Music, Thoughts

Once More Round The Sun

minceandskirlie

It was my birthday last week, another lap of the sun completed. I don’t really put much stock in birthdays any more or get really excited for them (though I did have a great time with family and a lovely meal out with my wife on the day itself). In fact I find myself now spending most of the year struggling to remember exactly how old I am now. Am I really 43? Or is it 42? Once I hit somewhere around my mid twenties I think I mentally felt like this is my age and I’m going to stick with it. Anything above that doesn’t really count. Just no-one told my haggard, ageing, body.

I fell down a synth laden black hole this week. It all started a few weeks ago when I dug out my Korn Volca Beats and was determined to learn how to use it. This magnificent piece of procrastination coinciding with the start of my latest Open University module of course. Then I started liking and following loads of synthy accounts on Threads that just post chill, ambient beats on hardware synths. I was scrolling for hours just checking out loads of cool sounds.

That led me to browsing hardware synths on Amazon for a while until I came to my sense and decided I should just use the toys I already have. Rooting around in my spare room, I dug out my Akai Miniak synth that I bought over a decade ago and also never learned how to use. I managed to switch it on and play around with some of the presets but it really needs some proper time put in to it to get the best out of it I think.

Time I don’t have it turns out! As my procrastination caught up with me after I had a birthday weekend and I suddenly found I had dropped behind schedule a bit on my uni course and needed to get my head down to catch up on some reading and go hug some trees on the first dry day we’ve had at a weekend for a while. I really went out and hugged some trees, as the course had us out measuring the circumference of local trees with a tape measure. Surprisingly, I didn’t see any posts on the local nosy neighbour facebook group for our town wondering why someone was hanging around all the trees taking pictures and measuring them.

That out of the way, I returned to my synth distraction. Which led me to building quite a wishlist on Amazon of some cheap hardware to do some DAWless synth jams. But I think that should wait. For now I have a drum machine, a beastly Akai synth that I just need to learn how to use, and access to Reaper and loads of software synths that I could use to find my feet with first. Yes, that sounds much more sensible. So instead of a new expensive synth that I won’t get round to learning, I received my dopamine hit by ordering a small USB midi keyboard controller instead so I can control software synths on Reaper and figure out what I’m doing.

My big plan is to use the synth stuff as a backing track to do some live jamming with my guitars, but lets see how that works out. If anyone out there has any VST recommendations or even some budget hardware recs, let me know. It would be a good basis of some music streams on Twitch I think if I can get the hang of it. If it works it’ll be pretty satisfying. But first I need to stop procrastinating and get back to some studying!

Music, Thoughts

Beats and Beaks

minceandskirlie

I’ve been busy with uni, work and then a family holiday this month. But I’ve still found time to procrastinate spend on a couple of lapsed hobbies.

10 years ago I picked up a Korg Volca beats just after they were released. A dirt cheap drum machine, with simple workflow, and a sound harking back to the classic modules of the 80s and 90s. I was full of good intentions of incorporating this in some low fi folk compositions. Then never really learned how to use it properly. It still sits on a shelf by my desk, unloved, to this day. However, I picked it up again the other week, when I was probably supposed to be doing something much more important and had a play with it.

https://www.threads.net/@folkedoff/post/CylKp5fL1CG

https://www.threads.net/@folkedoff/post/CynzhKmoace

(One day Threads posts will embed seamlessly into WordPress. Today is not that day. Click the links to hear the results)

Both those basic beats were drummed up (hah!) in just a few minutes. It’s so easy. I really need to spend more time with it. Frustratingly though, I don’t have a way to hook it up to a speaker at the same time as my guitar or my hardware synth (which I also should spend more time with). But if I can solve that problem soon I should start using the Volca more often while writing on the guitar and practicing in general (always was bad at practicing with a metronome).

While on holiday this week I also picked up a hobby I’ve tried starting loads of times over the years. I keep buying sketchbooks, pencils and pens, then carrying them around with me and never use them. Well, this time I spent a couple of nights sitting drawing in the holiday lodge then colouring the sketches with some pens. Mainly to try and impress my daughter really.

Blue tit (Cyanistes Caeruleus)

Goldfinch (Carduelis)

I love birds and wildlife and have always been jealous of people who can draw really detailed pictures of the birds and animals they see. Whenever I’ve tried in the past they always look really wonky. But I’m pretty chuffed with how this blue tit and goldfinch turned out. The blue tit is still a bit strangely proportioned, but the goldfinch is just about right. Think I just need to practice a bit more to get some consistency. I’ve never been a tidy artist and struggle with detail, which also comes across in these.

I might try some different pens next time or maybe even using some acrylic paints for a chance and see if that helps me get the details right.

Anyway I’m pretty happy with how both these bits of activities have turned out. Less happy about how much I’ve procrastinated from what I should have been doing instead, but that’s a whole other blog post!

Thoughts

Hitting the books again

minceandskirlie

It’s October which can only mean one thing! That’s right, halloween studying! I have a full time career in a very corporate IT environment, plus a family, and way too many hobbies that I don’t get to spend as much time on as I’d like. Yet, since 2019 I’ve also been studying part time for an Environmental Science degree at The Open University. I took a study break last year to concentrate on some house stuff, then procrastinated about that for most of the year. But now I’m back at the books again as the new academic year kicks off and I start my first level 3 module.

So what makes a middle aged man, with a good career and lots of other commitments decide to go back to uni? After all, I already have one degree. A BSc (no honours) Computing for Internet and Multimedia which I coasted through twenty years ago only because I hadn’t managed to get a job with the HNC Computing I coasted through before that. Late teenage and early twenties me was not one for working hard and getting top marks. Drinking lots and cruising to mediocrity was much more my thing.

What else I had in my twenties was a very clear sense of right and wrong, with a firebrand commitment to causes of the left. Fuelled by many, many hours listening to Rage Against The Machine and System Of A Down albums, and as many anti-globalisation books and websites I could find. I was a sparkly eyed idealist who was about have all that crushed by the big hammers of society – having a career and a mortgage.

I live in Aberdeenshire and decided to have a career working in IT. As you do around here, I wound up working for a very large IT services company who’s main client, in Aberdeen and the UK, was one of the supermajor oil companies. Almost twenty years later and barring a couple of short detours, I have only ever worked in corporate IT for the oil industry. Teenage me would be fucking mortified.

For someone who is still very much left of the left of centre, working for the oil industry for twenty years does result in some soul searching over time. Even more so now I have kids and someday will have to explain how we let the planet get into such an awful state. To say nothing, to do nothing, is consent. However, I need to pay a mortgage, don’t want to move elsewhere and the North East of Scotland is very much dominated by the oil industry. So what can I do?

Occasionally when things haven’t been going well at a company (there’s often a cycle of redundancy/outsourcing threats or new management changing the department and office culture) I’ve looked around at the public sector or more environmentally conscious organisations for job openings, but they have little need for my particular IT skills (supporting large applications for oil companies) and I don’t have the knowledge or experience they do need. While I would like to leave behind the world of corporate IT, I don’t really have the luxury of being able to study full-time, retrain, or start from the very bottom again in a new career.

I decided the best thing I could do, for my conscience, and my family, was to look at the kind of organisations I would like to work with one day and then think about what skills they would value. My thinking is that if I never train to do something different, then how can I expect things to change for me? So while I have the money to be able to afford to do another degree I should take that opportunity. Then I can study part-time and build up some skills and experience while still keeping a roof over our heads with my current career. A couple of years ago, a friend told me I was wasting my time doing an Environmental Science degree as there was no money in it. As if the only reason anyone would ever choose to do anything, was to get rich at the end of it. I have to admit, this really upset me at the time and still bugs the fuck out of me today when I remember it.

Even if I never manage to fully jump into working in conservation or helping the environment, at least some day in the future I will have a degree that might help me get volunteering opportunities to try and help manage my local environment or assist with wider projects. And in a roundabout way, I’m putting the cash I get from the oil industry to good use. It’s not about the money or trying to get into a more lucrative career. It’s about looking back at the person I was growing up, the beliefs I held then and think I still hold today, looking at my children and the world I’ve brought them into, a world that’s overheating while our politicians put their heads in the sand and pretend it’ll be OK, without taking any meaningful action to prevent catastrophe. It’s about looking at all of that and being able to tell myself I didn’t just help big oil companies make this planet worse, but I also did a little bit to make it better one day.

It’s hard work. It’s hard to find the time to sit down and read the material, let alone the 12 – 20 hours a week the modules generally say are required to read the material and complete the exercises. I pick an hour here and there through the day – lunchtimes, evenings in front of the TV. Then try and block out chunks at weekends or when the kids are at swimming lessons etc. All while still doing my bit home and spending time with the rest of the family, plus still scraping time for my other hobbies. It really is hard!

But at the same time it’s really enjoyable. I like learning. I love nature and the environment and after four modules I now know a lot more about the natural world and how it’s changing than I did before. This year is my first level 3 module, which would roughly equate to the 3rd year of a normal 3 year degree (for England, here in Scotland we do it a bit differently studying over 4 years normally). After this one I just have two left – a small final module and an honours project. The end is in sight! What comes after that? I’m not sure. I’ll keep my options open, but if nothing else I’m enjoying being a student again and get to spend some of my spare time learning about an important subject, doing so with interesting people from all over the country, and learning from the fantastic staff at the OU campus in Milton Keynes and the superb tutors locally.

Thoughts, Gaming

Baldurs Gate

minceandskirlie

It’s a couple of months since Baldurs Gate 3 released at the start of August. A game that I had accepted that I was interested in but not really excited to play, pre-release, then as the release hype hit and the reviews started to land I very quickly decided I needed to be on board. The FOMO was real.

Well that was a decision I am very glad I made. What a game. My only regret is that I don’t have as much time as I want to put into it. In the weeks since I made the purchase I’ve put about 25 hours in and am still on Act 1. Barely a dent in the overall story really. Without using my laptop to stream from my gaming rig while I sit on the sofa in front of the TV, trying to still be sociable with my wife, I’d have only managed a fraction of that. So, it’s not too bad.

Anyway, I am loving the game. Even as a fan of Larian’s previous awesome CRPG – Divinity: Original Sin 2, it’s shocking just how good it is. This is the purest expression of Dungeons and Dragons as a video game. I’ve been able to take everything I’ve learned in the last few years of playing a regular D&D session with friends and put it into the game. Mind you, this is a group which saw our party famously get TPK’d (total party kill) by a small band of kobolds in the very first encounter of one adventure. We’ve not set a high bar.

But that previous experience has been great, it’s let me jump in to BG3 unquestioningly and set about the game and it’s encounters armed with knowledge about short and long rests, spell slots, levelling choices and, most importantly, how to play each class without too much trial and error or reference to tutorials that totally new players may need. Which isn’t to put you off, if you’re completely new to D&D then Baldurs Gate is an awesome way to dip your toes in and get started. It is very welcoming to new players and the learning curve is much, much more forgiving than say a Dark Souls style game.

The writing, the size and scope of the game, the voice acting (oh so much amazing voice acting!), all of it shines in Baldurs Gate 3. If you have even a passing interest in D&D or classic RPGs then you should get on board. My friends who have been playing on PS5 say it’s great there too.

In fact my friends have also been similarly obsessed, most of them quickly overtaking me and filling our group chat with excited messages as they progress through the story. This does nothing to help me feel better about my slow progress through the game. However, I need to get over it as very soon I am due to restart my part-time degree with the Open University and will have very little free time for the foreseeable future (sad violin noises).

For the meantime I’m going to spend my last week or so of free time trying to get as much time in BG3 as I can. Which does make me feel guilty for neglecting all my other hobbies. But that’s a whole other thing I need to get over. If you’ve been playing BG3, let me know how you’ve been getting on, what’s your favourite class build?

Tabletop and Roleplaying, Thoughts

Octarius Kommandos

minceandskirlie

Games Workshop released Killteam Octarius (Orktarius), the launch box for a new edition of Killteam two years ago in August 2021. This week I finally finished painting the Ork Kommandos from the box! Let’s not talk about the Krieg squad and how they’re painting is going, or the contents of the Beast Snaggas box released a month before the Octarius box…

For the Kommandos I’ve been using Vallejo Xpress Color paints and this is the first full unit I’ve painted with them. I’d not used contrast style paints before so it was an interesting process. They are definitely quicker to deliver an adequate finished paint job, than traditional layer paints. If you use the “slapchop” (prime->zenithal->contrast->highlight) method you can get a really strong result. But, I still found myself getting frustrated with the paints at times. To get a good contrast effect you need a lot of paint. Putting a lot of paint on the model makes it difficult to keep things tidy. I find I keep spotting small areas, nooks and crannies, where I’ve missed or that have wee splodges of the wrong paint on them.

Of course, being contrast paint, if there’s a mistake somewhere you can’t just paint over it as the paint is not opaque. So if you put the correct contrast paint over a mistake you can still see the mistake. I am not a neat painter at the best of times so I find this pretty infuriating. With traditional layer paints I rely on going back over the model at the end to tidy up all the bits where I’ve gone over the lines, or whacked my brush on to the wrong part of the model. On the other hand, maybe this will train me to be neater?

Anyway, I do like contrast paints and as a firm proponent of Vallejo over Citadel (cheaper, dropper bottle supremacy), it’s good to see the Xpress Color paints giving great results. It’s just a different experience to the classic method of painting a model. Are contrast paints now the default standard? No, I don’t think so. I think I’ll keep using them for scenery and troops (I have a lot of Beast Snaggas still to paint for example, but we weren’t going to talk about that) but will probably go back to layering for characters, vehicles and elite units. With one exception. I love the effect of the Xpress paint on the Ork skin. I’m sorely tempted to use that as my new standard for the Greenskins.

After all that paint chat, the important thing is that I have a fully painted Kommando unit and I even got a game in with them at the weekend. Not only that, but I won. A hard fought victory against some Ultramarine Intercessors. Mistakes were made at deployment as usual and most of my most special specialist boyz got shot clean off the board in the first four activations. But points win prizes and I managed to rack up enough objectives by the time we talked it out at the end of turn three I had an unassailable lead. And a large squad of dead Orks.