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woudsma

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I feel the same. If I work 5 days I'd feel like I'm wasting so much time, when realistically I can do the same amount of work in 4 days. I'm working as a developer so it's also about retaining my attention span. I just can't do it for 5 days straight anymore.

My perfect 4-day workweek is having the Wednesday off so I have a 'mini-weekend' in my week. I only ever have to work 1 more day until I have some time to clear my head, make some music, etc. It feels like a more healthy work/life balance. And I feel sharper after a day off.

In JS, functions like filter/map/reduce can help when you try to write immutable code because you only work with the arguments, and return an output value. You don't have to define an empty/temporary array first, and fill it up in your regular for-loop for example.

I don't 'hate' loops, I still use them sometimes. Personally I just try to avoid them (in JS) because I feel like I can solve my problem without any side-effects. It's something less to think about. It's nice when the logic/variables for a function are encapsulated entirely inside that function. It also makes it easy to extract functions so you can re-use them elsewhere.

I think it’s ok when students are forced to be bored by their tutors. I’ve taught bachelor students who spent the entire lecture on their phone. After the lecture they would seize a lot of my (unpaid) time for extra face to face, or they’d send me an email with questions. It’s fine for them to be bored and forced to take notes IMHO.

There’s enough time for smartphone use outside school hours. It’s a waste of time/energy for the tutor if no one is paying attention. Of course I’d try to make the lecture as interesting and ‘fun’ as possible, but winning their attention over Insta/TikTok/etc is challenging.

I can't imagine myself graduating high school if I had a smartphone back then. Those things are so addictive, they just keep on giving. When I was studying all you could play on your phone was Snake. Going out with friends and making a campfire was way more fun than playing Snake. Nowadays people can spend 14hrs a day on their phone and still not be bored, it's crazy.

Deleting social media apps makes your phone _much_ less interesting though!

I used to be opposed to git GUI’s, but after a few years and working in larger codebases, I love the way they visualize everything. Especially when dealing with hundreds of branches. Sure I’ll use the git CLI from time to time but GitKraken works really well for me. I feel pretty safe seeing my stashes in front of me, etc.

Ableton Push 3 3 years ago

I’m not updating my music Macbook Pro anymore, I’m still on MacOS Catalina. VST’s break, (older) audio drivers stop working, etc. I spent too much time getting everything to work as it currently is.

Near my previous job there was a park with similar tiling [0]. I'm not sure if the pattern qualifies as truly aperiodic(?) but it triggered my brain every day, I couldn't not look at it. I love these kinds of patterns, they always invoke my curiosity. Just like in music irregularity makes things interesting. Something for your brain to solve. You know there has to be logic behind a seemingly random pattern.

[0] https://www.dutchdesignawards.nl/gallery/funenpark/

Ideally I'd sync it with Ableton's clock. I'm using Ableton only for tempo and multitrack recording. Maybe this is achievable without the RPi being a MIDI device? Sending messages over the network, like GuitarEffects which uses WebSockets. My RPi 2 doesn't support gadget mode (I should probably start looking for a RPi 4).

I'm currently using an Elektron Digitakt to sequence my analog gear - it's great - but unfortunately the DT is limited to 8 MIDI tracks with only 1 LFO per MIDI track to automate MIDI CC data. I'd love a Cirklon Sequentix but the waitlist is just too long (3 years atm, arghh).

I wonder if I can hook up something like a Midiface 16x16 (https://miditech.de/en/portfolio/midiface-16x16/) to the RPi. The Midiface is Class Compliant so maybe the RPi can use it natively..(?) I'm a bit worried about performance though.

Thanks for your suggestions, I'm going to look into them!

I usually create a folder containing src/index.js and public/index.html, then install react-scripts and add 'start' and 'build' scripts in my package.json.

  mkdir -p myproject/{public,src} && cd myproject  
  touch src/index.js public/index.html  
  npm init -y && npm i -D react-scripts  
  # add to package.json scripts:  
  # "start": "react-scripts start",  
  # "build": "react-scripts build",  
  npm start  
Now you've got a hot-reloading development server that can handle (and transpile) ES6 / TypeScript, import JS/CSS with 'import', etc. If you want more control over webpack you can 'eject' to be able to edit the webpack configs. Note that you don't need to use React to use react-scripts. I just want to get up to speed fast, without doing a 4hr webpack deep dive.

Hot reloading definitely saves me some extra RSI.

That book really made me fall in love with code. Nowadays I do mostly web development but I've spent many hours programming in Processing. It's a great learning environment with docs and terminology suited to beginners.

I find it so fascinating that simple rules can result in complex behaviour and natural-looking patterns. I'm keeping a sketchbook with related Processing/WebGL graphics on my website[0] if anyone is interested :)

[0] https://tjerkwoudsma.com

My first job at age 14 was being a paperboy. I was really happy that I could legally earn some money at that age. Got paid 50-60 euro's per month, but around Christmas / new year's eve I could go my round and collect tips of around ~100eu. My round was 200-300 houses from what I can remember.

My former self would be very jealous of the jobs that are available now for young people. Especially bike delivery jobs. Being a paperboy was pretty heavy work since I had to deliver papers _and_ ad magazines, which had to be folded into the paper and took hours of preparation. Once my bike flipped on it's back because of the weight and I couldn't get it back on it's wheels. I don't miss the heavy bags and ink stains on my hands, but I saved up enough money for a green iPod Mini! Jailbroken, it actually ran Doom in black and white :)

I'm 30 now, me and my friends still try to come together for birthdays, have dinner, go to a club, etc. Just an excuse for a nice get-together / party. Sometimes we give each other gifts (if we can think of something nice to give).