/reader

 

It’s that time in the summer where there’s a lot of Birthdays. I’ve had a great week, been to drinks in the park and a 40th Birthday. It’s mine this week coming and my parents are coming up on Saturday and then it’s drinks and dinner with friends.

Hope everyone is enjoying the sun!

1. My Little Spot
2. Solarpunk Means Dreaming Green
3. Permanently Moved
4. Photo 365
5. The Ministry Of My Own Labour
6. Terminal Access
7. Dipping the Stacks
8. Reading
9. Music
10. Remember Kids:

My Little Spot

“Write what you want to read”.

This was the advice that caused me to write a fairytale for 301 this week. I opened the show with talking about how that advice is annoying. Mostly because I want to read weird stuff, Whilst there’s a lot of weird stuff online – Substack is starting to become a very wyrd place – but none is my exact ‘flavour’ of weird.

I am actually a pretty weird guy. But what am I supposed to do? Actually fly a freak flag rather than trying my best to just go about my day like a Gray Man?

I wanna talk about time loops, encounters with place, visions, magic, literal quests i’ve been sent on… I mean maybe. I’ll think about it.

It’s my birthday this week coming, and I sort of wonder if 39-> 40 is a good year to be unhinged. Lay out the runway a little for the tradition ’40th birthday coming out as a wizard’ party. Maybe i’ll just get weird over on Substack? – despite my misgivings about the whole platform. I dunno.

All that aside I think “Write what you want to read” is actually really freeing advice. I’m going to take it to heart. After a false start I think I’ll be posting to the RSS club on the blog more. This is my little spot on the internet, after 15 years here I should probably *actually* lean into the medium.

Solarpunk Means Dreaming Green

The other week I posted that the audio for my talk on Solarpunk I gave in Lisbon had been put online.

Just after I posted it, Gordon White encouraged me to get into the habit of re-recording talks like this so I can have a ‘canon’ version of my own. This week I sat down and re-recorded the full 40mins talk. I think it’s one of the best talks I’ve given on Solarpunk.

You can watch it here.

I really enjoyed the process of sitting down, now weeks after the event and doing the talk again, editing it all together with green screen elements etc. Might do more of it.

Permanently Moved

Hole of Tears

Ivan, lost in the chaos of modern life, takes a walk by the river seeking solace. A modern fairy story.

Full Show Notes: https://www.thejaymo.net/2024/07/21/2416-hole-of-tears/

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Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Read a bunch of the ‘classic’ essays on building a SAAS business, took lots of notes.
  • I must admit, I’ve come away with more questions than answers but in a good way
• Recorded an interview with EcoGradia Pod
• Recorded with Eddie Rathke for Wolf Pod
• Call with Novara Media
• Heavy focus on getting things in order.
  • Got some business cards LMAO
• More work on the sekret project

Terminal Access

For those reading this via email, I reviewed Paul Cezge’s current Kickstarter for his newest book on DIY journalling games: Inscapes: How the Worlds We Make Make Us Who We Are

Dipping the Stacks

Mind of the Creator

It’s fascinating to imagine the engineers working on diagnosis and recovery from the memory failure. Having to build a mental model of the system, built by someone else. It has brought back memories of reading through the 6502 code Steve Wozniack wrote for driving the Disk II from the CPU. I had to reverse engineer this as a 13-yr-old learning to copy Apple II games that didn’t want to be copied. Understanding it all was beyond my abilities, but I felt very close.

Carbon fiber hewn structural batteries heralded as ‘massless’ solution for lighter devices | Tom’s Hardware

When your laptop’s case is also its battery, it’s bound to be more lightweight.

Social-Media Influencers Aren’t Getting Rich—They’re Barely Getting By – WSJ

Last year, 48% of creator-earners made $15,000 or less, according to NeoReach, an influencer marketing agency. Only 13% made more than $100,000.

Collaborating on the Computer with William S. Burroughs – RealityStudio

‘It’s a very interesting piece that shows Burroughs’ relevance in the Cyberpunk world of computer art,’ Goddard said

the attention cottage

I’m trying to build my way back to that balance, through how I organize the space in which I live and how I apportion my attention. Systolic, diastolic; inhale, exhale. Balance. Almost everything I write, including my newsletter, is meant to help people rebalance their attention — to give them another piece of furniture for their attention cottage.

Reading

I finished reading Herzog’s Every Man for Himself and God Against All. What a memoir, what a life. Its very inspiring. One of the things I take way from the book is his pure comfortableness with being uninformed about things that don’t interest him.

I started reading Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I asked Huw Lemmey where I should start and he said this. So here I am. One essay a night before bed. I’ve been finishing one short essay and then flipping over to…

James Holis’ Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life. I’m about half way done. This book feels like exactly what it is. A second run at the subject of midlife after the success of The Middle Passage about a decade before. This book whilst not any more prescriptive, offers a lot more signposting. Paths out, potential routes forward.

I picked up FRIENDLY AMBITIOUS NERD by Visakan Veerasamy. One of the blurbs writes: “sort of a Marcus Aurelius Meditations but for Twitter addicts”. I don’t think thats an unreasonable description of what the book is. It’s a book thats full word of mouth at this point. Been out for a couple of years. Check it out if the (great) title interests you.

Music

Spotify Playlist

• Spotify

CombatWoundedVeteran – I Know a Girl Who Develops Crime Scene Photos (Instrumental)

In honour of National Karaoke Day and the 25th Anniversary of one the best albums of all time, absurdist / outsider art Grindcore band CombatWoundedVeteran have put out an instrumental version of I Know a Girl Who Develops Crime Scene Photos.

It’s grind core. It’s not for everyone, but I really enjoyed listening to one of my favourite albums in a new way. In fact I suspect the instrumental versions might be a bit more palatable

I can’t even begin to tell you how influential this album has had/on my life. An absolute uncompromising banger. Inspiring.

I have the 3rd pressing this album in hot pink (of 713), and it has the rarer blue cover and still listen to it all the time. I bought it from a traveling distro at a punk show.

Here’s the same song *with* vocals:

Remember Kids:

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The post My Little Spot appeared first on thejaymo.

 

I’m trying to up my game. Expand the repertoire to include time lapse videos from still photos (like the shot of the cormorant up above from this morning).

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been watching Sawsan’s apprentice (aka Cara) set up the tripod, wrap its claws around the smartphone, level up the sight lines, take a deep breath… and hit the go button. And wait. And wait. And wait, somewhere between 2 to 2 1/2 hours until the sun is sufficiently up in the sky for the time lapse to catch the full end to end twilight to sunrise light show.

Cara can do it, repeatedly. Then any idiot can do this, right?

So I set off this morning. I’m solo, no production crew.

It’s 4:07 a.m., I repeat Cara’s time lapse set up sequence, take a take breath, and hit the GO button.

And I walk. And walk. And walk. I circle the park 3x taking photos, and keep a close eye on my camera gear so it doesn’t disappear.

Cloud cover is forecast to be heavy, and yet there is hope as the sky begins to clear in the line of my camera.

I walk back, pleased to see the camera video recording — all is as it is supposed to be.

It’s two hours in, and I’m practically giddy. This is going to work! And this being Sunday morning, the Big Guy upstairs starts clearing away the cloud cover — this time lapse will be NatGeo quality.

I pace. And pace. 2 1/2 bloody hours of waiting for a 17 sec time lapse video. Better be better than Good. The anticipation — Christmas Eve for a toddler.

Minutes away now.

Time’s up.

I reach for the camera, gently press stop, tuck away the tripod, and sit on the breakwall to watch. Why are your hands shaking?

I hit GO.

The video plays. Dark. Dark. Dark. Dark. Dark. Dark. Dark. Dark.

20 seconds pass and the video still shows frames from early morning. Giddiness turns to darkness.

No!

No!

No!

I failed to hit the time lapse button — I failed to follow the entire Cara time lapse set up sequence — so instead of recording a 20 sec video, I recorded the entire 2 1/2 hour event.

There has to be an app to convert a 2 1/2 hr. video to 20 sec time lapse. Has to be. I google it — there’s a solution or two to fix this. I exhale and head home. A fix is on the way.

• I try to upload the file from my smartphone to Google Photos. (The 48G file exceeds the 10G file limit. I learned this after 1 hour of waiting.)
• I try to download the file from my smartphone to an external drive. This takes 30 minutes, only to find that the drive isn’t compatible with my PC.
• I try to upload the file to Google Drive. File appears to be too large to upload. I learn this after 30 minutes.
• I try to upload the file to Dropbox from my smartphone. It takes! But it takes over an hour.
• Now with the file in Dropbox, I have to download the file to my PC (20 minutes) and then upload it to FinalCut Pro to speed up the 2.5 hour video. (This work takes over an hour, as I’m an apprentice on Final Cut Pro.)

So, that’s IT. Done. And Done.

It took over 8 HOURS to produce this 20 SECOND VIDEO.

Any idiot CAN do it!

Enjoy!

Notes:

• Post title: You think you know, but you have no idea. — Diary (MTV, 2000-2014)
• DK Photo of Cormorant @ 6:24 am this morning. July 21 2024.
• More photos from this morning’s LONG walk here and moon shot here.