Re: Turning towards the positive

Tracy Durnell's recent post resonates with what I've been doing lately to make my computer usage more pleasant.

I've been in the habit of compulsively checking notifications (Mastodon, RSS, YouTube subscriptions, etc.), and I figured out that staying away from that, and using my computer for local things is much nicer. A few specific local things I've been enjoying:

• I've wanted to learn the live-coding tool Tidal Cycles for a while now, and I'm finally doing that. Here's a Tidal Cycles performance by Lil Data, and here's one by Moxus (super glitchy and noisy!). This tool is nice because I can code and have my coding be immediately musical.

• I've started knitting, and my goal is that once I'm comfortable with some basic stitches, I can use code to generate patterns. I was inspired to do this by Sophia's project using p5.js to generate knit beanie patterns. This is a nice way to feel connected to my programming/computer interests without actually needing to be online or even use a computer for the full project.