My favorite albums from last year. Balkan brass, an acoustic favorite of 80s returns, Ethio-jazz, Guatemalan singer-guitarist, jazz-rock/Indian classical fusion, and a unique male vocalist.
The end of the year provides an opportunity to look back on all the media and entertainment I enjoyed over the last 12 months. I like taking some time to reflect on what had an impact on me, and why I liked it. It's fun to do during the holidays when I generally have more free time to write. So without further ado, here's my favourite music, film, and TV from 2025... Speyside is off of Bon Iver's 2025 album SABLE, fABLE. It's a relatively straightforward composition—just an acoustic guitar, some violin, and Vernon's soft vocals. But the lack of elements allows each one to stand out and add exactly what it needs to the sound. Each twang of the guitar rides along with Vernon's crooning in beautiful harmony. And small breaks, the sonic negative space, gives breathing room for the lyrics to sink in. A minimal masterpiece, in my opinion. I've been a fan of Milky Chance since university. Their first big hit, Stolen Dance , was one of my favourite songs back in those days, which was like...2013. Damn. In the (many) years since, this German duo released several more albums and EPs. I've always found a few tracks on those releases I liked. Their sound has stayed consistent—spaced-out, electronic folk rock. It's funky and easy to get lost in. Their latest release, Trip Tape III , is a continuation of their Trip Tape series. As the name implies, they're mixtapes instead of a proper album. They contain covers, unreleased demos and original songs all blended together into a perfect lazy-day-on-the-beach soundtrack. Or a summer road trip. Or playing pickleball with your Uncle. Whatever it is, they make good vibes. I had Trip Tape III on repeat for months this year. I love Camouflage , Million Dollar Baby , and Naked and Alive —all standout tracks for me. So for this stellar mixtape, and for continuing to deliver these upbeat indie vibes for over a decade, Milky Chance is my artist of the year. First off, this guy's name isn't Barry, it's Joshua Mainnie. Secondly, I'm unsure whether he can swim or not. But what I am sure of is his ability to make incredible dance music. Barry's—err, Joshua's —first album, When Will We Land was a launching point for his career (no pun intended). It received praise for the vibrant, "organic" sound superbly crafted by Mainnie. It's upbeat, unruly and has plenty of variety. Barry Can't Swim released his second album, Loner , this summer. It's reminiscent of his first album in all the right ways. Samples, beat patterns, and instruments all layered into an evolving melody that blends seamlessly as the album plays out. It's all danceable but feels very raw and emotional at the same time, probably because of the heavy use of vocal samples. Loner opens with the insanity inducing The Person You'd Like to Be , a sort of sonic ego trip that includes positive affirmations from robots and drawn out chords that sound like sirens. But after this crazed start, Mainnie takes us on a ride to a daytime dance party. Kimpton is bouncy and bright, complete with horns, steel drums, and some sort of chanting chorus. Things start to mellow out near the end of the album— Like It's Part of the Dance is a favourite of mine. I watched Past Lives while on vacation last February. I'd heard good things about it—it premiered in 2023 and received lots of praise, including Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. It was one of those stories that leaves you with an odd nostalgic feeling afterwards, and not only because it's a story about childhood love. It's also the way the movie is structured; It takes place over 3 periods separated by 12 years in between: 1999, 2011, and 2023. Thus it provided a bird's eye view into the main character's life at these different stages. You see how she grows up and how certain paths she takes have ripple effects years into the future. It all just made me think about about quickly we age, and how our life will only ever play out once. I also appreciated how un-Hollywood the story was. It doesn't end with any grand gestures or dramatic rekindling of a childhood love. It ends very realistically, just a quiet goodbye between two friends and an acknowledgement of life's what if's. Life will take you in many directions but you'll always carry your memories (or, past lives) within you. Okay, so I first watched Blackberry back in 2023 when it came out in theatres. But I re-watched it earlier this year, so it still counts. Matt Johnson is a Canadian director best known for his television series Nirvanna the Band the Show . It's a hilarious mockumentary series that stars him and co-creator Jay McCarrol conspiring to get their band—named Nirvanna the Band —a gig at the Rivoli. It's one of my favourite TV shows of all time. Not just because of it's hyper-local setting and comedy, it's also a uniquely funny show. Blackberry was Johnson's "breakout" film in the sense that it was his first with a multi-million dollar budget. It received critical acclaim and numerous awards at the Canadian Screen Awards. And rightly so, because it's a masterfully executed film. Johnson carefully interweaves his signature fast-paced comedy into a real story about the rise and fall of one of the landmark technologies of the 21st century: the Blackberry. It was dramatic, nerdy, and seriously funny at the same time. just casually showing up for your movie premiere in sweatpants and a Jays T-shirt In 2025, Johnson premiered his next film, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie —a spiritual successor to the TV show. I unfortunately haven't seen it yet; I'll have to wait for the theatrical release in early 2026. I really appreciate Johnson's love for his home and how he stays true to this in his work. He wants to change the idea that Canada is just a cheap place to film American movies and TV. It's also a place with it's own stories; stories that deserve to be told. I'm looking forward to seeing what Johnson will sink his teeth into next. I read he's directing an Anthony Bourdain biopic and a Dungeons & Dragons movie. I didn't watch too many documentaries this year to be honest. In any case, my selection for the most impactful documentary I watched is The Present . And fortunately for you, it's available in it's entirety on YouTube. It's a short, but beautiful film about Dimitri Poffé, a young man from France who was diagnosed with Huntington's disease in his 20s. The documentary follows Dimitri's bikepacking journey across Central and South America in an effort to raise awareness for the disease. As a novice bikepacker, the premise was enough to hook me. But it turned out to be much more than just another YouTube bikepacking recap. Overlaid with an incredible monologue from Dimitri himself, The Present focuses on time, and specifically the time we have here on Earth. What we can do with it and what we're capable of. It was really moving and sad at times, but ultimately it delivers an important message that anyone could benefit from hearing. Adventure becomes a way to feel truly alive. It becomes a way, even for a moment, to stop the ticking clock of life — Dimitri Poffé I'm not finished Demon Slayer yet, but this has undoubtedly been the most entertaining TV I've watched all year. Normally I'm not a huge fan of Anime, but I decided to give this show a try based on a recommendation from a friend. Demon Slayer is an adaptation of the Japanese manga series of the same name, published between 2016-2020. The anime is a few years behind, so it only concluded in July of this year. It's action-packed, it doesn't take itself too seriously, and the art direction is wildly creative. Demon Slayer takes place in a fantastical version of Japan full of demons and demon slayers, all of whom have a flair for the dramatic. If you're like me and haven't watched much anime, then the dialogue might throw you off a bit. It's very...explicit. Every character states their intentions and actions directly, either out loud or as an internal monologue. It can sound a bit melodramatic at times. Overall—it's a really fun show to watch. only downside is Zenitsu is the most annoying character on television Seth Rogan's The Studio was a rollercoaster ride of a series. The concept is probably the easiest thing to get greenlit from a studio, Hollywood loves a show or film about itself. The cinematography stands out for me; the show is mostly composed of long running shots and dialogue driven scenes. And it moves along at a breakneck pace—always tense and on the verge of collapse. This makes for good comedy albeit with an elevated heartrate. I also loved the music in The Studio . The show uses an original score of mostly drums with only small flourishes from other instruments at key moments. This percussion-heavy soundtrack complements the show's pace and emotionally-charged dialogue so well. Episode 2, The Oner , exemplifies all the best aspects of The Studio . It takes the extended shot theme to it's extreme by filming the whole thing as a single shot. Not only that, the episode is about a movie set where the crew is attempting to film a single-shot sequence. So it's all very meta and self-aware. It's completely unhinged and disastrous due to Rogan's character (the studio executive) trying to be helpful but accomplishing the opposite. It also establishes the kind of person he is for the rest of the series—idealistic, friendly, but lacking self-awareness. It's hilarious TV, give it a watch if you're looking for a laugh.
In the last few years, I’ve lost my appetite for discovering new music. The main reason is that I’ve focused on listening to full albums for most of the last decade, but increasingly I find it irritating and anxiety-inducing to listen to albums from start to finish. I’ve been reading/watching music reviews online since my early twenties. In this time, I’ve also been part of a number of music communities online. One defining characteristic of music discussions online—at least in the Anglophone world—is that they’re centered entirely around the album. To most critics and “serious” music fans, the album seems to be a single, indivisible unit of music that must always be considered as a whole. Five minutes with a search engine will dredge up hundreds of blog posts and op-eds touting the benefits of listening to complete albums rather than individual tracks. Some people almost attach morality to the act of listening to an album. If you’re not listening to full albums from start to end, in a darkened room, with your eyes closed, with noise-cancelling headphones, then do you even respect the music? Are you even a true fan? In my mid-twenties, I wanted to be a musician (I still do, but not as intensely). So when I started taking music more seriously myself, I focused my listening mainly on albums. This wouldn’t have been such a terrible thing had it not been for the fact that I didn’t enjoy listening to full albums. At all. Never had, never will. I grew up in an era of cassette tapes. When I was a teenager, my parents would take me to the local Planet M once a month, where I would be allowed to buy exactly one album on tape. My family couldn't afford CDs because CDs cost ₹400-500, whereas cassette tapes cost ₹100-150. So even when most of the world had moved on to CDs, I was still listening to all my music on tape. When you're listening to albums on tape, you're not really skipping around the tracklist. Sure, it’s possible to skip tracks on a cassette tape. That’s what the rewind and fast-forward buttons are for. But it’s not easy. You have to know precisely how long to rewind and/or fast-forward so you land where you want to. If you don’t get it right the first time, it becomes a frustrating back-and-forth dance between the rewind and fast-forward buttons until you manage to find the exact spot you need to be. Kind of like parallel parking in a tight spot. Listening to most of my music on tape, I should’ve grown up to be the sort of adult who enjoys listening to albums, right? But that's not what happened. The moment I discovered I could record my favorite tracks from their original tapes onto blanks, I stopped listening to full albums altogether. I had discovered the joys of making mixtapes, and there was no going back. When my family finally bought a computer, and I discovered how to download MP3s from the internet, I completely gave up on listening to full albums or even downloading them illegally. Freed from the constraints of linear analog media, I began collecting individual MP3s, making playlists, and curating music for myself. This changed in my twenties. As I started participating in music communities, going to gigs and festivals, and running a music blog, I also started forcing myself to listen to albums. That’s how all the pros did it, after all, and didn’t I want to be a pro? However, even when I was listening to nearly a hundred new albums each year, they didn’t quite make sense to me. They still don’t. To me, they just seem like a convenient packaging for a collection of music. Outside of some loose themes and sonic similarities that hold an album together, I don’t see why a certain set of tracks placed in a certain sequence makes for a better listening experience than a slightly altered set of tracks in a slightly altered sequence. There’s a lot of talk about the artistic intent that goes into curating and sequencing an album. But when artists play their music live, they often curate setlists by mixing and matching tracks from several different albums. DJs go even further, curating their mixes from tracks by many different artists, genres, and eras. If musicians themselves don’t constrain themselves to the album format, why must I? Sure, there are some artists who have turned the album into an art form . There are albums out there that are designed to be one unified, cohesive experience. But those albums are exceedingly rare. I’m willing to bet less than one in a hundred albums is designed to be listened to as a unit. Most albums are just collections of tracks that an artist made in a certain time period, or which share a common theme or sound. Albums also seem to me a modern invention, one that came about because of the technical limitations of recording media rather than a human tendency for enjoying a certain amount of music at a time. An LP is about 40-50 minutes long , not because that’s a magic number but because that’s how much music a vinyl record can hold. That’s why so many rock albums are still around 45-50 minutes long to this day. Rock music rose to prominence in the heyday of the vinyl record. On the other hand, hip-hop rose to prominence around the time audio CDs became more common, which is why many rap albums are a bit longer at around 60-70 minutes . The length of an album has little to do with something inherent in the genre or user preferences and everything to do with the technical limitations of the media it's distributed on. And now that streaming music has become more common, we see many artists breaking the mold . Some artists release albums that last several hours , while others only ever release singles. Unless an artist is planning to release physical versions of their music, they’re no longer constrained to the album format. So after more than a decade of forcing myself to listen to albums, I too am releasing myself from the constraint of album-centric listening. Starting this year, I'm going to listen to music in the way I enjoy: by seeking out individual tracks that move me, and arranging them into curated playlists for myself and my friends. To discover new music, I'm listening to more singles, curated playlists, and radio stations. I'm reading Bandcamp editorials and diving deep into obscure tags. I'm allowing myself to open an artist's Spotify page and click around on whatever tracks catch my fancy. I'm even allowing myself to listen to albums on shuffle, something I’ve already done with Audrey Hobert’s Who’s the Clown over this last week. I'm hoping that by freeing myself to listen to music in the way I want will allow me to discover a lot more this year.
When I was starting out with guitar the first pieces I learned were Classical ones. At the time I was very influenced by Bach, even learning to play some of his pieces (Bach created a lot of music for the Lute – a cousin of the guitar). Back then my dream was to get an orchestra to play one of my pieces, but that never happened and I soon moved on to Jazz and other things (mostly juggling). In 2026 my dream can finally be realised. Using Suno I uploaded a recording of one of my pieces and told it to do a Baroque version with an orchestra. Here is the result: On the free version of Suno you don’t get a lot of control, they say that your composition is 80% AI 20% your own work, but I think that they got the melody and a lot else exactly right. I think it’s an interpretation of my original piece that I really like. Judge for yourself – here is the original (recorded with a tape deck back in 1995): The post I used AI to play my Classical composition appeared first on Circus Scientist .
In my last post, I was struggling towards an algebraic theory of music. This idea has been burning in my mind ever since, and I wanted to give some updates with where I’ve landed. We begin by modeling a musical voice , which is, roughly speaking, the abstract version of a human voice. The voice can be doing one thing at a time, or can choose to not be doing anything. Voices are modeled by step functions , which are divisions of the real line into discrete chunks. We interpret each discrete chunk as a note being played by the voice for the duration of the chunk. This gives rise to a nice applicative structure that I alluded to in my previous post: where we take the union of the note boundaries in order to form the applicative. If either voice is resting, so too is the applicative. There is also an instance here, which chooses the first non-rest. There is a similar monoidal structure here, where multiplication is given by “play these two things simultaneously,” relying on an underlying instance for the meaning of “play these two things:” If either voice is resting, we treat its value as , and can happily combine the two parts in parallel. All of this gives rise to the following rich structure: Voices, therefore, give us our primitive notion of monophony. But real music usually has many voices doing many things, independently. This was a point in which I got stuck in my previous post. The solution here, is surprisingly easy. Assign a to each voice name: We get an extremely rich structure here completely for free. Our monoid combines all voices in parallel; our applicative combines voices pointwise; etc. However, we also have a new instance, whose characteristic method allows us to trade lines between voices. In addition to the in-parallel monoid instance, we can also define a tile product operator over , which composes things sequentially 1 : The constraint on arises from the fact that the pieces of music might extend off to infinity in either direction (which must do), and we need to deal with that. There are a few other combinators we care about. First, we can lift anonymous voices (colloquially “tunes”) into multi-part : and we can assign the same line to everyone: The primitives for building little tunes are which you can then compose sequentially via , and assign to voices via . One of the better responses to my last blog post was a link to Dmitri Tymoczko ’s FARM 2024 talk . There’s much more in this video than I can possibly due justice to here, but my big takeaway was that this guy is thinking about the same sorts of things that I am. So I dove into his work, and that lead to his quadruple hierarchy : Voices move within chords, which move within scales, which move within macro-harmonies. Tymoczko presents a algebra which is a geometric space for reasoning about voice leadings. He’s got a lot of fun websites for exploring the ideas, but I couldn’t find an actual implementation of the idea anywhere, so I cooked one up myself. The idea here is that we have some which describes a hierarchy of abstract scales moving with respect to one another. For example, the Western traditional of having triads move within the diatonic scale, which moves within the chromatic scale, would be represented as . forms a monoid, and has some simple generators that give rise to smooth voice leadings (chord changes.) Having a model for smooth harmonic transformations means we can use it constructively. I am still working out the exact details here, but the rough shape of the idea is to build an underlying field of key changes (represented as smooth voice leadings in ): We can then make an underlying field of functional harmonic changes (chord changes), modeled as smooth voice leadings in : Our voices responsible for harmony can now be written as values of type and we can use the applicative musical structure to combine the elements together: which we can later out into concrete pitches. The result is that we can completely isolate the following pieces: and the result is guaranteed to compose in a way that the ear can interpret as music. Not necessarily good music, but undeniably as music. The type indices on are purely for my book-keeping, and nothing requires them to be there. Which means we could also use the applicative structure to modulate over different sorts of harmony (eg, move from triads to seventh chords.) I haven’t quite gotten a feel for melody yet; I think it’s probably in , but it would be nice to be able to target chord tones as well. Please let me know in the comments if you have any insight here. However, I have been thinking about contouring, which is the overall “shape” of a musical line. Does it go up, and peak in the middle, and then come down again? Or maybe it smoothly descends down. We can use the discrete intervals intrinsic inside of s to find “reasonable” times to sample them. In essence this assigns a to each segment: and we can then use these times to then sample a function . This then allows us to apply contours (given as regular functions) to arbitrary rhythms. I currently have this typed as where , and the outputted s get rounded to their nearest integer values. I’m not deeply in love with this type, but the rough idea is great—turn arbitrary real-valued functions into musical lines. This generalizes contouring, as well as scale runs. I’m writing all of this up because I go back to work on Monday and life is going to get very busy soon. I’m afraid I won’t be able to finish all of this! The types above I’m pretty certain are relatively close to perfect. They seem to capture everything I could possibly want, and nothing I don’t want. Assuming I’m right about that, they must make up the basis of musical composition. The next step therefore is to build musical combinators on top. One particular combinator I’ve got my eye on is some sort of general “get from here to there” operator: which I imagine would bridge a gap between the end of one piece of music with beginning of another. I think this would be roughly as easy as moving each voice linearly in space from where it was to where it needs to be. This might need to be a ternary operation in order to also associate a rhythmic pattern to use for the bridge. But I imagine would be great for lots of dumb little musical things. Like when applied over the chord dimension, it would generate arpeggios. Over the scale dimension, it would generate runs. And it would make chromatic moves in the chroma dimension. Choosing exactly what moves to make for s consisting of components in multiple axes might just be some bespoke order, or could do something more intelligent. I think the right approach would be to steal ’ idea of an , and attach some relevant metadata to each . We could then write as a function of those envelopes, but I must admit I don’t quite know what this would look like. As usual, I’d love any insight you have! Please leave it in the comments. Although I must admit I appreciate comments of the form “have you tried $X” much more than of the form “music is sublime and you’re an idiot for even trying this.” Happy new year! Strictly speaking, the tile product can also do parallel composition, as well as sychronizing composition, but that’s not super important right now. ↩︎ key changes chord changes how voices express the current harmony the rhythms of all of the above Strictly speaking, the tile product can also do parallel composition, as well as sychronizing composition, but that’s not super important right now. ↩︎
What’s going on, Internet? Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.
I’ve been a Spotify subscriber for years. It’s convenient, the catalogue is vast, and the recommendations used to be genuinely useful. But lately, I’ve found myself increasingly uncomfortable with the direction the platform is heading. It’s hard to pin down exactly when Spotify stopped feeling like a music service and started feeling like something else entirely. A few things have been gnawing at me: Artist compensation is broken. The per-stream payout is famously tiny , and the model actively discourages the kind of music I actually want to support. Albums that reward repeated listening lose out to background playlist fodder designed to rack up streams. In 2024, Spotify stopped paying royalties entirely for any track under 1,000 streams, demonetising an estimated 86% of music on the platform. The interface is hostile. Every update seems to prioritise podcasts, audiobooks, and algorithmically-generated content over letting me play my own playlists. The homepage is a mess of things I didn’t ask for. AI-generated music is creeping in. There’s been a wave of low-effort AI tracks flooding the platform , often mimicking real artists or filling ambient playlists. Spotify removed over 75 million spam tracks in 2024 alone. It feels like the beginning of a race to the bottom, where quantity beats quality and genuine artists get drowned out. I don’t own anything. After years of subscription payments, I have nothing to show for it. If Spotify disappears tomorrow, or removes an album I love, it’s just gone. The company’s direction feels off. Beyond the platform itself, there’s the question of what Spotify’s leadership prioritises. CEO Daniel Ek has been investing heavily in European defense technology . That’s his prerogative, of course, but it underlines that my subscription money flows to a company whose priorities don’t align with mine. Spotify Wrapped was a wake-up call. In previous years, Wrapped felt like a fun novelty. This year it was a reminder that I don’t actually listen to that many artists. The ones I enjoy, I play on repeat. So why am I paying a monthly subscription to listen to the same songs over and over? The artists I love aren’t seeing much from those streams, and I’m essentially renting music at an increasingly high cost. The family plan price keeps creeping up, and for what? The privilege of temporarily accessing albums I could just buy outright? The obvious response is “just switch to another service.” But the alternatives have their own problems. YouTube Music / Google shares many of Spotify’s issues, with the added concern that both platforms profit from advertising revenue that flows from some less than savoury sources. When your business model depends on engagement at any cost, the incentives get murky fast. Apple Music locks you further into an ecosystem and has its own history of prioritising platform control over user freedom. Tidal is perhaps the current outlier. Better artist payouts, lossless audio as standard, and seemingly fewer of the dark patterns plaguing the others. But streaming services have a habit of starting idealistic and drifting toward the mean once growth becomes the priority. How long until Tidal follows the same path? I’d rather not find out by having my library disappear when they pivot. The fundamental problem isn’t any single company. It’s the streaming model itself. When you rent access instead of owning files, you’re always at the mercy of corporate decisions you have no control over. When I thought about what I wanted from music, the list was simple: I’ve landed on a self-hosted Plex library for my music collection, served up with Plexamp on all my devices. Plexamp is genuinely excellent. It’s a dedicated music player built by Plex, and it feels like it was designed by people who actually care about listening to music rather than optimising engagement metrics. Clean interface, proper gapless playback, and features like sonic exploration that help with discovery without feeling algorithmic. The client availability sealed the deal. Plexamp runs on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and Linux. The only gap is native car integration, but Bluetooth fills that role with minimal friction. Connect, play, done. The server side is just Plex running on my existing home server. Music files live on local storage, backed up properly, under my control. No subscription required for basic playback, though Plex Pass unlocks some Plexamp features. One of the benefits of owning your music files is choosing the quality. My entire library is FLAC: lossless audio that preserves every detail from the original recording. To be honest, I can’t reliably tell the difference between Spotify’s high-quality streams and lossless audio on my current setup. Most people can’t. But that’s not really the point. Audio technology keeps improving. Better headphones, better DACs, better speakers. The music I’m collecting now might be played on equipment that doesn’t exist yet. By storing everything in lossless, I’m preserving the highest possible quality for whatever the future brings. I’d rather have more data than I need today than wish I’d kept it later. With streaming, you get whatever quality the service decides to give you. With my own files, the choice is mine. Bandcamp is the obvious choice for buying digital music directly. Artists get a better cut, you get lossless files, and there’s a strong community around it. In theory, it’s perfect. In practice, I find the search experience frustrating. Getting to the specific artist and album I want feels slower than it should. Maybe I’m spoiled by years of Spotify’s instant search, but the friction is noticeable. For now, I’m putting up with it because the alternatives are worse, but I’m constantly searching for something better. If you know of a good source for purchasing lossless music with a decent search experience, I’d love to hear about it. I won’t pretend this is all upside. Spotify’s discovery features, when they worked, introduced me to artists I genuinely love. The convenience of having everything available instantly is hard to replicate. And sharing music with friends becomes more complicated when you can’t just send a link. But those trade-offs feel worth it. I’d rather have a smaller collection of music I actually own than endless access to a library that’s increasingly polluted with content designed to game the algorithm rather than move the listener. I won’t sugarcoat it: the friction to switch has been fairly high. Ripping, cataloguing, and transferring content is one thing. The curated playlists from years gone by are another. Those playlists represent hours of listening, discovering, and refining. Losing them felt like losing a part of my music history. Soundiiz came in handy here, automatically copying playlists across to Plex. It worked well for most of the heavy lifting. But invariably there’s a song on a crucial playlist that I just don’t own yet, leaving a gap. Until I fill those gaps, the migration doesn’t feel complete. It’s a slow process. Every missing track is a reminder that I’m rebuilding something that took years to accumulate. But each album I add is mine now, permanently, and that makes the effort feel worthwhile. Ownership - Files that live on my hardware, that I control Quality - Lossless audio, not compressed streams No algorithms - I’ll decide what to listen to, thanks Supporting artists - Buying albums directly puts more money in their pockets than years of streaming
Last 'cool links' post was in July! I really dropped off there for a while. What I read or watched worth sharing since last time (that I didn't lose sight of): Reply via email Published 23 Dec, 2025 Sortition Social - a community RSS feed reader. Every day, a random feed is selected from our database and added to the timeline. After seven days, the feed falls off the end of the timeline and is replaced by a new one at the top. The timeline always shows the latest entries from the feeds it features. SearchMySite - Search engine for user-submitted personal and independent websites. RawWeb - Search personal websites! James' Indieweb Search - Another way to search! The Interface Drama Master List - List of games that use interfaces in the story, like terminals, phones and desktops. I love these sort of games; I have played Secret Little Haven, A Normal Lost Phone, Needy Streamer Overload, Emily is Away, Pockedate and more :) List of OSINT exercises - in case you want to train your OSINT skills. (OSINT = Open Source Intelligence; the process of gathering and analyzing publicly available information) You Have To Live Your Life - Covid19 information and counterarguments to common fallacies about spreading infection, not masking etc. The Nerd Reich - Articles about the intersection of right wing extremism and tech. The Prodigial Techbro - A piece about not forgiving ex-techbros on their redemption arc too easily. The EU can be shut down with a few keystrokes - Discussing how much the EU and even its government institutions rely on US tech that could be taken away any second. I Miss Choices - A blog post about missing the variety of design choices and niches in products as everything starts to look the same. The Left Has Failed Animals - Animal rights have always been part of leftism, but have recently played less of a role than it should. Strudel and Nudel - writing music together, without an account, in the browser via code :) Melon's Post Office - free option to send newsletters for MelonLand members. Darwin's tubercle - Wikipedia article about a little thickening on your helix. I have this, and never knew it had a name! Open Printer - Open hardware printer. 40 Questions - Good for the new year around the corner! Questions to ask yourself each year.
What’s going on, Internet? If a song isn’t available on Spotify or Apple Music, a lot of people these days assume it isn’t an official release. I reckon that idea is wrong. Digital Streaming Platforms (DSPs) are not archives. They’re digital storefronts. What you see is a product that depends on licensing, timing, and deals, not history. Availability gets confused with legitimacy, and anything missing is treated like it never existed or as some kind of lost media. Streaming platforms are not archives. They are storefronts with licensing constraints. Availability is not authorship. Absence is not “unreleased”. This has quietly changed how people think about music. Not how they listen, but how they decide what’s official. If it’s not on a DSP, for a lot of people, it may as well not exist. One of my favourite Eminem songs is Bad Influence . It’s an official track from the MMLP era. It appeared on the End of Days soundtrack and was also a B-side on The Real Slim Shady single , which I owned on CD back in the day. Pretty sure it’s still in a box in storage - I’ll let you know if I find it. Today it sits in a weird place. Check out the MusicThread generated links . Apple Music has the soundtrack and lets me preview the song, but I’ve got no idea if the full track is actually available because I don’t have an account. Spotify lists the soundtrack but won’t play it in my region. Other services break or don’t surface it at all. Depending on where you look, the song both exists and doesn’t. Nothing about the song has changed. It didn’t suddenly become officially released when the sound track showed up on streaming, and won’t become unofficial when it dissapears again. The only thing that changes is what people think of it. Sometimes music doesn’t even get that half availble treatment. I recently wrote about the one and only album from the New Zealand band Atlas. Reasons for Voyaging was released in 2007. A proper release from a real band on a major label (Warner Bros. Records), on CD. The single Crawling climbed to the top of the NZ charts and received the full music video treatment. It was a huge tune in NZ at the time. It landed at an awkward moment, right as music was shifting from physical to digital, and was never licensed for streaming platforms. As a result, it’s now genuinely hard to find. Unless you know to check local libraries and hope there’s still a CD sitting in a basement somewhere. Not because it was unofficial. Not because it wasn’t good. Just because it fell between the cracks. Lol. That’s the risk when DSPs are treated as the record of what exists. They’re not preserving music. They’re selling access to whatever they can get licensed. They exist to benefit whoever is funding them, not the artists. This is why music ownership still matters to me. Not in a “vinyl is better” way, and not as a rejection of streaming entirely. I stream music all the time. Just not from DSPs. I stream from my own home server, from a digital library I’ve built over time, made up of music I actually own. That difference matters. Streaming as a way of playing music is fine. Streaming as a replacement for owning is what I don’t trust. At the end of the day it’s rented access, and the artists aren’t benefiting most of the time either. Stuff comes and goes. Tracks get greyed out. Albums dissapear. Licensing, regional, business, exclusivity deals. None of that has anything to do with the music itself. Steph Vee recently posted, Delete Spotify, sure, but don’t just replace it with another subscription . Same idea really. Ditching Spotify doesn’t mean much if all you’ve done is rent your music from someone else instead. When I own something, it’s there. No “unavailable in your region”. No wondering if it’ll exist next year. No egomaniac rapper changing the album post release, lol. I’m also not interested in hoarding music just for the sake of it. Loading up a server with ten thousand albums I’ve never listened to, or never will, isn’t collecting. That’s just noise. Digital hoarding without backups is fake ownership, and hoarding without listening is pointless to me. I collect muisic I care about , espeically on vinyl. Stuff I’ve lived with. Albums tied to certain times, places, and memories. If those memories matter to me, I don’t want them at the mercy of a streaming licence. So how do I actually go about getting my music? I try to buy music as close to the artist as possible. If an artist has an official website, I’ll check there first. If I’m going to a gig, I’ll wait and see if they’ve got vinyl available. If there’s a direct way to buy the music, that’s the path I’ll take every time. Bandcamp often fits nicely into that. If I’m still after the vinyl and Bandcamp is the closest thing to an official storefront, I’ll go there. It’s ideal. I get the record and a digital copy at the same time. The vinyl is nice to own, and the digital files go onto my home server and are what I listen to day to day. I’ll usually save things in my cart until a Bandcamp Friday lands so as much money as possible goes to the artist rather than the platform. If I’m buying records from a local store or retailer, I’ll usually grab a digital copy elsewhere. Sometimes that means Bandcamp, sometimes an official store, sometimes as AI training data, lol. The goal is always the same. Own the music. Don’t rely on a platform. If there isn’t a clear option, I’ve even reached out directly. I did this recently with local artist Niamh Crooks . She had CD copies of her EP that weren’t for sale on her website, so I bank transferred some cash and she posted a signed copy. Pretty cool. She also promised to look into setting up on Bandcamp. Yeah, sometimes there just isn’t an official path at all. No Bandcamp. No store. No label link. Just a link page pointing at those damn DSPs. In those cases I’ll grab the album as AI training data, add it to my library, and carry on with life. Once it’s in my library, it lives on my home server and I stream it from there. Same convenience as the DSPs, but without the shenanigans and with the reassurance tat what I’m listening to today will still be there next week. For the really special albums, they’re added to the record collection . Not everything needs to be owned on vinyl, but the stuff that means the most to me deserves a physical presence. Okay, I do have some dumb records in there too, just because I can. I’m not trying to convince anyone to cancel their streaming subscriptions or start a vinyl collection. That’s fine, you do you. This is just what music means to me. Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.
Konpeito Media Winter 2021 Cover In the winter of 2021 I discovered a Gemini capsule called Konpeito Media. KONPEITO was quarterly Lo-fi hip hop & chill bootleg mixtapes, distributed exclusively through the Gemini protocol. Each tape was a half-hour mix, clean on side A and repeated on side B with an added ambient background noise layer for atmosphere. Tapes were generally released in the first week of each meteorological season. KONPEITO ended in the Winter of 2022. The project no longer exists, but I found a mirror capsule here: gemini://gem.chiajlingvoj.ynh.fr/konpeito/konpeito_media_mirror.gmi > I saved a few of these mixtapes to my computer back then, and I always find myself coming back to the Winter 2021 tape. It's great to set as background music on blue winter evenings when I find myself writing for long periods of time. Konpeito Media had a deliberate end when its author felt it ran its course. Often we see blogs or projects abandoned, that's normal, but rarely do we see a two-year project where the author acknowledges that it's time to wrap things up and move on to other things. Konpeito on Mastodon - January 20, 2022: After some soul-searching, I've decided to call the KONPEITO project done. I know y'all were fiending for the new tape but it seems like there's always something else diverting my attention and that's usually a really good sign my heart isn't in it. The capsule will stay up indefinitely and I'll make sure you have notice before I take it down. I'll have one more tape up before I do, to say thank you to everyone who's listened and everyone who's shone light on the Gemini project. This project is one of my favorite pieces of internet history.
My friend Jason came over as he’d just got a new MacBook and a new Black Lion audio interface he wanted to try out. We plugged my Ear Trumped Mabel into it and did a few songs. I dragged my web cam setup downstairs to do the video haha. The song is Ol’ Bob from Roger Netherton . There is a 2nd take at the end that I think I like a little better. The first take I did a 2-finger style which sometimes I like but is probably better suited when there is a guitar too. Clawhammer and fiddle is so classic.
For the last few months, I’ve been trying to come up with a nice, denotational basis for what music is. But I’m running out of steam on the project, so I thought I’d write what I’ve figured out, and what I’ve tried but doesn’t work. Hopefully this will inspire someone to come tell me what I’m being stupid about and help get the whole process unstuck. It’s tempting to gesticulate wildly, saying that music is merely a function from time to wave amplitudes, eg something of the form: While I think it’s fair to say that this is indeed the underlying denotation of sound, this is clearly not the denotation of music. For example, we can transpose a song up a semitone without changing the speed—something that’s very challenging without a great deal of in the waveform representation. And we can play a musical phrase backwards, which is probably impossible in a waveform for any timbral envelope. Since we have now two examples of “reasonable to want to do” with musical objects, which cannot be expressed in terms of a function , we must conceed that waveforms-over-time cannot be the denotation of music. Music is obviously temporal, so keeping the “function from time” part seems relevant. But a function from time to what? As a first attempt: which, for a given time, returns a set of notes starting at that time, and how long they ought to be played for. An immediate improvement would be to parameterize the above over notes: It’s tempting to try to eliminate more of the structure here with our parametricity, but I was unable to do so. In contrapuntal music, we will want to be able to express two notes starting at the same moment, but ending at different times. One alluring path here could to write monophonic voices, and combine them together for polyphony: Such an encoding has many unfavorable traits. First, it just feels yucky. Why are there two layers of ? Second, now I-as-a-composer need to make a choice of which voice I put each note in, despite the fact that this is merely an encoding quirk. So no, I don’t think this is a viable path forward. So let’s return to our best contender: This definition is trivially a monoid, pointwise over the time structure: If we think about abstract sets here, rather than , such an object is clearly a functor. There are many possible applicatives here, but the pointwise zipper seems most compelling to me. Pictorally: Such an applicative structure is quite nice! It would allow us to “stamp” a rhythm on top of a pure representation of a melody. However, the desirability of this instance is a point against , since by Conal Elliott’s typeclass morphism rule , the meaning of the applicative here ought to be the applicative of the meaning. Nevertheless, any other applicative structure would be effecitvely useless, since it would require the notes on one side to begin at the same time as the notes on the other. To sketch: Good luck finding a musically meaningful for such a thing! Ok, so let’s say we commit to the pointwise zippy instance as our applicative instance. Is there a corresponding monad? Such a thing would substitute notes with more music. My first idea of what to do with such a thing would be to replace chords with texture. For example, we could replace chords with broken chords, or with basslines that target the same notes. Anyway, the answer is yes, there is such a monad. But it’s musically kinda troublesome. Assume we have the following function: which will convert a into its notes and an optional temporal interval (optional because goes on forever.) Then, we can write our bind as: where changes when a piece of music occurs. We are left with a hole of type: whose semantics sure better be that it forces the given to fit in the alotted time. There are two reasonable candidates here: where changes the local interpretation of time such that the entire musical argument is played within the given duration, and just takes the first ’s worth of time. Truncate is too obviously unhelpful here, since the continuation doesn’t know how much time it’s been given, and thus most binds will drop almost all of their resulting music. Therefore we will go with . Which satisfies all of the algebraic (monad) laws, but results in some truly mystifying tunes. The problem here is that this is not an operation which respects musical meter. Each subsequent bind results in a correspondingly smaller share of the pie. Thus by using only bind and mconcat, it’s easy to get a bar full of quarter notes, followed by a bar of sixty-fourth notes, followed by two bars full of of 13-tuplets. If you want to get a steady rhythm out of the whole thing, you need a global view on how many binds deep you’re ever going to go, and you need to ensure locally that you only produce a small powers-of-two number of notes, or else you will accidentally introduce tuplets. It’s a mess. But algebraically it’s fine. The above foray into monads seems tentatively promising for amateur would-be algorithmic composers (read: people like me.) But I have been reading several books on musical composition lately, and my big takeaway from them is just how damn contextual notes are. So maybe this means we want more of a comonadic interface. One in which you can every note, by taking into account all of the notes in its local vicinity. This feels just as right as the monadic approach does, albeit in a completely different way. Being able to give a comonad instance for would require us to somehow reckon with having only a single at any given time. Which appeals to my functional programmer soul, but again, I don’t know how to do it. But imagine if we did have a comonadic instance. We could perform voice leading by inspecting what the next note was, and by futzing around with our pitch. We could do some sort of reharmonization by shifting notes around according to what else is happening. But maybe all of this is just folly. Music as it’s actually practiced doesn’t seem to have much of the functionaly-compositional properties we like—ie, that we can abstract and encapsulate. But music doesn’t appear to be like that! Instead, a happy melody takes a different character when played on major vs minor chords. Adding a dissonant interval can completely reconceptualize other notes. It feels like a bit of a bummer to end like this, but I don’t really know where to go from here. I’ve worked something like six completely-different approaches over the last few months, and what’s documented here is the most promising bits and pieces. My next thought is that maybe music actually forms a sheaf , which is to say that it is a global solution that respects many local constraints. All of this research into music has given me much more thoughts about music qua music which I will try to articulate the next time I have an evening to myself. Until then.
This is the first post in my series of articles on taking back ownership in your relationship with technology. Learn the idea behind this series in my initial post . When Pandora first came out, it felt like a revolutionary way to discover new music. Just feed it your interests, and get a never ending playlist of relevant songs. Nowadays, this functionality is standard in all streaming music services. Just like infinite scroll, it keeps the user engaged and on the platform, giving providers incentive to make sure the music never stops. While never ending music streams based on your interests sounds like a good thing, there are drawbacks. First and most obvious, streaming music services are yet another monthly subscription cost. Less obvious though is the lack of curation and connection with music when it's served via algorithm. Spotify will throw anything that vaguely fits into your music profile with hopes of keeping you engaged. There's no human curation, no why behind the music selected. This limits your exposure to new genres and artists, keeping you in a musical echo chamber. Internet Radio is nothing new, in fact it's been around far longer than Spotify or Pandora, starting with "Internet Talk Radio" in 1993 . Today it's less popular, but still very much alive. While there are paid platforms, such as Sirius XM (now streamed via internet rather than satellite), there are also thousands of free, independent stations to discover. With internet radio, you can break free from a monthly streaming subscription. You'll be exposed to music outside of the artists algorithms typically throw at you. With high quality stations, you can even enjoy curated playlists with DJ interaction. Let's dive into how to get started! Tuning into internet radio is easy, there are apps and websites that work on every device! Here are some recommendations: Once you've got your internet radio player, here are a few recommendations for discovering stations to tune into. Stations I regularly tune into. Turn your internet radio into something physical with a Raspberry Pi! I haven't personally done this project, but it seems like an excellent idea. Bob Rathbone - Raspberry Pi Internet Radio You could also hookup an old laptop or phone to a set of speakers for a dedicated experience in your home. My favorite way to discover new artists is by pinning Shortwave on my desktop using the mini-player feature (see screenshot below). When I hear a new song I love, I'll note the artist and keep an eye out for their albums next time I'm at the shop. If you found this article helpful, or have suggestions on tools/stations/etc, send me an email at [email protected] Radio Garden - Web based, free Transistor - Simple Radio App - Android, free, open-source Shortwave - Linux (GTK), free, open-source, top pick Broadcasts - Mac OS/iPhone, paid RadioBrowser Recommended Radio Streams by deroverda Radio Garden (mentioning again, it's great for discovering local stations) Radio Paradise (I love the main mix and mellow mix) WOSU (related, Support Public Media! ) PBS Melbourne (Recommended by a reader) 3RRR Digital (Recommended by a reader)
What’s going on, Internet? December crept up fast and suddenly it’s twenty three days until Christmas. I’ve been enjoying getting out more and seeing live music. There’s so much more happening up here in Auckland and it has been good getting back into gigs. I started the month with Tom Scott’s Anitya show at the Civic . A week later I questioned my own sanity by going out to another gig with some wonderful friends on a Tuesday night right before flying to Sydney for the first of two work trips. Sydney was great. It was good catching up with and see work mates in person, but also mentally exhausting. Flying back to Auckland for the weekend added to the fatigue, but I liked the change of pace. I even managed to catch up with some of my cousins and aunt for dinner. Having the chance to do that on work trips is a nice bonus. Meanwhile the house hunting and weekends of endless open homes finally came to an end. My wife viewed a place while I was in Sydney and pushed it through the offer stage. The offer was accepted conditionally before I’d even seen the house. We went unconditional a week later and only then did I walk through it for the first time. After more than sixty open homes this year, buying a place that needs work makes more sense for us than blowing our budget on something “liveable” but missing basics like linen cupboards, wardrobes, or a proper laundry. This way we get to shape it how we want. I’m excited for the new year. While catching up and surfing the web, one particular link making the rounds that claimed personal websites are dead, which I obviously disagree with and replied to . Finally, I finished up my Firefox Container configuration and shared it for anyone to try out . Let me know if you found the container setup useful. With all that going on, I still found time to watch a bunch of shows, listen to a lot of music, pick up tonne of new records, and make a few updates around the site. Here’s November in full. I watched a bunch of episodes on the flights back and forth from Sydney. No movies this month. What happened there. I carried on with The Chair Company, which wrapped up its first season yesterday. Such a bizarre show. No idea when the next season is coming but I’ll be sticking with it. I finished Andor season 3. What a damn good show. I’ve got Rogue One queued up to wrap up the story, even though I’ve already seen it three times. I’m still watching South Park. It’s fun, but I’m tired of the White House plot line (I’m sure Matt & Trey are too). I miss the boys just being kidsw. I’ll probably go back to season 1 soon to remind myself how the show has changed and evolved over the years. Some absolute classic episodes around seasons 6-7. Plu1bus caught my attention and I’m working through it as episodes release. Interesting premise and am enjoying watching the story unfold. On the flight I spotted the UK show Dope Girls and gave it a go. I forgot about it once I landed, but I’ll finish the remaining four episodes soon now that writing this post has reminded me. I started and finished season 2 of The Vince Staples Show. It leans into the same bizarre energy as later seasons of Atlanta. Low stakes, easy to watch, and fun. I also started Educators. Silly, very New Zealand, and perfect fifteen minute episodes when I don’t want to think and have an awkward laugh. I got through three books this month. Gabriel’s Bay by Catherine Robertson was a solid read with plenty of local flavour and a warm story. 7th Circle kept me hooked as it pushed further into the Shadow Grove universe I got into last year reading through the Maddison Kate books. I’m fully here for the messy plotlines and the drama threaded between the raunchy sex scenes. I’m here for it. I also read Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Her books are always epically tragic and beautiful at the same time, and this one absolutely delivered on both fronts. Trying to decide if I want to read the rest of the 7th Circle books this month or dive into something heavier like Project Hail Mary. This month saw my usual mix of pop, hip hop, and early-2000s. Mokomokai ended up as my top artist of the month, with Olivia Rodrigo, D12, Tadpole, Eminem, and Westside Gunn all getting steady playtime. Top albums were a mix - SOUR by Olivia Rodrigo at the top, followed by Tadpole’s The Buddhafinger, Mokomokai’s latest release PONO!, and both Heels Have Eyes records from Westside Gunn. MGK’s Tickets to My Downfall also crept back into rotation with the (All Access) release of five new tracks to the orignal album. MGK has a gig here next year - do I want to go see him in concert? I mean I like Tickets To My Downfall but think he’s a ballbag. Dilemas. Track of the month was “Verona” by Elemeno P, with “Kitty” by The Presidents of the United States of America, (thanks to riding in the car with my son) and a few Olivia Rodrigo singles scattered through the top ten. Mokomokai showed up again with “Roof Racks”, because sometimes I’m just in the mood for something agressive. November 2025 saw my largest vinyl haul ever. I took advantage of the 20 percent off vinyl sale at JB Hi-Fi, burned through a stack of saved vouchers, and grabbed a few special pieces elsewhere. The links are a bit of a mix this month and there’s a lot of them. Enjoy. Not a huge month for website work. I fixed up some CSS, finished rolling out categories and tags across all my posts, and cleaned up a few lingering bits of front-matter. I still need to build the individual category pages and rethink how this data is displayed on the posts index and on each post. The posts page itself needs a refresh too. I’m not loving the masonry card layout anymore. This update was brought to you by Alright by Tadpole Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website. Tom Scott – Anitya from the gig MOKOMOKAI – PONO , WHAKAREHU , and Mokomokai all direct from their website in a special bundle which included the last remaining copies of the Mokomokai Vinyl 1st pressing in Red & Black Marble Fleetwood Mac – Rumours — JB Hi-Fi Eminem – The Slim Shady LP (Expanded Edition) — JB Hi-Fi Stellar* – Mix — JB Hi-Fi Tadpole – The Buddhafinger , and The Medusa — JB Hi-Fi D12 – Devil’s Night (IVC Edition) — Interscope Vinyl Collective, orange variant with posters and D12 sticker in a beaufiful, heavy gatefold sleeve The psychological cost of having an RSS feed Filip explores the anxiety that comes with writing a blog knowing it has an RSS feed. My first months in cyberspace Phil Gyford remembers the excitement and optimism of being online in 1995. Steps Towards a Web without The Internet AJ Roach imagines a web that could exist without the internet, built from small, local networks instead of centralised infrastructure. Should Your Indieweb Site Be Mobile Friendly? MKUltra.Monster experiments with making old-web design mobile-friendly without losing its classic feel. I ❤ shortcuts #3: read a random blog post Hyde shares a neat script to help randomly surf the independent web. In Praise of RSS and Controlled Feeds of Information rkert writes about why syndication still matters and how sharing content across the open web helps sites stay connected. Who’s a blog for? Cobb thinks through who a blog is really for and why writing for yourself remains the most sustainable approach. Maintaining a Music Library, Ten Years On Brian Schrader reflects on maintaining his personal music library over a decade and why owning your collection still matters. ChatGPT’s Atlas: The Browser That’s Anti-Web - Anil Dash Anil Dash argues that Atlas isn’t just an unusual browser but an anti-web tool that strips context from sites and traps users in a closed, distorted version of the internet. I know you don’t want them to want AI, but… - Anil Dash Anil Dash questions how we should react to Firefox adding AI features. He suggests die-hard fans need to look past the knee-jerk outrage and ask whether Firefox is actually trying to offer a safer, more privacy-minded version of tools their non-technical friends are already using. Early web memories - roundup post Winther rounds up early web memories from the recent Bear Blog Carnival - gutted I missed this as it was happening! Blogs used to be very different. Jetgirl looks back at how blogs used to work, from tight-knit communities to slower, more personal writing, and how different that feels compared to today. PicoSSG Pico is a tiny static site generator focused on simplicity, giving you a lightweight way to build plain HTML sites without a full framework. Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next? Disassociated writes about the return of personal blogs and why niche blogs might be the next wave as people move away from algorithmic platforms. Feeds and algorithms have freed us from personal websites Disassociated pushes back on the idea that platform feeds are “good enough,” arguing that treating Medium profiles as websites misses the point, and that personal sites still matter because they give you control rather than renting space inside someone else’s algorithm. Small Web, Big Voice Afranca writes about how the small web still carries real weight, showing that personal sites and hand-built spaces can have a bigger impact than their size suggests. How to Protect Your Privacy from ChatGPT and Other Chatbots Mozilla explains how to protect your privacy when using ChatGPT and other AI tools, focusing on data control, account settings, and reducing what these systems can collect about you.
I’ve been enjoying standalong MP3 players! The Innioasis Y1 kept coming across my radar, I like the the form factor, it was $50. What the heck, why not. The community for this thing is insane , it’s just as active as the people doing weird things with my RG35XX . It’s really cool seeing so many people doing neat things with such a simple piece of hardware. And like the RG35XX, part of the value proposition is this is a cheap peice of commodity hardware that would not have been possible in this way even 5 years ago, but is now inexpensive enough and flexible enough to be an incredible product for the money. I saw you could put a flavor of Rockbox on the thing so I did that. The UI out of the box isn’t nearly as polished but there’s a neat community-supported updater that goes so far as to install skins for you. I’m currently using another Adwaita adaptation I found on the y1 subreddit which handles CJK correctly, which turns out to be important to me. Rockbox has the ability to create a play log file, so I can scrobble my commute/work listening again ! I use the LastFMLog plugin to manually create a file, then use rb-scrobbler to upload it. It’s a manual process I only do every week or so, but it’s okay. This is awesome. Three surprises. Not quite complaint territory but worth knowing about: This thing is a lot of fun to use, though! The novelty will eventually wear off but it feels good to have something iPod shaped in my life again. No external storage. My Shanlings had a TF card slot so I could expand and swap the storage easily. This is internal. 128GB so it won’t hold my whole library but it holds everything I care about. No touchscreen. Again, coming from Shanling this took a little bit of getting used to. Pure iPod classic ergonomics, buttons only. Build quality is not super solid. The screen is plastic, not glass, and it scratched almost immediately. You can definitely “feel” a center of gravity while the majority of the device fgeels light. No metal in its construction. It doesn’t feel brittle but by no means is it a luxury experience.
My Shanling Q1 died after a couple of years of heavy use and I think it was probably fixable with some soldering but I don’t have time for that. In a rush, I bought an M0s not reading the page and thinking it was the higher-end M0 Pro , but ultimately this was not a big deal! This still works like the Q1: it has a custom proprietary Shanling OS which works pretty well. It does Bluetooth fine, it manages music via TF card the same. The thing I did not realize was how much I’d like how small it is, it’s a tiny little 1.5inc square that’s about half an inch thick and has barely any mass. It just dangles at the end of the end of my headphone cable. It would be very easy to lose if I were more careless. In all, it has served me for a year. No complaints.
This morning my 3-year old son came into my home office and wanted to listen to a song. He said "I want to be the music man" (aka D.J.). In my office, there's a 5-disc CD changer I got from a thrift store, and a few shelves of CDs. My son absolutely loves swapping CDs. Picking a jewel case, taking the CD out (trying his best to be careful while dad silently cringes at how he handles them), opening the disc tray, popping the CD in and figuring out how to change to the new disc. When the music started and he recognized it as the disc he put in, he was so happy! He had successfully switched from dad's boring music (Barenaked Ladies) to something he recognizes (The Laurie Berkner Band). He was even more excited when I showed him how to skip songs. I think the physicality of finding and pressing a button, then having something happen makes him happy. A lot happier than mashing at pixels on a touchscreen for sure. Afterwards, he asked a question that makes a dad proud: "Can we play Sonic?". In his case, Sonic refers to the physical copy of Sonic 3 sitting in my original Sega Genesis. My follow up question being "you want to be Sonic or Tails today?" as I handed him a controller that's older than both of us. He watched as I turned on the CRT (to which he said "this is the small TV"...which yeah, it's a tiny 12" Toshiba), took the cartridge out and blew in it (I know I know...but it works) and reinserted it. He gave a "yeah!" as the game announced "SEEEGGGGAAA" and off we were to Angel Island Zone. Look, I get the convenience of digital media, and heck there's probably even a noticeable positive environmental impact (supply chain, manufacturing, landfill, etc). But physical media will always bring more joy, especially to a 3-year old. Being able to physically hold something that makes you excited and having the ability to work a machine without complicated menus/software updates/subscriptions/etc is something special. Not to mention the fact of a nearly 30 year old game cartridge continuing to bring joy throughout the decades. When I was 10 years old playing Sonic 3 on the Genesis I found at a yard sale, I never could have imagined my player 2 would be my son in the future, playing on the same system and cartridge.
What’s going on, Internet? This past Saturday my wife and I got to see Tom Scott perform his new album Anitya in full at the Auckland Civic Theatre. Anitya is the first project Tom has released under his full name. Everything else before this — Home Brew , Average Rap Band , @Peace , Avantdale Bowling Club — sat under a group or alias. This album is a deeply personal one. The first half is about breaking up with his ex-wife, the second about falling in love with his new partner, with a track in between dedicated to his son. I pre-ordered the album during October’s Bandcamp Friday and listened to it the following week when it dropped, then again a few days later. Because of how personal the project is, I probably won’t return to it often. That said, seeing and hearing Tom perform it live (technically my third listen) gave me a new appreciation for it. It’s far removed from his previous releases, and that’s okay. The show itself was incredible — entertaining, emotional, and raw. It opened with a clever setup: a fictional pub in Avondale where local personality Dai Henwood played the karaoke host. Tom and a few mates, beers in hand, sat around a bar leaner waiting for the night’s entertainment. Over the next hour we were treated to local talent performing covers, including Tom’s partner Sarvi and one of my own favourites, Great South . Once the karaoke wrapped up, we had a short break while the stage was reset. When we came back, the theatre was packed. The next hour and a bit was the full Anitya album performed live, split into two halves with some Home Brew sing - alongs in between. I’ll always cherish the moment of belting out the chorus “Drinking in the Morning” with the crowd during this performance. Tom had a full band behind him — no backing tracks. This is what live shows should be when the venue allows. Some of the karaoke performers even returned to play parts during the main set. It was a fantastic show. When the album ended, Tom joked that everyone on stage could leave (they did). Then he launched into the Fuck the System Freestyle , a reworking of his verse from “Listen to Us” on the Home Brew album. This updated version called out the current government and even took a shot at Luxon, describing him as a “peeled cucumber-looking motherfucker.” The crowd went wild cheering, clapping, fully on board. A powerful way to close the night. I’m so glad we got to experience this once-in-a-lifetime performance. As for the album, it won’t be in regular rotation, but I’ll definitely set aside some time in the future to sit down with a drink and spin it on vinyl . Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.
This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Romina Malta, whose blog can be found at romi.link . Tired of RSS? Read this in your browser or sign up for the newsletter . The People and Blogs series is supported by Piet Terheyden and the other 122 members of my "One a Month" club. If you enjoy P&B, consider becoming one for as little as 1 dollar a month. I’m Romina Malta, a graphic artist and designer from Buenos Aires. Design found me out of necessity: I started with small commissions and learned everything by doing. What began as a practical skill became a way of thinking and a way to connect the things I enjoy: image, sound, and structure. Over time, I developed a practice with a very specific and recognizable imprint, working across music, art, and technology. I take on creative direction and design projects for artists, record labels, and cultural spaces, often focusing on visual identity, books, and printed matter. I also run door.link , a personal platform where I publish mixtapes. It grew naturally from my habit of spending time digging for music… searching, buying, and finding sounds that stay with me. The site became a way to archive that process and to share what I discover. Outside of my profession, I like traveling, writing, and spending long stretches of time alone at home. That’s usually when I can think clearly and start new ideas. The journal began as a way to write freely, to give shape to thoughts that didn’t belong to my design work or to social media. I wanted a slower space where things could stay in progress, where I could think through writing. I learned to read and write unusually early, with a strange speed, in a family that was almost illiterate, which still makes it more striking to me. I didn’t like going to school, but I loved going to the library. I used to borrow poetry books, the Bible, short novels, anything I could find. Every reading was a reason to write, because reading meant getting to know the world through words. That was me then, always somewhere between reading and writing. Over the years that habit never left. A long time ago I wrote on Blogger, then on Tumblr, and later through my previous websites. Each version reflected a different moment in my life, different interests, tones, and ways of sharing. The format kept changing, but the reason stayed the same: I’ve always needed to write things down, to keep a trace of what’s happening inside and around me. For me, every design process involves a writing process. Designing leads me to write, and writing often leads me back to design. The journal became the space where those two practices overlap, where I can translate visual ideas into words and words into form. Sometimes the texts carry emotion; other times they lean toward a kind of necessary dramatism. I like words, alone, together, read backwards. I like letters too; I think of them as visual units. The world inside my mind is a constant conversation, and the journal is where a part of that dialogue finds form. There’s no plan behind it. It grows slowly, almost unnoticed, changing with whatever I’m living or thinking about. Some months I write often, other times I don’t open it for weeks. But it’s always there, a reminder that part of my work happens quietly, and that sometimes the most meaningful things appear when nothing seems to be happening. Writing usually begins with something small, a sentence I hear, a word that stays, or an image I can’t stop thinking about. I write when something insists on being written. There is no plan or schedule; it happens when I have enough silence to listen. I don’t do research, but I read constantly. Reading moves the language inside me. It changes how I think, how I describe, how I look at things. Sometimes reading becomes a direct path to writing, as if one text opened the door to another. I love writing on the computer. The rhythm of typing helps me find the right tempo for my thoughts. I like watching the words appear on the screen, one after another, almost mechanically. It makes me feel that something is taking shape outside of me. When I travel, I often write at night in hotels. The neutral space, the different air, the sound of another city outside the window, all create a certain kind of attention that I can’t find at home. The distance, in some way, sharpens how I think. Sometimes I stop in the middle of a sentence and return to it days later. Other times I finish in one sitting and never touch it again. It depends on how it feels. Writing is less about the result and more about the moment when the thought becomes clear. You know, writing and design are part of the same process. Both are ways of organizing what’s invisible, of trying to give form to something I can barely define. Designing teaches me how to see, and writing teaches me how to listen. Yes, space definitely influences how I work. I notice it every time I travel. Writing in hotels, for example, changes how I think. There’s something about being in a neutral room, surrounded by objects that aren’t mine, that makes me more observant. I pay attention differently. At home I’m more methodical. I like having a desk, a comfortable chair, and a bit of quiet. I usually work at night or very early in the morning, when everything feels suspended. I don’t need much: my laptop, a notebook, paper, pencils around. Light is important to me. I prefer dim light, sometimes just a lamp, enough to see but not enough to distract. Music helps too, especially repetitive sounds that make time stretch. I think physical space shapes how attention flows. Sometimes I need stillness, sometimes I need movement. A familiar room can hold me steady, while an unfamiliar one can open something unexpected. Both are necessary. The site is built on Cargo, which I’ve been using for a few years. I like how direct it feels… It allows me to design by instinct, adjusting elements visually instead of through code. For the first time, I’m writing directly on a page, one text over another, almost like layering words in a notebook. It’s a quiet process. Eventually I might return to using a service that helps readers follow and archive new posts more easily, but for now I enjoy this way. I don’t think I would change much. The formats have changed, the platforms too, but the impulse behind it is the same. Writing online has always been a way to think in public. Maybe I’d make it even simpler. I like when a website feels close to a personal notebook… imperfect, direct, and a bit confusing at times. The older I get, the more I value that kind of simplicity. If anything, I’d try to document more consistently. Over the years I’ve lost entire archives of texts and images because of platform changes or broken links. Now I pay more attention to preserving what I make, both online and offline. Other than that, I’d still keep it small and independent. It costs very little. Just the domain, hosting, and the time it takes to keep it alive. I don’t see it as a cost but as part of the work, like having a studio, or paper, or ink. It’s where things begin before they become something else. I’ve never tried to monetise the blog. It doesn’t feel like the right space for that. romi.link/journal exists outside of that logic; it’s not meant to sell or promote anything. It’s more like an open notebook, a record of thought. That said, I understand why people monetise their blogs. Writing takes time and energy, and it’s fair to want to sustain it. I’ve supported other writers through subscriptions or by buying their publications, and I think that’s the best way to do it, directly, without the noise of algorithms or ads. I’ve been reading Fair Companies for a while now. Not necessarily because I agree with everything, of course, but because it’s refreshing to find other points of view. I like when a site feels personal, when you can sense that someone is genuinely curious. Probably Nicolas Boullosa Hm… No mucho. Lately I’ve been thinking about how fragile the internet feels. Everything moves too quickly, and yet most of what we publish disappears almost instantly. Keeping a personal site today feels like keeping a diary in public: it’s small, quiet, and mostly unseen, but it resists the speed of everything else. I find comfort in that slowness. Now that you're done reading the interview, go check the blog . If you're looking for more content, go read one of the previous 112 interviews . Make sure to also say thank you to Jim Mitchell and the other 122 supporters for making this series possible.
Are we doing a group trip to see Bad Bunny in Tokyo or what? Thank you for using RSS. I appreciate you. Email me
Music
Entertainment
Media
Culture
AI
Programming
Writing
Business
Web
CSS
Web Development
HTML
Open Source
Hardware
Gaming
Design