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No. 12

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No. 11

I delayed this week's newsletter until today, March 29, 2021, the 88th day of the year because it is World Piano Day. A day that I knew nothing about until this past week, but it is apparently a celebration of the instrument and the music it makes, marked on the 88th day of each year because the piano has 88 keys. The event was begun by Nils Frahm, a German pianist and composer, in 2015. If you'd like to celebrate, here are some suggestions.

To begin with, there is the Official Piano Day Playlist on Spotify.

No. 10

I had never heard of James Acaster before, but in December of 2019 I was using my two weeks off work for the holidays to, among other things, binge watch on YouTube and I saw one of on the show. If you aren’t familiar with the show, it is a panel show comprised of two teams of three. The teams take turns telling stories where two members are lying and one is telling the truth. The other team has to correctly guess who is telling the truth. There is a great many strategies employed from telling lies that seem very much believable to telling true stories in a way that seems beyond belief. In this episode, the team James Acaster was on had to explain how they knew a young man. Gabby Logan explained she had tripped him during a wheelbarrow race. Lee Mack said he accidentally brought him home from preschool instead of his own son. And James Acaster explained how he had engaged the boy in a year-long cabbage prank. Acaster has a knack for underplaying the absurdity of his stories in a droll way that I immediately was drawn to; it is definitely my kind of sense of humor. I won’t give away anything else, but it is worth a watch.

No. 9

It's really not a small web. Not anymore. Despite my title, the web is still dominated by huge social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tik Tok and that likely won't change anytime soon, but that doesn't mean that there aren't people out there trying to make a go of it with their own personal sites that show off the creativity, individualism and personality of their creators.

So start off with href.cool and HrefHunt! both by Kicks Condor.

No. 8

Rebooting this newsletter

It’s been almost 11 months since the last issue. It’s probably no surprise to learn that COVID is mostly to blame. Not that I ever got sick from it mind you; my household was blessed to have so far avoided it. But, 2020 was just a rough year. The news with regards to the pandemic was bad and kept getting worse and on top of it, it was an election year and it seems that we Americans decided in the midst of it all, and perhaps because of it, to collectively lose our minds. Already by April of last year, when I sent out the last issue, I had given up on trying to maintain any sense of normalcy. Not only could I not concentrate enough to write but I almost completely stopped reading as well. Four months into the year I was doing a bang-up job on my Goodreads' Reading Challenge with 30 books read. I finished only six more the rest of the year and most of those were audiobooks that I felt like I slogged through.

While I began this newsletter with the intentions of tracking and discussing the books I've been reading, I also named this newsletter, Farrago, which is defined as "a confused mixture." And that is entirely what this newsletter is; a confused mixture of things I find interesting, because I find a lot of things interesting. If you've signed up, then I'm sure you do too. Every week I'll run across many interesting things like article I find enlightening, a fact that I didn't know, or a viral meme that catches my attention. These are pretty ephemeral. Worth noting and sharing, for sure, but they come and go. But, sometimes, what I find interesting sticks around longer. It lodges in my brain and because of it I'll dive into a topic and I'll stay with it for weeks or even months. I am the kind of person that, if something interests me enough, I become obsessed with it and I focus on little else. A year ago it was drawing with pen and ink. Several years before that it was photography, a hobby I focused on for years. But, over the last 6 months I was a bit lost looking for something new to focus my attention on after my focus on drawing waned following my last move. I mostly spent my time reading fiction; something I spent so much time on that it almost became that kind of interest in itself. I mean it did serve as the initial reason that spawned this newsletter. But that changed recently, all because of this tweet by Fabian Iwand. The tweet contains a short video that begins as a picture of an airplane at altitude being observed while looking up through a canopy of trees, which then devolves into an image that resembles a landscape. It also contains the hashtags, #javascript, #creativecoding, and #generative. And that is the entire tweet, but it was enough. I was fascinated and I wanted to know more.

For my day job, I'm software engineer. Now, I have always avoided interests and hobbies that cut too close to what I do for 8 to 10 hours of everyday. I always felt that doing so was a sure way to burn yourself out, but this was different. While it involved programming, it only did so as a means of constructing art. One of the reasons I don't draw as much anymore is that I wasn't willing to perfect my use of the tools. It wasn't because I wasn't interested in making art. But, this is art using a tool I'm already pretty good at. I was thrilled to find two things I enjoy intersecting like this. This tweet by Danielle Navarro contained four images that, while computer-generated, strongly reminded me of the pen and ink drawings I used to admire when I drew myself. While this involves programming, this was all something completely different than my daily work of writing micro-services, API code, unit tests, etc. I wasn't unaware of the field of computer-generated graphics and animation, but I had never found a need to explore it or use it, but these videos and images I saw on Twitter were compelling. I stared at the piece by Fabian Iwand over and over and down the rabbit hole I went.

Over the last week I've been reading about generative algorithms, looking at glitch art, reading about the work of Georg Nees, and so much more. There is just so much to learn and there really isn't anything better than finding yourself on the cusp of a new journey to explore something fascinating and brand new to yourself. I'm sure I will have more to say in coming issues.

This week I’m just going share some things that helped me pass the time. My regular routine is shot and I’m finding myself struggling to do things that I thought I had under control, such as exercising, eating right, reading regularly, etc. What I had under control was a routine that made those things easier. I’ll try to keep that routine as intact as I can because some day it will return. In the meantime, I’ll just do the best I can. With that said, maybe some of what follows will help you pass your time.

It would seems most of us are probably not doing any of the normal things we were doing only a month ago, or, if we are, we are struggling through them. The only two things that have remained consistent for me are work (I’ve always worked from home) and my daily walks. Beyond that my regular routines are in disarray. My reading habit has suffered greatly as I get distracted and lose patience almost immediately after opening a book. In fact almost anything that requires extended concentration has been near impossible to do and I frequently just put things off. (I’m putting together this newsletter on Sunday evening after days of procrastinating.) I have found it far easier this week to occasionally work on my website, which I have over the course of the week managed to update so that I can now publish the occasional post, one of which I link to below, because it amounts to little more than tinkering in between scrolling through Twitter and unhealthily checking the United States Coronavirus Statistics from Worldometer. I try not to be too hard on myself. If ever there was a time to forgive ourselves for mindlessly passing the time, it is now.

Speaking of which, when I first started reading fiction again last year, it was closing in on the end of the 2010s and there was an explosion of lists of the best books of the decade. I spent a lot of time collecting these lists and from them creating my own TBR list of novels. This gradually extended to finding lists of the best short novels and novellas, because I’ve always enjoyed the form. This week I pulled some of the best lists I had found from my browser bookmarks and created a page on my website that serves as a meta list of lists. I plan to keep this list updated as I expand what I read.

I didn’t publish an issue last week and I’ll be honest that I almost skipped this week as well. I’m still floored by how much has transpired in the last week and half. Last Wednesday I was still making plans to go to the Big Ten Tournament to watch basketball. And while I was struggling all that day with nagging thoughts that I shouldn’t be going, I was still thinking that I was being overly cautious. In the end, we didn’t go but how indicative it is of just how much things have changed that a mere 11 days later I wouldn’t even dream of going to an event like that even if they hadn’t all been cancelled. Now my doubts are concerned with thoughts of whether or not we are doing enough. As a family we have pretty much completely quarantined ourselves as much as possible, but as a country I don’t believe we have gone far enough. I still see too many people thinking this is all overblown, a panic inflamed by the media. It would be a relief if they are right, but I’ve read enough that I fear they aren’t.

Over the last week I’ve been reading but noticing that reading fiction has been difficult. I keep finding my mind wondering. I spend way too much time on Twitter scrolling through to find out news and see what is happening around the country. Even TV hasn’t kept my attention. I finished my binge-watch of 30 Rock and haven’t found anything to replace it. Nothing seems interesting yet. I did watch some movies, Ford vs Ferrari and Moonlight, both of which I can recommend.

Here are a few other things I found interesting lately.

• A thread by Matt Bell on Twitter has a huge list of short stories as he tries to read one every day this year.

• Another Twitter thread by Michael Krakovskiy serves as a short guide to binge-worthy YouTube channels. “Some famous, some not so famous, all pretty nerdy."

• A Reddit thread that discusses bingeable TV shows to fill your time while home.

• The Metropolitan Opera started to stream free operas on their website beginning this past Monday.

Welcome to another issue. My audience is still small, but I hope those of you who have decided to join me in this newsletter are finding it useful and interesting so far. I'll be the first to admit I'm still trying to find my way. This is the third issue and the third format I've tried with three different ways of putting together the content. I imagine I'll be experimenting a bit more. The title of my newsletter, Farrago, was intended to signify the mismash of topics I'd write about, but, so far, it also accurately describes the forms this newsletter has taken over its short life. Newsletters are a format that I both like to consume and create, but I still have a lot to learn about what constitutes a successful one. If you yourself are interested in the process of creating newsletters then I can recommend this set of posts from CJ Chilvers.

In a recent issue of his newsletter, Roden Explorers, Craig Mod discusses how he deletes all of his old tweets.I knew this was a thing some people did and I had even done something similar once myself with an Instagram account, but I had a great deal of trepidation in doing so and actually regretted it after it was done. I used to think it was important to maintain the integrity of the web as an archive, but I’m not sure I’m convinced anymore. For one, the web has never been a very good archive of anything. All you have to do is go browse the archives of anyone’s blog, tweets or bookmarks and marvel at the number of broken links you can find there. Stuff disappears all of the time and nothing I do in my own little corner of the web is going to change that. Recently, I deleted the previous version of my website, the one that still existed from the days when I spent most of my time online futilely promoting my photography. It wasn’t easy to let it go (I have it archived offline as I couldn't bear to permanently assign it to the trashcan), but I don’t regret taking it down. I’m starting to think it might be good to reinvent yourself every once in awhile online and to shed the weight of past interests and posts. Very little I have done online in the past has reached a wide-enough audience to warrant keeping it around. If I'm honest with myself it simply doesn’t matter and so it feels like a significant weight has been lifted off my shoulders when I just get rid of it and start fresh. As for what I'm going to do with my Twitter account, I wrote a little script that will go through and delete any tweet older than 30 days and any tweet I've liked older than 90. I've backed up my Twitter account; all I have to do is run it. I’m hesitant. Old habits and values die hard, but I’ll run it this week and then I’ll keep on running it. My tweets and likes will be ephemeral and I think I will like it better that way.

Hello and welcome to issue 2. After the initial excitement that propelled the release of issue one of the newsletter, this week forced me to slow down and think more about how I plan to collect and organize the content that will go into this newsletter as something I do on a weekly basis. Needless to say I have a lot I need to figure out and maybe I’ll share some of that once I do.

Anyway, here’s what I found of interest this week:

• This evening I watched The Farewell. Highly recommended. A line of dialogue in the movie struck me. It was said to describe a difference between East and West, but it spoke to me a more personal level too.

“You think one’s life belongs to oneself...[here] a person’s life is part of a whole.”

Of Interest

In preparation for starting this newsletter I’ve returned to reading book blogs as well as revamping who I follow on Twitter to include more book people. Its interesting to see what is being talked about in the world of books, what’s popular, and what is driving conversations.

One of the first things I picked up on this week was something from Annabookbel who announced a Paul Auster Reading Week:

• Introducing Paul Auster Reading Week 17-23 Feb