No, We Ain't Right at the Stop Light

I haven't posted in a couple of weeks, which is OK, I suppose. It's not like this is my job or anything, but I do like to keep up to date, mostly for myself. I'm the type of person who takes my personal history for granted. As a result, my life is essentially a fuzzy blur punctuated by interesting moments in which I didn't die. This blog nonsense helps me gain a little focus over time. Which reminds me, I'm going to need glasses. The very notion of my eyesight not being razor-sharp is offensive, but such are the facts. Anyhow, to catch us all up, here's a stream of consciousness brain splat...

The new apartment is pretty great. I still don't have everything in a place. Paintings and other art are leaning against the wall in hopes of being hung sometime soon. The bedroom is piled with random stuff I don't have a place for and haven't committed to throwing away yet. I have no idea where my toolbox is going to go. There's some furniture I ought to purchase, like a wardrobe and a small dining table and chairs, but I'm sick of spending money and don't want to buy cheap junk to hold me over, so those purchases will have to wait for eventually.

I ordered some photo prints and was disappointed with most of them. I ordered black and white lambda prints, but I'm pretty sure they sent me regular old inkjet prints for four times the cost instead. I'd be more annoyed about that if it weren't that most of my complaints about the prints are related to failings in the digital "negatives" I sent them. For most of my life (literally), I've been a non-cropper. "Compose it right in the viewfinder," I'd argue. But all of my cameras (I have a bunch) have different aspect ratios. The shots all look good (to me) on the computer screen, but as a print, I much prefer a 4:5 or 1:1 ratio. There's something about 2:3, 5:7, and even 3:4 that turns me off on a wall. I'm retraining myself to adjust for a crop when composing in the viewfinder. I've also found I much prefer smaller prints. I'm ordering another round of prints this weekend. Hopefully, I'll do better. "Dare to be excellent", and all that.

I have a few programming side-projects cooking. Don't get too excited. None of them are potentially lucrative. I've started building my own monosynth in JavaScript, because it's possible with the Web Audio API and MIDIAccess API. In another life, when the internet was smaller, I ran an experimental electronica record label. Back then, every now and again, Dave Smith of Dave Smith Instruments and I would have a chat via electronic mail. Dave Smith is the engineer behind the original Sequential Circuits synths, and the father of the MIDI standard. I can't remember what we used to talk about. I do remember liking him and feeling privileged to even speak with him.

My other project is creating a bookmark manager. Of the existing bookmark managers, I think Pinboard is one of the better services out there, but I really don't care for the guy who runs it, and don't want to support him financially. A bookmark manager isn't rocket science, so I figure I'll just make my own for myself and release the source code as WTFPL. For giggles (and my CV) I may write different versions of the backend in PHP, Ruby, Python, C#, and Node leveraging various SQLs and NoSQLs. I suppose I could write various frontends in all of the Angulars, React, and Vue; along with a Drupal module and WP plug-in. Information wants to be free, and all that.