General

Top experts!

I used to subscribe to a newsletter from James Clear1This is an admittedly great name for a self-help guru to have. I obliquely made fun of him here. I dropped the newsletter because he sent a lot of mail, the advice got very samey, and ultimately it gets fatiguing to constantly read platitudes about how to be a better person, blah blah blah.

He’s back!

I received an unsolicited email from him today2CleanShot X makes this look far classier than it did in reality:

I like the unspecified use of “top experts” in the above. What are they experts in? It doesn’t matter, they’re top experts! Trust me. Actually, let’s have a look:

  • Serena Williams: Top expert at tennising
  • Neil Gaiman: Top expert at writing
  • Gordon Ramsay: Top expert at yelling

What “small behaviors3I’m using the American spelling here and my spell checker is getting mad at me” made these experts so expertful? Let’s see:

  • Serena Williams: Has probably played five thousand million hours of tennis
  • Neil Gamin: Has probably written five thousand million words
  • Gordon Ramsay: Has probably yelled at five thousand million people

The key to become a class master (surely the goal of a MasterClass), then, is to spend an extraordinary amount of time doing the one thing you want to be an expert at. This is prime TED Talk stuff right here. Further, the small behaviors would seem to be:

  • Find something you want to do (“I want to be an expert yak herder”)
  • Spend an inordinate time doing that thing
  • Top Expert!

Anyway, spoiler: I did not sign up to MasterClass™.

I already did, jerk!

The best, weirdest and worst instrumentals by The Alan Parsons Project

Over the course of its ten albums, The Alan Parsons Project released 20 instrumentals, though more on their first five albums (four of which start with an instrumental and the fifth, The Turn of a Friendly Card, starts with a pseudo instrumental that runs about two minutes before the vocals begin).

What follows are lists, because I love lists!

Top 5 Favourite Instrumentals

  • In the Lap of the Gods (Pyramid)
  • Lucifer (Eve)
  • The Gold Bug (The Turn of a Friendly Card)
  • Pipeline (Ammonia Avenue) and Paseo de Gracia (Gaudi) (tie)
  • Secret Garden (Eve)

Honorable Mention: Sirius (Eye in the Sky). This song is probably indelibly tied to sports team introductions now, but it’s still a terrific and dramatic intro to Eye in the Sky. “Mammagamma” from the same album is also very good, if a bit slick.

What all of the above songs have in common is atmosphere. “In the Lap of the Gods” is mysterious, soaring and melodramatic (see more here). “Lucifer” starts with somewhat unnerving strings and sound effects (including Morse code), fades, then comes back with a staccato drum and ringing guitar, before adding in the requisite choir. “The Gold Bug” does feature vocals without words, but these really serve as another instrument in a lovely, layered song. “Pipeline” is perhaps the most conventional on the list, but it’s so incredibly smooth it feels wrong to omit it. “Paseo de Gracia” ties–this closing instrumental is the only one to have a Spanish flavour, with horns and more fine guitar work by Ian Bairnson. “Secret Garden” also features worldless vocals (again by Chis Rainbow) and has a sunny, almost Beach Boys sound to its harmonies.

Top 3 Weird Instrumentals:

  • Total Eclipse (I Robot)
  • Chinese Whispers (Stereotomy)
  • The Fall of the House of Usher (Tales of Mystery and Imagination)

Honorable Mention: The two instrumentals from I Robot that aren’t “I Robot”.

“Total Eclipse” is the only Project song solely credited to conductor Andrew Powell, and it’s this weird, almost discordant song that sounds like a portent of doom, perhaps reflecting how ancient people feared eclipses. “Chinese Whispers” is an odd, short piece featuring a vaguely Asian-sounding acoustic guitar, with Eric Woolfson’s daughters providing murmured vocals. “Usher” is the longest song the Project did at over 15 minutes, and it’s divided into movements that encompass sound effects of a storm, the house collapsing, choirs and everything else. It sounds entirely different from everything else on all ten of their albums. The two “I Robot” instrumentals, “Nucleus” and “Genesis Ch. 1 V. 32” are largely mood pieces.

Probably the Worst Instrumental:

  • “Hawkeye” (Vulture Culture)

It’s not bad, per se, it’s just very bland. Without any orchestration, it leans heavily on sax and keyboard, which also helps date it as a very 80s song.

Water!

clean clear cold drink
Mmm, water. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

When you’re hot and thirsty (after, say, just completing a long run), there is nothing more refreshing than cool, crisp water. This is not a revelation, but it struck me when I supped from the water fountain at Hume Park post-run today.

(This is also a blatant attempt to convince myself to drink more water.)

Pyramid is a fun album

photo of great pyramid of giza
Photo by Simon Berger on Pexels.com

Yes, I used the F word.

Pyramid is the third album from The Alan Parsons Project, released in 1978. It’s one of their best and here’s why, in no particular order:

  • Released at the height of disco, it exists completely outside of disco, achieving a timelessness so many great albums have.
  • At a mere 37:46 minutes long, this is an amazingly compact album (especially by prog rock standards), yet even in its economy it manages to pack in nine songs that include six vocalists, three instrumentals, a choir, tolling bells and a tuba solo.
  • Speaking of tuba solos, Pyramid isn’t afraid to go from the sublime to the ridiculous. The epic centrepiece, “In the Lap of the Gods”, an instrumental featuring the aforementioned tolling bell, choir and lush orchestration, is followed by “Pyramania”, which includes a tuba solo and lyrics like, “I consulted all the sages I could find in Yellow Pages/But there aren’t many of them.”
  • The concept (more a theme, really) comes through more directly here than on other APP albums. Every song echoes fears of death, of inevitability, regret and loss. The one exception is the final instrumental, “Hyper-Gamma-Spaces”, a trippy reprieve that focuses mainly on keyboards.

It’s a zany, mysterious grab bag of doom. Give it a listen on your favorite streaming service and soak in the experience of vocals without autotune.

I’m not always polite and mild (or witty)

When you get a spam message on an iPhone, you can report is as junk and have it block the sender and delete the message. If you also have a Mac, it will not mirror this, so you will still see the message there, until you delete it.

This morning, I was reminded that I broke one of my rules yesterday morning when I replied to a scammer. I haven’t done this in years. I don’t enjoy “the game” and appreciate having a single button I can tap to make them go away (it would be better if these messages never got through at all, of course). But yesterday morning I was apparently a bit cranky from being up extra early due to Mouse Incident™ and I did reply, before blocking. Behold my early morning sass:

Today, I asked my AI pal ChatGPT to come up with some sassy replies written in the style of Shakespeare that I could use instead. They’re actually not that bad!

Oh, treacherous fiend, whose wicked scheme is laid,
In the realm of cyberspace, a villainous charade,
Thy words, like honeyed poison, doth beguile,
Yet beneath thy deceit, a serpent's guile.

And:

Thy message o'er Apple's channel of delight,
Doth seek to rob me blind, in broad daylight,
A plea for gold, a promise to repay,
Yet, in truth, thou art but a wolf at bay.

But I will probably just Delete and Report Junk like I normally do.

In 18 days, Summer 2023 will be over

And I will be sad. The transition from summer to fall is the only seasonal change that makes me feel a bit glum. Days get shorter and colder. Trees lose their leaves, vegetation withers. It rains more. It rains on top of the rain. Sometimes it floods. Yes, you get a few weeks of nice weather and fall colours right at the start, but that’s it.

By the time fall changes to winter, it’s already effectively been winter for weeks, so it doesn’t hit me the same way.

Here’s to Summer 2024! Only, uh, a lot of days to go. I could look it up, but I’d rather not know the precise number just now.

Summer comes to an end once more…

What I want AI to do

Two things:

  1. Not start SkyNET and destroy humanity
  2. Use its smarts to come up with YouTube thumbnails better than these:

If anyone in the future ever wonders when the fall of civilization began, I’m pretty sure it will be answered with, “When everyone on YouTube thought goofy faces on thumbnails would make people watch.”

A look back to August 27, 2021, via August 30th, 2021

It makes sense, trust me!

August 27th, 2021 was my last day of employment at Langara College. I worked in IT Support, on the service desk as a CST1Computer Support Technician. I started there as a contractor in November 2012 and was hired on permanently in January 2013, so I worked there for a little under nine years.

All of it, and many years of tech support work before that, was a mistake. This isn’t to say it was all horrible, or an unmitigated disaster, or that I didn’t do my job well, it just wasn’t what I should have been doing.

Since leaving, I have lost weight, gotten in better shape, renewed my creativity and feel I am just generally a better, and happier person. It’s not perfect, nothing ever is, but it’s a huge improvement over where I was.

I wrote about leaving tech support and my job of almost nine years three days after my last day. Everything I wrote then is still valid today. You can read what I said here:

A brief essay on how my broken logic mired me in the wrong job for years

Genesis in 1974: Very Serious Art

Yes, another Midnight Special video is posted below. Apparently, YouTube’s algorithm is pretty simple:

- Watch Video A
- Get recommendations for anything remotely like Video A for the rest of your natural life

So I now get a lot of Midnight Special video recommendations.

Genesis of the 1970s is a very different band than Genesis of the 1980s, which is probably what most people think of when they think of Genesis. In the 80s, they were led by Phil Collins and produced a string of pop music hits. When Gabriel was the lead singer, they were about Art.

There is a lot of Art in the performance for “Watcher of the Skies”. Peter Gabriel, dressed as a kind of sad space clown vampire, is soaking in it. On the one hand, you have to admire the dedication to the act. They bought into it, and played it to the hilt. And it was the early 70s. People were into prog rock. Everyone took it Very Seriously.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that when Peter Gabriel picked up the tambourine and starts holding it over his face, I lost it. I laughed harder than I have in a long time. It felt good.

My apologies to Peter Gabriel, sad space clown vampire.

The video:

The tambourine in question:

“How do I play this thing?!”

One way or another (I did not expect this)

Generally, critics seem to agree that Blondie’s best album was Parallel Lines, released in 1978. It featured a number of hits, most famously “Heart of Glass” but also “One Way or Another.”

The Midnight Special YouTube channel has recently started uploading a bunch of clips from the show, and I watched the performance of “One Way or Another”, curious to see if it was actually live (though The Midnight Special has a reputation for showcasing live performances, sometimes you would get a mix of live vocals/recorded instruments or recorded vocals/live instruments or just a big old bag of fake everything). In this case, the song is actually performed live and just over a minute in, it cuts way from the band to a couple dancing in that funky 70s way they did back then. And I thought, “Is the guy wearing see-through pants?” and the answer is yes, yes he is. I did not expect this.

It looks supremely silly, of course, and it’s also a cop out because he is not wearing underwear underneath, but what appears to be a pair of shorts or a swimsuit. He could have at least worn a Speedo.

As someone who was already a teen back in 1979, I can verify that see-through pants were not a big thing. Big hair was a big thing.

Here’s the video, so you can see him shake his booty in full glory (two other things: He and the woman act like they’re “fighting” each other, but it was the 70s, so who knows if they were acting or high on, uh, life. Yeah. Also, the song takes kind of a weird turn for the last minute and a half):

I am a Sr. Gemfinder

I made a terrible mistake. Actually, I made two terrible mistakes:

  1. I got into a creative funk. Technically, this isn’t a mistake, but it still feels like one.
  2. I re-installed Bejeweled 3. This was definitely a mistake.

On the other hand, I’m now a Sr. Gemfinder1This is kind of a dumb rank. I mean, the screen is literally filled with gems. Or maybe it means I’m a senior, age-wise, and because of my old and ailing eyes, I should get an award for just seeing the gems at all., see:

I mean, I don’t need to be solving the climate crisis or brokering world peace here, but I feel like I should be doing something more substantial.

I have a solution! I’ll switch to the Mac. There’s no Bejeweled there!

Right after just one more game…