This isn’t a dead city. There doesn’t seem to be much creativity at the top. It seems to me that Toronto has a split personality, a civic schizophrenia. On the one level there’s the spirit of individuals and small groups who do things, what you might call the vernacular spirit. This is all very informal and genius, quite romantic and full of fun, a great deal of fun but it seems to me the official spirit of Toronto is, ‘Stamp out fun.’ Pompus, impressed with mediocrity if it’s very, very big and expensive.
Jane Jacobs, 1969 CBC Interview
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Robin Sloan in Syntheizers as Utopian Technologies
This recalls the early days of synthesizers; what was Switched-On Bach if not “I see what you did there”? I hope that analogy is right, because the synth provides a healthy, sustainable template for these tools (AI). Ubiquitous and unremarkable, controllable and hackable, with flavors ranging from fully corporate to gloriously DIY … I’m realizing, as I type this, that synthesizers might be one of the truly utopian technologies.
Robin Sloan, Notes on a Genre -
April 2025
Housing
In March we replaced the lighting in the basement with some nice LED fixtures and removed all the old T12 fixtures. My next project is to drop off the large collection of burnt out T12 bulbs at the dump, and then organize the workbench in the basement so I can start using it as a workspace for electronics.
Synth Building
After prototyping all the various subcomponents of my new melodic orchestration module, I finished the PCB design and sent it off for fabrication. Once I get the circuit boards around the middle of the month, I’ll assemble the module and hopefully start coding. The first project will be write a program that emulates the arpeggios and chords of a Roland J-6.
Synth Music
Now that the weather has warmed up again, I’d like to start shooting synth videos outside again. Hopefully we get some nice weather in April so I can get restarted with this.
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John MacIntosh on Finance Aesthetics
Finance is everywhere in the cultural imaginary; it represents itself largely on its own terms, a set of appearances that do not correspond to its practise.
John MacIntosh, Finance Aesthetics -
xQc on AI Generated Art
Why would I care? I don’t consume the method, I consume the product.
xQc -
Cory Doctorow on AI Generated Art
Today I read Cory Doctorows latest post, Why I Don’t Like AI Art, and really appreciated his approach to defining art and how the use of AI tools diluted the meaning within works of art.
…the prompt given to an AI to produce creative writing or an image is the sum total of the communicative intent infused into the work. The prompter has a big, numinous, irreducible feeling and they want to infuse it into a work in order to materialize versions of that feeling in your mind and mine. When they deliver a single line’s worth of description into the prompt box, then – by definition – that’s the only part that carries any communicative freight. The AI has taken one sentence’s worth of actual communication intended to convey the big, numinous, irreducible feeling and diluted it amongst a thousand brushtrokes or 10,000 words. I think this is what we mean when we say AI art is soul-less and sterile. … the AI is padding out the part that makes this art – the microdecisions intended to convey the big, numinous, irreducible feeling – with a bunch of stuff that has no communicative intent and therefore can’t be art.
Cory Doctorow, Why I Don’t Like AI ArtI think this resonated with me since it aligns with what I learnt from Suzy, that art is intended to communicate and to convey. When the means by which you are creating art is a prompt of only a few sentences it really limits the amount of meaning that which can be conveyed in the work.
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March 2025
Housing
Over the course of February, we finished unpacking everything in the living areas of the house and have gotten settled in to the new place. We were able to host friends for the first time mid-month in February which was a great feeling.
Late February in Calgary saw a very rapid thaw after a long cold snap which managed to loosen the eavestrough on the east side of the house, so one of the first impromptu repairs was erecting some scaffolding to reach and secure it again. As expected it was two hours building and tearing down scaffolding for a fifteen minute repair.
I have a bunch of small jobs around the house to get to in March, but nothing too major planned.
Synth Building
Late in February I started designing the circuit for the Melodic Orchestration module I’m building, but realized that there’s enough new techniques that I should slow down and do some prototyping before I move to designing circuit boards. The new designs which I’ll be using in Melodic Orchestration that I need to prototype in March include:
- Using a bare microcontroller in the circuit
- ISCP / FTDI programming of said microcontroller
- A new CV input handling circuit
- Using an onboard buck / boost power converter on the module
- MIDI in and out
- Using multiple I2C devices (display, storage, DAC)
- Scaled inputs and outputs for velocity control
Game Design
As I continue reading The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell, I realize that my initial concept was woefully inadequate, which is a blessing and a curse. It’s good I didn’t rush a half baked idea into reality, but at the same time I feel a bit overwhelmed by the task of conceiving of a better idea.
I’m going to keep reading, learning, and hopefully inspiration will strike at some point in the near future with a more workable idea.
Outdoors
In February I entered a team into the Beltline Bonspiel and somehow managed to eke out a second place finish despite my personal lack of talent. This confirms what I learned at the Ironman Bonspiel, bad ice is the great equalizer as it handicaps professional players quite effectively.
In March I want to spend some time researching and planning some hikes for the season so I have a rolodex of outings ready to go when I have the time or opportunity.
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Edward Tufte on Interface Design
No matter how beautiful your interface is, it would be better if there were less of it.
Edward Tufte -
Louis-Armand de Lom d’Arce on Canadian Winters
To survive the Canadian winter, one needs a body of brass, eyes of glass, and blood made of brandy.
Louis-Armand de Lom d’Arce, Baron de Lahontan -
N.T. Wright on Our Participation in Renewal
When God rescues your heart from its natural rebellion, and makes it new through your trust in him, your baptism and your following of Jesus, the way this newness works must be through your own decisions, your own thinking things through, your own will power (aided and strengthened at every point, Christians would say, by the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ own spirit).
N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part 2