Productivity
😐
I sorted my work projects into Kanban columns based on their status—different types of to-do, doing, and done. As usual, it took longer than I expected, but thinking through the nature of my various work projects helped me shape my system, which should be helpful for sorting my tasks and personal projects. This week my predetermined project schedule has me switching to my fall housekeeping, but with my new Kanban approach I’m throwing out that schedule and sticking with my current project until it’s at a better stopping point.
Nature
😒
I dropped in on the park of the flooded paths to see if it was walkable yet. The paths were clear and dry as if they would never even think of being covered in marsh water. So I’m considering how to reintroduce the park into my walking rotation, since I’d put a new one in its place.
AI
😎
I got hooked on Suno, the AI music generation app. I’d known about Suno thanks to my AI news feeds, but I’d been resisting it, mostly because I assumed it wouldn’t be that great and that it’d be hard to access and use. Plus it did feel like a little bit of encroachment on my creative territory. But I am vulnerable to links from my friends, so when one of them sent me a link to it, I didn’t put up a fight, and I found that not only is it easy to use, its music is somehow strangely good.
Here are a few songs that have grabbed my attention:
- “If” – Surf rock based on a Rudyard Kipling poem.
- “Liminal” – A sort of new age pop interpretation of liminality.
- “Pop Song” – A catchy song about itself.
- “Healing Melodies: Namo Avalokitesvara Chant (Version 6)” – A beautiful a cappella Buddhist hymn.
To help me explore the styles Suno was familiar with, I had ChatGPT throw together a table of the genres in the mashups on Suno’s Explore page plus some extra info about them, which I put into a Google Spreadsheet.
And of course, I tried generating a few songs, which you can hear on my profile. My favorite so far is an orchestral one I called “Showtime on Banquet Day”. It actually sounds like something I’d try to write myself, though it gets a bit wild at the end.
Sliding down the Suno rabbit hole has had a few effects:
- It’s been another boost to my interest in music, as I occasionally get when I run across interesting recordings, usually for worship team practice, and this time it’s revived a project I’ve dabbled in here and there, exploring the evolution of popular music.
- Similarly it gives my meager curiosity about poetry another of its occasional bumps, this time from seeing how turning poetry into music gives the poetry more body for me, so I want to see what I can do with that.
- It’s helped me crystalize my thoughts a little more on what the current crop of AI applications is good for, in this case sparking creative ideas and producing quick demos to recreate and revise, since a lot of these songs aren’t really fit as-is for professional use.
Glad you can walk the paths again!