I SHOULD BE IN BED RIGHT NOW!!!!

i’m up late finish a bit of work on bento.

bento is the new name for the sampler and sequencer i mentioned last week.

it lives here now:

https://bento.party

it has all sorts of exciting new features!

  • recording with the microphone now shows a helpful informative screen!
    • it has an svg tape animation i drew myself in inkscape! i sat with a cassette and a sanyo tape recorder and drew out the best representation i could and then animated it with css!!
  • you can select a region to play back per-step!
  • it shows your step’s selected region right there in the square!!!
  • you can drag and drop a square onto another one to copy it!
  • you can drag and drop an audio file onto the screen (waveform screen) to load it! this even works on the iphone! you can drag a file from the Files app into the screen on bento.party!
  • if you you’re in safari on your phone you can click the share icon and then Add To Homescreen and it will appear as a standalone app and it looks lovely
  • if you’re on latest macos in Safari you can do File>Add to Dock… to add it to your dock and it looks even LOVELIER

most of this week i just worked on that! so far it’s quite popular! everybody loves bento! it’s the coolest thing i’ve ever done! it’s really fun!!!!!!omg

there’s also a beta up at https://beta.bento.party which implements local saving (you click the 3 dots and select “save my bento for later” then when you refresh it’ll load it back up). i have a branch where i’m adding a screen for selecting pan+volume per-step. you can also reverse samples per-step but i haven’t added UI for that yet, so it’s kind of a easter egg

didn’t do anything else. took 2 days off work to work on it. have to go to bed now because andrew w.k. will start singing at 5am whether i’m asleep or not.

everything in the world is awful and sad and infuriating and devastating except for kind people and bento.

don’t go crazy, i need you later

hello everyone!!!

i hope it’s good.

let’s see… let’s see… let’s seee…… i went into the office on tuesday… i’m 10kg lighter now than i was on 9/11 (the most recent 9/11 just before 12/9 this year)… didn’t go outside apart from that… had to skip pixie’s birthday getaway because i am not able to control my sleep, food and money if i don’t come home every night… also skipped gabi’s early hallowe’en because i hurt my foot and i’m a loser………. what else what else what else……..

safari has its own valid css value for the appearance rule: -apple-pay-button:

apple.com but every dom element is the apple pay icon, which is the apple icon followed by the word "Pay"

i’m working on a cool thing, it’s this:

https://operator.chee.party/

it’s a little musical instrument for the telephone. it’s a sampler + sequencer, and it’s really good!

features:

  • it keeps perfect time!
  • 4 separate single-voice channels, each with their own waveform
  • record new audio from your microphone
  • per-step sample trimming
  • set the bpm
  • per-channel bpm divider (¼×, ½×, 1×, 2×, 4× the main bpm)

it’s fun! it works on phones!

i have always been thrilled with the idea of making little music programs for cheap, readily available hardware ever since i made prettychips for the nintendo ds when i was a teenager. especially focused at people who don’t have any other way to make music. i don’t know why it took so long for me to realize the obvious fact that the cheapest most readily available hardware is the one you already own.

look forward to/be wary of a future longer post about how it works (it’s very fancy futuristic computer stuff, v cool v cool). but that will have to wait until after v1. so after this todo list:

  • per-step pitch control (¹²√₂)
  • per-step AR envelope
  • per-step volume control
  • per-step reverse
  • select multiple steps at once for combined operation
  • drag and drop one step to another
  • per-channel base sample speed (fine tune between 50% + 200%)
  • upload sample from disk
  • load sample from URL
  • drag and drop sample onto page
  • saving
  • sharing
  • desktop keybindings for quick ops
  • sync
  • swing

plus some other optimizations on the computer side of it.

umm yeah this post is really computery, sorry. i havent really done any non-computery things this week other than drink water and eat tofu.

sorry thanks

Quiet week. Since the masa harina incident I’ve learned some important lessons:

  1. all black dots are flies
  2. all white lumps are maggots

I tried to kill several pin holes in my kitchen wall this week. Other than that I’ve been making music, doing weird stuff with Nintendos, dancing, cooking the same omelette over + over[1] and continuing the endless job of tidying my apartment after a long spell of mental incapacity.

My murphy bed, whose legs are broken, is being held in place at night by Common Lisp: 2nd Edition, The Flavour Thesaurus, Duquette’s Thoth Tarot and a Lulu print-on-demand copy of On Lisp. This is a major improvement on cans of nixtamalized corn and coconut milk which lose their structural integrity over time until you are awoken in the night by a sudden screech, thump and squelch to find yourself sliding off of the bed and onto the floor and into what appears to be ectoplasm.

cherries and the untitled supernatural e.p. are starting to form shape. They each have 1 finished track so far. Thinking about lithium, thinking about smoked almonds, thinking about World War 3. Thinking about the Mexican government kidnapping communists and throwing them out of a plane into the ocean to die.

It’s been a year now since yellow sofas were invented.

~ chee

fn
fn
1 3 eggs, spinach and boursin. Served sprinkled with sesame seeds.

hello little monkeys.

feeling like a gooey chocolate chip cookie.

I’ve been getting up at 5am this week. When you’re trying to make healthier choices, people always tell you to make small reasonable adjustments. Because that’s what works. For most people. Normal people. i.e., freaks. Me, i need chaos. i need brightly glowing extreme shifts and changes that can be serve as a kind of hobby, as a project. So it can’t be “going to bed a little earlier”, it needs to be “i get up at 5am now”. That same impulse to always go all the way with everything can be turned and pointed in the other direction. healthy chaos. it’s not “cutting down on drinking” it’s 0 drugs, 0 alcohol. Anyway this is working so far this month. Maybe i’m a fool.

Met ZZ at the office for Teahorse Tuesdays on Thursday at the Fortnum & Mason at the Royal Exchange. Lovely time. Had a lovely week, honestly. In bed by 9pm most nights. Leave work between 1 and 2p.m. and go outside. Have lunch, get the train, lie on the heath listening to music. Got a little goofy towards the end of the week, even got the goofs in fact. They’re gone now.

There was a space-themed warehouse party on Friday evening. Wonderful. So good to see everyone, beautiful people. So many so beautiful people. The community shares a problem that all open spaces do, how do you deal with bad and malevolent actors in a society founded on the principal that everyone should be able to be themselves and do what they like? How to deal with takers in a community based on giving freely. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law can’t subsist unless everyone involved is working on their magnum opus.

The place looked great, the music was great, everybody was dressed to the 9s. I finally had an opportunity to wear my cyberpunk glasses and my IKEA space suit. Around 4:30a.m. i headed home. Sober partying is pretty good, I’m all charged up with party energy and there’s no noticeable downside. There were long stretches during which I’d normally drink something or take a drug and instead i just stood still, not knowing what to do. There were also a couple times when otherwise deeply sweet people were telling me some long meandering tale that even they weren’t paying attention to. As though they’d fallen asleep and started dreaming at me. During these moments I became so intensely bored that I thought that I might just burst into flames. But they passed.

As a consequence of egodeath you might recall I lost almost all of my pictures of the festival. I had two disposable cameras, one of them was in the bag with my phone when it was taken by the night. The other was developed, and I gave some people printed paper photos of themselves at the party on Saturday. They are especially precious little pictures because they are the only ones i have. They were received very warmly.

The love I have for so many of the people in that place is so intense sometimes i feel that i might shatter into pieces if i’m touched. it feels difficult to contain, like if i open my mouth there will be light coming out and then through all my pores and then i burst and shatter.

🎉🥳 happy birthday lb 🥳🎉

note to self: i should add custom emojis to my blog

Why worry? Just exist!
If you're feeling low we can do the twist!

there were more strange motorbicycle scenes outside at 2am on monday night. lots of people rumbling around on motorbicycles out there in the street. some kind of motorbicycle drag racing event. and i am an old lady peering out at them from between the blinds.

this week:

  • yoghurt meditation
  • coffee with and without eggs in it
  • dancing
  • you think i’m never lonely because i’m so cute and popular?

i released an e.p. this week called field disturbances, it’s available everywhere. it has a whole philosophical component to it that i haven’t written down anywhere and i’m not going to start now.

there’s not much going on other than that. i just work and make music.

in some ways this regularly blogging on a Sunday has backfired. i started it because i wanted to write on the blog more often. but if i look back a few years i used to write all kinds of different posts and now i save everything up for Sunday. eh, whatever.

even if in a year or two
someone drops a bomb on you
you won't feel it on the scene
think of the fun we can have in between!

did you know there is a 3emdash and a 2emdash in unicode? look how long they are:

  • em
  • two-em
  • threeem

going to go to bed at 9p.m. and get up at 5a.m. tonight, to see what that’s like.

in closing, here are the lyrics and chords to the song Greasy Greens by Pink Anderson:

Greasy Greens — Pink Anderson
============================
F (open a, ab, g) [open dgb] [233 on dgb] [3233 on adgb]
F (open a, ab, g) [open dgb] [233 on dgb] [3233 on adgb]

F                F6  F                 A
Folks I'm just a man from New Orleans
Bb               F
Crazy 'bout them greasy greens
A    Bb                  F
If I don't get 'em three times a day
[3 on d] [3 on d] [3 on a] [3 on a]  [4~ on e] [4~ on e] [1 on e]
I'll     get      mad      and       walk      a         way

F           [1^2 on g] [1^3 on b] [1 on e*]
Them greens
F             F7
all I want my greens (they won't stop for the red light)
A Bb            [2 3 on a] F
  Soft and easy            good and greasy
[3->8 on a]                  [4~ on e] [4~ on e] [1 on e]
           Crazy 'bout them   grea     sy        greens

Way down south where I was born
They raised them good old green corn
Sweet potatoes & Black eyed peas
Green tomatoes and pecan trees

But them greens all I want my greens
Soft and easy good and greasy
Crazy 'bout them greasy greens

Mama you can cook your lima bean
you can cook somethin I ain't never seen
But Honey when you fix ya table for me
Ah don't fix nothin but:

Them greens all I want my greens
Soft and easy good and greasy
Crazy bout them greasy greens

That meat you use must be fat
Cook them greens so greasy like that
If you don't use nothin but naturaline
You can't cook no good greasy greens

Them greens all I want my greens
Soft and easy good and greasy
Crazy 'bout them greasy greens

I don't care what your mama don't allow
Bring them greens here anyhow
Soon as I get 'em, honey, I'll be gone
Your mama won't know that you put them on

Them greens all I want my greens
Soft and easy good and greasy
all about them greasy greens

I see greens upon your shelf
You must be saving them for someone else
I hear hissing in your pot
Honey, how much greasy greens you got??

and them greens. all I want my greens.
soft and easy good and greasy
wild about them greasy greens

i am not been eating enough. had a great 9/11 this year. celebrated by signing my lease and meeting becky for a picnic. it was a lovely picnic on the heath even though i was 10 minutes late and got in trouble. after our picnic of babybels and quorn we went looking for a bar to get a cup of tea. the Railway told us they couldn’t serve us tea because they had no way to wash crockery because the kitchen was being renovated. the next couple of places were closing. the crown gave us a fine, though scant, pot of tea and we had a lovely time. i spent the rest of 9/11 playing beatsaber. i had 4 showers. i changed my clothes 3 times.

tuesday i spent working and playing beat saber. i very nearly went into the office. i did not.

wednesday i spent working and playing beat saber? who the fuck knows

thursday i went into the office. i sat in my special area chatting with my colleague for most of the day, and then we went looking for a bar to get a cup of tea. the teahorse was too busy, as was the next place, and the next place, and the next place. eventually we gave up and returned to the teahorse. but it turns out the teahorse doesn’t even sell tea? what a silly name for a bar that doesn’t serve tea. we gave up and drank an ice cold glass of garbage.

friday i spent the evening setting up full body tracking in beat saber so i can be one of those cool girls on youtube. i also cooked a delicious chili con carne with This Isn’t Beef mince and cauliflower rice. everything in the bowl was a vegetable. it was good. maybe i’ll be a vegetarian for a little while. though i was crunching on ice on thursday so i should get some iron tablets.

since getting back from portugal i have become the worlds worst texter. i have so many unreplied texts and messages. i’ve been using a new trick when i find myself wasting time looking at The World Wide Web or apps or watching bullshit or listening to mindgum i say hey siri set a ten minute timer and when the timer goes off i have to stop and that really springs me into action. for some reason setting the timer makes it so much easier to stop than just deciding to stop and trying to stop idek. sorry for not replying

saturday i spent making music :) i also played cyberpunk

saturday night/sunday morning at 2am/26:00/14pm somebody rang my doorbell and woke me up. at first i was so confused and didn’t know if i’d dreamt the doorbell. sometimes i dream the doorbell. about 15 seconds later they rang it again. i was not expecting anyone. they knocked on the door some. i decided not to answer. i heard them go down the stairs and get onto a motorcycle and drive away. i still don’t know who it was.

sunday is today. i spent the day making music :)

i am still 770 calories below my goal. how the fuck am i suposed to eat 770 calories? maybe i can drink 100 grams of butter