This is what I feel. The narrative that people won’t support Biden because the other side is fighting against his programs and policies makes 0 sense.

I never feel more dumb than trying to work with my calendar when I am not in my home time zone.

The new God is an Astronaut track is awesome.

Every day when I dip into online spaces I am bombarded with noise that ultimately makes me feel delighted, furious, or unremarkable.

The thing I miss most about traveling without a personal laptop is the Photos app. I just don’t enjoy it as much on the iPad. I have been thinking about whether I should get my own MacBook Air or upgrade my old iPad to 11" or even 13" iPad Pro. I don’t think the iPad is enough.

I am struggling with a few blog posts in draft right now that may never get completed. One of them is about how I’m coming to value beauty. I think there’s something twisted in Western conceptions and values of beauty that means only the rich get to live suffused with it.

I played a Martin D-28 from the mid 70s that only one major repair— its frets were replaced at Martin. My god was that a balanced sound. So easy to play, too.

Om Malik shared a lovely quote about friendship. Reproducing just the first bold part here:

It is a relationship that consists almost entirely in shared history, loyalty, and an ongoing pleasure in each other’s company. Friendship asks only that you be yourself.

Being bombarded with random peoples’ Star Wars opinions on the internet is an experience bad enough that we should just shut it all down.

Sometimes the touristy stuff is pretty cool.

22,000 steps and a new album by MONO. Good day.

All this machine learning and Southwest and Marriott have not figured out that someone who travels as much as I do does not need a reminder a week ahead of time that I have a trip coming up.

I knew it was coming, but it’s still strange how every sci-fi show, especially in space, turns into a zombie/infestation story.

Yes, I just finished Halo season 2. Still better than it has any right to be.

I’m in an Alaska Air 737 MAX 9 and I’ve never been this uncomfortable on a plane. It’s hot. I feel like I have no space (a rare window versus aisle seat for me). My back hurts. Southwest has, apparently, spoiled me.

This article on just how weird neutrinos are was a delightful read. All science journalism shouldd be like this.

Why are the jumpsuits Apple executives wear as a joke more fun than the appearance of any product they’ve released in like 20 years?

I guess some AI things happened today? 🤷🏻‍♂️

There are a lot of things that are “not for me”. Sometimes, those things become “for me”. Sometimes they fade for everyone; it was a fad. Sometimes it stays relevant for lots of folks and never becomes for me.

I’ve generally decided to stay on the sidelines when I think this cycle is happening.

I’ve seen everything from “they’re being cautious” to “I’m no longer buying anything from Apple”. I haven’t and probably won’t watch, but it remains hard for me to generate outrage about a thing I don’t think is useful, so I won’t use it.

Did users demonstrate an interest in any of this? Have they demonstrated an interest in any of the myriad applications generative tech has been shoehorned into?

I like Cory Dransfeldt’s site. I disagree with a ton of things he says. This is a great example.

I have a lot of uncertainty around various ways we’re using LLMs and other new generative models. But the critique, “Did anyone want this?” is the height of “I am living within a filter bubble.”

ChatGPT has 600 million monthly active users— and that’s DOWN. They reached 100 million users in just 2 months.

I haven’t caught all the way up to what Apple released— but I saw things like grammar checking, summarization, and removing subjects from photos (presumably using generative fill) — these uses have tons of users. A lot of people want these things. How many people use things like priority inboxes on Gmail?

We can debate the environmental impact, the ethics of how these models are being built, privacy concerns, and the actual quality of the output (actual generated art is a thing I see a ton of online, much of it bad, and I’m not sure much of anything is better for it).

But the idea that these features are just some kind of AI-like hallucination on the part of Wall Street that is not reflected in ways real people want to use computers? That’s willful ignorance.

Generative art feels like the least useful, most controversial use of generative models. I don’t know why everyone rushes for this use case. But then again, I’ve used Memoji like once, ironically.

Alon is dead on about the impact actions like Hochul has on civil service. One reason I was confident about leaving my job at the Rhode Island Department of Education was watching a change in governor lead to a disinterested, uninvolved Board of Education whose goal was “halt”.

I currently play a Valvetech VAC22 I’ve owned for about 15 years. After a bit of a hiatus, I got back into playing more lately and found a few guys locally to start a band. While the VAC22 has a master volume that works reasonably well, it’s still damn loud for my office in a town home. I love that amp, but it’s just been living at the practice space for 2 months now and I’ve been playing acoustic exclusively at home.

Yesterday, Elsa was going to take a long ride to visit a friend of her’s down in St. Mary’s county. I figured I’d search if there are any cool guitar shops in the area and take the ride and then head over to the guitar shop. I ran across a place with a pretty solid assortment of gear– Island Music, and so plans were set.

I had a bit of an agenda– I thought I’d try out the Marshall SV20C and Vox AC15. I’ve owned an AC30 in the past and liked it, and thought either amp could stay at my house while the Valvetech hung out in the practice space. Both seemed like they’d blend nice with the VAC22 as well– back 15 years ago I always thought I’d pair the VAC with a Hayseed one day.

I was surprised at how loud the Marshall had to be to sound good to my ears. It was that classic sound, but I though the SV20C would be a bit more versatile take. Instead, it was simply great Marshall sounds at “too loud but don’t really really fuck your hearing" levels.

The AC15 was a great amp, with all the things I’ve always liked about a Vox and some of the things I never really did. I probably would have walked out with the with the red AC15. It would have looked great next to the purple tolex VAC22.

But then I saw the three Dr. Z amps in stock. A good friend of mine, Chris, has been telling me that the best amp he ever played was either the Dr. Z Maz 38 or a Matchless for… 20 years. I just never played one. A lot of folks who play Dr. Z amps are in country bands— they’re known for their killer cleans. But I’m not really a country guy, so while the cleans have always seemed incredible from afar and something I appreciate, I wasn’t really sure how dirty and aggressive these amps could get. Chris told me the Maz 38 was just bonkers loud, and I should try out a Carmen Ghia.

So I plugged into the Carmen Ghia, and it’s nice, but not all that. At least not for me. I understood why people like them, and thought with the right overdrive and setup I could make it sound great. But I wasn’t really drawn in.

Then I tried the Z Plus. Huh. This thing was pretty freaking great. And what was really impressive was how solid the master volume is. It sounded great even when I could still hear the strings on the electric. I would have spent a lot more time with this amp except that then I plugged into the Maz 18 Jr.

This thing rips. Monster sustain. Plenty of gain. I’m not sure I’ve ever played an amp with that much clarity even with tons of dirt. There’s a few things I like to play with every new amp that fall under the “sounds great acoustic, often gets buried with any kind of compression and saturation from gain/overdrive”. Not here– I’m talking acoustic level clarity at basically every level but when the pre-amp volume is fully dimed. And it always, always, always cleaned up with the volume knob. Just an insane amount of touch sensitivity.

I thought to myself, “Whelp, this is incredible. If I had an amp like this, I’d probably want a clean boost of some kind, because while it sounds great with the pre-amp volume dimed and that’s about as far as I’d want to go, it sounds better for most things around 2:30 to 3 o’clock-ish.”

So I turn the amp around and go “wait a tick, what is this?” Not only was I surprised (pleasantly) to find an effects loop (I haven’t had one since the Marshall DSL100 I sold 20 years ago, but now I play in a band that’s kind of post-rock/spacerock-y where some ambient modulation would be aweome). But there’s also an “eq-bypass”. But the pedal has a knob… what’s that a mix? I quickly do a search and realize no, there’s already a built in, footswitchable clean boost. Dang.

After a couple of hours I couldn’t help myself.

I only wish it had red or purple tolex.

So, happy first New Amp Day to me since… based on pictures at least February 2007?

I haven’t decided if I’m going to keep my Valvetech VAC22 yet. I need to spend some more time with it side by side for comparison. Maybe I’ll do a stereo or wet/dry or just straight A/B/Y setup.

Just read some emails from 2008 from a friend who has since passed away. I came across them and just had to read them. I thought it would be sad, but it wasn’t. Instead, I was able to so clearly hear her voice and remember her in a more complete way than I’ve been able to lately.

I missed this news that Gravatar has introduced a new API and expanding scope. Very neat idea!