For the last 23 days I’ve been able to get in at least 30 minutes of exercise and close all three rings on the iOS Activity app. My beloved wife started tracking exercise a little more than a week before I did and she managed to close all three rings for the entire month of September. I am so impressed by that and so proud of her that I am challenging myself to do the same for the month of October.
Today is October 1st and all three rings are closed for today. I can do this.
When I was in college I took a circuit design course and had to solder together a circuit board. That was in 2003, I think. Maybe 2002. A long time ago. I haven’t done anything remotely similar to that since.
For a while now I’ve had this secret desire to buy a build your own amplifier kit and build the whole thing myself. I want to build a clone of a tweed Fender Deluxe. It’s supposed to be a simple build and it is a legendary amp.
I’d like to do this, but the idea of actually wiring it together is terrifying to me. The solution, of course, is to find a smaller scale project and do that first. Like, practice, you dig? There’s also the small matter of not having any of the tools required.
Today is one of those days where I feel myself getting close to pulling the trigger on a wiring project. Build Your Own Clone is a company that sells kits for all sorts of guitar gear. Their stuff is supposed to be excellent. I was surfing around their website today looking for something simple to use as a first project. Some kind of fuzz pedal maybe? How about a treble booster, those are supposed to be dead simple.
Then I saw they have a Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal clone. I don’t know if it’s an easy build or not (the reviews say it is, but are those people first timers? Who knows) but I’ve been thinking about picking up a Bluesbreaker style pedal anyway. Wampler makes one. Keeley used to make one. Analogman makes the mother of all Bluesbreaker style pedals, the King of Tone and I’ve been on the waiting list for one for over two years. Maybe I could build one to hold me over until I bubble up to the top of the list.
Also, amazon has all sorts of inexpensive soldering kits that include everything I remember using in that circuit design class so many ages ago.
I do not want to spend money on any of this stuff… but I’m thinking about it. Thinking about it pretty hard. Who knows, build a pedal or two, then build a tweed Deluxe… then what? I bet I could find a 4×10 tweed Fender Bassman clone somewhere. Maybe even the amplifier the Bluesbreaker pedal is supposed to simulate, the Marshall 1962 aka The Bluesbreaker (so named because Eric Clapton used one on the Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton album in 1966).
Fantasizing about guitar gear… that’s a new high of nerdness for me, I think.
So hey, how’s the intermittent fasting thing going, he asked because he’s kinda feeling lazy when he knows he still has three songs to finish and the dishes need to be done and the dehumidifier in the cellar needs to be emptied and yadda yadda yadda?
It’s still going, if that helps. I still have a tad more than three hours to go in fast #20. I haven’t missed a day since I started this whole screwy thing. I had to mess with it a bit the other day. We had a lunch date with Harry booked for noon on Sunday. My fast period is supposed to end at 1:00. I adjusted things by ending the off period an hour early the night before so that fast was 8:00pm to noon instead of 9:00pm to 1:00pm. No problem. Lunch was eaten on time and all was right with the world. Of course, in order to get back onto the preferred schedule I had to make the next day’s fast 8:00pm to 1:00pm, meaning I had my first official 17 hour fasting period. I did it. It went okay.
Last night I actually didn’t eat anything after dinner. Not because I was being a good boy, but because dinner was HUGE and I never recovered. I think unofficially my current fast probably started before 7:00pm, but that’s okay. I’ll make it. As the clock strikes 10:00am though, I am already fantasizing about lunch. Mmmm, lunch.
It’s Tuesday today, and Tuesday is my self imposed weigh in day. The Zero app, which tracks intermittent fasting (it’s really just a timer with some statistics saved off) has a tie in to the iOS Health app and it allows me to track my weight. It has nice graphs and everything. My first week had a huge weight loss. My second had a very small weight loss. This is the third week and it fell happily in between.
I haven’t set any weight goals yet. Well, other than the lose 250 pounds or so (which is, sadly, not an exaggeration. Robbie is a fatty). I haven’t even started mucking with diet yet. I’m starting this little Autumn-Quarantine experiment with just the intermittent fasting and a little bit of regular exercise. I’ll add diet changes later, but for now chocolate is still on the menu. Let’s see how long that lasts.
In a moment of nerd glory, I setup a Google Spreadsheet with my weigh ins, including a column that tracks weekly changes and a column that tracks total changes, and a line graph… you know, like you do.
Two hours and 56 minutes until it’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch time, babie!
Phone rings. The number on the caller ID is gibberish. Okay, I’ll bite. I could use a laugh.
“Hello, we are calling from the social security office. There has been suspicious activity on your account and we are going to suspend I.T.”
Huh? Suspend I.T.? Wait… did they mean “suspend it”?
Laughter ensues.
For the first time ever, a perfect activity week.
iOS 14 is installing on my iPhone at this very moment…. and it has been installing for a while now.
Happy iOS day!
I haven’t played my guitar this week and the stir crazy is getting to me. I’ve done a lot of work on 50/90 but none of it on guitar. I’ve got eight songs with vocals recorded that are just waiting for leads. I have three that are ready for rhythm guitar. Tonight. I hope. All totaled, I’m up to 47 songs now. Three more to go and then all I have to do is the gigantic mountain of work left to finish them up.
The Agents of Shield re-watch is up to season five episode one. It opens with a montage set to a Talking Heads song. At least I think it’s a Talking Heads song. It’s definitely David Byrne singing. It lead me to the question: The year is 2020, is it time for me to give Talking Heads a try? I more or less ignored them back in the 80’s. Should I change my mind? Change my tune, so to speak?
Jen and I have been trying to exercise. I’ve been getting 30 minutes or so in each day for the last few days. I’ve been slacking a little today though. One of the things the Apple Watch activity app tracks is calories burned. I had the goal set at 640. I can’t remember if I set that or if it defaulted that way, but it’s been like that forever.
My SleepWatch app has been giving me notifications stating that I get better sleep if I burn 800 calories. That’s interesting. The last few exercise filled days have seen me going way above 800 and I have been sleeping a little better than normal. I guess that settles it. My activity app has been upped from 640 to 800 calories. Yup. I need to go for a 5-6 minute walk now.
The title of the post is just a pun. No one is furious. Unless you count being furious at the dictator cheeto for being recorded saying that Covid was a killer all the way back in February. That’s not what you get furious about. What you get furious about is that 50% of the idiots who vote still think he’s doing a great job, the fucking dogs.
Anyway.
51 minutes ago I finished my second intermittent fast. Two days in a row of no eating between 9:00pm and 1:00pm the next day. Something tells me that I’m going to get sick of this really quick, but for today… Two fast, too furious. Or something like that.
I’ve started having a little problem with my Apple Watch. Yesterday it froze on me. It went to sleep and wouldn’t wake up. I rebooted and everything was fine… or so I thought. About an hour later I saw a no-connection error icon. What? I checked my iPhone and sure enough the phone and the watch were not connected via bluetooth. I re-connected them and it was fine for a while but eventually it disconnected again.
I went to Wise Master Google and it told me to just toggle the bluetooth function on my iphone. That seems to have worked so far, at least for a couple of hours, but I have been having a little bit of an issue connecting to Siri. Its only working when my phone and I are in the same room. Weird.
My step son just wrapped up his second day of school. He did it all from his room. He’s in the living room doing music theory homework on the electric piano right now. As of today the full remote schooling is still just for this week. For now though, it’s such a relief to know he’s not going into the coronaviral plague pit otherwise known as the high school. I really don’t want him to go back, at least not without a vaccine, and not a rushed-poison-election-year-gimmick vaccine. I’m so tired of this.
So how are you all doing?
I was up really late last night. I had a load of laundry running and I didn’t want to fall asleep until it was done. I was also watching an episode of The Watchman and I wasn’t paying attention to the clock when I started it. It finished about 25 minutes after the laundry. Dumbass. Turns out I didn’t get to sleep until about 12:15am. My sleep numbers were pretty good* but there just wasn’t enough of it.
Seemingly unrelated, King Crimson guitarist/band leader Robert Fripp not only helped to invent what we now call Progressive Rock (with the first King Crimson Album, In the Court of the Crimson King in 1969, the point of it being the first prog record is arguable, but the arguments in favor are pretty good. For me, I tend to look at The Beatles Abby Road which came out a few weeks earlier), but he also helped to invent what we now call ambient music as well (with the 1973 release of No Pussyfooting in a collaboration with Brian Eno, under the name Fripp and Eno). He came up with a technique of using a couple of reel to reel tape decks to make loops of sound. He eventually developed a whole electronic style of playing, which he dubbed Frippertronics because he sounds like he’s one of those guys who likes giving funky names to stuff (I don’t know if that’s true or not, it just kinda seems that way. No offense meant, Robert). These days he uses a guitar synthesizer rig and some samplers to do his thing (and recently it’s been really making me want to dabble in synth pedals and loopers).
One unique (I think) aspect of a King Crimson show is that at some point before the people start showing up, Fripp will record a few minutes worth of an improvised ambient piece of music and they will play that through the sound system before the show starts. I think they loop it so it can start playing around the time the doors open, and end when the band takes the stage. Musically speaking they’re not really… ya know… musical. There isn’t a melody, and there really isn’t a harmonic structure to speak of. They are just meant to be background sounds.
So Crimson has been touring for years and years, and every show has it’s own original ambient piece. There must be a mountain of these suckers stored up somewhere. In the spirit of the Covid-19 lock downs being an existential kick in the nuts, Mr Fripp has been releasing one of these ambient pieces each week. Every Friday he puts one out via all the streaming services under the title Music for Quiet Moments. Music for Quiet Moments 15 came out today.
Why am I talking about this?
Because I have a playlist with all 15 pieces and it’s playing through the Sonos speaker in my bedroom/office right now, and as alluded to in paragraph #1, I’m pretty sleepy today.
Is it a mistake to combine these two seemingly unrelated things? Being sleepy and ambient music?
Ummmm… maybe I should switch to something noisier.
*My SleepWatch numbers for the past couple of weeks have included a string of heart rate dip values that were literally unbelievable. I did eight straight days above 20%, then one in the teens, and then six more above 20%. I’ve never had a run like that in the year-plus I’ve been paying attention. Granted, the last two nights have only been 13% each. A month ago I would have been very pleased with that. Now? It’s a let down.
I suppose it’s time for a 50/90 update. Let’s do some math, shall we?
July 4th through October 1st. 90 days over three months.
90 songs in three months means 16.67 songs per month. Thanks for coming out even, stupid math. So at the minimum, two of the three months need 17 songs and one needs 16. Since July starts on the 4th instead of the 1st, July is the shortest month, therefore logically July should be the month that only needs 16 songs.
Math is hard.
As of bed time last night I have 16 songs in progress. All of them have the song form set, half of them have very badly performed guitar parts recorded, none of them have lyrics or melody yet, and all of them pretty much suck so far.
But….
I am on the minimum pace.
I want to record some guitars tonight, and I’m hoping that by the time the weekend is over there will be some vocals down too. We’ll see. That might be a tall order.
I also feel that I should warn you, faithful readers (he said like he was Stephen freakin’ King or something) that a few minutes ago I started on what could be the nerdiest project I have ever undertaken… and that’s saying something.
Jen and I have become a little weirdly obsessed with candles during our four month lock down. All through our work days we both have a candle or two (or three) burning near our desk. I don’t really know why, and I don’t think she does either, but we do.
This morning when I lit my desk candles I started taking a time lapse video of one of them. I pointed my iPad at a candle, started recording, and lit the bastard. I was planning to let it run for an hour or so out of fear that the battery wouldn’t last for much longer than that. As I was writing this though, I found a lightning cable long enough to plug my iPad in without moving it from it’s video-ing location.
It is possible that I could take a full 8-9 hour long time lapse video of this candle. Oh. My. Nerd. Hopefully I don’t accidentally knock over the iPad or something. Knowing me like I do, I’ll probably do something stupid to screw this up and spare you, faithful readers, from my epic nerdness.
We shall see.
Inside the Red Head's Head 