I still find it funny how new are the idea of a fully standardized spelling and the modern concept of literacy that includes following that standard.
It would take me quite some time to recognize "fácab" as a spelling variant of "fo-gaib".
One would get some unkind words for 'Fáidheann (sic) Pádraig a dhaltaí ann" today.
There's some strange irony in the fact that I was right to reject the idea to distribute soupault (a static site generator that generates HTML by element tree rewriting) transpiled to JS to get a scripting engine free from the JS runtime.
Back in 2019, having Node.js as a dependency for an OCaml program seemed aesthetically unappealing.
Then there were Deno and Bun.js that could even bundle the runtime with an executable but I procrastinated on that and chose to stick with a much smaller native executable and a Lua interpreter embedded in it.
Then first Bun.js was acquired and went through a vibecoded rewrite and I thought "wait and see" was a good approach.
Now Deno is acquired and will soon be discontinued.
I should better invest my effort into an embeddable JS interpreter for OCaml it seems.
It was the first time I banned anyone on GitHub. An account created 60 LLM slop PRs in a _single day_.
I don't know if they'd make the usual excuse that they just used the LLM as a tool—there's no way anyone can meaningfully review that amount of changes in a day.
Exactly the kind of a Friday party I needed after a difficult gig. Just a perfect number of people around. ;)
On the subject of bald musicians... there's a common stereotype that if they wear hats or caps on stage, it's because they are insecure about their baldness.
As a bald guy who plays double bass, I can say there's a practical reason to do so: if it's hot on stage or the instrument is physically demanding, the hat wicks away the sweat that would otherwise be flowing straight down one's face when there's no hair to absorb it.
I know people who have plenty of hair but wear hats on stage for the same reason—to avoid a sweaty hair look if things get hot.
This Sunday I played in a coffee place that is dog-friendly and never had a band before. Quite a few people came with dogs and those dogs were barking, which was very distracting.
I regret we didn't call "Caravan" to make the proverb "The dogs bark but the caravan goes on" true in a previously unseen sense.
I bought that Kolstein rosin out of sheer curiosity to replace dried-up Nyman and I’m pleasantly surprised. The rosin itself is nicely sticky and grips the strings well but I especially like the rubber sleeve that you can roll down and back up.
It’s much less annoying than paper or foil you need to tear off and I’m not worried about dropping it (I had a cake of Nyman shatter in that situation).
Of course she’s a cat, I don’t need to look anything up to confirm that…
I tried to contact a speech therapist about my speech problems, and that therapist was like, "Your speech isn't good but I don't hear anything I can help with".
I wish it was more like "Dude, here's your problem, you can fix it by doing this one exercise", but it is what it is, unfortunately.
That sign doesn’t even consider the possibility that I in fact don’t.
That’s a form of coercion.
In a few places, my account name is "dumbclarinetist".
It's a reference to my music school classmate's (affectionate) catchphrase.
It referred more to my classmate whom she dated at the time, but she always used it in plural when we both were around.
She was the only person in the class who truly understood how to write orchestral parts for woodwinds even though she was a percussion player, so she has a right to say such things.
Besides, I'm actually not very smart, so it's not like she was wrong to say that...
I’m still surprised that Xbox 360 was not followed by Xbox 370, Xbox 390, and then z/Box.
At a jam session, a participant called a 1920s tune. I was playing the house bassist's five-string Tobias bass and chose to use the 1-slap-5-slap pattern to match the style.
The drummer started doing excellent 1920s comping, and the guitarist was doing a very fine "la pompe", but the five-string bass sounded amusingly out of place in that setting—not subverting the effort but quietly objecting to it, so to speak.
On a fusion'y tune it felt like the most fitting bass ever, though.
The really sad thing about my speech problems is that even before the underlying causes kill me, everyone will already remember me as a person who couldn't articulate any sounds properly.
Even if I get hit by a bus tomorrow morning, I have already missed my chance not to be remembered like that.
It's not a fate I would wish anyone to meet.
At the regular gigs and jams where I play now, no one calls "Satin Doll".
I randomly remembered of that tune and started playing it on my clarinet while I was practicing.
It made me remember a certain residency that the venue chose to end abruptly over a year ago, where the person who booked it loved Ellington and tunes by Ellington and Strayhorn were called all the time.
I became overwhelmed by vivid memories of that band and place even before I reached the B section.
I'll surely call it at a jam this week.
On this day, four years ago, I met someone who'd become a massive crush for years to come.
But at the time, I didn't recognize either the depth of her knowledge and skills or her charm.
She looked very shy and awkward, and her job at the time was paying her so much less than she deserved that she was wearing rather worn-down clothes, and I suppose very few people are completely immune to the problems of the first impression.
It took me a couple of months to realize what an incredible person she was.
I hope I'll have a chance to admire her for quite a bit longer.
A mildly sacrilegious psalm-based poem:
On a sleepless night,
I'm counting sheep
but keep losing count.
I'm not a good shepherd:
I don't know my sheep,
and they don't know me.
As Psalm 22 suggests,
I could count my bones instead
but I don't know how many I have.
If I had an exam in the morning,
whether in agriculture or anatomy,
I'd have failed it.
And I don't need to ask
why have you forsaken me.
It's perfectly clear:
It's very annoying
to sleep
next to someone like me.