an email to their support on Sunday and haven’t heard back yet. Hopefully soon; I chose them because of a reputation for good customer service.

I had to think about whether I wanted a refund or exchange. I’m not sure the device is that effective, and maybe it’s redundant with the Lexapro anyway. But it’s also too early to dismiss, and it can be a pleasant sort of ritual. So I asked for the exchange.

I’m also looking seriously into an Oura Ring. I feel like (A) it might have some useful insights and information, and (B) it’s just kind of neat. 🙂

Had another therapy session yesterday afternoon. We actually wound it down a bit early, beacuse things are going well and nothing much came up. She does keep asking if there’s anything else I want to bring up, and I’ve been saying no. Maybe I should go ahead and go into the emotional difficulties I had as a kid, even though they got so much better? Maybe talk about gender identity… although I think the additional stress that puts on my mental health is 100% from the transphobic poolitical climate and I’ve made piece with being a weirdo. Actually I think I might privately journal about those things to work out if they’re something I want to bring up.

We changed the scheduling so it’s theoretically every 2 weeks, rather than every week.

I picked up a bunch of books on mindfulness from Alibris. Ironically, several of them were recommendations for “if you read just one book on mindfulness…” Here is a size comparison of two of them:

oversized bananas for scale — sorry I don’t have a normal sized banana to show the scale of the oversized ones.

But the one I’m reading now, Fully Present, is more moderately sized. Its authors are an anthropologist/psychiatry professor, and a former Buddhist nun and mindfulness educator. Between them they cover both “science” and “art” perspectives of mindfulness, and the book leans toward practical, uh, practice. I’ve already picked up some specific advice for meditation with a bit more discipline (but still gentle and accepting). I have to say I’m grateful to be able to sit for 15-20 minutes and just focus on breathing or body sensations or gazing, without it being boring. That doesn’t mean consistent focus without the mind telling stories isn’t a challenge.

My previous read was The Seafarer’s Kiss. Take the basics of “The Little Mermaid” but put it in freezing Scandanavian waters, change the queer subtext to text, make the king a sexist tyrant who needs to be overthrown, replace the sea witch with Loki and add a very heavy dose of “be careful what you wish for.” I liked it.

Ask A Historian was a little bit of a mixed bag. The stories were enjoyable and I learned some stuff, but some of what it covered needed a little more debunking or clarification.

  • the “Hayfeverite” craze. There was a period when hay fever was fashionable among white, upper-class men (this part is true, there were clubs and everything). This was because a doctor claimed it was a disease of the priveleged, which women and “lesser races” (sigh) didn’t get. The book said it was because exposure to pollen reduces hay fever susceptibility — but the accepted explanation seems to be that the doctor was mostly just treating the privileged in the first place and/or just wanted to distract patients from feeling miserable with a little casual white supremacy and sexism.
  • the alleged craze for fistula surgery among the sycophantic aristocracy after King Louis XIV’s life was saved. Kaz Rowe did some research on this and presented it in a recent video, and gave a pretty solid argument for what they were thinking and the way it’s been exaggerated. 17th century medicine was pretty grim…
  • there was a mention of the Moses myth where the author was speculating which phaoroah it might have been. He really should have said that it wasn’t any of them — Egypt had at various points conquered some of its neighbors but it never mass-enslaved any population. The pyramids etc. were built by farmers in the off-season, and they were paid for the work. In fact the first known labor strike was among pyramid builders because their beer shipments were late!

We’re 13% of the way through the year (thanks timeanddate.com) and NAMM is behind us, and I’m not finding myself tempted by any other Eurorack modules or plugins so far. I looked at Minimal Audio’s Poly Flanger this morning, added it to my cart and then said “…I don’t need this, I should instead play more with regular flangers” and dropped it. I see that GRM Atelier has a Windows release now, but… it’s still a “you have to trust that we’ll add more stuff in the future” thing and I’m just not feeling the hype.

Still waiting on a shipping notice from Control for that Walk 4. Their website still says “week of February 10th.” I just sent a message to ask if they have an update.

The first batch of K-Accumulator has shipped, and apparently us folks who put down a deposit for batch 2 will get an update next week. Meanwhile there’s a “quick start guide” which is pretty mind-blowing, revealing a bit more about the morph system, the delta-sigma pattern generator and the interactions between sections. I’m super excited about it. Hopefully anticipation for Walk 4 and K-Acc isn’t the only thing keeping my gear curiosity in check. There’s gonna be a lot of fresh exploration to do.