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Today's soundtrack is Xasthur: To Violate the Obvious. This morning, I'm reading the first part of the second chapter of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, "Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion." We know that having a free press is one of the ways that we can protect ourselves from a "corrupt or tyrannical government" (p. 27); neither should the government have the power to silence the free press, nor should the common man have a right to silence it, even if taken to a majori

Today's soundtrack is Arvid: Goodnightdaydream., an indie psychadelic pop release that I came across last month in this Reddit thread and added to my Randomizer's album list. Today is the day that the Randomizer has pulled it up. As always, if you want to check out all the music that I've listened to while blogging, check out the "Music I've Blogged To" playlist on Spotify. This morning, I'm learning about diabetes in an online course. Disclaimer: I'm just writing down my not

Today's soundtrack is Wintersun: The Forest Seasons, a beautifully atmospheric metal album. This afternoon, I exchanged the Boss Katana Mini that I bought last week for a Line 6 Spider 15 modeling amp. I thought that the Katana's distortion and delay would be enough effects for a little practice amp; however, I found that though the distortion was great, I was disappointed with the limitations on the delay effect, especially because there was no reverb option. I set up the am

Today's soundtrack is Primordial: The Gathering Wilderness. This afternoon, I'm learning how to "Use CSS Selectors to Style Elements." In the last lesson, I learned how to use CSS to change the colour of a specific HTML element. But today, I've learned that that isn't the most efficient way to use CSS. The best way to use CSS is to use it to set up consistency across the page. At the top of the code, best practice is to set up an opening and closing "style" block. <style>

Today's soundtrack is Jonathan Davis: Black Labyrinth, the lead singer of Korn's solo album. After setting up my Reaper template last night, this morning, I continued working on my mix, finding the right amp settings and drum reverbs and compressions on the different parts of the kit. I threw a few things together and came up with a little grindcore-style piece - click the video below to give it a listen, and let me know what you think! #JonathanDavis #Korn

The French playwright Moliere once famously said, "Everything that is not prose is verse, and everything that is not verse is prose" (citation). There are two ways one can write: prose and verse. We've all written prose, whether we knew it or not. Prose is how we communicate in the day-to-day. Prose is how we express our emotions, needs, and desires. Prose is even how we send a text asking a friend out for drinks. Prose is how we think and how we talk and how we dream. But we

Today's soundtrack is Old Man's Child: In Defiance of Existence. Now that I've completed my metal project, I'm ready to get started on the next big thing. I spent my time today setting up a new template in Reaper, setting up a workflow for my next project. My friend Marcus recently taught me a lot about using compressors and limiters in my workflow, so I've been playing around with the Klanghelm DC1A Compressor in conjunction with the LoudMax brick wall limiter and I've been

Today's soundtrack is Eldamar: A Dark Forgotten Past, an album that sounds to me like a direct descendant of Burzum's classic "Filosofem." This evening, I'm starting the Basic CSS section on freeCodeCamp. CSS, which stands for "Cascading Style Sheets," is used to control what a webpage looks like. Unlike HTML, CSS is case-sensitive. The standard way of using CSS is to use an external style sheet with the CSS commands, then point those commands at different parts of the webpag

Today's soundtrack is Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Twin Peaks wouldn't be the same without Badalamenti's haunting compositions. This morning, I'm doing the next lesson on justinguitar.com: "One Minute Changes - Stage 4." The chord sequence I worked on is C to G7 to C7 to F7 to E to B7, then again in reverse: from B7 to E to F7 to C7 to G7 to C. The chord change that I had the most trouble with was switching from E to B7, as B7 is a new chord to me. #Jus

Today's soundtrack is Tech N9ne: The Storm. This evening, I'm learning how to use HTML to "Define the Head and Body of an HTML Document" (link). We use the head of an HTML page to provide a web page's metadata; the body is where we put the information that users will see. Metadata, which according to techopedia.com's definition is simply "data about data" (citation), includes "link, meta, title, and style" (citation). I quickly learned that the "head" and "body" tags are NOT

Today's soundtrack is Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention: We're Only In It For the Money, an album that I've always wanted to give a proper listen. Many years ago, I listened to another of Zappa's albums - I don't remember which one - and it wasn't at all what I expected. I'd heard so many good things about what an incredible musician he is, and he had a kind of rockstar look - so when the sound didn't fit with what I'd been expecting, I shut it off. Since that time, ho

Today's soundtrack is Slayer: Divine Intervention. This evening, I'm reading the first chapter of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, an essay called "Introductory." Mill says that this essay is about civil or social liberty, which is "the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual" (p. 11): the age-old "struggle between Liberty and Authority" (p. 11). Historically, this struggle was between subjects and rulers. The rulers had

Today's soundtrack is Marcel Tyberg: Symphony No. 2, which is a gorgeous album composed by an Austrian man whose grandmother registered him as a Jew; he was killed in Nazi death camps (citation). This version of the recording was done by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. This afternoon, I'm picking up where I left off on the free guitar lessons at justinguitar.com. Before I started this blog, I'd worked through his white section (he lays out his difficulty like the karate b

Today's soundtrack is Insinnerator: Hypothermia, whose sound harkens to the classic thrash metal bands of the 90s. Energetic and a lot of fun. This morning, I'm reading the introduction of John Grant's An Introduction to Viking Mythology (available in here). Vikings were both chivalrous and barbaric; they had devised philosophies and mythologies that excused "the most bestial behaviour" (p. 6), though the people who lived in Viking villages only condoned these behaviours if t

It's been a year in the making, and I'm so proud to announce the official release of my new album Everstorm's Eve: "Cephalopod, Eater öv the Void". I've done a lot of reading and research while preparing to write and record this project. It has lyrical themes of astrophysics, calculus, space exploration, and (of course) cephalopods (the classification that the octopus, squid, and nautilus belong to). Musically, this was a stretch for me to record. I've always been a metalhea