What I'm currently…

Some notes on what I'm currently listening to, reading, and thinking about.

What I’m reading shouldn’t be considered as recommendations—indeed, I often don’t enjoy them and don’t finish them. However, what I’m listening to definitely can be considered as recommendations.

For what I’m listening to, I typically link to YouTube for the songs—for lack of a better option. I highly suggest using the uBlock Origin browser extension (and the Firefox browser).

There is also a YouTube playlist of all the songs referred to below.


September, 2023

Listening to

For no particular reason, a few tracks about dogs.

Reading

Thinking about

  • I’ve bought a new running watch: a Garmin Forerunner 265S, to replace my old Garmin Forerunner 245 which, after around four years of great service, couldn’t hold a charge for longer runs with bluetooth headphones active.
    A few positive aspects of it:
    • It is nice to not have to worry about the battery going flat on longer runs.
    • I like waking up to the “Morning Report”, which is a neat feature.
    • The extended sleep, body, and running metrics are useful.
    • I like the smaller sized watch face.
    And a few disadvantages:
    • I find the AMOLED display harder to read while running in the dark (which is when I do most of my running)—a bit halo-ey and unstable.
    • The pace alerts on workouts seemingly can’t be turned off, and can be very annoying—particularly as they now seem to be based on the moment-to-moment pace rather than the average pace for a workout segment.
    • The weather widget seems very useful but is finicky about updating.
    • Having to perform a glance action to show the display (well, to have a longer battery life anyway) can be a bit annoying, particularly when the glance sensitivity seems a bit off.
  • Keen to see Alex G in concert in December.
  • Preparing and giving a talk to the Complex Human Data Hub at the University of Melbourne on my past perception research. Getting my head back into that space has been interesting.

August, 2023

Listening to

The theme this month (this has morphed into being theme-based rather than what I’m actually listening to, and I’m fine with that) is one-offs — songs that I love but only really listen to the one song by the musician.

Reading

Thinking about


July, 2023

Listening to

Apropos of nothing, a few of my favourite songs named “Untitled”.

  • Neutral Milk Hotel - Untitled
    I love this instrumental and bagpipe-laden track from one of my favourite bands (if not the favourite). It captures a lot of the Neutral Milk Hotel musical aesthetic and is genuinely rousing, in a critical point in the wonderful In The Aeroplane Over The Sea album just before the closer Two-Headed Boy, Pt. 2. I think the musical side of Neutral Milk Hotel tends to be underappreciated, with Jeff Mangum’s voice and lyrics tending to take focus. I have seen Jeff Mangum solo twice (in New Jersey and Minneapolis) and both were great, but seeing the whole Neutral Milk Hotel band (in Sydney) was a completely different level of great—perhaps the best concert I have been to. I’ll write more about Neutral Milk Hotel in a future entry.
  • Palace Music - Untitled
    From one of Will Oldham’s projects (of which the best known is Bonnie “Prince” Billy), this is a great ramble of a live track. I love the looseness of a lot of the Palace stuff, and the album on which this track is from (Lost Blues and Other Songs) is a favourite of mine (see Ohio River Boat Song, Lost Blues, Come In). Incidentally, I am looking forward to seeing David Pajo (as Papa M), who played on some its tracks, live in September in Melbourne. The vinyl release of the record contains a poster that I used to have on my wall; interestingly, so did Nick Sobotka in the under-rated Season 2 of The Wire. That reminds me of the appearance of a Liars poster in Julie Taylor’s room in Friday Night Lights (and I agree with the Liars that Tyra Collette would have been a more likely Liars listener; and Matt Saracen, of course). Again, I will write more about Will Oldham (and Liars) in a future entry.
  • Interpol - Untitled
    I find Interpol to be a bit uneven, but they can be great at their best — such as this song, the opener to their debut Turn On The Bright Lights. That album has some other great tracks also, such as NYC and The New (particularly the first half). Their follow-up, Antics, was a bit more consistent — with highlights such as Take You On A Cruise and Public Pervert. I think Wrecking Ball was the only real highlight on their subsequent album, even given that it had a track referencing the great White Noise novel by Don DeLillo. I lost touch with them after that album.

Reading

Thinking about


June, 2023

Listening to

I now work in an open-plan office, which has taken a bit of getting used to — headphones and music have been critical to being able to focus. Not including the venerable and highly-recommended musicforprogramming.net, the theme this month is music that I have been listening to at work.

Reading

Thinking about


May, 2023

Listening to

A covers theme this month.

  • Tool - No Quarter (Led Zeppelin)
    Tool should do more covers—based on the strength of this song, at least, which is one of the best tracks in their whole catalogue. I wonder if having the constraints of an existing song might rein in some of their more excessive tendencies. This track is just great.
  • Gillian Welch and David Rawlings - Abandoned Love (Bob Dylan)
    Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are among the best exponents of the cover song, with many great renditions—indeed, this song comes from a whole album of covers: All The Good Times (Are Past & Gone). I love the looseness of this song—does Gil not know the words and go with the vibe at points?—and the serendipitous ending of running out of tape. Of course, it is also a great song (though I don’t actually know much about Bob Dylan). Some more examples of their great covers are Hello In There (John Prine), Method Acting / Cortez the Killer (Bright Eyes / Neil Young), The Weight (The Band) (I love how much fun Gil is having in this), I’ll Fly Away (traditional), and Pochahontas (Neil Young).
  • Nirvana - The Man Who Sold The World (David Bowie)
    I think an underappreciated aspect of Nirvana, particularly for those who grew up with them as I did, is how much they used their spotlight to draw attention to other bands through their covers. Indeed, 6 of the 14 songs on their classic MTV Unplugged in New York album (from which this song is drawn) are covers. In addition to this fantastic rendition there are others in the Unplugged session like Oh Me (The Meat Puppets) and Where Did You Sleep Last Night (Leadbelly). Elsewhere, other great covers of theirs are The Money Will Roll Right In (Fang), Love Buzz (Shocking Blue), D-7 (The Wipers), and Turnaround (Devo).

Reading

Thinking about

  • Experimenting with an AI-driven running platform, TrainAsONE.
  • The best way to have a Linux-like environment on a work-issued Windows computer. I have been pleasantly surprised by Windows Terminal.
  • Using dask to work with data that is too big to fit into memory.

April, 2023

Listening to

In keeping with my recent relocation, the theme this month is musicians from Melbourne (or Victoria at least).

Reading

Thinking about


March, 2023

Listening to

Reading

Thinking about


February, 2023

Listening to

An early–mid 2000’s theme this month.

Reading

Thinking about


January, 2023

Listening to

An Icelandic music theme, as this month will be 20 years since I left Reykjavík after spending a semester as an exchange student at the University of Iceland (Háskóli Íslands).

Reading

Thinking about

  • jsPsych
  • I popped a tyre while driving over the holidays; I wish I either knew more about cars or did not need to drive them.
  • A review of an enjoyable year of running in 2022:
    • Total distance: 1934km
    • Run locations: Bathurst, NSW (215); Little Bay, NSW (16); Wangaratta, VIC (8); Jindabyne, NSW (3); Lithgow, NSW (3); Forster, NSW (2); Albury, NSW (1); Carcoar, NSW (1); Firefly, NSW (1); Orange, NSW (1); Valentine, NSW (1); Warners Bay, NSW (1).

December, 2022

Listening to

Another mid-to-late 90’s theme—with a different vibe.

Reading

Thinking about


November, 2022

Listening to

A mid-to-late-90’s theme.

Reading

Thinking about


October, 2022

Listening to

An early-90’s theme.

  • Nirvana - Aneurysm
    In the midst of the hype and legacy, it can be easy to forget that Nirvana is a great band. This song is from their essential Live at Reading performance (see Cokemachineglow for a wonderfully-written review that I keep coming back to). All their albums are great, including their MTV Unplugged session—particularly the covers, such as The Man Who Sold The World. Their posthumous You Know You’re Right is one of their best; a great surprise when it came out.
  • Alice in Chains - Them Bones
    I love that this is the first song on their great Dirt album—just launching straight into it! I like their different approach on their Jar of Flies album just as much, if not more (see Don’t Follow and Rotten Apple, for example). Their MTV Unplugged session is also fantastic; see Nutshell, for example (it’s cool how they enter and start playing separately—and I think the bass sound here would be up there with the best I’ve ever heard).
  • Jane’s Addiction - Stop!
    Their two albums from this period, Nothing’s Shocking and Ritual de lo Habitual (the latter in particular), are great all the way through. Their bass player, Eric Avery, is one of my favourites—I don’t have the music knowledge or vocabulary to explain why, but I love his playing in their epic Three Days (their best song) in particular (e.g., how his playing changes from fluid at about 5:30 to just the essentials at about 5:55 as it build up).

Reading

Thinking about


September, 2022

Listening to

Reading

Thinking about


August, 2022

Listening to

A bit of a country-ish theme this month…

Reading

Thinking about


July, 2022

Listening to

Reading

Thinking about

  • Being a student again.
  • Looking more into NixOS.
  • Starting to use type checking in Python code.

June, 2022

Listening to

  • Eleanor Friedberger - My Mistakes
    I really like all of Eleanor Friedberger’s solo music, and this was the first single from her first solo album. It reminds me of Minneapolis / St. Paul, where I was living at the time it came out.
  • The Flaming Lips - The Gash
    The Flaming Lips played the last concert that I went to before the COVID-19 restrictions began. It was a great concert, at the Sydney Opera House—one of the best sounding gigs that I’ve been to. This song is off the great The Soft Bulletin album.
  • Tori Amos - Putting the Damage On
    This song has only recently made it into my ranking of top-tier Tori Amos songs. Maybe it is the odd intro, but it hadn’t stood out to me until the past year (the same thing happened with “Hey Jupiter”—it wasn’t until I saw it played live that it became a favourite). There is also a great live version of this song.

Reading

Thinking about

  • Mistakes in research programming and strategies for their avoidance and tolerance (see the resulting post).
  • Where to start with gardening, now that I have a few areas of soil to tend to.
  • Playing through Portal 2 again. I still think the first Portal is quite a bit better.

May, 2022

Listening to

Reading

Thinking about

  • How to present all the details of a statistical model in a manuscript without distracting or alienating readers.
  • The best strategy for staying warm through the upcoming Bathurst winter (my first serious winter since Minneapolis, USA, in 2012–2013).
  • The writing, scenes, and characters in Don DeLillo’s “Underworld”.