~caff@TTBP

17 october 2018

Wow! It's been a long, long, long time since I've recorded feels. I guess trying to stick to a schedule just doesn't work for me. I finally nuked my old Ghost blog, leaving yet another set of link-rotted permalinks. I might bring them back on my Hexo instance that I'm still too stressed to theme.

SOTDBot's grown far bigger on Tilde.Town than I could've imagined. I love seeing all the songs people share via sotdbot popping up on Mastodon, and genuinely seeing people get enjoyment out of sharing music. I want to bring it beyond the tildeverse/fediverse, to Twitter, and the internet at large as well. I even bought a domain, as I am wont to do. sotd.vip, someday, will house that project. Right now, work has to come first, which I am taking a quick 5:30AM reprieve from. I know the problem I'm brick-walling against, I'm just not yet sure how to fix it. Perhaps just venting a bit will help clear that block. I also just want to give a shout out to ~severak, and town radio which uses SOTDbot's entries. Give it a look.

Better Unicode handling needs to come to SOTDBot at some point, but it's not a huge priority at the moment. At present, my main priority is figuring out why Cinch's match method doesn't actually match on strings anymore. (It used to! I swear!) But for now, I've got a work around in place. I'll go spelunking into the codebase for cinch eventually and try and figure out why they're not working as they should be.

~caff

05 december 2017

Okay, I'm finally changing the format of my feels, just so I don't feel so bound to structure when I write them. I think that's the cure for me not doing them, at least partially.

Also, Animal Crossing! I've been playing lately, and you can add me if you'd like! I'm "caff" on there as well, and my ID is as follows.

4253 4638 437

Cheers town! <3

29 november 2017

Hey town, it's been a while again. I've been busy with life and such, but c'est la vie. Anyway, I'm happy. I bought some new stuff! New 4K TV, new wireless, noise-cancelling headphones, and miscellaneous odds and end, as well as finally installing a new SSD that I won when I attended Twitchcon. It was an adventure, but I got it working! I'm also finally investing in Bitcoin again. Probably not the smartest idea, but I'm planning on working on a trading bot. Don't know how effective it will be, but it's something I want to try. I've got some ideas, and I'm going to run it dry for a while before actually giving it any money. We'll see how that turns out.

Also, I made an online status script if you're using tmux. You can view the guts at ~caff/.is-away.sh. Just throw that in your home directory, adjust it to work for your needs, and add it to your crontab, and you should be good to go.

I might work on making it more easily customizable at some point, but it's just for me for now.

I might stop adding songs to my posts, but for now, I'm just going to keep on going with the flow.

Foxy Shazam - Holy Touch

Just because Glam Rock, and I've been jamming to Foxy Shazam since I heard Eric Nally on Macklemore's Downtown.

03 august 2017

It's a pretty relaxed day. Been doing lots of promo product design to order for work. It's pretty fun, relaxing in between going back to work on the actual code too. Nothing much to report on tilde dev stuff, other than some CSS changes to my ~caff page, and adding the Tilde Town ring. Hope everyone's having a pleasant day. \^\^

~caff

Music! Just heard this song on Google Play Music radio. Mildly NSFW cover image on the song, just be forewarned.

Ken Ashcorp - On The Rocks

And normally I only do one song per post, but hell, I've had this song stuck in my head for a while today.

The Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatrist

~caff

Oh, hell! It's been almost an entire month again between my posts. I need to fix that still. I'll probably get back to it regularly-ish.

~caff

Oooh, also, I've been reading the Cyberpunk 2020 main book, trying to learn about the system. I really want to start playing it with friends. It sounds really neat, and has a stat called Cool. It could definitely be exciting to play with friends. Patches765's stories got me hooked on the idea of it, and I'm going to try to cobble together something eventually. If anyone's familiar, let me know!

~caff

03 july 2017

I did it! I wrote my first tiny little project in Go. It's not perfect. Far from it, but it's something. It's called Kogara and it's just a simple little link shortener built upon Redis and Gin, mainly because I wanted to learn more about both, as well as learn a bit about go. It actually seems to work pretty well. The response time on the requests is sub-millisecond with a local Redis instance. It's a pretty cool feeling. It's got a long way to go before I'd recommend it to any friends, but it's something!

Keep an eye on the repo for future updates!

~caff

Now this is a cool song I discovered on Chromeo radio on Google Play Music. It's from Penguin Prison, an artist I heard back when I was listening to a lot of RAC's remixes. It's called Don't Fuck With My Money, and it's pretty amazing. The music video was filmed in 2011, and it's set against the Occupy Wall Street protests, giving the video some poignant meaning to the song itself. Definitely worth a listen.

Penguin Prison - Don't Fuck With My Money

~caff

Wow. It's actually been almost a month since my last ttbp post. I thought it was shorter, but sometimes time just seems to fly away. Hopefully I can actually keep on top of it at some point.

~caff

09 june 2017

It's Friday! Happy Friday everyone! Music always puts me in a great mood. Next week, I'm off from work! And I'm spending the week with a friend who's coming down to visit. Also, I'll be attending E3! Woooo! I'm super excited to see it. If you're going to be there, let me know and we'll grab coffee or something! I still need to make up some business cards for this time around. :P I'm probably going to emulate my card design for Twitchcon last year, but with updated information including that I'm a web dev and such. I'm actually pretty proud of that card design, since it was thrown together in about an hour, art and all. The social icons on it aren't my favorite, but I can try and change those this time around. I'm trying to figure out if I can get them shipped from Vistaprint in time for E3, or if I'll have to get them printed locally. We'll find out soon enough!

~caff

Another artist that's stood out to me from my Google Play Music recommendations is Nothing But Thieves. I'm trying to decide who their music reminds me of, but they've got an amazing sound, and I want to hear more and more from them!

Nothing But Thieves - Amsterdam

Nothing But Thieves - If I Get High

Nothing But Thieves - Trip Switch

~caff

08 june 2017

Rule 1 of mucking about with bootable partitions: Remove them from the GPT if you're doing in anything that could result in the partition being corrupted or deleted. That's a lesson I learned the hard way when I tried to replace my Manjaro installation, but instead managed to remove the partition while Fedora decided it couldn't install after all, so I spent a good 5 hours trying to recover that before just giving up and buying a new SSD the next day. On the bright side, all my data's still on the old hard drive, and I have a shiny new SSD, but it's still going to take a while to set everything back up as I like.

~caff

Music time! I've gone through some of Google Play Music's suggestion improvement workflow, and that on its own introduced me to some new music as well, like Wolf Colony, Nothing But Thieves, or the focus of today's post, Rainbow Kitten Surprise. Their name was a large part of why I decided to give them a listen in the first place, but their music is amazing. Incidentally, it appears I need to spend more time on Audiotree, since I've heard a few live sessions from them for bands I've grown to love. Enjoy!

Rainbow Kitten Surprise - Devil Like Me

Rainbow Kitten Surprise - Cocaine Jesus

~caff

01 june 2017

You know how you always tell yourself "I'm doing to do this thing! It's so easy, I'm just going to make it happen!", and then somehow, it never actually does? I've fallen into that hole, and it's not a fun one. So far, things I want to do just keep piling up, but actually doing them falls far behind. To name a few:

Redesign my personal website
Redesign my ~town page
Work on a replacement for Revlo, a Twitch.tv stream currency service. (More on that below!)
Keep playing Guild Wars 2, which is an insanely addictive game. (Message me your IGN if you wanna add me :) )
Start working on Raygun again (Working title) for stream-safe music, some free, some on a subscription basis. (E.g. Pay $0, get access to an open library of stream-safe music. Pay $10/month, get access to a larger library with bigger artists available, etc.)

That's just a tiny sample of things that I want to do. I've also been learning Go lately, and am definitely going to be playing around with Gin Gonic and Gorm. They are supremely cool. I can get an ORM interface just by defining some structs, and they work really well! Was also testing out how much a basic Gin app can handle with apache bench, and I found out the bottleneck wasn't the app, but rather the sqlite database I was testing it with! That's a great feeling. So was the feeling of seeing sub-millisecond response times, even when hammering it with ab. I'll have to try hooking it up to Postgres next, see how much that can handle.

Work's also going well. I think my boss actually bumped my options from 0.5% to a full 5%. Hopefully the company will continue to do well! Mostly because I like working here, and partly because it'd be amazing to own a non-negligible amount of a successful company.

Anyway, onwards and upwards!

~caff

I've been on another brass band kick, so it's fantastic to find new bands, and lately for me, that's been No BS! Brass Band. I found them performing "3AM Bounce" on /r/ListenToThis a while back and I love going back to that video on a regular basis just to hear the awesome energy that these guys put into their songs. Enjoy, folks!

No BS! Brass Band - 3AM Bounce

No BS! Brass Band - Khan!

~caff

08 march 2017

IBM needs to either step up their efforts with the mess taht is Loopback, or say that they don't want to support it. This "kind of there, kind of not" type of support is annoying, and their documentation is all kinds of a mess.

/minirant

~caff

Music! I still haven't been up to writing much, but music's still something going strong with me. I've been trying to discover some new music since I have to DJ a Trunk Party for my company soon, and as well as just to expand my own musical répertoire, but sometimes the old favorites are amazing. Imagine Dragons is one of my favorite bands, and I'm happy to see they came out with a new song this year!

Imagine Dragons - Believer

Enjoy!

~caff

21 february 2017

It's insane, this world we've fallen into. I went to my first ever march/protest on Saturday. The "Immigrants Make America Great" march in Los Angeles. It was an incredible experience. I even managed to reconnect with an old friend from high school in the midst of the march. I'm terrible at estimating crowds, but I'd say it could easily have been in the tens of thousands. It was great to see so many people stand together, and stand up for the rights of so many people that are now vulnerable thanks to the Xenophobic Tangerine that has burrowed into the Oval Office. We can't let this become normal. We have to keep fighting. Keep up the fight my friends and townies.

~caff

Of course, I can't be all doom and gloom. Today, while trying to answer a question from tildebot, I got a fill-in-the-blank quote that led me to the discovery of a delightful song entirely by accident.

Jeffery Straker - Slings and Arrows

Hope you enjoy this upbeat jazz/pop/swing fusion!

~caff

I want to shout out to all the amazing townies that populate this server. To name a few names, ~mio, ~vilmibm, ~desvox, ~elly, ~kc, ~joe, ~curiouser and I know I'm forgetting so many people, but I feel like I need to say how happy people on here make me. So thank you. Thank each and every one of you.

~caff

Oh, one more thing on Trump. It's so... bizarre. He's already campaigning, he forced Chris Christie to eat meatloaf, (!?!?) and gave the strangest press conference I've ever seen. What in the hell is this universe right now. Thanks to John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Samantha Bee, and Trevor Noah for keeping me sane.

~caff

10 february 2017

Hello town! I still need to write more. I've been off it for a while. I've started a half dozen journals, only to leave them to languish, unfinished, for days. Today, if you're seeing this, I managed to break that streak. I've been looking at Twitch more, and it's really cool! They just introduced communities, and I'm helping to moderate a community dedicated to positivity! I've also done a little more work on caffbot, so now he can give you some !positivity, as well as having been adapted to the newest !tilde challenges. Not much else to say right now, but I know I'll come up with something else soon enough. :)

~caff

And of course, the song of the day! I've been on another remix kick, so here's one of Maroon 5's newest song, "Don't Wanna Know" by Chris Tran.

Maroon 5 - Don't Wanna Know (feat. Kendrick Lamar) (Chris Tran Remix)

Enjoy!

~caff

21 december 2016

Hello, hello folks! I haven't written in a while. I've had something of a cold, or perhaps even the flu, and it's been kicking my ass, but I need to get back to writing!

I don't know how many of you have been doing the Advent of Code, but if you haven't, you should absolutely try it. It's fantabulous! (But I'm desperately far behind.) I'm still not quite back to thinking up anything too coherent beyond this and Reddit comments, but hopefully a few more days of antibiotics and musinex will kick the rest of this cold/flu/thing right out.

Cheers, townies!

~caff

Song thing today. I'm still not really in the right headspace to write much. I could probably do better than this, but in general, I've been stuck on this song for a while. I listened to Jon Bellion a few years back, but forgot about his music until his latest hit All Time Low came out. It's beautiful, catchy, and of course has the benefit of Jon Bellion's bright, clear voice.

Jon Bellion - All Time Low

~caff

02 december 2016

Hello town! It's been a while. I've been distracted with Thanksgiving weekend and actual work that pays me money to do things and stuff. Unfortunately my town productivity has suffered as a result. Actually, my productivity in general has suffered. I'm just not really in my own mind right now, for whatever reason. But enough of my griping. I don't have much to write about today, other than the fact that I'm super excited to get home and eat. I'm so damn hungry right now. All I've had is a pack of "breakfast bars" and nothing else since I woke up. Time for me to rectify this situation.

~caff

Oh! Music! Yes! Hmmm... Let's go with something a bit Jazzy! I forgot about this song for a few months, but this is "Danza 2016" by Lucky Chops. It's awesomely upbeat, and you'll probably recognize at least a song or two in it. In addition, it reminds me how much I love brass bands. It's worth seeing how energetic they are when performing live as well!

Lucky Chops - Danza 2016 (Live)

Lucky Chops - Danza 2016

Ehhh, fuck it. Let's throw in a few more Lucky Chops songs!

Lucky Chops - Coco

Lucky Chops - Problem (Ariana Grande Cover)

Lucky Chops - Hey, Soul Sister (Train Cover)

Lucky Chops - I Want You Back (Jackson 5 Cover)

I could probably keep posting more music by them, but this is a good start!

~caff

23 november 2016

Apparently iTunes requires apps to have a reporting system. It's understandable, but that was something I didn't realize. I'm going to have to have a readthrough of the app store review guidelines this thanksgiving, since our requirements were apparently not based upon that. I'm really excited how close my work has come to fruition. Not much else to say today. Been super focused on getting my work done, but I still need my writing to keep myself sane. I just found out today that I'm getting more equity in the company, since I've been taking more of a senior role in the company. Hopefully a raise will follow around the one year mark. I still feel like I'm making more than I probably should be, but it doesn't stop me from wanting to be more ambitious in a financial sense. Anyway, time to finish a few things up, and head off to a picnic!

~caff

I haven't kept up with much in terms of new music asides from what I hear on Soundcloud, but today I stumbled across a Tommy Trash an A-Trak collab that just hits all the right spots for me and a surrealistic music video to boot.

A-Trak & Tommy Trash - Lose My Mind

~caff

22 november 2016

I'd like to give a special shoutout to ~bofh453 for being a freaking wizard when it comes to audio. (It sounds like they've worked on ffmpeg!) I promptly decided today that I'd try and build a toy mp3 decoder entirely in JavaScript, because reasons. It's going to be interesting, but bofh453 definitely gave me some great starting points. (I'm pretty new when it comes to everything, though I do work as a software engineer, even though most of my experience is with JavaScript) File processing is still pretty new to me. I've toyed around with some ideas, but nothing major. (Ask me about my half-finished IBM punchcard reader written in JS using canvas to get raw data from JPEGs, and individual pixel parsing! I have an idea of how to improve it, but that'll be a little down the road. Haven't had much time to work on it lately, but it's for a CTF challenge on RingZer0Team) This mp3 project will be a more major test for me, and hopefully I can implement playback using the WebAudio API. It'll be a cool challenge either way.

~caff

This song I love because its music video doesn't change the original song at all from what I can tell, and manages to tell a completely new story on top of the song. This is exactly what I want from a music video. Don't change the song for additional story elements. Don't interupt the song for 15 seconds right before the chorus. Just let it play, and tell your story visually! Marshmello, a new artist broke out early in 2016, who always wears his mask, and currently, his identity is unknown. Marshmello's single Alone managed to break 100 million views on YouTube in 3 months, and encompasses exactly what I believe makes a great music video. It tells its own story without the need for dialog interrupting the song, it has a clear plot, and articulates its story very well.

Marshmello - Alone

~caff

Hello Townies! It's a new day (well, not on UTC, yet) and I'm barely awake! I hardly got a wink of sleep last night, but I'm feeling good! Got some energy drinks to ensure that I can stay somewhat coherent. See you soon town!

~caff

21 november 2016

Good morning townies! I'm still awake on Sunday night, and I'm not sure how to feel. I had coffee, so that's at least part of the problem. (I was sure my caffeine tolerance was through the roof, but I guess I just don't feel it.) I do have work in the morning, but I only need like 5 hours of sleep to function. I'll also whip up some more coffee in the morning. Honestly, my coffee maker hasn't been used in months. I've been using energy drinks more than coffee, but I do splurge on the occasional Chai Tea Latte, which is delicious. (If you haven't tried one, you absolutely should.) Still getting over this cold, so I'm trying to cut back on the energy drinks until I'm healthy again, but eh, it's basically the one thing that makes me feel like me. Holy hell, I might actually have a problem.

In addtion, my cat seems to have perfected the art of escaping from her collar. It's a breakaway collar so she doesn't choke herself if she gets stuck, and she uses that fact to her advantage. I'll have to add a photo of her on Tilde Town soon, because she's so cute. (Adopted her a few months ago from a shelter. She's about 5 years old, and her name is Arwen) I also got her a harness, since she's been trying to be adventurous lately, sitting by the door when I come home, and trying to sneak past me. Perhaps letting her explore a bit in a harness will make her less apt to try and dash out without permission. I read a story of an owner who basically convinced their cat that they needed their "jacket" to go outside, so perhaps I can train my cat to do something similar.

Also, over the weekend, I've become absolutely addicted to a game called Wildstar. (It's free on Steam!) It's like World of Warcraft, but free to play. I don't think there are any hard limitations asides from things like how many characters you can create. My friends and I got absolutely engrossed in it. It's pretty easy to play either solo, or with a group, and sync in and out of playstyles seamlessly. It's all up to you how you wanna play it. Who knows, maybe we'll be able to quest a bit together!

~caff

I've been on a streak of listening to songs from musicals, and it's reminded me of how much I need to see Hamiltion. I'm fairly sure it's still in California! However, why not stick to the classics, like Aladdin! Cause you've never heard a song like this.

The Cast of Aladdin - Friend Like Me

~caff

Another two cups of coffee for this morning! Apparently I only got 4h13m of sleep last night. Erph. Short, even for me, but Wildstar is so damn engrossing! That, and I couldn't sleep. Consuming coffee at midnight might be the culprit. I'm honestly hoping that I can take off a bit early tonight, though I'm probably going to have to do some manipulation to the production database today. I'm not looking forward to that shudders. It's always something that makes me super nervous to do. I always back up, I always sit there biting my nails until the operations complete successfully. Hopefully today everything works well again.

~caff

18 november 2016

Happy Friday everyone! It's a bit of a slow day, but I finally wrangled the DB I was working with yesterday into submission, after quite a bit of breath holding. (I hate touching production databases at all, so a full backup was in order) Now I just have to work out how to get iOS to shut up about the 64-bit build when I do it on the emulator. I'm not wholly convinced that it's simply an emulator, instead of a build issue. I guess I'll find out in a bit. After that, it's one more build, then it's off to the app store! It's exciting, and a lot of responsibility for me. Perhaps I should argue for a raise after the release! I don't know if I deserve it, but I want to try. I've been taking on more tasks after all, so I think it's appropriate. I always feel like I'm undeserving of a raise though. Hell, I often feel I'm undeserving of the job I have, but enough about my insecurities! Time for some music!

~caff

Today I think I'll share a cover by Sarah Close. One of my favorite songs lately has been The Chainsmokers' Closer, partly because it's an awesome song, partly because I imagine that roommate back in Boulder really wants their mattress back at some point.

Sarah Close - Closer (The Chainsmokers Cover)

~caff

Honestly, I've been wanting to get into music production, kind of for the first time, kind of returning to it. I used to play around on the piano all the time, I have a full-size keyboard in my apartment that I haven't touched lately. Hell, I bought a fair amount of software too. Ableton Live Intro, FL Studio, and even Serato, for those days I really just want to DJ. I've got a DJ controller, as well as a Novation Launchpad and a decent soundcard. I've always played for a little bit, never recording anything, but always just enjoying the sounds on my own. Perhaps it's time to change that. Maybe one of these days I'll post my own song in my incoherent ramblings on TTBP. Or maybe I'll just keep rambling about my ramblings and my wants instead of what I do. It's part of why I'm still a wantrepreneur instead of an entrepreneur. Anyway, catch you tomorrow townies!

~caff

17 november 2016

I seem to have missed another day. Partly because I wasn't feeling 100% before. I've come down with a relatively nasty cold, but thankfully, plenty of cold medicine seems to be the solution in knocking it back quickly. Still not feeling 100%. Got a bit of a headache, sniffles, and coughing, plus a little bit achey all over. (Flu, perhaps? I hope not.) Overall, I'm almost back. Probably about 75% of the way to feeling healthy again. I still occasionally make a noise like I'm pull-starting a lawn mower, but it's better than it was. In addition, I get to deal with figuring out how to make 64-bit builds with Ionic and Cordova. It looks like it's mainly adjusting the architectures, but iOS 10 still yells that I haven't "optimized my builds", or something to that effect. But I digress. I've managed to have this sitting open, writing nothing for several hours now, and I'm not even sure what day this will fall on. Probably technically "yesterday", but it's done. Cheers!

~caff

Today I feel like sharing a sillier song with you. If you're familiar with Bad Lip Reading, you've probably heard at least one of his songs. Whether it be Magic Man, or Bushes of Love, or Russian Unicorn, you've probably heard at least one, even if it's just playing in the background of one of the video outros. So here's a few!

Bad Lip Reading - Magic Man

Bad Lip Reading - Russian Unicorn

Bad Lip Reading - Bushes of Love

Bad Lip Reading - Carl Poppa

Bad Lip Reading - Beard With Glue

Bad Lip Reading - Gang Fight

~caff

15 november 2016

Today has been reasonably productive at work! I actually fixed a bug entirely by accident while investigating another issue. I thought it might fix the issue I was investigating, but it just happened to work out. I'm pretty damn pleased with that. There's still the problem with getting it to do the thing I set out to originally. Also, I don't think I've covered the latest feature of caffbot in a little while, so here's what's new!

Added a !podcast command, to get a suggested podcast from my list of favorites
Added a !caffsongs command to get a song I've suggested in my ttbp ramblings.
Added !wtfsimfd, to let you know what to make for dinner. (Thanks for the binary ~desvox!)
Added !sayhello, which should say hi in various fashions/languages.
Added !polyphasic for information on various sleep cycles. (Still need to write some help pages for that particular command!)

More commands will be coming soon as well!

~caff

This isn't that important to know, but it's something cool I enjoy talking about people with. I used to run a music blog, and had a tiny little "radio show", on an internet radio station. I heard a lot of great artists, some well known, some much more obscure, but when I hear a song by someone that I used to listen to during my music blogging days, I get pretty damn excited. The most exciting "discovery" I made was Glass Animals. I'm fairly sure they were already well on their way to stardom, and I guarantee I had nothing to do with it, but there is something a bit magical about hearing an artist "before they were cool", to put it in hipster terminology. Another artist I fell in love with during my blogging days was RAC, who has since been nominated for a Grammy for their remix of Say My Name by ODESZA. Every remix and original they put out is astoundingly great, at least in my opinion, and I'd like to share a few of their songs with you today.

Imagine Dragons - On Top of the World (RAC Mix)

Panic! At The Disco - Victorious (RAC Mix)

Chromeo - Bonafied Lovin' (RAC Remix)

RAC - Cheap Sunglasses (feat. Matthew Koma)

RAC - Let Go (feat. Kele & MNDR)

Two Door Cinema Club - Next Year (RAC Mix)

Enjoy!

~caff

I know there was already one caffbot post today, but one more command made it in that I definitely want to share sooner, rather than later. You can now get more song suggestions by running !desvoxmusic, which will pull from ~desvox's amazing music sharing system. If you want to contribute to the recommendations from their system, you can run ~desvox/bin/music, and follow the instructions! ~desvox even integrated CLI-based YouTube search, so you can link to your song without ever leaving the CLI.

~caff

14 november 2016

I'm still pretty worn out from this weekend, so I don't have a whole lot to write, at least not off the top of my head. On top of that, I accidentally left waffles in the microwave this morning instead of eating them. Damn I'm out of sorts. I should probably get some lunch or something, before I just completely zone out and end up accidentally writing Skynet into my current projects. Maybe I'll be able to sneak in some more before the UTC day is over.

~caff

Also, today, a song! I'm not sure what I'm feeling like today. Perhaps something a bit tropical. Something like Heaven by Alex Adair. I don't remember finding this song, but somehow it ended up in my library, and I can see why. With a minimalistic track and tropical influences, this song definitely makes me feel a bit better after just kind of feeling down all day today, for whatever reason. I hope everyone enjoys this track!

Alex Adair - Heaven

~caff

13 november 2016

Hello townies! I just got home from my friend/coworker's wedding, and it was faaaabulous! I also love how I look in a suit now. I want more! It was relaxing, there was an open bar, I made some awesome friends, and there's still brunch tomorrow. I'm not the most focused right now, so my writing may be a bit ping-pongy. I've had a few drinks, and I'm sober, but even though I'm sober, I tend to be unfocused for the rest of the night. C'est la vie. I might just call this writing good for now, and hopefully write more before 4PM my time tomorrow, since that's when it rolls over to midnight. Love you, townies!

~caff

Oh! I almost forgot to do a song. Hmmm... Now, I think the song will be some electro-swing. Perhaps some Caravan Palace. Yes, Caravan Palace will do nicely! Midnight by Caravan Palace is a really cool piece, with some of the most sensual saxophone playing I've ever heard, which is also amazing live! Enjoy, folks!

Caravan Palace - Midnight

~caff

12 november 2016

A new day already? Fantastic! I'm actually really glad that I stuck with UTC on Tilde Town. I kind of wish the world ran on UTC. When I say 14:00, nobody would have to ask, "What time zone is that," but I digress. I've discovered a new energy drink. "Monster Energy Ultra Black". Black Cherry-flavored energy! Well, I'm saying this in a blog, so perhaps I'm far too enamoured with energy drinks. I've had quite a bit of variety in energy drinks. I have a wide variety of favorites, so yeah. I love energy drinks a bit too much. Caffeine in general perhaps. Hell, my damn username is caff. Perhaps I'll write more and include a song after I run home! I forgot my tie and dress shoes for tonight's rehersal dinner for my friend's wedding!

~caff

Well, I managed to look halfway decent in a suit. I'm pretty happy with that. Got to have dinner and meet new people. Looking forward to the actual wedding tomorrow. I still have to deal with constant self-doubt though. I was constantly worried that I was invited out of pity, or obligation. That they didn't actually want me there, but I RSVPed, and they didn't want to tell me know. I'm somewhat sure that's not the case, but I can't help that constant gnawing at the corner of my mind. Perhaps someday I won't feel like an impostor in my own skin.

~caff

Time for some music! I don't know about the rest of you, but when I was a kid, I loved Blue's Clues. It was one of my favorite shows, and as much as I loved Joe, the replacement host, the original host always held a special place in my heart. When he left the show, there was speculation of him being a drug user. Even though I was fairly young, I still heard the rumors. The truth is actually more interesting, at least to me. Steve left willingly. He never wanted to spend his entire career as a children's host. Even though the show brought him an amazing amount of success, including being named one of People Magazine's most eligible bachelors, it wasn't his passion. Combine that with the fact that he started to go bald, and there you have the reason Steve Burns left Blue's Clues. This isn't to say he left the spotlight though. Burns wanted to pursue his music career, and he also wanted to ensure he didn't go bald on TV, particularly not on a kids' show, so Burns left, and produced his debut album "Songs for Dustmites" with The Flaming Lips. While it's never really blown up, the songs on his album are evocative, passionate, and great to listen to. So enjoy one of the songs off of his first album, "Maintain".

Steve Burns - Maintain

Songs for Dustmites Playlist

Some more reading on Burns' departure from Blue's Clues

~caff

11 november 2016

I've managed to miss two days of writing so far. Or is it three? This election has been emotionally and mentally draining, and it's not done yet. Between Trump appointing a notorious climate-change denier as the head of his EPA transition team, and the protests going on around the country, we're going to hear about the US election for years to come. I'm not happy about Trump's election, but we as a country told Trump he should accept the results of the election, regardless of the outcome, and it would be hypocritical to not accept the results ourselves. Do I respect Trump? No. Do I want him to hold the highest office in the United States? No. Am I going to protest it? Internally, yes. Outwardly, no. I'll be working with whatever I can do to make the world around me a better place. I'll be volunteering, I'll be helping invidividuals, I'll be giving all I can to help people in need. I'll be wearing a safety pin to show that I do not stand for the hate that Trump espouses to many vulnerable minorities. Will it make a difference? Maybe, maybe not. But I can't in good conscience stand by for the next four years and hope that everything will be alright, and yet, I hope that Trump lasts for four years, only to be replaced at the next election. Why? Because the next person in line for the presidency is Mike Pence.

You would be hard-pressed to find a man with a worse record on LGBT rights in the country. Yet I'm sure he'll be in Trump's ear on many issues, particularly on social issues. I don't like the sound of that at all. Marriage is more or less here to stay, barring some astounding reversal of Obergefell v. Hodges, but there are some very, very important LGBT rights that still are not present, namely protection from discrimination in employment and housing. In 16 states and 3 US territories, you can be fired for your sexual orientation or your gender identity. In 7 more states, you're protected, but only if you work as an employee of the state. In 4 more states, you're only protected for your sexual orientation, not your gender identity, and once again, only when working for the state. However, the situation is even more dire when you look at housing. Nearly every single state that protects gender identity and/or sexual orientation in state employment does not offer any protections for discrimination in housing. The only exceptions are New Hampshire, which protects sexual orientation in both state and private employment, but only protects gender identity in state employment, which also only has protection for sexual orientation in housing, and Wisconsin, which only offers protection for sexual orientation in both employment and housing. Hell, 18 states even have hate crime laws that are uninclusive of sexual orientaiton or gender identity. This has to be fixed. This has to change. We can't just pretend that it's not a problem, and I can't feel good about this considering we just elected a man who would prefer to "leave [LGBT rights] to the states".

I've gotta stop talking and thinking about this, as I'm getting myself worked into a lather, however I don't think we'll see federal-level discrimination protection until we see both a left-leaning congress, and a president who isn't backed by a man who looks and acts like a sweater that Voldemort and Satan collectively decided to turn into a Horcrux.

~caff

It's time for some music! Today, I'm calling in some Train. Pat Monahan is one of those singers that can make me just swoon. Their voice is like catnip to me. I just can't get enough of it. Perhaps my favorite song by them is Hey, Soul Sister, though every song by them is just one more song for me to love. In the words of Family Guy, I fucking love Train.

Train - Hey, Soul Sister

Enjoy!

~caff

08 november 2016

The closer you get to the end of something, the further away it seems. Happy* election day, to my US friends. Please, remember, if you haven't already, get out and vote. Regardless of who you vote for, it's important to remember that voting is such an important thing to do. To make your voice heard. (Plus, free sticker!) This has been such an exhausting election cycle. The animosity between supports of each candidate has been unprecedented. It's important to remember, no matter your political affiliation, everything is born from peoples' wants, needs, hopes, and dreams, and at the end of the day we're all humans. We're fallible, passionate, weird, angry, loving, piles of carbon atoms; atoms that somehow managed to congeal in such a way that we're able to think, move, build, breathe, and do so many amazing things. Our passions get us in trouble, and let us extrapolate on our favorite things. Our ideals are not always shared, but in the grand scheme of things, I think -- hope -- that every human wants the best for humanity as a whole. It may not always manifest that way, but I certainly hope that's the end goal for even the most ardent fundamentalists.

Personally, I hold many ideals that tend to fall in with what's described as progressivism, at least in the US. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about that as a label, as it tends to make for stark contrast to other ideals, and label them as regressive. Perhaps I just don't like repurposing words for a particular ideology, even though it seems to be the norm. Regardless, I've rambled for far too long. Happy Election Day for the U.S., and happy November 8th to the rest of the world!

* Your results may vary.

~caff

Today I'm doing a band I saw open for twenty one pilots, and also fell in love with. An understated, haunting sound that makes for great focus music. The lyrics don't distract, unlike many songs with lyrics. It just makes me feel all melty inside, like I could just fill whatever I'm sitting on as I relax into it. Hopefully you enjoy the song as much as I do.

MUTEMATH - Used To

~caff

My conflicted feelings on "Fair Use"

I'm a weirdo when it comes to copyright. I love the free and open exchange of culture to proceed unencumbered by DRM, paywalls and other blockers, but I'm also a staunch believer in artists getting paid well for their work. I see so many videos use copyrighted music in the background that say "This is fair use", when clearly the author has no clue what Fair Use is. First, the legal aspect.

There are four factors that determine whether or not something falls under Fair Use. First, the purpose and the character of use. This is the primary factor that indicates that a work is Fair Use. Is it transformative? Does it add or transform the original work, and give it new meaning? If not, it's most likely NOT Fair Use. Beyond that, the nature of the copyrighted work is also taken into account. Biographical works are more likley to be able to fall under Fair Use than fictional ones, and published works are more likely to fall under Fair Use rather than unpublished works as well. The third is the amount and substantiality of the portion used. If you use a three second clip from a television show, that's much more likely to be Fair Use than if you take an entire show from beginning to end, even if it's transformative. Finally, does the use negatively effect the market for the original work? If it detracts from the original artists' potential market, that's very unlikely to be fair use. Translating a book to another language could very well get tripped up on this particular point, just for an example.

Now, the most common misplaced use of Fair Use that I've seen is music uploaded to YouTube channels. "I don't claim copyright over this", "This is fair use", and so on, where they imagine that's some kind of talisman to ward off DMCA takedowns. It doesn't work. If they're up, it's either because the copyright holder didn't want to bother with taking it down, or they don't know about it. Fair use is a much narrower case than most people tend to think. One of the most obnoxious trends on YouTube (in my opinion) is "reaction channels", where they will take the entirety of a video, shrink it, put it on the side and film their face while they watch it. It's not transformative, it often uses the entirety of a video with little transformation or commentary. (Note that not all reaction channels are this way. Notably, h3h3productions was sued for copyright infringement, though is videos are notably transformative, focus heavily on commentary, and do not use the entirety of the video. Plagiarism Today has a great video detailing on the issues with the h3h3 lawsuit)

On the other hand, it's extraordinarily difficult for smaller artists to license works properly, and they might be really limited in what works they're able to use fairly in their projects. They can use royalty-free music, but many creators would like to use music they know, music they are familiar with, and many songs that people are allowed to use without having to obtain explict licensing are far and away from well known. (Though there are some amazing artists, like Kevin MacLeod (Incompetech)) If someone wants to use a song by their favorite artist, they really can't. Not without risking DMCA takedowns, or going through an expensive licensing procedure. (ASCAP alone, one of several major music licensing agencies, I believe starts at $700/year, regardless of revenue, there are also several other licensing bodies, such as BMI and SESAC, each with their own licensing costs that are typically far out of reach for small creators)

Now, to the part I'm conflicted about. I want artsits to be compensated fairly for their creations, but I also want creations to be accessible for little or no cost to smaller creators who would otherwise miss out. Fair Use it typically what people look to for protection, but it's often misunderstood, and applied incorrectly, which puts those smaller creators at risk. Perhaps someone will be able to come up with a better solution. One that benefits everyone, and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

~caff

07 november 2016

So, I'm horrible at scheduling out. Like, really, really bad at it. On one hand, it makes for some exciting times with scheduling things, or it can screw me over pretty badly. This is starting to look like one of the later times. Yesterday, when I got rear ended while driving on the freeway, I went to buy some suits for my coworker's wedding, which is this coming weekend. It starts with a dinner on Friday, the wedding on Saturday, and brunch on Sunday. So, obviously, suits aren't going to fit me right away, so I need to get them tailored. A week's time isn't terrible, but considering many tailors are probably quite busy, expecially in a major metropolitan area, it's getting a little more stressful. Top that off with the fact that I still haven't recovered my savings, and still need to buy my coworker a wedding gift, that's starting to look a little more stressful. I'm probably going to have to ask my parents for money, which is tough, since my mother is out of town somewhere, for at least a few more days, and my dad's in San Diego or Mexico, I'm probably not going to hear back from them until at least Tuesday, then I still have to get the tailoring done, and hopefully it'll be done in time for the dinner.

Worse comes to worst, I might be able to reach out to my grandparents, but I'd feel really bad about that, since I really haven't talked to them much, and I'd feel abd about even just asking for a loan instead of a gift. I'll figure it out one way or another. I usually do. I'm good at that. It's not the best, but I somehow manage to fly by the seat of my pants for the most part, and it doesn't totally fail!

~caff

The time change has still thrown me off. It's not too bad, and I love the extra hour that it feels like I have. It helps fix my sleep schedule a bit, since I tend to stay up unhealthily late. Also, I realized I forgot to include a song today, so let's fix that! Today, let's do a cover. Originally by Arthur Russell, I think, "This Is How We Walk On The Moon" is a light, airy song that's been covered and remixed by many different artists. Instead of just doing a single cover or remix of it, I'm going to include a few different ones of my favorites, and let you enjoy them on your own.

The Original:
Arthur Russell - This Is How We Walk On The Moon

A more full-throated cover:
Geographer - This Is How We Walk On The Moon

Thomas Jack gives a jazzy, trance take on the song:
José González - This Is How We Walk On The Moon (Thomas Jack Remix)

An atmoshperic remix of the song:
Arthur Russell - This Is How We Walk On The Moon (Labyrinth Ear Rework)

06 november 2016

It's a new day, time to write more! I'm a little shaken up today thanks to a car accident. It was all good, but still not the kind of excitement I was hoping to have, but everyone was very nice. Insurance should take care of it all, and I'm not too worried about it. Anyway, probably going to use the rest of the day for video games, and watching Burn Notice and Archer. A nice wind down to the day. I don't have a whole lot to write about today, but it's always relaxing to just jot things down. I hope that everyone is enjoying their weekend.

~caff

Twenty One Pilots has always had a special place in my heart. They're incredible live. They run the entire venue. They'll play on stage, but they'll also head up into the nosebleeds, to make sure everyone gets a great view. That, and their songs are incredible to listen to. They just feel raw. Vulnerable. True. Hopefully you guys will enjoy their song "Tear in my Heart"

Twenty One Pilots - Tear In My Heart

~caff

Feeling a bit better now. More relaxed from the car accident. Not sure about my deductible, but hopefully I won't have to deal with it, since it's $500. I'm not even sure repairing my car will cost that much. I might just deal with it, get an estimate, and decide from there. It'll also be a lot more easy since my next paycheck won't be completley devoured by rent. I also definitely want to do more work on IRC bots. I forgot how much fun they can be! Caffbot's coming along very well, and is fairly feature rich for just tinkering with him for a few days last week. As a side note, it's definitely time for me to clean my apartment again. It's really hard for me to get motivated to do it, but I always feel much better after I do some cleaning. Having a clean apartment is a great feeling.

I'm also hoping to hit the gym more, lose some of this weight around my midsection, and get back to the weight I was at after I graduated high school, so I have about 35-40lbs to go. Yikes. Typing that out makes it seem a lot less attainable, but I'm just going to have to buckle down and get it done, for my own sake. Maybe I'll hit LA Fitness, see if they can transfer my membership so I don't get stuck going to the dingy one by my house that somehow is still out of the way for me to get to, and go to the one that's at the shopping mall on the way home from work, with all of the shiny new equipment. Hell, the plaza even has valet parking!

Even just writing this out has me a little bit pumped up as well. I'll have to go and work my ass off now, use up some of my excitement. Hopefully sharing my experiences will help me stay discliplined, and get nice and skinny.

~caff

05 november 2016

Ode to Contradictions

I tend to procrastinate a lot. I hate it, but it happens. I'm slowly getting better about it, I think. I'm a weird bundle of contradictions. I'm both an early bird, and a night owl, I procrastinate, and constantly feel like I should be doing something, I crave to be my own boss, and I want to also just do my job. It feels weird. Unnatural, even. But it's apparently who I am. Perhaps one day I'll figure out a set of things to be, that aren't a contradiction. Maybe I'm just not completely grown up yet. I kind of stumbled into adulthood all of a sudden, and I'm still not 100% used to it. Well, I say I stumbled into it, more like I decided to take up jogging and for my first time out, I ran a marathon. I didn't prepare myself very well for adulthood during my formative years. Perhaps because I didn't want to, perhaps I just didn't think of it. I didn't have a job, very few responsibilities, didn't really have to worry about much of anything. I still have a very easy life, and I'm incredibly fortunate for that, but I can't help but wonder if I'd be in an even better position if I had done something -- anything -- differently.

I've always been ambitious. Hell, I'm already trying to plan out how to buy a house in a major metropolitan area, and I'm scarcely old enough to drink in the United States. The average age of a first-time homebuyer is 31-34. I'm a full decade and change before that, and I'm hellbent on finding a way to get a house. I'm not entirely sure if I'm ambitious, or delusional. Determined, or uneducated on how the world just has to work. I want to start a business, I want to travel the world... I want a lot of things. I'm working on trying to manage my own expectations, while simultaneously trying to make my "wants" into "haves". Perhaps it's just me hedging my bets. I'm not 100% sure on why I do anything I do. I'm impulsive sometimes. Hell, a lot of the time probably. I'm responsible to the point that I need to be. I'm eager to learn, and happy with what I know. Perhaps I am just a living contradiction. Perhaps I should accept that. Perhaps I should fight it. I'm not at all sure. If any of you townies happen to watch Bojack Horseman, I often feel like a mix between a responsible adult, and Vincent Adultman. Perhaps it's just a vicious cycle of self-doubt that causes me to never feel happy with what I have; to never feel like I deserve to be where I am. Hell, I'm doubting myself over that last damn semicolon. Something inconsequestial that is making me question my own writing. I'm questioning if this damn rant is even an Ode. I looked up the dictionary definition of Ode just to assauge my worries, and I'm still not entirely sure. Maybe I'm just weird. Maybe I'm just broken. Maybe I'm just perfect as I am. I have no idea, and maybe that's the problem, or maybe just a symptom.

Self doubt is a hell of a thing. I hate it, because it leaves me feeling like I don't belong. I love it because it constantly pushes me to try harder. Yet I'm never happy with what I've done. It's never enough. I could write the "Howl" of code, the "Hamlet" of programming, and I'd never know it, or never believe it. A constant dark cloud of impostor syndrome hangs over my head, never letting lose droplets of relief, never striking me with a jolt of reality. It's just... there.

Perhaps it's not worth writing about, yet here you are reading it. I can barely I'm reading it myself. It's just words. From some person, probably thousands of miles away. He's not important. He's not famous. He's not a genius. He's just a guy. So thank you, sincerely, for taking the time to read my tirade. To consume my monologue on my inner monologue. My tale of trepidation that never seems to end. Most of all, thank you for existing, you wonderful person. I still don't know who I am, but I hope that perhaps, in some way, these words relate to you. Even if nobody ever reads these words, it feels good just to write them down. To let them escape from constantly gnawing at my mind. To have them somewhere else, where I don't have to worry about them as much.

~caff

Phew, now that my diatribe on my own self-doubt is over, it's time for the one thing I promised I'd try to do every day. It's time for a song. I love, love, love remixes. They always amaze me in their variety, their take on the original song, and how they can completely change the feel of a song. One of the most striking examples of this would be Mike Posner, who skyrocketed to popularity with the release of "Cooler Than Me", whose song "I Took a Pill in Ibiza", a slow, stripped-down acoustic track that sounds more like a sad country song than an electronic anthem, yet when SeeB remixed the song, it became a much more upbeat tune, despite the lyrics. Considering what a heart-wrenching song the original is, it almost is disappointing to me that the remix surpassed it in popularity by an order of magnitude, the music video garnering over half a billion plays on YouTube, and the original only reaching a bit over 20M views, but I digress. Both the original and the remix are amazing, and absolutely are worth a listen, just for the lyrics. I hope you enjoy these songs!

Mike Posner - I Took a Pill in Ibiza (Original)

Mike Posner - I Took a Pill in Ibiza (SeeB Remix)

Finally, you really should read over Mike Posner's own thoughts on the lyrics, which he shared on Genius. It's incredible to see the though processes behind the song, but this in particular really felt raw, and never has a song made me want to just hug someone before.

~caff

04 november 2016

I almost forgot to do my ttbp writing today! I'm going for a streak, and almost failed three days in. Caffbot's been tweaked, and the API key has been replaced so it's not visible to the world. (It's for the best.) I also now know a little about YAML, so that's nice. Ruby's still very new to me, but I'm slowly getting the hang of it. I've also enabled !geekjoke, which is pretty empty at this time but that should change soon. (If you have any great short geek jokes/one liners that you would like to share, please send them my way!) Also, feel free to make suggestions for new features for caffbot if you have any! I'd love to make them into a swiss army bot!

~caff

It's also time for a new song with my writing. Today, we have Tokyo by Jinco, an orchestral trap song. It's not quite as "brutal" as some trap songs, and sounds absolutely beautiful.

~caff

And with that, caffbot's !telephone should have proper error handling. The Yandex translate API has a limit of 1M characters per day, or 10M characters per month. It doesn't look like we'll hit that at the current usage rate. Even on its very first day, caffbot only translated 41,317 characters of text, and I've since dropped the number of iterations it uses by default. I'll probably do an update towards the end of the month to see how much usage the !telephone command got! If there's any issues, feel free to let me know. It should handle rate limit exceeded issues, maximum text size issues, general text translation issues, and it should shortly handle API key issues as well. I hope that everyone enjoys caffbot!

~caff

I'm going to keep on writing, because I want to try for at least 500 words every day, and today is almost over. So hopefully I can cram in the rest of my words in a matter of seven minutes. I have to say, it's truly been amazing how close this community is. In a few short days, I've already made friends on here. Whether they know they're my friends or not, I've already decided that. (Which so far includes pretty much everyone I've talked with! Hi everyone!) I'm pretty tired today, so my writing may be a bit out of sorts. Hopefully I'll keep up with it over the weekend as well. I've tried to do that with Stack Overflow, and I've gotten up to ~40 days in a row I think, and SO isn't anywhere near as enjoyable as spending time with townies. Hell, it's downright cathartic, to focus on coding without having to worry about deadlines, or specific deliverables, just doing it because I love it. In short, thank you Tilde.town. You truly do make me happy. Each and every one of you. Keep on making, keep on doing amazing things, keep on working on making this town a crazy, awesome place for everyone that inhabits it. <3

~caff

03 november 2016

Hello guys! It's time for my second day of blogging my feels, and it feels so good! (Pun pretty much intended) I've spent most of today unmotivated, but still trudging through some work, thankfully, so I don't feel completely bad about my progress, but I still wish I could have accomplished more today. Going to try and get some sleep tonight to be super productive tomorrow, since there's very little left for me to hit deadlines that I need to, and I'm super excited about that.

It feels great to be home though. Netflix did me a great service, and reminded me that Supernatural is indeed a thing, and that I should watch it all. (Season 11 is now on Netflix in the US for those of you who enjoy Supernatural!) I decided to start over at season 1, since I haven't watched it in years. I also realized that despite me wanting to watch Kung Pow for a while, I never have gotten around to it, and much to my chagrin, it's not available on any streaming service I subscribe to. Not on Netflix, not on Hulu, not on Amazon Prime Video. I could rent it from Amazon, or buy it, which I may do, but there's so many streaming services, it's crazy that sometimes you just can't find something you want to watch on any of them.

In addition, I'm finally doing some setup on Manjaro, which is apparently one of the few Linux distros that my monitor likes, with several different Debian and Ubuntu-based distros causing an ambiguous "Input Not Support" on my off-brand monitor. I suspect it may be detecting a larger resolution than is available, or doing something funky with the refresh rate, but I digress. Today's more of a "venty" day for me.

~caff

I'm still staying commited to including a song with my ttbp posts. Since I shared a downtempo alt-J song yesterday, along with plenty of whining about rain, or rather the lack thereof, today I figured I'd share a more uptempo song. It's also appropriate, since I would probably have still never heard of them if they didn't open for alt-J at a concert I attended, and I'm obsessed with them now. An eclectic mix of instruments, from brass, strings, and more traditional pop instruments, San Fermin's Jackrabbit produces a very eclectic mix of sounds that come together beautifully. A genre that I believe is termed "Baroque Pop", it's something very unique sounding. The live version also has a very different energy from the studio-recorded version for reasons I cannot quite put into words, so it's only fair that I include both, and let you decide for yourself.

San Fermin - Jackrabbit (Live Music Video)

San Fermin - Jackrabbit (Studio Music Video)

~caff

Now, for some town business. I've made a few more tweaks to caffbot that should improve the round-trip quality of translations. (As in they should mostly make it back to English, or something vaguely English-like, as opposed to a mixture of English and Bengali, or Korean, or some other script.) I've also identified an issue that I hope to resolve soon. If a translation direction isn't supported by Yandex.Translate, it will return a 501, which in turn causes caffbot to freak the hell out. The sane thing to do is to simply retry if it returns a 501, which is probably the fix I will end up implementing. If anyone wishes to help, let me know and I can figure out some sort of git repository for caffbot for additional collaboration! I'm also very excited to announce that the previous five lines of writing, well, now six, were exactly 80 characters across. Not at all useful information, but I love little things like that.

~caff

Back to caffbot for a bit. I forgot that I've found a couple favorite lines from !telephone.

20:00 <@krowbar> !telephone To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there's the rub
20:00 < caffbot> Translating to foreign languages! Please wait, it may take a while... (Results Powered by Yandex.Translate <http://translate.yandex.com/>)
20:00 < caffbot> en->is->su->ko->ta->mk->mn->is->en: The sleeping God dreams honey,Yeah,you can rub

Oh my. Thank you for that amazing line ~krowbar! I don't think that could have been better if you'd tried.

Also, while not quite as thoroughly entertaining as the previous one, I did try one that I'm moderately happy within response to tildebot telling me that I am, in fact, better than a horse.

07:56 < caff> !telephone You are a horse amongst men.
07:56 < caffbot> Translating to foreign languages! Please wait, it may take a while... (Results Powered by Yandex.Translate <http://translate.yandex.com/>)
07:56 < caffbot> en->pl->no->ka->ceb->gd->fi->en: You are horse people.

You are horse people.

I'm easily entertained by things like this, so please forgive me for rambling about this, but hopefully you'll find it at least mildly entertaining!

~caff

One more caffbot update today! I've implemented a new command! !polyphasic will give you information on alternative sleep schedules. It's kind of cobbled together at the moment, and should work, but if you find any issues with it, let me know. The returned information will give you a short blurb explaning the sleep cycle, and a representation of it on a 24 hour timeline, with each cycle starting at midnight, and sleep marked by #, with awake time marked by ..

Hope that this proves interesting to some of you!

~caff

02 november 2016

There are days when you just want rain more than anything else. You want to feel it beating down on your head, to let the rain slowly soak into your clothes, or bead off of your jacket, and fall to the ground. You want to sit on the fire escape, and listen to the droplets bounce off of the metal, a natural percussion that just outlines everything that's awesome about the world. Sometimes you just want to sit inside, and hear the low applause of millions and millions of water molecules as they find their resting place. I'm trying to be deep, but honestly, the rain speaks for itself. It doesn't need me to make up silly analogies, or metaphors. It's just something that you love, or you hate. Maybe you want to see the sun every day, or maybe you'd be content to hear the rain day in, and day out. Perhaps someday I'll live in Washington, or another place where rain is a regular occurence, instead of sun-bleached California. However, I digress. I just keep pining for rain today, and yet the clouds seem to be tauntingly far away.

~caff

Well, it's a departure from my previous opining on rain, but I'm now very excited that I've gotten some functionality into caffbot on IRC. Stop by #bots and try out his new !telephone command, which will run your phrase through Yandex Translate up to 15 times.

Usage: !telephone [iterations<=15] <text>

Example:

03:47 < caff> !telephone Well a duck walked up to a lemonade stand, and he said to the man running the stand. "Hey, got any grapes?"
03:47 < caffbot> Translating to foreign languages! Please wait, it may take a while... (Results Powered by Yandex.Translate <http://translate.yandex.com/>)
03:47 < caffbot> en->cy->mk->bn->gd->de->hr->gd->en: Good duck standing would walk to the lemonade, and said that people are running. "When it was all over, earl?"

Hope everyone enjoys playing arond with this!

~caff

I've also decided that I'm going to include a song with my feels. Today's is Bloodflood by alt-J, one of my favorite songs to listen to in the rain. It just feels perfect to look out, and see the rain drifting down the windowpane as Thom gently serenades you, the tremelo in his voice emphasizing every droplet.

alt-J - Bloodflood

Bonus Rainy link

~caff

As an aside, I think today's experiments with ASoftMurmur show that my ideal place is a coffee shop by the beach, with the wind blowing in the background by a crackling fire. At least that's my conclusion in terms of audio. Logistics are quite another story.

~caff

I know I'm editing this obsessively, and perhaps excessively as well, but it feels amazing to be back to writing regularly. I used to do an excercise called 500 words, which is excatly what it sounds like. I certainly miss it. Perhaps ttbp will be my new 500 words. I really don't want to steamroll others' updates, so in the future, I'll try and update less frequently during the day. I'm just excited and such. I'm already feeling so welcomed by the tilde.town community, it's amazing. Hopefully I can continue building things and making friends in this crazy place.

~caff