I just fell upon a trailer for a documentary on the tv show Lost on YouTube and as I glanced at the comments the black hole opened up. ”Great show, terrible ending.” ”Worst ending of a show ever.” ”The creators should be sent to prison over the ending.” (Yes, that was an actual comment.) And so on, and so forth.
I was really into Lost when it started and I kept watching up until season four, I think, then I stopped and later got back into it via the DVD box sets. A year or two ago I rewatched two or three seasons but it’s been quite some time since I’ve watched the whole thing, so this is not going to be a post about details of Lost. I’m going from memory here so things are inevitably colored by the bit rot the mind. Regardless, in my opinion whatever problem Lost had was not the ending. It dragged in the middle but the very end, in particular the last episode, was great.
But arguing whether the ending was good or not is sort of pointless. What I do want to argue is how much I think we keep missing the point of the art, yes, art, of stories when we keep coming back whether the plot was all tied up, whether there where any ”plot holes” or not, and only judging it by what can be summarized in a wikipedia plot synopsis. If that is all that matters, why even read books? Why watch movies and tv shows? Why not just read the wikipedia page and have time to consume so much more content?
I took special note of a comment from someone who was so mad that the show demanded an ”English major” to understand. Why not just spell it out plainly? At first I wanted to reply to that comment but I quickly realized that that would be pointless, so I started writing this instead.
Maybe I’ve become that artsy fartsy, high brow person that I despised when I was nineteen, but these days I care much more about how a story, regardless of medium, makes me feel and the journey I took with the characters than I do about exact plotting. Because again, if I only care about plot why even spend the time engaging with the story when there are so many great summaries to read online?
Maybe me changing my opinion this way over time is something I should be ashamed of. Maybe I’ve let my past self down. Or maybe it’s a natural part of growing and evolving – after all, nineteen years have passed since I was nineteen – and it’s much worse that so many people seem stuck in their teen mindset. Maybe that mindset and single-mindedness stops stories from being art and instead turns them into more content, more slop for us to consume.
In the past I’ve considered myself to be a musician. Even further back in time I considered myself a songwriter. The problem is, even back then, I wrote very, very, few songs and now it’s been a decade since I wrote almost anything. I’ve also completely fallen out of actually playing instruments and my singing voice has deteriorated completely due to it not being used. The only recording and mixing I’ve done in a long time has been as part of various short projects at work. I just seem unable to actually create anything for my own sake, whether just for the pleasure of doing it or for the sense of validation when showing it to other people.
This is something I really want to change. I want to be able to write and record things and to play music. I can come up with multiple reasons why I don’t but in the end most of them are probably excuses and the truth is most likely that my problems boils down to striving for perfection. I want the things I create to be perfect and I know that they won’t be. Hence, I don’t finish things because if I don’t finish it, it can’t be criticized by either myself or somebody else and therefore it cannot be deemed as imperfect.
Again, this needs to change. I need to get out of this mindset and realize, truly internalize, that one finished shitty project is a thousand times better than any amount of works in progress that one day, someday, eventually, maybe will become perfect. I need to push myself into something creative and to decide that it needs to be finished, even if the result is not what I initially wanted it to be. These thoughts have probably been swirling in my mind for a long time but they got much more focused a couple of weeks ago when I watched Yahtzee Croshaw’s Dev Diary on YouTube. In it, and in a lot of his other endeavors, he is very clear about the importance of actually creating and finishing creations if you want to be a creative person. It seems so obvious but hearing him hammer it home and following he’s journey to create twelve video games in twelve months, ultimate quality be damned, lit the spark in me to do something similar.
Now, I’m not going to be developing video games. I’m also not going to try to write 100 songs in 100 days or something similar. What I am going to do is actually embark on a project that I’ve been toying with in my head for way too long. Which brings me to the title of this venture, Achtung Perfection.
Achtung as in U2’s 1991 album ”Achtung Baby”, my absolute favorite U2 album, and one of the greatest rock album ever in my opinion. My project, Achtung Perfection, is me making my own versions of all the songs on ”Achtung Baby”, one song every month. For an album with twelve songs, that means a year long project. Some of those songs will probably have an arrangement and a production similar to the original while some might be quite different. Some will borrow ideas from exiting cover versions.
The idea is not to make a perfect version om ”Achtung Baby”. That is something that I can’t do, simply because a perfect version already exists; the actual album itself. The idea is me being aware of, avoiding, (”achtung” in German means ”attention”, ”watch out”, etc.) attempts at perfectionism. I will make one song each month. Each song doesn’t need to be perfect. Each song doesn’t even need to be good, but each song needs to be finished at the end of each month.
Here’s how it’s going to work
At the end of each month for the next year, at the very latest the last day of each month, I will release a finished recording of a song from Achtung Baby, in the order they appear on the album. I am allowed to think about upcoming songs, but I am not allowed to do any recordings for an upcoming months song before that month starts and the previous months song is finished and published. Now, published can be a relative term and the exact definition here might vary. At the very least, I will put up an mp3 file here on my blog. Hopefully I will manage to get any licensing issues solved (I do have an idea for that) and be able to put them up on YouTube and maybe Spotify or Apple Music or something similar without having them taken down for copyrights violations but that is something that I’ll work on during the project and not worry about now.
Also, at around the half point of each month I will publish a blog post or a YouTube video or something reflecting back on last months song and talking a bit about the current months song, This doesn’t have a set release date but the 15th of each month seems like a good target to aim for.
The first month for the project is August 2024, meaning the project has started and I’ve started recording my version of Zoo Station. When I’m writing these words I don’t yet know for certain if they are going to be published as a piece of text or as narration on a video. If it turns out you are getting these words from a video, you will likely hear some drones in the background that is part of my Zoo Station version. For those of you familiar with Nine Inch Nails version of Zoo Station, this might sound similar to that and that is not an accident. I really like Nine Inch Nails’ take of the song and my idea is to fuse that and the original, flying from one version into the other.
When I started writing this text I had recorded the drones and some guitar and bass. Between the first draft of the text and the publishing of it I’ve also recorded vocals. I’m using a combination of my modular synth and a Korg Volca Modular for the drones. They are not the most spectacular or original drones in the world but I think they will get the job done. The guitars are more or less scratch tracks, but I am well aware that I am halfway through the month now so I need to be prepared to make some tough decisions and keep some things that were meant to be re-recorded so that I actually finish on time.
Will it work? Will it be any good? I don’t know at the moment, but both I and the world (ha) will be able to know on August the 31st at the latest.
I’m looking forward to this project, while also being very nervous . What if all twelve songs turn out to be crap? What if this finally reveals my imposter syndrome to be well founded? Maybe I don’t know what I’m doing!
Or maybe I do. Maybe this will be fun and rewarding. Achtung Perfection
@MrHenko Looking forward to hearing it! Please don’t feel pressured though. I am really more of a Joshua Tree person, but Achtung, Baby is really good imho. 🎸
@odd Thanks Odd! Joshua Tree has the best opening of the two. Streets, Still Haven’t Found and With or Without You is a one-two-three punch that few bands can match, even on a greatest hits album but I think the overall quality and feeling of the album as a whole is higher for Achtung Baby. But I am also quite weird in that I really like Zooropa as well, and even find a lot of redeeming things about Pop.
I wrote this headline in my notebook a few days ago, thinking that I should collect my thought on Threads under it. Up until now the page has remained empty. The thing is, the more I think about Threads the less I care about it.
Don’t get me wrong, if you’re on Threads and you are having a great time there then good for you. The same goes for having a good time on Instagram, TikTok or Twitter och Reddit or whatever. People having a good time on (or off) the internet is a good thing. I’m not here to say that Threads is meaningless or uninteresting on an objective level, just that it’s uninteresting to me.
I’m sitting under a roofed section of the deck. The clouds rolling in are so dark blue as to almost come off as black. The power cuts out and all those noises of modern life, the ones we are so used to that we don’t even hear them anymore, disappears.
I don’t see any lightning, maybe it’s too bright still, but I hear the roar of thunder. I love a good summer thunder storm.
5:53 pm
The rain starts pouring and I see a flash. It hits the ground within a hundred meters or so. The sky is no longer dark but bright white from the rain.
Yet another lightning strikes and I count in my head. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three… I get to six Missisippies before the thunder roars. As it dies down, so does the intensity of the rain.
6:07 pm
The power returns. The brief respite from modern hi tech life ends.
I’m currently relistening1 to Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves and just like the first time around I really like it. I have been falling behind on books lately but this past weekend I felt like listening to something and I was completely burnt out on podcasts so I decided to go back to this one. It’s so grand in scope and such a thrill-ride and then parts of it is, despite it’s dire subject matter, sort of a cozy book to me. Yes, the situations the characters are in are terrible and they have to make some tough choices but is competent people making the best out of their situation, solving problems as they come up. That is apparently something that really speaks to me.
I started listening on Saturday and today (Wednesday) I finished part two of the book. Oh, speaking of nothing in particular in the book, this post will be full of spoilers for the book. The intended reader is somebody who has read the book, or who doesn’t give a shit about being spoiled. Alright, moving on.
As I was saying, I finished part two of three today and I haven’t started on part three yet, so anything I write about ”5000 years later” will be based on my memory from my first time through the book. That being said, I think the first and the third part are the best ones. The second part drags from time to time.
Part One
The first part is just fantastic. The opening is great. I quoted and raved about the opening sentences on my first listen of it but it’s not just those lines. The first couple of chapters are amazing. It draws me in from the first sentence and then keeps it up, without it feeling ”cheap” like som page-turners can feel. The way the ending of one section can so nicely translate into the beginning of another, even thought the latter one is from the perspective of a different person and/or some time later gives it a really nice flow.
There’s also a clear way that things are heading. Maybe not as clear as a goal but at least I as the reader know that we are moving toward The White Sky and The Hard Rain and that everybody needs to to everything they can before those events.
Part Two
I’ve been thinking a lot about part two during this listen. I don’t really have a problem with long asides about orbital mechanics or other things. On the contrary actually, I love those asides in novels. So that’s not the problem with this part of the book.
Also in my mind, part one goes on up until Dinah telegraphs repeated ”QRT QRT QRT” to he father. To me, that’s where part one ends and part two begins.
I think the problem with part two is two-fold. It doesn’t have as clear of a narrative goal as part one. It feels like there’s a continuous struggle to get somewhere, but where that somewhere is isn’t quite clear. At times that makes it extra tense, which is good, but at other times it feels like it’s not really going anywhere.
The second problem is that it’s in part two that the main characters makes some really stupid decisions, decisions that feels out of character for them. For the first part of the novel people make the best they can out of a terrible situation, and they do it by making rational choices. Sometimes the choices are hard to make, but it’s still rational. In the second part, we have the situation with J B F.
When she shows up at the Cloud Ark, it’s in clear violation of the Crater Lake Accord. The clause about no world-leaders being allowed to be sent up seems like such an important one. Her role wasn’t to escape to orbit. Her role as president was to die with the people. Since she cowardly abandoned that, when she asked permission to come about Ivy should have declined. Yes, that’s grim, but so is nuking people the way J B F did, though given the circumstances, doing that was the right choice.
Failing to decline Julia, once she has been allowed to the Ark, once all hell has broken lose, and once Aïda is calling asking to get back to Endurance, the answer should once again have been no. She and the other’s chose to leave the Ark and to go on their own so F off and good luck.
Obviously I’m writing this with hind-sight but my memory is pretty clear on me feeling this on my first go through the book, when the situations first unfolded, as well.
And again failing that, once there on Cleft holding The Council of the Seven Eves, how, HOW can they allow Aïda and Julia to be part of the future of the human race. I get that killing them, a quarter of the human race at that point, would have been a really hard decision, but one that Tekla was ready to make. But they wouldn’t have had to do that. Let them live, but don’t assist them in having children. Particularly Aïda is so clear with her intentions, letting her build her own clan when the others could have just as easily refused her seems so illogical.
That being said, without these choices there wouldn’t have been a part three. And I love part three. Well, I loved it the first time around. Let’s find out tomorrow if I still do.
I have a really hard time deciding whether I should call it listening or reading, when I’m not the one doing the actual reading of a book. ↩
Tonight (midnight between the 31st of July and 1st of August) was the ”Midnight Swim” here in Sundborn, where a bunch of swimmers swim from the damm next to Carl Larsson Gården upstream to the church and then back downstream again. It seems to be an annual thing and I heard about it last year but was too tired to check it out, something I regretted the day after when I saw photos of it and read about it in the paper.
So this year I decided to go regardless of whether I was tired or not and I’m so glad I did. It was really cool to see the lit up buoys (the right word?) that the swimmer dragged with them in the dark, and the speed they managed when they headed back downstream was simply amazing.
Here’s some photos:
The last group of swimmers (the fastest ones) starting their journey.Resting and gathering the group back together at the church, before turning back downstream.High speed swimming downstream, closing in on the finish line.∞
It’s time for me to get a new computer at work this year. We generally use Macs and we get new ones every three years. From 2015 to 2018 I was using a 13″ MacBook Pro, a computer that I truly loved. I had all the ports I needed (as long as I remembered to bring a Thunderbolt to Ethernet dongle) and it was small and light in my backpack.
Twenty-eighteen rolled around and it was time to decide on a new computer. By that time some of my colleagues had gotten the new USB-C/Thunderbolt 3-only laptops in the previous year and results where mixed to say the least. To give some examples, one of my colleagues absolutely loves here 15″. Another one is quite happy. One likes everything except the TouchBar. One likes his computer but has had to have it serviced multiple times do to keyboard issues. Another one has been serviced because of screen problems. Another colleague abandoned the Mac platform entirely. I felt quite strongly that I didn’t want to get into the potential problems of dongles, keyboards and all the other stuff but I did want to stay with the Mac. Fortunately I had one option, the 15″ late 2015 MacBook Pro was still on sale so I decided on that one.
Since then my computer and me has had an on again, off again relationship. I love the fact that I rarely need a dongle to anything. I love that I can plug in both SD cards and USB flash drives whenever I want. And MacSafe keeps being great. However it is was too big for my taste. The 15″ form factor is really not for me. It has even gotten me to the point where I occasionally get out the old 13″ and bring that one in my backpack. Also for the last six months or so I’ve really felt that this machine (the 15″) is letting me down in terms of speed and the fan noise in Zoom meetings is driving me crazy.
So it’s time to get a new one. When the 16″ hit the market last year(?) I thought I new what the future held in stock for me. I hoped for a similar 14″ form factor and that that computer would be the one for me. Now such a computer doesn’t exist. But the M1 laptops exist and they seem very nice. But am I ready to jump on a new technical platform early on? Will Pro Tools, MediaComposer and similar tools work? Will all my x86 terminal tools be available for Apple Silicon? And most importantly, do I feel like I have the time to figure these things out?
My options
Here’s basically my options:
13″ MacBook Air with M1 processor
13″ MacBook Pro with M1 processor
13″ MacBook Pro with 2,0 GHz Intel i5
The basic problem that all three have is that they are USB-C/Thunderbolt only. I would really, really like to have at least an HDMI port and an SD card slot. And now there seems to be some rumours about upcoming Macs that might have that. But to I have the time to wait? Last week I would have said yes, at least wait until after WWDC but yesterday I realised that the most likely reason why my 15″ wobbles on the table is that the battery has started swelling and that seems like something that will kill it sooner rather than later.
With that in mind I probably just need to suck it up and head into the USB-C world. And if I do that the Intel 13″ has a distinct advantage in that it has four ports instead of two. Two seems to be very few. Also the Intel one has a know processor architecture. Every piece of software will probably work just as well as on the old 15″, right? Right?!?!?
Well, maybe not because my 15″ is still on High Sierra.
Let that sink in for a moment.
I still use a laptop on High Sierra.
Why? Simply because when Mojave came out I just couldn’t be bothered with checking whether all the tools that I need to do my work still worked or not. I had one small child and one very small child at home and messing with things that already worked seemed like a terribly idea. And then I stuck with that solution. This computer will remain on High Sierra until it dies. This makes it quite possible that the transition to a new computer will be less that smooth even if it’s still and Intel machine.
So the ports then. Four is indeed more than two. And why settle for two when I can have four? Well…
That’s why:
Geekbench scores for my three options, compared to my current machine.
Based on this, getting a new 13″ Intel machine seems like a very small step up from what I have today, but a small step that still brings the hassle of new ports and an os that means I will have to do a lot of compatibility checking. On the other hand, getting an M1 machine almost doubles my single core performance scores and more that doubles the multi core ones.
So a MacBook Pro 13″ with an M1 then? Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell, if it had four USB ports and the Air only two then the deal would have been sealed. But the port situation is the same for both. And the Air has the added benefit of being fan-less. As I currently hate the fan noise from my computer maybe this is the way to go? Or maybe not having a fan means it’ll throttle the processor way too often resulting in I poor experience in the long term? So that can go either way.
And then there’s the TouchBar, or the lack of a TouchBar. The Air has proper function keys, while retaining TouchID. Even though I’ve only briefly tried the TouchBar on other peoples computers it seems to not be something that I want to have. Potentially cool but as far as I’ve seen there hasn’t been a ”killer app” for it, but there is the risk of accidental input.
In conclusion
It’s a bit anti-climactic but I don’t know for sure which way to go. In writing this text I think I’ve settled on getting a new one as soon as possible, and narrowing the choice down to either the MacBook Pro 13″ or the MacBook Air, both with an M1 processor. Which of those I should go with I still don’t know.
My yearly theme for 2021 will be The Year of Music. The point of this theme is to get me to do more music related things.
Listening
Doing that could be as simple as listening to some music during the day. For quite a few years now I haven’t been listening to much music. I often have my AirPods in my ears but most of the time what I’ve been listening to has been a podcast or, more recently, a YouTube video. For the second half of 2020 YouTube has more or less become the background noise of my life. This is something I really want to change.
I really enjoy listening to music and doing it makes me happy but it’s so easy to get stuck in the hole that is YouTube and podcasts. The podcast part has sort of fixed itself because it feels like I’ve burned out on most podcasts. Now there are a very select few that I actually care about listening to. On the other hand YouTube, as I wrote in the past paragraph, is a growing problem.
And don’t get me wrong, a lot of the stuff I watch on YouTube is great and I really want to keep watching it but every now and then I should turn off the videos and turn on some music instead.
I should probably also commit to listening to more new music, since my interest in whats currently popular has been close to zero for at least ten years now, but I feel like I need to set reasonable goals. So if I do listen to new things, that is good. But if I chose to listen to the same old stuff that I’ve always been listening to, that is also good.
Playing
Another way to progress the theme is to play music. I love playing guitar, tinker with synths, recording things and so on but I do it way to infrequently. Especially the recording/producing part has been close to zero for a long time. When I want to record something I would like it to be something that I’ve also written myself but that is something that I need to let go. I haven’t actually finished writing a song for a decade so it’s time to uncouple songwriting from recording an instead record some fun covers or something. I do have a more specific plan here, but that’ll have to wait for another day.
Making things
Making things related to (listening och playing) music is also part of the year of music. Working on the πiFi Music Player for instance is absolutely something that furthers the theme.
Setting up my home studio
If I were to calibrate the monitor speakers of my home studio or rerouting cables, setup synths and so on, that would also be compatible with the theme but I need to make sure that I don’t get stuck in preparing for a recording that I never make.
TL/DR I finally bought myself an Apple Watch, it arrived a few days ago and I really like it.
There are few, if any, purchasing decisions that I’ve been sweating for as long time as the Apple Watch. I never really felt the need for one but the want for one has been there since its initial release. However I didn’t like the look of the first aluminum ones and I though the steel ones were too expensive. Eventually I got a Pebble Steel for my thirtieth birthday and I really liked that watch and found it useful.
Pebble Steel
After a few years and the Pebble corporation being ”sunset” it stopped working properly, it’s app started hogging disk space on my phone and so on so I stopped using it and got myself a regular watch.
EDIT: This photo was added after publication of the article.
The idea of getting an Apple Watch has been in the back of my mind more and more these past few years as I think the aluminum ones have gotten better looking. So last year I was quite close to buying one but in the end I decided not to, just to change my mind this summer. The reason (more likely excuse) was that it would be nice to track my activity when I go swimming in the lake.
I knew I wanted to silver aluminum one but I did some waffling about which band to get. In the end I decided to get two, the Alaska Blue Sports Band and the Milanese Loop
My Apple Watch with the Milanese Loop
My Watch with the Alaska Blue Sports Band
The watch bands
I’m surprised about how much I like the Sports Band. I mostly got it because I wanted to wear the watch when swimming and I didn’t want to use the Milanese loop for that but right now the Sports Band is my favorite of the two. It looks got and is comfortable.
The Milanese loop is still eligible for a return to Apple but I think I’ll keep it. I will use it some times and if I return it now I’ll definitely not buy it or something similar again because I will get cheap. So having one is probably better than not having one.
The watch itself
As mentioned above I got the silver aluminum watch and I chose the 40 mm one. I have quite small wrists and I’m not a fan of big watches so this smaller one fits me great.
I also decided to go with the cellular version, something I’ve always cheaped out on for my iPads. With the iPads I’ve never really regretted that cheapness since I never, I mean never, carry and iPad with me outside of a place with WiFi without also carrying my iPhone and tethering has always worked perfectly for me. For the watch I wanted to try and see if I decided to leave the phone behind for walks and other potential, though still not actual, exercise. So far I haven’t been able to get the cellular working because of some problem with my carrier that I need to go to a store to sorts of and I just haven’t had the time yet.
The watch-faces and complications
I’ve heard CGP Grey and Marco Arment among others complain about the various watch-faces. So far I don’t agree with them. I do think third-party watch-faces should be a thing, and if that isn’t a thing there should be far more watch-faces by Apple, but the current ones works for me right now.
So far I haven’t really decided on a particular favorite. Instead I have a few that I circle between during the day for various contexts.
Simple
The Simple watch-face
First of, there the Simple watch face with a petroleum blue second hand. This is my night time watch. So far I wear the watch at night as well to track my sleep so I think it’s nice to have a fairly clean-looking watch-face for nighttime viewing.
The main one here is Sleep++ by _David Smith. I’m a big fan of David and his work and curiosity about his watch apps are part of the reason why I wanted one. I put the Sleep++ complication there on this face to make sure I activate sleep tracking each night but I gotta say that the automatic tracking works very well as well, so maybe I don’t really need it there. Still, it’s nice to have the crescent moon there as a visual cue that this is the night watch-face and that I’m supposed to sleep when I see it.
Infographic
Infographic
I imagine this will be my main work watch-face, the one I turn to on a working day after I’ve woken up and will use until work is done for the day. In that context I love how many complications I can, and have, fill it with, though it does make it quite busy which.
The main complication here is the topmost ”multi function” one that is hosting OmniFocus. This way I can always see what I should be doing next and it’s a great feeling to check off a lot of items and then see the Done text appear, indicating that there’s nothing more I need to do.
However, I would like it even better if I could chose different OmniFocus perspectives for the watch complication and the watch widget. Right now those need to be the same. It’s in no way a big complaint but OmniFocus is this wonderful power tool of choice and settings, so it would be great if this particular thing could be a setting as well.
As for the outer complications, they are (again clockwise from top left)
Pedometer++ is another great tool by David Smith. It was the first app I got for my iPhone 5S that made use of the ”motion co-processor” and the main reason why I’ve worn my iPhone as much as possible ever since. I just love to track my step amount and I think Pedometer++ is a nice app to do it with. On the watch it works equally well and so far I’m more interested in just my steps rather than my ”exercise” and ”standing” so I prefer this one to the Apple Activity Rings.1
Yr is a weather app from Norwegian National(?) weather service. I’ve used their phone app for ages and I find their forecasts better that the Apple ones.
Home is for controlling the IKEA Trådfri lights in my house. If I work at the office that is not going to be very useful but when working from home it’s nice to have quick access to the various lighting scenarios.
Then there’s the inner complications. A time complication from Watchsmith, yet another awesome David Smith creation. It’s an app whose sole purpose is to provide useful and highly customizable complications for the watch. Very geeky, truly amazing!
Then there’s a date complication and finally the Overcast one. Overcast is my podcast player of choice and having quick access to it is great. I’m not 100% sold on the dark mode icon on the watch but I haven’t bothered checking out whether I can change it or not.
Infographic Modular
Infographic Modular, my free time watch-face.
Finally there’s the Infographic Modular face which I use as my free time watch-face, or awake but with with nothing particular to do watch-face.
I like the digital time on this one for precision telling of the time and in combination with the fuzzy time beneath it it’s great. The fuzzy time is another Watchsmith complication.
On the bottom there are three complications (left to right):
Pedometer++
Overcast
Home
All of these feature on watch-faces mentioned above, so look there for more information.
The complication next to the digital time is the battery indicator. This one will probably be changed to something else soon. I find I don’t really care that much about the battery. Maybe it will be replaced by the activity rings, but that would than make the Pedometer++ one fairly redundant so it would need to be changed as well. Or maybe I’ll change the battery to the weather.
There will be lots of fiddling over the summer and hopefully a few blog posts about it
That being said, filling the activity rings has proven to be far more addictive that I though. ↩
Every project needs a name and I need to stop referring to the music player I’m building as "The Kid’s Music Player". So, the project name is from now on The πiFi Music Player or πFi for short.
The basic idea is to replicate the very kid friendly1 way of listening to music that a cassette player or CD player was back when I was a kid. Today we can all access pretty much every piece of music ever recorded but to do so you pretty much have to have a smart device of some kind and be able to read and write to find what you are looking for.2
To do this I’m building a device that scans pieces of cardboard with QR codes on them and then uses the information on the QR code to playback the correct track, album or artist from Spotify. (Local play might also be a feature.) The side of the "music card" that doesn’t have a QR code will have album art or similar to make it easy to identify to both adults and kids.
I currently have a soon to be alpha in my hands (or on my bookshelf). I’m using a Raspberry Pi with Mopidy for the playback, a Raspberry Pi Camera module and zbarcam to scan the QR codes, a Python script to actually do something with the information in the QR and then a HiFiBerry Amp2 to DA convert and amplify the audio for a pair of passive speakers.
As you can see in the video the physical/crafty side of the project has a lot of work that needs to be done. I’m currently using some LEGO to keep things in place, but I need a proper enclosure. I’m not 100% sure whether I’ll make something out of wood, metal or whether I’ll 3D print something unapologetically plastic. 3D printing seems like a good idea because it simplifies making more than one device, which I’m planning to do. However, I’m never 3D printed anything. Nor have I built a 3D model of anything, so I’ll have some homework.
Even more important before it can be considered even an alpha is a volume control. Right now, the only way to control the volume is to SSH into the Pi and use mpc volume XX where XX is the percentage of volume I want. Because the amplifier is 2x 30 Watts, it’s quite loud in a normal home setting. As I’m listening while typing now I have it set for 7% volume.
The WAF of SSHing into something to change it’s volume from ear-piercingly loud to tolerable is very low.3
I also think it need some kinds of physical controls, at least for play/pause, stop and next track. Right now those functions are also accessed via QR codes.
Before moving it into beta I also need to build speakers. I have borrowed the ones I’m using now from a friend. I might also build a proper power supply for it, instead of using the wall wart that I use now.
Many things are still uncertain and there are so much I need to learn how to do, but I am really happy to have started this project, and that I actually got back to it after having left it dormant for three mounts.
If you want to follow along everything will be published here on the blog. I’ll try to remember to tag all the posts with πiFi Music Player.
Yes, I am aware of "smart speakers", ladies in cans and "AHOY TELEPHONE". Here’s some reasons why that’s not a solution here. ↩
Yes, "Wife Acceptance Factor" is probably a very problematic term these days. I think we should try to change it to "PAF – Partner(s) Acceptance Factor". The idea itself, that something that appeals to a nerdy person doesn’t necessarily appeal to the other person(s) living with the nerd, still has merits and is worth considering when building and/or purchasing something like this. Regardless of the gender and/or pronoun of the nerd and the other person(s) involved. ↩
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Replies and comments
jeremycherfas
15 augusti, 2024 20:12@MrHenko Wow! Great ambition. I wish you every success.
odd
15 augusti, 2024 20:39@MrHenko Looking forward to hearing it! Please don’t feel pressured though. I am really more of a Joshua Tree person, but Achtung, Baby is really good imho. 🎸
MrHenko
16 augusti, 2024 11:58@jeremycherfas Thanks Jeremy!
MrHenko
16 augusti, 2024 12:00@odd Thanks Odd! Joshua Tree has the best opening of the two. Streets, Still Haven’t Found and With or Without You is a one-two-three punch that few bands can match, even on a greatest hits album but I think the overall quality and feeling of the album as a whole is higher for Achtung Baby. But I am also quite weird in that I really like Zooropa as well, and even find a lot of redeeming things about Pop.