Bouncin' Back
Seeking Balance
Time between blog posts continues to expand. Despite not really having a lot of plans, the last couple months have been exhausting and full. I’ve found myself worn out from the work day, which is taxing me again after several years of being able to cruise. Last time, I think I mentioned struggling with learning the pacing and flow of the projects, which was frustrating. Well, I’m starting to wrap my head around the sequence and flow and my confidence is increasing with each day. My boss actually told me I’m doing a great job so far, which really gave me a lift. I’m turning a corner, and hopefully that takes some weight off my brain, freeing me up for more learning in my free time.
Flint Project Update
I wish I could say that I’ve made major progress on this project, but it feels more like I’ve hit road block after road block and I’m discouraged. Losing my direction has made me feel as though I’m losing some of the skills I built up over the past couple years. Feelings of stretching myself too thin, perhaps underestimating how much time the day-to-day responsibilities require of me have crept in over the past couple months. The one bright spot is that I haven’t run out of time. Time is still short, to be sure, but I can’t despair and declare failure. I still have a few weeks left to grind out something to contribute to the project. I have managed to work through the tedium of installing dependencies in order to get Robosat up and running on my deep learning machine. The latest obstacle is the program chewing up all my RAM before completing the rasterize operation. I might have to move to the cloud, or contact the developers to see if they have any advice. They did offer a Docker container version, which may be an option. Another option is to abandon robosat and try to get a model up and running using fastai or another framework altogether. That may be overly time-consuming, so I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that.
Frequency Modulations
Amidst the various frustrations, one thing that has been calming and enjoyable is my electronic music hobby. I recently picked up a new synth, and I am blown away. I owe the missus for letting me drop the coin on this new gear, but at least I managed to wrangle a really good deal on a near mint second-hand unit. After many years trying different software, iPad apps, eurorack and more, I think I’ve finally landed on a setup that is inspiring and deep enough to keep me captivated. I’m learning how to make the most of what I have, and having a lot of fun along the way. I’m hoping to put together a set of real songs, but all in good time. Priorities and all. In the meantime, check out the video below, a little test drive of the new synth.
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