Llanoland

https://www.last.fm/user/Professor_Steve/listening-report/year/2024/week/49

I'm trying to use this blog as my social media as it allows me a lot more control, length, and interesting stuff to be able to do rather than just posting directly into Facebook or something. 

I have an illusion that I have more control over the posts than if I just hand them to Mark or the Bluesky team. I don't really use Instagram except to share memes. 

Anyway, here's last week's listening - I am obsessed with Emily Armstrong's voice. I think I'll have to do a deep dive on her other songs at some point. 

Looks like my listening isn't going to be close to last year's at all: 

Last.fm calls a verified listen (over 50% of a track) a "scrobble" - who knows why, some kind of branding I guess. But there's no way I can do 270~290 tracks a day here. I listen to a lot of music, but not that much!

My listening trends have gone down over the years too: 

2017 is explained by not having a device that could capture scrobbles while walking around. I think my main listening device from 2016 - 2017 was a PSP believe it or not. Gone are the days of pirated recordings of satellite radio broadcasts! Now I just get those same shows in Spotify. 

There are songs, smells, and shows that get me in the Christmas spirit but one that really stands out is the 2006 Playstation 2 game Okami. 

This was a game my ex got around Christmastime years ago and I remember it being on the old SD tube-based TV in my first NYC apartment all the time during that first Christmas break working at my new job.

I remember it being a very cozy experience and fun to watch her progress through the game, eating snacks and other not so healthy holiday food. 

I also remember being a bit overwhelmed and feeling a lot of uncertainty about having such a long break. Previously, at the University of Pittsburgh, we only had about a 2 week holiday. For some reason we were back in the classroom around January 4th. With finals ending around the 19th of December or so that didn't give us a lot of holiday time. I could spend a week maybe in Texas with my family but that was about it. 

This seems like another lifetime ago - several lifetimes - but the sights and sounds of Okami really do feel like the holidays to me. 

I've become obsessed with wanting to buy several things, instead of what I should be doing this time of year - being grateful and thoughtful and thinking about fun gifts for others!

A Microsoft Surface Tablet

I have a very old iPad that works fine that has a LTE card in it. For very little money a month, I can write and read anywhere I am without worrying about time limits on WiFi, security, or whatever else might be going on at the hotel lobby or coffee shop or bar where I'm sitting (these are common places for me to want to type something). The iPad though is mostly a consumption device, not really ready for prime time work. I know people disagree with this, but I have a very early iPad pro. It's a bit frustrating and annoying to try to use for putting together a big research document or essay. Blogging is ok with it. Anyway, it would be great to have the beautiful new OLED Surface with the 5g/LTE slot. This is very expensive though so I'm just sitting here looking at it on different tech websites and wondering when I will be able to get one. I have told myself I will get it when the iPad finally craps out, which won't be anytime soon.

Steam Deck 512GB

I have so many computer games I've collected over the years that it just seems reasonable at this point to have a way to play them when I'm not sitting in front of my computer. I've been thinking about this one for a long time. I was even in the preorder line, but got out of it. I'm glad that I did because now they have a better screen and a bit better specs. The alternative to this one is wait for the Linux based OS to go public/free and put it on a Pi or something, but that doesn't solve the portability issue. This one is the most likely one to happen. 

A linux laptop

Not sure what happened to all my spare laptops around here, but they have all mostly died or stopped working. I do have one left that is an awkwardly large laptop that could serve this purpose, but I want a small one that is quick to boot up. The 17 inch old gaming laptop isn't the best choice for the linux box in my opinion. I'd like to get a very inexpensive laptop and just run linux on it for those times when I am fed up with Windows or when you need an inventional boost. There's something nice about changing desktop environments when you need some inspiration. 

When was the last time I brought a camera around with me? 

You could correctly say "yesterday" since my phone is a pretty incredible camera, as is everyone's these days. But it's not that great really. It does the job, but it's not as good as having a dedicated device for taking pictures.

This weekend we travel to Manhattan for our annual Christmas spirit trip (unofficial name) where we visit all of our favorite holiday spots in the city. This used to be easier to do when I had an apartment in Queens, but now I live full-time here on Long Island. And I just noticed I said "on" which means I'm becoming infected with the discursive norms of life here.

Our weekend trip will be a blast because I'm a tourist again. It's been about 16 years since I have been a tourist in New York City. It's good to put on old comfortable clothes again. My first trip to New York City was in 1992 when I lived in Fort Worth, Texas as a moderately successful high school student. That was a great time. I had a camera with me then too, albeit non-digital and disposable Kodak film camera. 

I have revitalized my Nikon point and shoot camera I bought in 2015 (perhaps?). I bought it because my old point and click wasn't holding a charge and was being weird and out-of-focus. This was just prior to my trip to Anchorage, Alaska for a national debate tournament. Since then, this camera has been all over the world with me. It has been spending its last months/years in a box in storage. I charged it up yesterday and tried it out. Seems like it's working fine. 

The lens is better than my iPhone and it has more settings than the iPhone. The current SD card can hold 7600 some odd pictures. I think most interestingly is that when you have a dedicated camera you are not just collecting anything, you have to stop and consider what you are looking at as a picture. You have to say to yourself "I should take a picture of that." Then you have to pull out the point and click, turn it on and focus it. It's a good ritual as it adds some sort of cost, some kind of processing fee to the idea of collecting images which is what the iPhone suggests you do.

I have been thinking a lot about cameras and vlogging and doing a lot of research. I have landed back with GoPro, as you know, buying the 13 and really being happy with it. For still photos, maybe this 2015 point and click is good enough for me as it has been previously. Maybe all that studying of different things to buy just convinced me I am already in a good spot? 

Should I take the camera around with me everyday? Probably not, but I'm wondering about it. 

Here's the first shot from the GoPro 13 I bought on black Friday. Looks good even without any editing.

Seung Sahn is one of my favorite Zen masters. I bought the book Dropping Ashes on the Buddha from the Barnes & Noble on Texas Avenue in College Station, Texas many years ago, but it has remained safely on the shelf for over 20 years now. The recorded sayings, personal letters, Dharma talks, and more in that book paints a really lovely impressionistic picture of this man, someone who dedicated his life to helping others gain something they already had - an understanding of life!

These kind of Zen books are great, and they really should be used as a model for other kinds of writing - I feel like I have a great understanding of this guys life and thinking thanks to the book. It's like watercolor, impressionism, minimalism, but in a text format. It also encourages a return to the book. It encourages a return to the book that is a leafing around in it, a leafing-through. So many good memories with the book. 

I think about the book on my shelf right now in the quiet house. I am in the office, but I can see it in my mind. I'm pretty sure that the old Delta airlines boarding pass is still in it as a bookmark, used that way by my old roommate Ken on a trip to Idaho or from there back to New York.

I think tonight I'll return to the book again!

Wondering if I should move back to Vimeo. I am not sure I like YouTube having all my videos, and I need a good place to host teaching videos that I can use from semester to semester. The trouble with YouTube is that they make the viewer watch ads, and I’m not really into that if they have paid the tuition.

Vimeo is a bit expensive but I think it might be a good spot to host everything and keep it updated and accessible to students. Plus I am pretty sure I could make a lecture series and paywall the content there, unlike YouTube where you have to hope that someone finds the video – a million or more someones – before you are compensated.

Vimeo is kind of expensive but there really isn't a great option. Our canvas hosting doesn't have enough space on my campus. Plus I don't really like the idea of my IP being on their servers even though it could be argued that it is a for-hire creation if it came down to it. I still think I'd have a good case that I didn't have to make such creative or complex videos to teach that particular course. They are also probably going to be generic enough to where they are applicable to more than just the St. John's courses I am teaching.