Derik Badman's Journal

Almost a whole month. I did get some coding done, though not a ton, working more on adding cloud based storage to my character sheet app, mostly as a way to see how it would work and what complications would arise (I have yet to address sync conflicts). I have been toying with the idea of making music again after... decades (?) of not. I downloaded Garageband and have played around with it, but having gotten rid of all my musical gear long ago, my only interface is mouse and keyboard, neither ideal, as they have no real feel to them, like drawing with a mouse instead of a pressure sensitive device. Considering purchasing a computer->guitar hookup (and borrowing a guitar), or maybe a "controller" that has pads and keys, but also worried that once again it will just be another thing that I don't really work at, give up on, and then it sits around making me feel bad for spending the money.

I'm not even sure anymore what I have been doing. Watched (or rewatched) a bunch of tv shows... watched or rewatched a handful of movies (Personal Shopper, Mr. Arkadin, Irma Vep, Shadow of a Doubt being the most recent that I still remember)... I reread Delillo's Underworld which was a large portion of my reading the past few weeks (it is very long). I've run three sessions of D&D for a group of coworkers, but my regular group has not had a session in months.

We hosted Thanksgiving again with seven guests feeling like so many people in the house after all this time of having no visitors at all. Realizing (surely, re-releazing and then forgetting) how much the meal part of the holiday is actually the least fun, as everyone sitting around the same table makes for awkward conversation, and it is better to be able to just chat with different people in smaller groups and snack on things.

I probably continued to work too much, always getting sucked in too early, because I sit down at my computer to do something else but then start looking at Slack and there's always something that needs attention or is best accomplished before the day starts (so as to less interrupt customers).

Got my covid booster Tuesday, then was feeling a little off yesterday so I took the afternoon off and watched movies. I rewatched Irma Vep and felt so much more into it this time through than I did on my first watch back in May of 2020. Maybe just being more open to it this time, knowing what to expect, made it easier to pay closer attention to the film, to see the connections in it. Still love the ending sequence with all it's scratchings and discordant sounds. Watched one of the Criterion extras on it with Assayas talking about the film and apparently that last part was inspired by a Lettrist film, a group I've for a long time heard about but never saw any of their work.