Recently, I learned that John Philip Sousa is the composer of The Liberty Bell. Many of us know this as the theme music for Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

He has a tie to my Mid-Western region of the USA, having composed a Foshay Tower March for the self-same Foshay Tower in Minneapolis. His orchestra played it the one time, the check bounced, and he never played nor published for the rest of his life.

But the reason I researched him reveals a part of my psyche I have tried to keep hidden. You see, I have John Philip Sousa ear worms. Seriously. Stars and Stripes Forever figures largely here, as there are many sections that all come together at the end. I listened to the whole piece just a few days ago. I forgot about the Piccolo. I smiled

You see, I needed to be able to name the terror. Then, perhaps, I can come to terms with the ear worm.

So I found the Wikipedia page. The one with all 137 of his known Marches. One by one, where there are linked audio files, I listened to the intros. Nope. Nope. Nope. Not that one either. I’m far less familiar with John Philip Sousa’s œuvre than I would have guessed. With the exception of just the two marches that my grey matter seems to adore, and the one pop culture gave to me, I thought perhaps two or three more had more familiar themes than the rest.

Anyway, my brain also loves to fire snippets of The Washington Post my way from time to time, as well.

So, which comes first? The John Philip Sousa or the dissociation?

There is one more ear worm. One in a similar vein. I know its name.

I will not speak of it here.

There’s a lot to be said for learning the hard way. I am deeply impatient with myself. I was attempting to restring a guitar I was gifted with many years ago—because I want to really dig in and learn. I broke the first new string in my eagerness. So now I wait for replacements to arrive.

I know.

I know.

The reason why my chats and emails and posts all seem the same is hurry.

First, I’m usually writing in a browser (as I am now), instead of a proper text editing tool. I don’t have a workflow more sophisticated than Get The Idea Out And Hit Send ™.

Secondly, while I do one or more cursory re-reads, I’m operating from what I know I intended to write, which is often different than how my fingers hit the keys, and different still from assumptions that autocorrection tools make. I don’t always see what isn’t right until I see what got published or sent.

Thirdly, I want to strike while the iron is hot. The inspiration to write a post doesn’t last long. And the germ of the idea that generates the post, if otherwise undocumented, may not come around again for a while. Even if it does, it will be subject to the filter called The Moment Is Gone.

I’ve talked a lot about how music is a time-travel machine.

Today what hit me while working The Re-Rip Project and the compilations of various EDM genres is how long I spent preferring electronic music at 120 BPM or faster. For about 15 years it was my thing. It seemed like a reasonable place to end up after listening to 80’s synth-pop, and a little Acid House, New Beat and Industrial.

From my contemporary reading of Mondo 2000, Rolling Stone, and Wired, I was aware of the developing Rave Culture and Club Kids. But it wasn’t until the Cool World movie exposed me to a few early Moby tracks that I dove in head first.

It was probably the one time in my life when I felt in tune with something cool happening in pop culture. Before long the record store I worked at had a Techno section next to the Imports. Techno came and went, Acid Jazz and Trip-hop and Chillout all tried to happen. The term Electronica gave way to EDM. I passed through Trance and Jungle and Breakbeat and Garage and Dubstep sub-genres before I found Chill and Downtempo. Then I stopped working at places that carried music and major retail stores stopped carrying anything but Top 200 charting artists.

I still enjoy electronic music in doses, but I have no idea what the kids think is cool anymore, or if it’s even a thing.

Also I signed up on Discogs. They have cover art for all of the obscure stuff I own.

Forgive me if I remember stuff wrong. Also Douglas Coupland is way overrated.

I just heard myself say “What’s the temp out side? The air sounds cold.” It’s eight Fahrenheit, for reference.

Sometimes, the GIF I want does not exist because I remebered a pop-culture moment incorrectly

The In Memoriam segments get harder to watch, every year

We were going to check out a comedian’s set after seeing a snippet on Tiktok.

Even though the TV audio was set as one of the Apple TV audio outputs, sound from the Apple TV was only playing via a HomePod Mini in a different room. I had to leave the YouTube app and the video I was watching to go into the system settings to set the audio output to the TV speakers only.

But that didn’t fix the problem. The TV showed the volume was responding to the remote control, but there was still no sound.

Switching to Apple Music gave the same result. No audio. No clicks, no pops, just silence.

Back to system settings to restart the Apple TV.

That “worked.” I’m getting system sounds now as I move the focus and make selections.

I relaunched the YouTube app to watch the video I had previously started. YouTube makes no effort to remember what was happaneing previously, not the video nor my place in it. At least the app remembered my search.

Now, the audio is playing correctly, but the HDMI pass-through for volume control isn’t working. This means I have to restart my TV, via a hard power cycle.

I’ve been supporting technology for a long time, and I understand everything that can go wrong. On good days I’m grateful that everything works as well as it does as often as it does. But we aren’t doing ourselves any favors with the complexity.

I have to reset both the Apple TV and the TV itself to get everything back to nominal operation. I’m not doing anything unsupported, but the electronics and the software fail with alarming and disappointing regularity.

It’s no wonder people hate technology. This is so stupid.

Also broken? The iPhone QR scanning functionality. Because I wanted to sign into the YouTube app without booting my laptop. The YouTube app on the Apple TV and on my iPhone are allegedly supposed to be able to detect one-another to validate my sign-in. Naturally this detection failed, even after several tries. Method two is to scan a QR code. Allegedly, the QR Scanner function from the iPhone Control Center opens links in Safari, but God help you if you have to switch away for a Multi-Factor Authentication code in a different iPhone app. Because whatever you were doing just disappeared and you have to start again. While you’re doing so, your authenticator code times out, so that is a wholly broken system and that verification method necessarily failed. There’s also no sharing the shortcut from the QR code to open in an instance of Safari—because apparently you’re already there, in a way that is ephemeral beyond belief. You can leave any time you like but you can never come back.

Fortunately I could get a code via SMS and Apple did thoughtfully allow me to easily paste that code from the clipboard into the authenticaton screen without having to switch to the messaging app or the code generator app.

I get it. It’s not necessarily the Apple TV on its own, it’s not the TV on its own. But isn’t it? Are these devices designed to a spec or aren’t they?

I don’t know. It works unless it doesn’t. It seems so dumb that everything suddenly requires a full reset to return to normal operation.

Thank you for reading my rant. It’s my frustration at doing what seems to be all of the right things but still having consequences I can’t control or remediate.

I’m sure the engineers who design these things can tell me why I’m being unreasonable.

My immediate behavior in the face of obligation-free paid time off is to sleep until I can’t sleep any more. If/when this is interrupted, I go back to bed as soon as possible for as long as possible.

Reading and writing is wonderful. I have a brain that likes to make connections. Between consuming some social media posts today, then writing an update to my Now page, I’ve learned some things that have helped me to clarify my own values and principles.

Yeah. Music is just as likely to bring tears to my eyes as anything, anymore

I just got a markdown-native writing app, which I’m excited about. Particularly the Apple-native synchronization to iCloud and between devices. However, a new blank document is still a new blank document.

I’m not proud of Apple if the union-busting activity is real

When, out of habit, you walk down the stairs of the atrium in your employer’s building, from the third to the first floor, to head back to your desk—and then realize the thing you need to do next is on the third floor

LinkedIn is testing a new ‘no politics’ setting

Wishing more large services offered similar. At least some offer filtering.

That thing where I have remote starting for my car but do not remember to use it to my benefit

Used all the caffeines to power through a long work weekend. Today, I started my day early and my usual large amount is insufficient. My brain wants MOAR.

Just listened to an album from 1991 that I had forgotten about, Culture Beat’s Horizon.

I got the cassette as a promo from a record store I worked at. Clearly it was in-store play, because it had one of the stickers we used. And it was something I liked enough to put my initial on, to claim once it was rotated out in favor of something newer.

That’s the main reason I looked it up to stream. Because back then, I had to wait for it. And I kept it after a lot of exposure to it.

It’s super much a statement of the time, with several tracks leaning heavily on other popular tracks and popular samples. One of the tracks was so much like Pump Up the Jam that a decent DJ could probably have faded between the two tracks very easily.

I did not buy the whole album digitally, but a few tracks stood out. Namely No Deeper Meaning, due to the sampling of Change by Tears for Fears, which still makes me squee.

The second half of the album, roughly Side 2, is much less caught in 1991, if still referential (if not reverential). The drums from Running Up that Hill in the outro was a nice touch.

That was a fun time machine ride.

Read Nicholas Bate’s Your 2022 Word.

My word for 2022 is Grow

It’s not a resolution, nor a command. But it encapsulates so much on my mind.

It’s an old microwave but it still warms my heart. The first button is for making popcorn 🍿

There’s a Moon over Margaret Street tonight…

In Apple’s Post-Jobs, Post-Ives design era, I feel like device industrial design is looking a lot like Jobs-era design, before Ives spoke and presented during product releases.

In other words, the devices look very familiar.

ADHD Tax: When I panic about losing my phone while I’m in a meeting. Phone was less than a foot from my person but I had set another object on top of it.

Anyone else noticed the increased usage of the word Cyber, recently? Just me? Cause I’m old enough to remember its overuse the first time around? I miss those days, when we thought everything was going to be cooler by now.

That feeling when you get the email from the vendor that an item has shipped. Yet the tracking number reveals only that the label has been printed and the shipper has not yet taken possession of the item.