My training is primarily in Classical Music, a high and sophisticated art form. 🎩

There's immeasurable value in it, just like classical literature and the impressionist paintings of Cézanne. It's art that transcends the dizzying pace of change.

These days, though, I love folk music.

I think a lot of what's being made today falls into that category, even beyond music: Blog posts, podcasts, videos, illustrations, games...

It's not really the latest and greatest, or the most sophisticated that's exciting. Most nights, I just want to lay back and hear someone preach the truth to me.

Rebecca Solnit, by way of discovery for me by Austin Kleon:

Adults, like children, love hearing the great stories more than once, and most religions have prayers and narratives, hymns and songs that are seen as wells of meaning that never run dry. You can go lay down your sword and shield by the riverside one more time; there are always more ways to say how once you were blind and now can see.

High art typically has an emphasis on correctness, style, and form. Precision and training are required.

What makes folk music really good is that the bar for entry is lower. It doesn't take much to start a blog. Nowadays, you can grab your computer mic or camera and start talking on your opinions, sharing your own twist on something you read today, or a conversation you had.

On top of that, it's much more communal in that way. There's more room for personal expression when the form is simple. But a shared story or theme ties the choir together. No need to chose between joining in or expressing authentically, there's space for both.

If you have a way of sharing online, you have a way of making your own folk music. If you have a guitar and know three chords, you can start singing along.

There are a few why's behind my recent drawing habit. Here are a few:

• I grew up with an artist in the family
• My favorite>) stories are told through pictures
• Drawing as a medium has one of the widest spectrums for style
• Drawing, as a whole, has personal creativity baked in more so than music

Each of those points deserve a post for another day!

One of my biggest drivers, though:

I draw for my kids

I don't have any yet! Miranda and I haven't even tied the knot yet. But that is what's in mind as I'm exploring a new medium.

I'm aiming to embody a few things:

• Leading with Curiosity
• Creation driving learning
• Expanding dreams

A tall order for just messing around with a pencil. It's goofy, it's silly, I don't have chops, and it's one of the most important things I do everyday - along with music, software, and even blogging!

While I love arts and music education, it can fall short in these areas. Teaching to a curriculum squashes curiosity. Personal creation is an afterthought in band classrooms. And, by trading personal creativity and curiosity for curriculum, personal dreams are tossed.

That's not the case with all programs. But, as a parent, there's no one better to model the things that I believe are most important in art and music than, well, the parents.

Leading with Curiosity

We're hard wired to be curious about the world we live in. There's wonder and awe around every corner.

How often, though, are we limited by identity, fear of wasting time, or are simply too distracted?

Drawing was one of those things for me. "I can never do that!," "I'm a musician, not an artist," and "I won't ever be any good" were all limiting stories. But I loved it all the same and wanted to explore that love.

Maybe my kids won't feel the same about drawing. (Kids, generally, don't have that baggage.) As they continue to grow, though, I want to be someone who can firmly model following a thread of curiosity, even at the risk of looking amateur.

Creation Driving Learning

We're also all naturally creative. If you've ever uttered the phrase "I don't have a creative bone in my body," you're probably only thinking of a limited spectrum of creativity. Sure, drawing a picture is creative. But so is software. And so is marketing. And so is teaching. And so are spreadsheets. So is cooking.

We've all got it! It can be easy to shy away from it in new territory, though! The same limiting stories from above come in and can discourage.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned through drawing, piano, guitar, and writing music is this: You don't have to be good for it to be enjoyable. Being some level of competent helps with flow. But, before that, the process of gaining new skills easily replaces the pleasure of being in flow! My favorite sessions playing piano have been those where I'm absolutely stumbling through a new tune, but I'm getting to explore new chords, melodies, and the configuration of my hands at the keys. I'm reminding myself that every time I draw, and want that to be a driver in what ever my kids get hooked on.

Maybe you're worried about friends and colleagues seeing what you make and embarrassing yourself. Wonderful news - the people that actually matter, typically, are more concerned with the spirit rather than the form. A loose drawing of a friend is probably more endearing than a commissioned oil painting, because it captures the spirit of the maker.

With my kiddos, I want them to feel confident in their ability to bring something new into the world, even if it's with tools they're not as familiar with.

Expanding Dreams

Like I said — maybe my kids will think drawing is for lame Dads. But that's not the point in the long term.

At some point as we grow up, dreams of becoming astronauts evaporate into realistic plans of becoming an english teacher. In some ways, that's all fine and well. Rubber has to meet the road at some point.

Art, music, storytelling, acting - pretty much any creative craft, though, brings dreams to reality right away at a young age. My 7 year old son may not be able to practice being an astronaut at that age, but if he loves drawing, he can practice art and grow up learning to be a real artist with real craft.

That early seed of making a dream real sets the stage for a lifetime of confidence in their own ability to do just that with even more vision.

Once a given dream is realized, then there's what's next. Probably you've been fortunate enough to experience that - "I finally got my dream job!! ...now what? Is this it?"

No, I may not raise the next Aaron Blaise, but that's not at all the point. What ever it is, if I can be a model and help my children pursue and realize their dreams at a young age, that's a gift that will compound over their lives. Because their dreams will grow. "Being a cartoonist" evolves into "being an art teacher" evolves into "working in fundraising" evolves into "creating an arts education non-profit that serves their local community" - or any number of alternate paths.

By modeling that in my own life - by allowing even my tiniest seeds of my personal dreams to draw, to play instruments, make music, develop software, write essays, and serve people - I stand in a good position to help nurture what ever that looks like in the lives of my children.

TypeScript is MOSTLY just a way of bringing C# methodology to building applications in JavaScript.

Call me Captain Obvious! They are both Microsoft products.

But I've been learning C# and the similarities have been interesting!

Here are the things that are really nice about working in C# so far:

1. It's a compiled language. SO there are some errors that are caught at compile time, like undeclared variables.
2. Intelisense is strong here. Typing values right out the gate makes that all the easier.
3. Self documentation is pretty wicked in Visual Studio. Opening up the Assembly Browser gives you access to ALL the properties and methods for objects and classes that are used in your project.
4. Enums! From the TypeScript docs: "Enums are one of the few features TypeScript has which is not a type-level extension of JavaScript."
5. Interfaces and Generic Types also are a borrowed C# concept!

The only exception might be that C# is a classic object oriented programming language where JavaScript and TypeScript mostly fake that part, being much more dynamic. Arguably, though, some of the tooling already gets you pretty close — component based frameworks, for example.

The "TypeScript is just JavaScript" sentiment has strangely made TypeScript difficult to learn for me. Similar to Node vs ES6 — the fact that they're so similar makes it difficult to remember that your brain needs to work in a different paradigm. It helps when I'm learning about Types in a language that is strongly typed from the get-go.

So I'll say this much: learning C# has been a really fun way to also learn TypeScript.

In class driven languages like, say, C# — a way of storing utility methods is through a Static Method.

Say you're working in JavaScript. A great ol' example of this is the Object.keys() method.

Objects is the constructor. keys the static method.

(technically not a class since JavaScript only mimics classes. More details on that in You Don't Know JS by Kyle Simpson and contributors.)

In JavaScript, you can access the method on the constructor through dot notation. But when creating an object, that object doesn't have a keys method.

const pizzaData = new Object();

Object.keys(pizzaData) // √

pizzaData.keys // X

The benefits?

Largely memory and data size. Not every object needs to recreate the method for each instance. We really only need one source of truth for a utility method like this.

Not all that different from abstracting a handler in React components. Does each input component need to have its own onChange method instantiated with the component? Or can the same method be passed down from a parent prop.

So a pattern for working with static methods could be:

• If you need a method that can access the data directly on an instance? Store the method with the instance.
• If need something that converts data from an instance, or is largely utilitarian in function, a static method could be a good option.

I'm thinking lots on the transient nature of things.

Especially in art, software, and entertainment, but y'know, everything is changing all the time.

My recent pieces of evidence:

• All things are acquirable, including blogs and podcasts
• There are genres of games I grew up playing that have fallen from the limelight into niche-status. Platformers comes to mind.
• Though, Point and Click Adventure Games have hit me really hard lately. LucasArts closed in 2021. Humongous Entertainment, maybe a juvenile example, but one from my childhood, had a short 15 year run before closing due to both hand drawing animation becoming to expensive and their target age range of young kids growing up quicker, wanting to move on to games marketed for older kids.
• On the topic of 2D Animation: Austin Kleon wrote in response to the Oral History of Lilo & Stitch. Kleon writes about how you know it's good when you have to ask "how did this even get made??" and Lilo & Stitch was one of those for Disney. The Florida studio that developed it, though, was closed only a year after, and marked the major shift for Disney away from 2D animation.
• Austin, Texas.
• Man, even the climbing gym I go to was just acquired!

Maybe it has to do with my age. Large slices in the pie chart of my life have been pretty consistent and sturdy. Same group of friends k-12. Same colleagues in college. Even in teaching music, working with the same folks. It helps that my medium — teaching classical music — was a backwards looking genre. There were discoveries to be made, but they weren't the "ground moving underneath you" kind of discoveries.

Maybe it's the technological era. 300 MB on a CD ROM was a lot back in the day. Software was shipped on floppy disks 25 years ago. Now GitHub can help me write my unit tests.

Lots of feelings to be felt here:

It's cool! New stuff all the time!

Or...

It's a bummer! They don't make it like they used to!

I'm somewhere in the middle. Mostly, I'm becoming more aware of how important creative work is as a response to shifting sands.

In grad school, I read Making Your Life As An Artist by Andrew Simonet. Lots of great practical advice, though the opening of the book has a beautiful explanation of why all art making is important:

With food, there have long ben seed savers and farmers who reject the standardization of our diet. They grow things that don't fit with industrial agriculture. They preserve the seends for plants we may need someday.

This is what artists do culturally. We provide the wide spectrum nutrition that the soul needs and the Entertainment Industry ignores. We save cultural seeds, the DNA of ideas and ways of seeing that we may need tomorrow.

Or in 20 years.

Or 2,000 years.

Sometimes it looks like blogging.

Sometimes it's playing the sax.

Sometimes it's games.

Sometimes it's art.

Sometimes it's music.

The nice thing is it's not just high art that's worth preserving, so is the folk music.

All the same, when making something that comes from a place of authentic curiosity and fascination, it's a way of casting a vote for the staying power of that idea.

You bring your own intersections of the different moving cultural pieces, and we get a double wammy - preserving meaningful culture and creating something new in the process.

A little late, but here are some quick little easter sketches!

Listen on Youtube

Been LOVING this new instrument!

Doing creative work gets pitched as this "Exertion of the ego" or "One bold director's vision." Iwata himself said "Creativity, after all, is an expression of the ego."

Allow me to be over 30 and bust out the phrase "But, the older I get...":

The older I get, the more I feel inspired by being tied to a lineage. The more it feels ennobling to be a part of a larger legacy of craft, expression, and plane ol' messing around.

It happens anytime I go to an art museum... like this weekend! We're all moved by an artists' ability to draw expressive strokes on a page, paint a bowl, or carve figurines.

Take that in any creative dimension you want. I have a few more:

Every time I sit down to code, I feel my spirit jumping down into the trenches with many folks I admire. Those spirits that developed video games in the 80s and 90s in Japan, or those developers who programmed the websites I visited as a kid. Or my favorite: my dad — who was always tinkering with custom built PC's while I was growing up.

As a musician, well, there are multiple!! I sat with Bach and Yo-yo Ma while learning the first cello suite on bari sax. (An offensive idea to some, I'm sure, but wildly fun for me!) When I play piano, a range of jazz musicians, classical pianists, and composers sit at the bench next to me.

Lately, my favorite is thinking of Walt Stanchfield, who would "spend an inordinate amount of time at the piano" only to go on and sketch tirelessly. A very personal fit for me, who also is spending his days sketching and banging at the keyboard.

On a grander scale, all of that connects us with generations spanning humanity of people who added flare to simple items and decorated their time with song.

Here's W. A. Matheau's essay on originality:

...You realize that what is "original" essentially rearranges the familiar: the same ancient notes and gestures done over again in meaningful new ways. You realize that only the fingerprints are yours, and that this was true for Beethoven and his fingerprints, and Bird and his. You see how everyone is on the same pilgrimage, and how there is no racing on such a road as this. You desire on thing only: To be a conscientious traveler.

Phew! What a relief! No need to be original. Just authentic. Instead, we're all unique intersections of influences.

While that leads to different sensitivities and different eyes for beauty, we're all united in one way or another to our lineages. And we are continuing the conversation for generations by contributing in the first place.

My voice may not be entirely unique. Instead, I think it's more noble to be the vessel through which so many traditions and eyes for beauty in the world continue on. In that way, we all live on.

An adventure into the wooded grove 🌲🍃

Playing with a few sounds from Ocarina of Time and Chrono Trigger!

Purchase on 🤘 Bandcamp and Listen on 🙉 Spotify or any of your favorite streaming services!

Barley and Board in Denton is pretty yummy, y'all!

Listen on Youtube

The Faber books have a knack for really stately pieces 👑

Sorry for the fake out at the end. 🙂 Best experienced in a loop!

A great deal of data flexibility is made available through MongoDB's aggregations.

When it comes to SQL, that same ability to query and combine data is a first-class process by nature of the language itself.

Combine that with a scripting language like python, and the possibilities continue to open up!

Here are the basics to getting started with passing SQL queries in from Python.

Setting Up

A bit of installing needs to be done first:

• You may need to pip install mysqlclient so that the ORM can pick up your mysql config.
• You may also need to download mysql through homebrew.
• Lastly, I think it's helpful to have the MySQL workbench GUI.

To setup mysql on the command line after install, you'll want to login with this command:

$ mysql -u root -p

Leaving the password flag blank by default on first login, though this can be changed later.

SQLAlchemy & MySQL Workbench

SQLAlchemy will be the ORM of choice for this post. There are other great options, though I personally chose this because it has first class support in the Pandas method DataFrame.to_sql().

The nice thing about using an ORM is you have access to methods that simplify queries down to a single call.

#Equivalent to 'SELECT * FROM schools'
query = db.select([schools])

Sometimes, though, you have to open up the hood and write more intricate queries yourself.

Writing the Script

Ok! The fun part begins!

In an environment variable, set your connection url:

mysql+mysqldb://root:PASSWORD@localhost/DBNAME

Above I've already created a DB, so I'm skipping that step here. You can programmatically do this through Python and the steps looking similar to create_db_connection below.

We'll pass that url into our create_db_connection method:

from sqlalchemy import create_engine
from sqlalchemy.sql import text
from sqlalchemy.orm import Session

def create_db_connection(url):
  connection = None
  try:
    connection = create_engine(url)
    print("MySQL Database Connection Successful 👍")
  except Error as err:
    print(f"Error: '{err}'")
  
  return connection

While we're at it, let's write our method for executing a query and reading a result:

def execute_query(connection, query):
  try:
    with connection.connect() as session:
      session.execute(query)
      print('Query Successful')
  except Error as err:
      print(f"Error: '{err}")

def read_query(connection, query):
  result = None
  try:
      with connection.connect() as session:
        result = session.execute(query)
        return result
  except Error as err:
      print(f"Error: '{err}'")

If you'd like to pass in values dynamically, you can use the text module. Here's an example form this article:

from sqlalchemy.sql import text
with engine.connect() as con:

    data = ( { "id": 1, "title": "The Hobbit", "primary_author": "Tolkien" },
             { "id": 2, "title": "The Silmarillion", "primary_author": "Tolkien" },
    )

    statement = text("""INSERT INTO book(id, title, primary_author) VALUES(:id, :title, :primary_author)""")

    for line in data:
        con.execute(statement, **line)

For us, though, a raw string works just as well:

pop_client = """
INSERT INTO client VALUES
(101, 'Starbucks', '123 Cool St., Dallas TX', 'Fast Food'),
(102, 'Cava', '27 Yum Dr., Austin TX', 'Lunch'),
(103, 'Flavor Town',  '20 W Good Food Lane, Houston TX', 'Dine In'),
"""

One reason to use MySQL workbench here is that it's WAY easier to debug through their console than to do it within our Python program. So, as you're writing queries, I would recommend giving them a whirl in the GUI first.

After confirming the above insert works in the GUI, you can clear it by truncating the table:

TRUNCATE TABLE client

From here, it's as easy as calling our methods:

connection = create_db_connection(url)

q1 = text("""
SELECT *
FROM client;
""")

execute_query(connection, pop_client)
results_first = read_query(connection, q1)

for row in results_first:
  print(row)

Reading and writing, done! From here, the only limits are your SQL savvy and your python chops.

True artists create in the genre of their time. Sooooo I'm going to write about AI!

Some of the AI demos are pretty impressive!

What I've seen though, mostly, feels like playing those old point-and-click adventure games. You have to keep trying different solutions to a puzzle just to make the game happy. Similar is true with having AI generate content for you.

It's a tool, but it's not quite the "steal your job" kind of automation that's been expected. At least, from a knowledge-work perspective.

Josh Comeau makes a great point at this juncture about tasks v jobs:

My personal belief is that for the most part, working professionals will find ways to integrate this technology into their workflows, increasing their productivity and value. Certain tasks might be delegated to an AI, but not many jobs.

I appreciate that GitHub's AI product is named "Copilot." It seems more fitting and true to the nature of most AI tools. It's not going to do the job for you, but it's a means of getting an idea started or synthesizing information.

Dave and Chris speak to this point on ShopTalk Show (also, my source for Josh's article!) AI seems to be good at synthesizing and expanding on certain points. Generating reports, namely, or summarizing notes.

But, in that sense, blog articles that are only a Google search away can accomplish a similar task.

So maybe that's it. AI is largely a synthesis tool that is only one step removed from the Google "I'm feeling lucky" button of old.

But it still takes a human being to understand context, style, form, and to solve the innumerable problems that take more than a few Google searches.

Does that takeaway from how impressivene or usefull AI is as a tool? I don't think so. AI still unloads the initial effort of sifting through content.

If anything, the fact that AI is not quite a quantum leap in productivity is a testament to how AMAZING our current resources are.