My present day journey of music consumption.

Posted on July 27, 2025 by Fresh

Greetings. Happy Sunday (or insert the day on which you are reading this).

Lately, I’ve been evaluating how I consume music and that evaluation strongly goes past that as a regular listener, but a musician/artist-creator/producer and my current age. This may be TL;DR but, be that as it may, I’m not gonna summarize 🙂

I started consuming/listening music as a child when there was really only vinyl and cassette (I skipped over that mess called 8-track, but I digress), so I won’t go into the subsequent ways/technology that followed it – iTunes/mp3, Napster and the like, all the streaming platforms available today. Instead, I’ll share the ways I best enjoy consuming music and why.

Spotify (yes/no: no). I remember what Spotify was like when it first hit the US shores. It was a much different entity than it is today. I pretty much despise what it has become regarding everything from its incessant algorithms, digital DJs, its every growing offerings of AI generated tunes, resurrecting songs via AI of dead artists and circulating them (read more here). and what its CEO is using the money gained to invest into. I’ve used Spotify as a platform used by Distrokid, a music distributor, to stream songs I’ve released as an artist and the only thing that serves any benefit for me is listener reach. Additionally, I’ll just mention (as tons of others have) the FRACTIONS of a cent an artist gets paid for the stream of one song (provided the listener streams it for more than 30 seconds). I’ve never made a playlist because I don’t find it that useful. The only two things of benefit are discovering other artists I like and streaming music in the background while driving or other tasks where I’m not in the position to really enjoy the listening experience. Lastly, because of its inherent design (similar to other streaming platforms), it has made musical disposable and weakened the more valuable aspects of the better listening experience. I’ve lost track of how many times unes of major artists, particularly those from decades ago, sound degraded in audio quality compared to other artists. This is 2025, what’s up with that? Then there is the whole contractual thing with record labels where some songs you can find elsewhere aren’t even on Spotify.

YouTube (yes/no: no). Similar to Spotify, there are tons of artists uploading their music to YouTube. What trumps Spotify here is now you get video content (maybe that’s the case with Spotify now, but again, see above – not into it anymore). The downside with YouTube, unless you pay for YouTube music is pretty much the same with Spotify (also unless you pay for Spotify) – ads. The ads I see on YouTube turn my stomach, for some reason, I find them worse than any ads I’ve seen on TV throughout my entire life.

Bandcamp (yes/no). Even though Bandcamp is also considered a streaming platform, the general features far outweigh Spotify and YouTube. For one, YouTube comments are nice, as they can provide more insight into the artist and/or the tracks being streamed, but I rarely bother with comments. Yes, there are alternatives to Bandcamp but what I love about Bandcamp is the following:

  • As an artist, one can set the price of your music for download, from zero upwards and get paid immediately (once BC takes a small cut). There is no better way I can think of to support an artist when this kind of mechanism is used. I’ve made more money on Bandcamp over the last 10 years than I ever would via Spotify.
  • Merchandise sales, if you choose, are another way for fans to support you, whether by purchasing physical media or otherwise.
  • The artist discography is immediately accessible so listening to it is very easy.
  • Additional details can be added that you can’t via Spotify or similar. You can go beyond song artwork visuals and add lyrical content and the like. If you have followers/supporters, they’ll show at the bottom of your page, and more.
  • Downloads of your music comes in different formats: ogg/vorbis, FLAC, mp3, .wav, etc.

Soundcloud (yes/no: no). I used to house tracks there back in the day, and while I pretty like its organizational approach, it seems you have to now have an account and log in to listen to songs. I don’t know when they changed to that, but I pretty much don’t use it for general music listening BUT it is a good mechanism for sharing tracks with others, especially sync licensing library houses, but I think there are other approaches that have come along that serve that purpose better.

Generally, when I want to enhance my music listening experience, I like to do so via listening via physical media. The biggest two reasons: I own it and I don’t have to rely on the internet to do so. In addition, though it is far less convenient and requires more work – I oftentimes like making my own minidisc labels of artwork. I don’t mind using my deck to label tracks on the MD, or using something like WebMinidisc to simplify track labeling when using netMD (or even HiMD, if that is your thing). Similarly, I like reading liner notes in my hands, my journey has been long enough that I like (especially being a musician who has done tons of studio work as well) getting as much history as I can about the musicians, songwriters, arrangers, producers, studios, etc behind the music -something you don’t get streaming services.

That’s about it, (as I stream music from my favorite and monetarily supported site, SomaFM). I hope you enjoy the rest of your day, evening, night. Oceans of rhythm…

Fresh.

PS: My latest enjoyable genre is ambient – I may blog about that in the future

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The small web.

Posted on July 24, 2025 by Fresh

Greetings all, I hope this post finds you well.

Peace and blessings, Fresh.

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#19orwell84

Posted on May 31, 2025 by Fresh

Greetings all,

I hope you are well on this last day of May, in the year of our Lord, 2025. Man, time is flying. I’m fulfilling a pact to post a blog at least once a month, as it seems to be the perfect frequency for me to continue enjoying the approach to blogging, something I used to do incessantly since 2007.

The blog title serves two purposes. The lesser one is an easily searchable hashtag I use on Bluesky to tag articles of interest that I plan to come back to read or want to easily find there. I do this because, unlike other social media sites like X, there is no native bookmark feature (yet) and the pinned post feed designed by another Bluesky user sort of gets the job done but sometimes that feed can go down and/or won’t show every article you’ve “saved”. The main reason for the tag is to serve as a collection of articles I’ve seen posted that shows the ever increasing prediction of what George Orwell wrote in his book, “1984”. For those not familiar with it, it predicts the future of the digital surveillance state we are under, globally. While I haven’t read the book, I am in no way surprised that the predictions are constantly coming to fruition. The sad thing is that they all seem to be unavoidable.

At the risk of being long winded and discussing aspects of the articles I have tagged over the last two months, I’ll just leave links below. I often wonder if some people, as they can be with other aspects of privacy intrusion, just accept it and don’t care, or not…I don’t know…and I don’t really care to. Anyway, the articles;

New Orleans called out for sketchiest use of facial recognition yet in the US – This one, and anything that has to do with facial recognition is, to me, probably one of the most egregious, especially with the ongoing issues facing AI facial recognition and its implications.

DOGE Is Building a Master Database to Surveil and Track Immigrants – Three words – digital tracking collar.

ICE Taps into Nationwide AI-Enabled Camera Network, Data Shows – First with EZ-Pass and toll lanes, now this…

There are many more to come but if you’re a Bluesky user, feel free to search on the hashtag for many more articles I came across on the topic.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post,

Oceans of rhythm,

Fresh.

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AI slop – please make it stop (wishful thinking)

Posted on April 6, 2025 by Fresh

Greetings reader, I hope this post finds you well. Welcome to April.

Disclaimer: This is mainly a rant post, you’ve been warned.

Generative AI in 2025 is hardly a new thing, it’s been around regularly for the past two years, easily and you really can’t traverse social media without running into some form of it. The aspect of it that really annoys me is not the lesser known approach of taking your facial makeup and allowing yourself to appear as a 17th century gladiator or space warrior from the 27th century, it’s the generation of photos that are supposed to be very real but, upon just a wee bit of inspection, clearly can be seen as fake. I’ve been seeing this WAY too much for my liking, thanks to the highly annoying Meta post suggestion algorithm, on Facebook. This images are that of architectural items – homes, the ever present “barndominiums” (I didn’t even know that’s a term), street scenes, indoor dwellings, and similar. The height of my annoyance is the large number of clueless people commenting on this images saying they are awesome, fantastic, great, beautiful, etc. Granted, these comments can be planted/created by the creator of the page (the creator even may be some sort of bot for all I know). A little bit of common sense after inspecting the image will reveal that this made by generative AI. I’m not saying I’m so keen to noticing that I stand out alone in stating this – there are always at least one or two comments in the post thread that point out the same.

The worrisome thing is if these comments that hail the greatness of this images are legitimate, we’re in for a future that will be VERY easily duped and accepting of fakery – not the really good deep fake imagery and video that is currently in development but it will be do just being too lazy to look a little further. We already have photo editing technology in the latest smartphone and imaging editing apps that can remove items from photos with accuracy beyond the Photoshop editing features that have been around forever.

Will we become so used to generative AI in the same way we’ve become used to voice generated audio that we clearly know isn’t a real person but is *close* enough, let alone the very latest in AI visual assistants that REALLY sound like a true person. My guess is, like many similar technologies, yes….it’s inevitable…they’ll sound even more realistic then the ship computers that talked back to the crew of the Starship Enterprise in the 60s.

Oh well, time moves on. Make it habit to touch grass, regularly (even it’s akin to astroturf).

Peace…oceans of rhythm

Fresh.

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Digital echoes in an unquiet mind.

Posted on March 31, 2025 by Fresh

Greetings all,

I hope this post finds you well. Here we are, the last day of March 2025, signifying the end of the first quarter of the year…already. I don’t know abut you, but it continually feels like time is flying, which could be a good or bad thing, depending on your perspective.

Earlier last week, I came across an article which highly resonates with me on a number of points. Here’s an excerpt from said article entitled Digital Echoes and Unquiet Minds:

“…a growing interest in returning to single-focus devices and analog technologies. Record players and film cameras aren’t experiencing resurgence merely from nostalgia, but because they offer fundamentally different relationships with media relationships characterized by intention, presence, and focus.”

You can probably see the gist of what this article is about, but in this digital age of constant information being presented to us daily, via our mobile devices, I highly recommend you read the article in its entirety.

For anyone who saw the birth of the internet and born into its existence and development, life through and with our digital devices is normal, so normal that they have become an intricate and intimate part of our everyday. For people like me, who grew up in a time without them, remember living a life absent of them. Those memories continue to resonate within me daily as I continue to realize how dependent and habit forming they have become, not just in the realm of social media use, but via other technologies. Personally, it’s causing me to rethink many things and I find that to be good, overall. I’ve read books and articles similar to the above before but, for some reason, this one hit home, to the point where I think I’ll review it regularly. After the initial read, I found three areas that I’ve strongly felt about and have practiced to certain extents already. This confirms alignment with what the author wrote about.

Maybe you’ll find the same to some extent.

Peace, Fresh.

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Return of the AFOL

Posted on February 1, 2025 by Fresh

Greetings all,

I hope this post finds you in good spirit. Here we are, the first day of the second month of 2025, also known as the kickoff of Black History Month, and maybe some other celebratory months I saw listed on social media somewhere. In any event, I don’t think anyone in these United States (or globally for that matter) can say that the last 11 days haven’t been “interesting” (define that word as you see fit).

In any event, over the last few weeks, I’ve returned to a enjoyable pastime that I essentially got away from over the last 10 years or so – building with LEGO. I played with LEGO as a child but that didn’t really hold my interest like other toys did, so by middle school, that interest pretty much dropped off. Fast forward to my adult life, and I mean in the 201os, is when I took a renewed interest in LEGO, particularly in the Space and Technic vehicles theme. What renewed the interest wasn’t so much the sets themselves, but the talented, everyday people, that were building these amazing space themed creations from their own imaginations, coupled with the immense knowledge of building techniques. Not even being a huge science fiction fan, I wanted that creative knowledge also. Beyond that, I began to see real life LEGO replicas of everyday things being built which, to this day, I find amazing.

Aside from the combination of building technique knowledge and creative imagination, there is an entire engineering aspect, especially in Technic themes, that comes into play. This aspect directly lends itself to the LEGO Mindstorms and Spike Robot Developer products, which are HIGHLY up my alley, and also includes their Power Functions and Powered Up lines of products. Furthermore, there is the intersection of LEGO robotics and coding languages such as Python/Micropython, and microcontroller platforms such as the Raspberry Pi and Arduino, that bring together an entirely different aspect in building with LEGO. If you take a look at my blog roll, you’ll see a fair amount of websites dedicated to LEGO. All in all, the term AFOL (Adult Fan Of LEGO) has always be an very real thing, and from the products they have been creating for the adult market over the years, it’s quite apparent.

Personally, I find building therapeutic, not just in following the build instructions that come with each set, but setting out to create something in my imagination and seeing the final result before my eyes. This result is called a MOC (my own creation). It involves levels of building techniques that you have to learn along the way by doing. The more constraints you have to deal with (mostly a smaller inventory of bricks, let along enough amounts of the colors you need), the more you have to become ingenious during the build process. These constraints are what I am dealing with currently because I just don’t have the room or the display space to build larger kits (or I should say I haven’t made the space). Never the less, where I am right now in the building process is good, and what I’m seeing other builders sharing online is VERY inspiring and motivating, so that makes the learning process (and there is a lot to learn) exciting. I definitely aspire to get to the level of many I see online, not only with space themed builds, but the robotics and powered builds, both employing the engineering aspects I mentioned above. The whole concept of LEGO (‘LEGO’ is an abbreviation of the two Danish words “leg godt”, meaning “play well”), has always appealed to me, and still lives within me and in many of their products still.

In any event, I’ve been posting my latest builds to Bluesky (primarily to another account purely for that) as well as my Flickr account, and look forward to building these sets (along with any alternative build plans to the original instructions that people share on the net – oftentimes I find those MOCs even more interesting than the originals!

Thanks for the read….”Play well” and be well.

Fresh!

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Day 1: 2025

Posted on January 1, 2025 by Fresh

11:25pm EST – Greetings readers, I hope your entry into 2025 was grand, safe, happy, and all that is positive. Mine was, as I spent a quiet night at home watching 2024 come to a close. I’m grateful to have been blessed with a chance to enter into the new year. Today has been quiet and *mostly* productive, and what’s even better is I have the rest of the week off.

This post is nothing but basically a brain dump and reads like a journal entry, I know, I know. Got my first workout the year in, finally got around to getting an extra filing cabinet and some storage boxes to do a LOT of paperwork filing. Cruised around Bluesky off and all day, and continued to reflect on the changes I’ve started and hopt to continue throughout the year. Oh, I did a small Lego build today (it’s been awhile) – the Mars Rover Perseverance, it’s a small Technic polybag build – I like those because they are quick. Afterwards I ended up connecting with a Bluesky user who is in Lego Star Wars, but is alos a fantastic MOC builder (MOC – My Own Creation). I’ve been into Lego as a hobby for a LONG time as an adult, which sprang from my memories as a child playing with them. I have Lego models at work, and as I type this, there are a few space themed (my favorite theme) to the left of me, on a bookshelf, and two Speed Champion models, a Porsche 911 and Ferrari F40 behind me on another bookshelf. Lego Racing, Lego Technic, Lego System, Lego Space (Classic and Neo) Mindstorms themes have been my favorite for a long time. Building is always therapeutic and I really want to get back to doing more of that. The flip side is it can become a rabbit hole of interest, such that I had to pull back from it. There are immensely talented creators in the world of Lego, I mean IMMENSE, which is why it’s continually enjoyable to partake in.

I just finished Round 4 of #100DaysOfCode yesterday, so that was a good way of closing out the year. I’m continuing my Python studies as well as updating (revision 2) of my low power model rocket maximum altitude/peak velocity at engine burnout simulation code. I’m getting the hang (I think) of object oriented programming in Python, but not enough where I am really comfortable in moving on BUT I’ve already began to update my code to reflect what I’ve learned so far, so that’s a good thing.

Anyway, technically, this satisfies my “at least once a month” goal of blogging. I was up until 2:30am this morning and pretty much only got six hours of sleeping. I feel it catching up to me now, so this is good time to end this. Tomorrow is getting a bit more productive, gotta redeem the time before heading back to work on Monday.

Happy 2o05…oceans of rhythm…

Fresh!

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That was then, this is now.

Posted on December 27, 2024 by Fresh

Now playing: postburialism #5 | deep dark future garage mix | tracklist

Greetings readers, happy holidays. I hope all is well as you are reading this. Here we are, coming to a close of another year with 2025 right around the corner. Whatever 2024 was to you, I hope the following year will be better.

Last week, I received a letter that was mistakenly placed in my mailbox. I recognized the envelope being from my credit union and pretty much knew the type of contents inside. Upon looking again, I saw that it was for my neighbor a few doors down. Easily recognizing the house number was one thing but what I didn’t realize the name. I don’t know how long the residents have been living there but I’m sure it’s been for a good number of years, because I’ve been living at my address since 2001. It’s rare that I get another’s mail but, when it happens, I’ve always known the neighbor. The difference here is that I’ve seen them come and go, but only by car.

In this particular case, it made me think about how very different things are now versus when I grew up as a child in my neighborhood. During those days, I lived in a neighborhood that saw four age groups of kids growing up over time, all nuclear families and every neighbor knew one one another to the point where all the parents looked out for one another’s children in the neighborhood. It wasn’t, as you probably have heard or know, uncommon that if you got in trouble for something, it very well may be that it first happened under the watch of your friend’s parents before they reported it to yours! Stevie Wonder’s lyrics to “I Wish Those Days” are kinda swimming around in my head, as a sentiment to what I’m getting at here, but I won’t digress, LOL

In any event, it just got me to thinking that, because of our street we live on (which has been VERY quiet, opposed to the street I grew up on where us kids were always playing outside in it), we’ve acknowledged the neighbors only on the houses that flanked yours. Sure, driving down the street after so many years, there would be waves exchanged, but knowing each other’s names, let along further engagement, is not anything usual anymore. This, of course, is attributed to many things that have changed over the decades, a fair amount (I believe) are related to, but not only about, technological advances, but I wont digress and wax philosophically about that either, nor will I say this applies to every neighborhood in 2024, as there are too many variables to consider.

In any event, that letter is still downstairs on the counter (I know, bad) and I should walked down and placed in their mailbox, which I will do tomorrow. I’m going to do it around the time the postal carrier delivers the mail on our street, I hopes of maybe catching my neighbors when they come out to check their box. We’ll see.

Take care and, again, Happy 2025 to you and years.

Oceans of rhythm,

Fresh.

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While the “sky” is Blue(r), X users are fewer.

Posted on November 24, 2024 by Fresh

Greetings all, I hope this post finds you well. ICYMI, in social media news, over the last few weeks, Bluesky has gained a massive amount of users migrating (or as I like to call it “skygrating”) from X (nee Twitter) as a result of Elon Musk’s November 15 2024 new terms of service. I personally find the skygration reasons legitimate, and that’s to mention many other reasons regarding what the platform has became since Elon took over. Before I continue, I’ll give you some chronological back history of my existence on social media platforms similar to both Bluesky and X

  • 2001: Joined BlackPlanet
  • 2004: Joined MySpace
  • 2006: Joined Twitter (user #14023, Nov 21, 11:52pm)
  • 2014: Instagram
  • 2017: App Developers Network (adn.net, Mar 14, 1:24 pm (now pnut.io))
  • 2017: Mastodon
  • 2023: Bluesky (user #25950, Apr 19)

Mastodon was my first taste of using a decentralized network, but I really didn’t use it that long because it didn’t interest me and felt like it was just another social network to keep track of, along with the fact that I wasn’t very familiar with the benefits of using a decentralized network.. I won’t go into detail reasons on why I continued to use the above platforms other than MySpace, at that time, was THE place for sharing music on many levels, BlackPlanet was my OG simply because of why and for who it was created to attract, Instagram was to socially share photos in a way you couldn’t on Flickr, for example. ADN was more a tech atmosphere and, finally, Bluesky, the so-called Twitter replacement.

While this post is not about why I like Bluesky and why I am deactivating my main X account after 18 years, but more about my observations about the massive skygration from X users to Bluesky. As of I type this, Bluesky shows me that I have 2000 followers and following 1500. In my 18 years on X, I’ve never achieved numbers that, on both sides, just because how I’ve continued to use the platform. I was, and still am, of the mindset: quality over quantity, when it comes to social media engagement. I’ve always been more of a consumer of information that interests me vs a social butterfly, so that information I tend to bookmark, archive, whatever such that I can make future use of it accordingly. I’ve also always provide enough in my social media bio to let people generally know what kind of person I am in terms of my interests followed by the general content I post. The combination of the two, I figure (just like everyone else) helps one make a decision as to if they want to follow me or not, as those are the first two things I look at when making my decision.

What I’m finding interesting on Bluesky is the amount of people that follow me (presumably as a result of the skygration) but seem to have nothing in common with me, coupled with the fact that some have followed well over 1000 users, but zero posts, and very little following them back. A general rule of thumb for me I never guarantee a follow back when you follow me (back to the quality over quantity thing). Secondly, having zero posts means I first need to see what you are posting about until I even follow you. Bluesky has instituted a somewhat recent feature called “starter packs”. A starter pack is essentially a group of people who share the same interests, this group (list) is made up by a user and present to the “skyline” for other users to peruse and decide who they want to follow in the group. I suspect that many go through starter packs, sometimes following the whole group, sight unseen, or cherry picking whot they follow, even if a said user has zero posts and/or being followed by other users they have have seen before. I suspect that is how my followers numbers grew to 2000 quickly since 15 November. I’m starting to see the crypto accounts and scammer/AI bot accounts make it over slowly as well – two out of four which I engaged with personally and have now disappeared, the other three I have blocked without engagement. I’m sure more will come.

I’m seeing an influx of content and users from X that share my interests and its very slowly resembling my experience on X, without all the mess that X is now carrying. As of today, Bluesky has exceeded 2 million members. Apparently I have “elder” status there (and if X defines it the same, on there as well). We’ll have to see, as time goes by, how things unfold, based on this article, Bluesky Says It Won’t Screw Things Up. I’m liking Blueskly and glad I got the invite when I did. In the meantime, I’m maintaining an account on X which has the sole purpose of being used to document my #100DaysOfCode journey and interact/receive information on space startup/Python coding/various other tech interest content from users that have yet to make it over to Bluesky. X’s November 15 ToS states that all public tweets will train it’s Grok AI entity….good, mine will train it on Python….something far more useful than much of the GARBAGE it is and will continue to be trained on. As for my main account, as soon as can follow desired accounts from my new account, I will deactivate my main account.

That’s it fornow. Be well, be safe.

Oceans of rhythm…

Fresh.

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Travels Unravels

Posted on November 2, 2024 by Fresh

Photo credit: D.Ramsay (shot on iPhone 12)

Greetings all.

7:59am – I’m getting an early start on the monthly blog post habit and thought this would be a good time to post as I finish this green tea. This recipe, one I call Newtonium Tea, originated from a Tim Ferriss episode about morning ritual. If you’re so inclined, you can see the recipe here.

Over the last few years, I’ve been doing a fair (in my mind) amount of business travel, more than what I have between the years of 2008 and 2018, to California and Florida (Jet Propulsion Lab and Kennedy Space Center). Prior to those years, I traveled as far as Guam and Japan on business, and prior to that, mostly the Los Angeles area. (with one-offs in New Mexico, Boston, and Houston). I like that photo I took above, it was taken when I was on a moving walkway on the way to baggage claim at DCA. It came out great for me moving while shooting, kinda looks like a photo you’d see for a travel ad.

I’ve come to realize that if I never had to travel on business again, I’d be totally fine with that but getting the job done requires it. It’s not that I don’t like everything involved with travel. I’ve stayed in range of hotels, not one that was totally bad. In fact, I fancy the simple Holiday Inn Express hotels I’ve stayed in for these reasons:

  • Ample USB ports in the room
  • Early complimentary breakfast
  • Workout room
  • Daily housekeeping
  • Easily adjustable room temperature controls
  • No concern with validated parking
  • Clean

If I can check the boxes for all seven above, I’m good to go. My lack of desire to travel mainly boils down to the fact that I’ve become a self-admitted homebody at this point. It is what it is. Right now I have no pending trips coming until early 2025 so, until then, I’ll bask in the current localities.

That’s for now… thanks for the read. Be well.

Fresh!

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