Saturday Morning Music Writing Rambling

Since changing my main workstation this year (and needing to run different versions of many of the tools I use), I haven't been writing much music anymore. 

(Well TBH, I'd probably really started running out of steam again last year after COVID. But also, the newer tools having a bunch of nasty design changes that make them uncomfortable and annoying to use doesn't help)

Anyway this morning, I happened to have a snippet come to mind (i.e. the way that most of these *always* start), so I went in to jot it out.

When saving this, I noted that my previous one was already a month ago (and had been sitting open as  "todo to finish sometime"). So, as you do, I opened it up to give it a playback...

While listening to it, I switched back to today's one, intended to get back to work on it, but whatdoyaknow! I pressed play slightly too early, and then discovered that this second thing goes really well underscoring the end part of the other one!

(It did help of course that they used the same ensemble type)

The better part of an hour or so later:
Hang on...  I think I can probably draw the line under this one now 😂 

So yeah... I've now just completed my 1st or 2nd piece for the year LOL 😜 

(I may revise it later for a 2nd polished / extended edition, but this seems good enough for now)

Software Wishlist September 2025

On that note, here's a bunch of other things I wish various software I use often would introduce

Summary:

1) Firefox - "Private Browsing Container Tab Type

2) Desktop Window Managers - Project-Based Application Window Grouping + Complete Window State Restoration on Restart  

 

Mastodon UI Wishlist

As I've mentioned a bunch of times on here, ever since the hostile takeover and demise of Twitter a few years ago, I've switched over to Mastodon (+ posting / reposting stuff on here again).

Here's a list of things that I wish that there was a Mastodon UI that did. Unfortunately, the way things are going, it also seems that I'm likely gonna have to implement all this myself in my own client / frontend to get any traction on it...

MediaSlurper Updates - Ep 3 - Multi Device Support

It's been a while since I've posted any updates about my "MediaSlurper" project...

Well, that's largely a good thing! Given that it was built as a personal tool to solve some very specific bottlenecks in my data management workflows, that means that in practice, it's largely been working very well for my needs (or at least, "good enough!), which is no mean feat, given that I run it at least 3-4 times a day, almost every day!   Granted, there are a handful over "very annoying" bugs relating to the various heuristics in use to avoid making duplicate copies of anything!)... but those only happen in very specific cases that I can always manually enable escape-hatch hacks in the code to work around! 

But yeah, in general, it's been working well enough that I've been able to pause active development efforts to focus on other more pressing matters  (e.g. "Picasa Replacement Project", and/or general life stuff)

 

Anyway, with the recent need to start urgently investigating properly migrating from old phone to new one (NOTE: I actually made the switch early this morning, and apart from a "major heart attack / moments of sinking terror" trying to get the Whatsapp transition to transfer over smoothly), I ended up running both phones for a while, and needing to be able to use MediaSlurper with both. This lead to a flurry of activity for the past few weeks, culminating in some of the final most useful stuff only coming online today, *AFTER* I have already effectively transitioned off the old phone.... 

Nevertheless, given that I don't know when I might need this stuff again (or whether someone else might find it useful if/when I ever release this tool), I have decided to keep plugging away at it to finish the last push of new functionality that should address a bunch of other things I've found myself really needing over the past month or two.

Blender Addon - Hand Drawn Timing Chart Paths to Animation (3rd-Party / Not Mine)

It's been a while since I've posted about any Blender or animation related stuff on here, having moved onto other pursuits these days. But tonight, I'm going to briefly break my silence to link to the following demo clip for an addon that I've gotta say is pretty awesome looking!

  

Well done to everyone involved in making this happen! Very nicely done! Simple yet effective  😍