Category: Misc

Creative space, progress and Max MSP 9

It’s been a few weeks since my last blog, been recovering from my marathon and had a pretty busy schedule where music making and learning about music took a bit of a backseat.

The creative space is almost done, unfortunately delivery of some parts has been delayed so the finishing touches can’t be completed. Hopefully at the end of next week we will be finished and I can start furnishing the space. Which is about time as I am done getting everything out of storage and setting up everything if I want to do something. It’s costing me too much energy and takes the fun out of it.

A little bit of wait but then my working space is there.

Max MSP 9

The new release of Max MSP came as a bit of a surprise to me. I am nowhere near an expert on Max but this update seems like a big step forward, especially in Jitter and the addition af Ableton’s ABL library for DSP, which allows for the direct use of Ableton effects in Max.

Also there is a code box where you can work on code for Gen, javascript and other stuff in Max. I am not there yet as my skillset is lacking bit these additions seem very cool and useful.

It’s a never-ending tool for making musical productions, with visuals, instruments and so on.

Besides all this work on Max, all the learning resources and help stuff has been updated, integrated in max and redesigned on the website. It’s the perfect starting point for anyone wanting to start and learn Max MSP. I have said it before it’s a big learning curve. At least for me, but it’s very rewarding and can be used for anything you can think of. Especially for building your own musical and visual environments and in interaction with hardware in a way that is custom to you.

It is overwhelming at first, by doing it opens up more and more avenues for creativity as you go along. I am looking forward to learning more and diving into this new version.

Some other thoughts

The state of the world is not great at the moment, rising far right autocracy and the devastating effects of global warming are taking a toll on a lot of people. Not to mention the ongoing wars around the globe and the dangers of more conflict looming every day. Sometimes it’s very hard to focus on the things you want to do in life and work on. I have that exact same problem.

But as I am limited severely in energy I need to focus on what I can control and work on. For me meditation works very well. I have mentioned the benefits of meditation more often but this is as good a time as any to talk about it again.

As it brings me right back into the here and now. It’s only 12 minutes a day for 5 days per week. So you can even skip two days, and maintain this for a few months, at first you will not notice the benefits. But after some time and keep the 5 times a week going and you will start to feel a shift. And for me this was a real eye opener.

More about this and about the science behind it in the excellent book Peak mind by Amish Jha

Give it a go and keep at it, see you all next time.

Slowly back at it.

It has been a while and I have been thinking about how to make this blog an interesting place again for people to visit and keep it fun for me to get some writing out there.

This has always been just a personal page, simply sharing whatever I wanted on the subjects I am interested in. Which are music, running (and other sports), finance and all sorts of other things.

I also shared some of my more personal things such as my brain damage. I mostly struggle with on a day to day basis. This also being the reason for my absence of late.

Been dabbling in music and keeping you updated om my progress or lack thereof has helped me greatly, It was a structured endeavor which really helps me.

Unfortunately I struggled with sound and processing sound in my brain a lot and my appetite for doing music and keeping up this blog faded rapidly.

I am slowly getting back to working on music again, and I will have a go at blogging as well. I might just write on lots of other subjects as well. Just to keep the blog momentum going. Let’s see how this all goes. For now I am, be it cautious, back.

Cooperation , beautiful, simple and necessary

Nowadays, and for some time now , your succes is portrait as being of ones own doing. Whether it be work , study, personal life, everything is achieved by the individual. You work hard therefore it’s your succes, and we don’t need anyone else to be successful. This misconception is widespread.

This couldn’t be further from the truth, we can achieve nothing without our fellow man. Everything stands or falls with cooperation in society as a whole. Nothing is achieved as an individual. Yet a lot of people seem to think so. But nothing is just the fruit of ones own labour. It ‘s always a collaborate effort.

You didn’t just study hard for example, somebody teached there , someone cleaned there, someone thought long and hard about the curriculum. Somehow nowadays al these efforts seem to get lost in the narrative. Let’s call them the invisibles of the individual succes. Which then by default is not an individual succes. But a collaborate effort.

This type of thinking comes in all shapes and sizes. Got sick and didn’t fully recover ? You should have worked harder, studying went sideways, you should have worked harder. Missed out on buying a house, worked harder and saved more. And so on. But most of these failures are because of the lack of common goals as a society.

A lot of people think this way because they made it and worked hard , you see I did it, so can you. But in the meantime all the infrastructure that makes the individual thrive has budgets cut and or left to the marketplace. From healthcare , education to the job market , everything had to be flexible and cost effective. With growing uncertainty and loss of function.

Simple example , too long in a flexible job contract and you miss out on the opportunity to buy a house. But yet you did everything ‘right’, worked hard and saved harder. Yet there are no more hours in a day and the paychecks keep getting smaller , thanks too inflation. Lot’s more examples out there , but what pains me most is the beauty that’s in working together is dismissed so easily. We get things done together, working on common goals for the common good. And you learn a lot from each other. Faster and more than as an individual. Everyone benefits.

So talk about your goals, ideas and other things you enjoy and find people to work with, who knows what might be the result, in the meantime we all learn. En start appreciating other peoples work as part of your succes.

Mindset – How to get things done.

Mindset, how to get things done. Whatever that may be! Well I have done a lot of experiments with what works for me and what I should improve when I want to get stuff done. It consist of a few key ingredients. First and foremost is planning. Have a goal , break it down into steps and plan the time, resources and order and start stepping.

Well that’s easy. No it’s very hard. When I first started using weekly planning sheets it was out of sheer necessity because I would otherwise forget everything. It was in place for me to get by on a day to day bases.

Then after a lot of trial and error I got my day to day in order and got myself thinking what do I want challenge myself with. And make a plan. Then I started falling into some traps. First and foremost I planned way too much , too much tasks and too much goals.

Which brings me to ‘rule’ rather recommendation number 2. Plan too little. There will always be something that takes up more time or an unplanned event will destroy your carefully set to do list.

Have no more than 1 great goal at any time in 3 categories. Max, why ? Well otherwise it will get muddy and stuff starts drifting. You can only focus on so much. For example , set a work or learning related goal, one physical fitness and one personal life goal. Learn how to program , run a 10K race and plan a trip. Or whatever you want. There will be lots of other stuff needs doing besides those goals.

It’s also divided into 3 categories for a reason, one is demanding on the brain, one on the body. You can keep those two nicely balanced , your brain needs time to digest newly learned stuff and exercise helps a lot (as does sleep) , the third must be less of a braindrain and more in the way of relaxing.

You have only about 4 hours worth of intens brain work a day anyway. If you trained yourself right.

So keep to do lists small, and allow yourself much needed rest in between. Recovery is key. Only make new to to lists when old ones are fully done. Don’t put notes and reminders for future tasks on existing to do lists , it will distract.

Makes a nice bridge to the last tip for today, when doing work that needs a of your brain power , make sure you get rid of any distractions. Put away your phone, disconnect the internet, don’t open your mailbox. Make sure you fully focus on the task at hand. Make sure everyone knows you cannot be disturbed. Make sure you have a way of letting people know they cannot disturb you during those hours , only for emergencies. And let them know what an emergency looks like.

Make sure you don’t stretch yourself too much in those intensive brainpower consuming sessions. Set an alarm after an hour or two and take a real break. Jus eat something or enjoy a good coffee. Do not let your distractions in, no phone no email no internet. Just time for recovery. Limit the total amount of time to a max of 4 hours or so per day. Start with a half an hour and build from there. It’s hard focusing with such intensity.

I have made all the mistakes having way to many goals , too much on the to do list and every distraction possible at hand. It leads to frustration and anger because nothing gets done within the time frame you planned for it. Not even close. It’s not easy getting razorsharp focus. It needs a lot of training. The mindset isn’t just there the moment you decide it is. It needs training , consistency and rhythm to cement itself.

And for now , rule or recommendation 3, don’t be too hard on yourself. There will be days when everything goes easy , and there will be days, weeks even when nothing works. Just trust yourself and stick to it. You will get there and it will get easier to get your focus back. Make sure you evaluate your goals over time, is it still the right goal and does it need adjusting. Are the steps still the right ones. Have no fear of throwing goals in the bin if it’s not achievable for you. Just start a new one. I have trashed more than I finished. But made sure I learned from my mistakes. That’s why it’s important to evaluate.

And have fun, it’s not always fun, nor should it be. Some goals will be a necessity in order too get forward. But make sure you have fun along the way. And set fun goals, stuff that you know is fun from the beginning. And never give up on yourself and the process.

Zero

Back to zero, this lockdown for me is a forced rethink of what I need to do, or love to do. I have had a forced reset after my brain injury and after a few years I have a pretty solid base. And I got into a rhythm again. I sometimes forget to focus on the goals I have set after my return to the ‘real world’.

After adjusting to the lockdown and getting my head around it, I have spent some time going tru my notes and thoughts just after my revalidation. It was very much focussed around learning and getting some old ideas done. Mostly focussed around creativity and music. It’s has been hard getting started on those things for some reason. This part of my goals has been overshadowed by the day to day stuff I need to do. So I am now need to set some time for it.

This new crisis has also made me think we as a society need a reset, a bold start from scratch, back to zero.

It has also shown the fragility of our system and the need to rethink a large part of it. For me a lot needs to get back to zero. Start to rethink the whole idea of how we need to organize society and how we do things.

The focus on economic growth and keeping big business happy is long overdue. The metrics we use for calculating our output is one of the past. The cost of every crisis lands on the weakest shoulders. Most people haven’t really recovered from the financial crisis of 2008 and are now here. It might seem as if there was a recovery but most people just got back to a level of were they were in 2008.

The main problem is the inability for most people to get there financial situation more stable, workers rights have steadily been downgraded, the gig economy is not one that benefits most workers. And thus most people. Combining this with the every growing privatizing of healthcare , utilities and so on it’s a risk cocktail that has again landed on the same group of people.

The risk for society as a whole has gone up as well, the governments around the world have stepped in at an enormous cost for the future , all in a all in bet for quick recovery. Which might not happen.

So while this is all pretty gloomy it also gives us as a opportunity to force a few long overdue changes. The most important is the mindset about how we measure the wealth in our society. It needs to be a new mix of economic growth , health and happiness of the people and nature. A focus more on the quality of life and things rather than just things and masses of them.

It’s just a thought but these levels of leverage on financial , environmental and human risk our current system is very much unsustainable. Hopefully this new crisis will give way to forward thinking and real problem solving. I for one hope for the best.

Rethinking the blog

Well I have been absent with blog posts for a while now. Last post was November 2019 and we are well underway in 2020 in the meantime.
So what’s up, well I have drifted a bit from what my original idea for the blog was. My personal interests in finance, music , running and art. The main idea was to write whenever I felt like it and keep it a bit diversified. I got caught up in the personal finance part of it all. Mainly because there are so many cool ideas and I tried incorporating all that in my blog.

Well that generated more posts but not a lot of interesting ones. So I am stopping all series, which don’t add to get people thinking about things and just state facts, like the dividend and portfolio updates. Lot’s of other people are doing a much better job on those topics than I do. It also means I don’t feel any pressure (totally self imposed offcourse) to keep a monthly schedule and post stuff for the sake of it.

It’s a bit of a re-focus if you will and a drive in writing more meaningful pieces than just following a format. Let’s see where it takes me.

Time and life

Time is a unknown factor in life, while planning ahead for retirement and saving some money for later sometimes your time can be cut short. So why not try to invest to get a bit more free time now.

The main goal for me to pursue financial independence, is time. This became even more evident when I got sick in February.

While I maintain a healthy lifestyle and mostly watch my health closely, you can’t control it. I have some stuff I want to do before I am too old to do it, such as running a few more marathons and a few Ultra trails. While some people run them at age 70 , changes might be I am not in a shape to do that after I am retired. Also there are a few travel experiences I cannot fit in the 24 days off I get every year.

So I am now even more determined to become largely financially independent and have the options of taking months of to train and travel. I have been on this path for some time now, while it is easier with a full time yob which pays well, fast is nice , but a bit slower and doing what I really love doing might be more important.

I will keep you posted on the progress.

Recovery and pictures

A few weeks back I suffered an encephalitis due to a virus that got stuck in my brain. Now I am getting back from that which isn’t all that easy. Progress is slow , and not always a straight line up.

In order to get my health back I need to do some exercising , no running so I stick to walking for now. One of the advantages is I get to take my camera with me and snap some pictures. A few I have uploaded and added.

Chemical waste

The whole world applauded the Paris environmental treaty. Which mostly covered the restriction of the fossil fuels. This all to prevent the rise temperature worldwide. Good work on all fronts. Everybody happy, mostly because everything that has been agreed can be easily outmanoeuvred. Simply because you can travel the world with all the carbon emission rights and buy or sell any paper deficit or surplus you might have. As with all matters which nobody really cares about. It’s near impossible to check.

Same thing with waste. Mountains of waste. And these massive amounts of waste is a more pressing problem at the moment I think. Since a very large part of the industrial waste is simply dumped around the world, where it should be disposed of in the proper way. And on paper it most likely is, at least when people are able to track it and check it. There is a massive waste trade around the globe. And hopefully somewhere someone is doing the right thing and getting rid of it the way it’s supposed to at the end of it all. Well that assumption is wrong.

I had read about the illegal dumping of loads of industrial waste in Italy in the book Gomorra by Robert Saviano. And in some articles in newspapers and magazines over the years. Last week I watched a documentary on 2doc a Dutch documentary about these illegal dumps. they used to dump it and dump tons of clean soil on top. The dumping nowadays is done by orchestrating fires , and once the fire is burning the chemical waste is dumped on the fire. This produces toxic fumes. And a lot of the toxic materials end up in the bottom due to the rain and the water used by the fire department when extinguishing the fire.

This has resulted in extreme levels of heavy metals and other toxic materials in the fruits and vegetables that farmers grow on the lands surrounding all these illegal dump sites. It has caused variations of cancer which you normally come across with elderly people , now people as young as a couple of months have been diagnosed with these types of cancer.

More shockingly the money to clean up this mess, paid for by among others the European tax payers , ended up in the pockets of the criminals that dumped it their in the first place, cleaning absolutely nothing. All this has never been checked , although there was a nice piece of paper outlining all the parameters of the cleaning. But nobody cares after the ink is dry. And in the statistics it’s probably marked as clean again. In the meantime everything stays the same. And nobody wakes up.

The documentary (in Dutch). De gifcirkel