From 3e52492521e16f9543cf266a9c39d50f87e4927c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: David Eisinger Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2025 10:27:01 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] finalize july dispatch --- .../journal/dispatch-29-july-2025/index.md | 93 ++++++++----------- 1 file changed, 41 insertions(+), 52 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/journal/dispatch-29-july-2025/index.md b/content/journal/dispatch-29-july-2025/index.md index 45e5d49..59015df 100644 --- a/content/journal/dispatch-29-july-2025/index.md +++ b/content/journal/dispatch-29-july-2025/index.md @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@ --- title: "Dispatch #29 (July 2025)" -date: 2025-06-24T14:00:35-04:00 +date: 2025-07-03T10:26:36-04:00 draft: false tags: - dispatch @@ -31,30 +31,26 @@ references: file: fly-io-g1y72q.txt --- -Some thoughts here... +Big month: birthdays, travel, lots of music. My boy turned one -- time friggin' flies. He is on the move, talking up a storm, and getting into everything. -- Nico birthday - {{}} {{}} -- Beach - - Beach banger - - [Poolsuite][1] +We spent a week at [Holden Beach][1] with Claire's family. Great to see everyone, and great to take a proper vacation. Both kids are changing so quickly (Nico starting to walk, Nev taking an interest in swimming and playing piano) and it was nice to take a break from work and spend bunch of dedicated time with them. {{}} {{}} +[Poolsuite FM][2] was the soundtrack to the week, and it inspired me to make a house track one evening. Musically, I spend a lot of time trying to make music that _doesn't_ sound so electronic, so it was nice to sort of lean into it; my little travel music setup is pretty well suited for it. Check it out: + -[1]: https://poolsuite.net +[1]: https://hbtownhall.com/ +[2]: https://poolsuite.net -- Dads birthday - - Richmond - - [Children’s Museum][2] - - Buz and Neds +We then traveled up to Richmond to meet up with my family to celebrate my dad's 70th. Nice to get all the cousins together, if only for an afternoon. The [Richmond Children’s Museum][3] is great. {{}} {{}} @@ -62,84 +58,77 @@ Some thoughts here... {{}} {{}} -[2]: https://www.childrensmuseumofrichmond.org/ +[3]: https://www.childrensmuseumofrichmond.org/ -- [Angel Island][3] - - Ball pit photos +I took the kids to [Angel Island][4] one evening, where I was able to reproduce this Eisinger family classic: {{}} {{}} -[3]: https://www.angelislandusa.com/ +(That's Nico on the left, and a young me on the right.) -- Ken trip - - Car rental - - Music +[4]: https://www.angelislandusa.com/ + +Finally, my buddy Ken and I met up at the Eastern Shore in Virginia (at the same place we stayed [a few years ago][5]). I rented a Jeep Wrangler off of [Turo][6], which was a fun way to try out a car I'll almost certainly never own. We brought a whole bunch of gear and spent most of the weekend making music. + +[5]: /journal/dispatch-7-september-2023/ +[6]: https://turo.com/ {{}} {{}} +Here's a track we made, called "Heat Lightning": + -[13]: https://turo.com/ -[14]: /journal/dispatch-7-september-2023/ +It was cool to make music with another person, something I've never really done before. Ken's process is a lot different than mine, more DAW-focused, more live playing, less MIDI sequencing (he's an accomplished percussionist & his timing is much better than mine). I definitely learned a lot, and I'm keen to lean more into Ableton. At the same time, the genesis of the track came from just jamming with my Circuit Tracks and a few other pieces of gear, so I still think there's a place for the hardware stuff I'm already doing and enjoying. -- Firsts - - Nico walking - - Nev swimming - - Nev piano - -Next month: - -* Lake for the fourth -* Wide open after that -* Running, weight loss, more music (Melodics, Ableton) +That was a whirlwind of a month. We're headed to Lake Norman for the long weekend, but then hoping to have a slower-paced July. I'd like to get back into running and exercise (despite the heat), get Ableton working well with my setup, and generally just enjoy summer here in Durham. ### This Month -* Adventure: -* Project: -* Skill: +* Adventure: Lake Norman for Indepence Day +* Project: use Ableton to produce a track (including effects, dynamics, and a mix of sequencing and live recording) +* Skill: Ableton ### Reading & Listening -* Fiction: [_Title_][4], Author -* Non-fiction: [_Title_][5], Author -* Music: [_Iteration_][6], Com Truse +* Fiction: [_Firewalkers_][7], Adrian Tchaikovsky +* Non-fiction: not reading much non-fiction these days +* Music: [_Iteration_][8], Com Truse -[4]: https://bookshop.org/ -[5]: https://bookshop.org/ -[6]: https://ghostly.com/products/iteration +[7]: https://www.adriantchaikovsky.com/terrible-worlds-revolutions.html#firewalkers +[8]: https://ghostly.com/products/iteration ### Links -* [Opinion | Sarah McBride on Why the Left Lost on Trans Rights - The New York Times][7] +* [Opinion | Sarah McBride on Why the Left Lost on Trans Rights - The New York Times][9] > Maybe it is hurtful, but you can’t foster social change if you don’t have a conversation. You can’t change people if you exclude them. And I will just say, you can’t have absolutism on the left or the right without authoritarianism. -* [Generative AI as a magic system – Tracy Durnell's Mind Garden][8] +* [Generative AI as a magic system – Tracy Durnell's Mind Garden][10] > We treat generative AI like magic… and magic systems have rules. When creating fantasy worlds, writers think about who can use magic, how magic is performed, what it’s able to do, what its constraints are, what the source of magic is, and what it costs. I’m applying a bit of reverse worldbuilding to the real world to extrapolate the rules of the AI magic system. -* [Toward A Theory Of Kevin Roose][9] +* [Toward A Theory Of Kevin Roose][11] > My suspicion, my awful awful newfound theory, is that there are people with a sincere and even kind of innocent belief that we are all just picking winners, in everything: that ideology, advocacy, analysis, criticism, affinity, even taste and style and association are essentially predictions. That what a person tries to do, the essential task of a person, is to identify who and what is going to come out on top, and align with it. -* [Helix][10] +* [Helix][12] > It's pretty nice! It launches quickly. No plugin system so the futzmonkey sort of has to stay in its cage, but it's very batteries-included. I found a tutorial for setting it up for Markdown that wasn't overwhelming and helped me get a sense of how its config works. -* [How Field Notes went from side project to cult notebook][11] +* [How Field Notes went from side project to cult notebook][13] > Two decades after Aaron Draplin and Jim Coudal launched Field Notes, the analog notebook company is crushing it in the digital age. -* [My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts · The Fly Blog][12] +* [My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts · The Fly Blog][14] > And here I rejoin your company. I read Simon Willison, and that’s all I really need. But all day, every day, a sizable chunk of the front page of HN is allocated to LLMs: incremental model updates, startups doing things with LLMs, LLM tutorials, screeds against LLMs. It’s annoying! But AI is also incredibly — a word I use advisedly — important. It’s getting the same kind of attention that smart phones got in 2008, and not as much as the Internet got. That seems about right. -[7]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-sarah-mcbride.html -[8]: https://tracydurnell.com/2025/06/24/generative-ai-as-a-magic-system/ -[9]: https://defector.com/toward-a-theory-of-kevin-roose?giftLink=0131f06f11f5f3dfe5152b52f0d2f2dc -[10]: https://lmno.lol/puddingtime/helix -[11]: https://www.fastcompany.com/91352848/field-notes-cult-notebook-started-out-as-a-side-project -[12]: https://fly.io/blog/youre-all-nuts/ +[9]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-sarah-mcbride.html +[10]: https://tracydurnell.com/2025/06/24/generative-ai-as-a-magic-system/ +[11]: https://defector.com/toward-a-theory-of-kevin-roose?giftLink=0131f06f11f5f3dfe5152b52f0d2f2dc +[12]: https://lmno.lol/puddingtime/helix +[13]: https://www.fastcompany.com/91352848/field-notes-cult-notebook-started-out-as-a-side-project +[14]: https://fly.io/blog/youre-all-nuts/