Weeknote for 8/18/2024

Productivity

😐

I determined the initial work-in-progress limits for my work projects, and I was reminded of the value of such limits. I target 5 to 10 hours a week for project work, but last week I got sidetracked enough, mainly by music, that I missed even the lower end of that range, which highlights the importance of managing work with the system’s capacity in mind. This week I’ll continue the Kanban setup with my work tasks, hopefully with less distraction from other interests, and eventually I’ll end up with a visualization for my work that will help me manage it more purposefully.

Nature

🙂

I met a toad. On the way to my car Monday morning I thought I spied the chipmunk I’ve seen around, but its movements were too slow and jerky, so I took a closer look and found this amphibian, which my app said was some kind of North American toad. I don’t know what it was doing in our parking lot.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum)

Music

😎

I got acquainted with Mahalia Jackson. Seeing all the music genres available on the AI app Suno revived my interest in an old project, learning about the evolution of popular music. Looking for a starting point, I remembered reading that rock came from jazz, which came from blues, but then Musicmap told me blues came from gospel, so I started there and took the opportunity to look into Mahalia Jackson, who is considered to be the most influential gospel singer.

It’s not the kind of music I would normally listen to casually, but when I first encountered her work with “No Room at the Inn” years ago, her performance was so intriguing and endearing that the song quickly found a place on my Christmas playlist. This time I wanted to see what her performances looked like, so I watched a few on YouTube, the most engrossing of which was “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” possibly her last filmed performance. It’s still not really my style, but watching closely let me appreciate her effortless power and sincerity and her swings and swoops of improvisation, and I found myself carried along by the music like a train on a track.

I was similarly entranced by “St. Louis Blues,” the only video recording of blues singer Bessie Smith, one of Mahalia Jackson’s major influences, who had an equally effortless power.

I generated a couple more Suno songs. Generating them is quick, if your prompt is simple, but extending and naming them can take a while, so I’ll need to be aware of how much time I can spend on it. I’m learning that as with other generative AI, Suno doesn’t necessarily follow your instructions, so you have to keep your mind open and embrace serendipity. I still have more to name, but for the country sitar songs Suno gave me, I came up with “Sitar Stomp” and “San Antonio Sitar Spring.”