I really wish they would switch these back to being live. It just adds a human element that cannot be captured with this crap. Steve stood up there in a black sweater and let the tech speak for itself. On these I'm stuck beholding the same class of high-income-Silicon-Valley-mid-40s where they are all kind of weirdly look and sound the same even though they are all trying so hard to have unique styles and they are all just so excited to be telling you the thing that is really important and gives their life deep meaning and peace and they are so happy.
I love this response. The beauty of claiming one’s art with a confident but plain “I” and then following with a clear and concise answer.
How do you view your day job? As a necessary evil to pay the bills? As a good “real world” counterweight to the arts? I ask in good faith and genuine curiosity as I am likewise drawn to the arts but have over the years come to appreciate how my tech career keeps my feet planted on the ground.
I find myself grateful I can support my family financially, as it's statistically unlikely my art can ever permit me to quit my day job.
Not to imply that it's in any way a quality peculiar to those who write poetry in their free time (I know it isn't), but my need for creative expression regularly seeps into the coding standards to which I hold myself, insofar as I demand a certain beauty-- such as such a thing is ever even possible-- out of the libraries I write.
This reminds me of a book I recently enjoyed: Lost in the Cosmos: the Last Self Help Book by novelist Walker Percy. One of his best questions was on "the problem of re-entry", i.e. how does one go from plumbing the very depths of existence/meaning back to the mundane of standing in line to buy groceries. How does one "re-enter" "normal life"? The book doesn't so much as answer the question as make the reader ponder it, but it does have an interlude on writers and their propensity toward alcohol (which, given his career as a novelist, one could say he has valid insight into).
WARNING: personal, non-verifiable theory about to be presented
When coming across modern writers I will often check their biography to see what odd-jobs they have had. I feel that modern man can become so insulated in modern life (e.g. spending an entire career in academia with, say, no hobbies that are grounded in actual life such as fishing, serious gardening, etc) that he can become very disconnected and overly "heady" or "abstract". As such, I often am glad to see when an artist or writer has some terribly mundane and tactile job on their resume. I know that as somebody drawn to the arts I have been incredibly thankful for my unplanned career in software as it has opened my eyes to many naive thoughts I had as to "how the world works".
>“I had gone to install a dishwasher in a loft in SoHo,” he says. “While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to find Robert Hughes, the art critic of Time magazine, staring at me in disbelief. ‘But you’re Philip Glass! What are you doing here?’ It was obvious that I was installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be finished. ‘But you are an artist,’ he protested. I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well and that he should go away and let me finish.”
I heard a story once about Glass driving someone in a taxi and the passenger saw his license and said what an interesting coincidence, he was on his way to see a concert of music by a man named Philip Glass. I don’t remember if Glass revealed his identity or not.
> Einstein on the Beach was premiered in Avignon on July 25 1976. Glass and Wilson were then offered the option of two performances at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where the critical reaction was delirious: "One listens to the music just as one watches Wilson's shifting tableaus," wrote John Rockwell in the New York Times, "and somehow, without knowing it, one crosses the line from being puzzled or irritated to being absolutely bewitched." The day after the performance, Glass was back driving his taxi: "I vividly remember the moment, shortly after the Met adventure," he says, "when a well-dressed woman got into my cab. After noting the name of the driver, she leaned forward and said: 'Young man, do you realise you have the same name as a very famous composer'."
> When coming across modern writers I will often check their biography to see what odd-jobs they have had. I feel that modern man can become so insulated in modern life (e.g. spending an entire career in academia with, say, no hobbies that are grounded in actual life such as fishing, serious gardening, etc) that he can become very disconnected and overly "heady" or "abstract". As such, I often am glad to see when an artist or writer has some terribly mundane and tactile job on their resume. I know that as somebody drawn to the arts I have been incredibly thankful for my unplanned career in software as it has opened my eyes to many naive thoughts I had as to "how the world works".
I agree with the idea but I was very surprised by the last part of your comment because, in my experience, software engineering fits perfectly into the type of job that you call "disconnected" and "abstract" rather than anything "grounded in actual life".
I always found software to be extremely concrete activity. All that stuff going on in your head still needs to be typed or nothing changes. A failing memory model on your development machine is a really unpleasant wake up call that all this stuff is operating in the real world.
You can try to abstract as much as you want, but you can’t hand wave the speed of light or even just the messy world of user problems / 3rd party software issues.
PHP, Ruby, Elixir, Javascript, Python. Familiarity with the main frameworks of each. Looking for contract work, but open to full-time opportunities depending on the details.
It may also be that they were one of the most prominent faces of Rock’s commercial and creative decline. One of the best YT interviews I’ve recently seen is Rick Beato sitting down with a music industry veteran to discuss why rock music declined so rapidly.
tldr - prior to the 90s radio stations were largely independent and had local DJs constantly searching out and playing new and original local music as that DJ was incentivized the find the “next big thing”, I.e. a DJ could say “I was the one” who broke Some Big Band on the national scene. However, in the 90s legislation was passed that allowed for the monopolization of radio stations. Many were bought out by large central corps. This resulted in the demise of the local DJ searching for new music, instead replaced by the DJ who is told by those “up top” what to play. Thus we witnessed the death of new and creative acts, replaced by bands that were “formulated” by corp minds.
Can somebody explain what Guido van Rossum has been doing from a day to day perspective on core Python since he stepped down from BDFL? I’m asking in good faith as I don’t follow Python that closely and am curious what he has done since 2018.
It is great that the author included some known pieces for you to "watch" (click the music icon on the bottom right). Of course one first goes to Bach to test the mettle. While "watching" BWV 578 one thing I immediately noticed was how the rhythm of the counterpoint stood out to me in a new way. I have seen many visualizers (the great https://www.youtube.com/user/smalin/videos deserves mention), but I have found most to have some sort of constant object moving around to visualization the tones (i.e. a ball moving up and down). In this case, there is no "moving object" that we follow and we are instead left with the tones in isolation. I greatly enjoyed seeing how this increased my appreciation of Bach's rhythmic counterpoint as I could see when multiple strings were plucked at the same time with the clear purple coloring. Amazing work!
What I found weird is that there's only one guitar piece in the list: Asturias. The rest is keyboard music. And unfortunately, that piece shows weaknesses in the system. Notes get cut off, the rhythm is wrong, and there was one very loud buzzing sound, which suggests the buffer can't be filled fast enough.
Man, I didn't even notice the icons in the bottom corners. I thought it was just a quick toy on first pass which is a shame because loading existing songs is really cool.
I wonder how many other people close the tab without noticing the buttons like I did.
Also love that MIDI velocity is mapped to pluck position, so higher velocity notes are brighter. This is a beautiful representation of physical modeling.
Does anybody know whether these services prevent a user from copying an instrumentalist's specific style? For example, let's say I input:
> "make a song with Johnny Cash singing about X"
That would result in IP/copyright issues, no? I don't really know the legal specifics here, so grant me some slack if I am not using the correct language. But, assuming that input does create a legal problem, does the same apply to these sort of prompts:
> "with a guitar solo by Zakk Wylde"
> "with drum fills like Thomas Stauch"
etc...
Are there similar legal protections around instruments as the voice?
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