Technology

I find music scores to be absolutely beautiful documents. In middle school I was engrossed by creating my own music and, more importantly, writing it down. There’s video evidence of me being jazzed about receiving a “Lyricist’s Notebook” for Christmas around that time. I also recall purchasing a journal of staff paper for ambitious ideas I had. Yet turning musical ideas into something that can be shared, let alone something that would look good, felt out of reach. When the itch to create music struck me again last week I remembered a new-to-me program, MuseScore, that changed everything. ...

I’ve slowly formed my thoughts on the language model tools that have stormed into the foreground of technology over the last few months. My initial utter skepticism, largely founded on people’s misunderstanding of how these tools are designed, has morphed into an appreciation of their specific utility as a thesaurus for any kind of text available on the internet. ...

I listen to several Relay FM podcasts, which keeps me engaged in a sphere of technology personalities. They kept me up-to-date on the exodus from Twitter that this region of internet culture experienced, and their settlement into Mastodon. I’ve never been a big Twitter user. Comical Start has/had an account where I tried to remember to post each week’s episode, but that’s mainly for the practice. Nobody cared that I did that, and I slowly turned that account into more of a personal account that followed the internet folks that I enjoy. I never tweeted at them because it was a show account, so I simply read things when I thought of it and that was that. ...

Textbooks have been the premier mechanism for presenting curriculum for centuries. While the printed word is powerful and, for many people, superior to digital versions, the physicality of textbooks requires that their content remains static. Errors are inevitable, as are changes in relevant topics or pedagogy. New editions are the only tool to fight against the decay of a textbook’s utility.1 In an educational landscape dominated by digital tools, it’s tempting to have content updated rapidly and frequently. This approach requires a deft hand. ...

It’s been a while since I wrote about my setup for various writing projects. It’s changed a bit since then, and is still not particularly robust. Consider this a report on the state of the world. ...

Years ago when I got my first electric guitar, a used Squier Stratocaster in white, my guitar-playing uncle was nice enough to pass along a multi-effects pedal.1 For hobbyist playing on my own, it was a fun toy that gave me new sounds and allowed me to attempt imitating the sounds in songs I was trying to play. This memory popped back into my head the other week as I was tooling around with my much-improved Fender Telecaster I bought last year. Despite my excitement about having a guitar with a simple, clean sound, I found myself wishing again for more ways to have fun with playing. While flows like plugging into an interface and using Garageband are viable options, that requires more connections and isn’t any less expensive than where I ended up. After doing some research, I found that reputable multi-effects pedals were way less expensive than I originally imagined. ...

After broadly explaining the virtues of digital organization, let’s discuss the practical example of eBooks. I’ve moved from allowing a single platform (e.g. Amazon Kindle) to dictate how I organize my eBooks to making sure I own and manage the system myself. You should too. ...

I asked ChatGPT to write its own Onion-style article with the same title as what I published yesterday. My request along with ChatGPT’s response. Make your own judgement on how it did, and continue on if you’d like to read my thoughts.1 ...

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA—In an effort to eschew the tendency for modern AI tools such as ChatGPT to appear neutral while still housing the fundamental biases of their creators within their core, San Jose-based startup Half Full, Inc. announced on Monday the launch of an AI whose goal is optimism, plain and simple. ...

We create and accumulate huge quantities information these days. I don’t think that makes us fundamentally different than our ancestors in terms of organization. What separates us is that it’s now possible to have our data completely disorganized in a way that is invisible to others. This requires an increase in awareness and intentionality to reap the inherent benefits of organization.1 ...