• 10 Posts
  • 152 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: October 18th, 2023

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  • I don’t generally read them to the minute very often. For the most part, 5 min increments are close enough for what I need, most of the time. If I do need a more precise time, I’m usually already closely watching the clock and it’s just addition (was 1341 when I started this, now it’s 1345.).

    If I need to get the precise time, cold, than it’s as simple as: closest 5 min tick, then add or subtract minute ticks till you get to the minute hand

    Eventually you get to the point where it’s not something you consciously think about. You just look at the clock and then pattern recognition takes over and you just know what time it is.




  • From what I’ve noticed, “not figuring it out” is often either a question of fine motor coordination or poor ear training.

    Other times it’s outlandish expectations from yourself. Your not going to be playing "Money for Nothing " by Dire Straits for a while, but something along the lines of “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley is probably achievable within your first week.

    Fine motor control is mostly just a matter of practice. Use a metronome and start SLOW.

    Ear training in this context is being able to map a sound in your head to a finger position on your instrument. Again practice, pick a simple melody and try to find that melody on your instrument.

    As for what instrument. What do you want to play? You could get any instrument in the world, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t want to play that instrument.

    I mostly play and teach guitar, you can easily get a reasonable instrument in the $300-$600 range. Sometimes cheaper.

    Serviceable keyboards can be had for about $150.












  • I’ve bounced between a bunch of different ones. Each time I switched and moved the directory over the formatting and linking tended to break. In the end, I settled on just a raw hierarchical directory structure using raw markdown (using a basic text editor) for typed notes and whatever other relevant media (pictures, pdfs, whatever), and GoodNotes for handwritten notebooks with PDF backups saved to directory on my Nextcloud.

    I don’t know, maybe my needs are odd but I’ve just never found a single application that could handle all of my note-taking and documentation needs. Everything is close, but frustratingly annoying in one missing feature or another. And all of them seemed damned slow compared to just opening up a file browser or a terminaland doing what I needed.

    As for file syncing, Logseq was pretty easy to handle syncing for. I just put the logseq notes directory on my Nextcloud and Bob’s you’re uncle. Access on my desktop, laptop and mobile devices. Don’t have to use Nextcloud though, just something that would allow you to sync the directory between devices. Syncthing would probably work. Just don’t bounce between devices too fast. Causes conflicts you have to correct manually.


  • Nowadays, Apple is only really big for digital music if you are (or were) already really deep in their ecosystem. Not sure I’ve heard of any devices that play nice with their DRM in a while and last I had looked (admittedly many years ago) they did not have a compatible app for Android.

    Apple music was bigger back 15 or 20 years ago for digital downloads due in large part to the iPod, though I occasionally hear of some odd band or another that only releases their stuff on iTunes.

    And since this is a linux community, as a heads up, iTunes is only marginally functional, last I heard, in linux. Apparently it can’t detect connected devices. You’ll probably need a Windows or Mac system to run iTunes if you want to go that route.


  • For CDs, Amazon, ebay, or discogs. Digital music I usually get from the artist’s webstore if possible, otherwise I’ll buy it from Amazon or BandCamp.

    One heads up, Buying and downloading digital music from Amazon is a pain in the butt if you have an Amazon Music subscription. Easy and straightforward though without.

    Apple music is also possible but you have to burn the tracks to CD using itunes to move it out of Apple’s ecosystem.

    I also hear good things about Tidal but I’ve never used them.