Month: November 2025

MY MINIMAL DJ BROWSER APP WITH MIDI CONTROL

Modern DJ software is bloated, and way too much for what I need, so I built this minimal DJ web app with Google’s Gemini + ChatGPT. It’s an HTML page that I load locally into Google Chrome with keyboard and midi controls.

I need this to make mixes of my HUNTERTHEN music, available to those who buy the full albums on Bandcamp. I make “soundscapes for your interplanetary commute,” which will either lull you to sleep or help you get your work done.

Next on my shopping list is something like this, the GRID3 PBF4 4-Button + Pot + Fader MIDI Controller. I really only need two sliders, but having four will be nice, and the extra buttons can be mapped to start / stop each track.

WAKE UP, IT’S STILL BURING DOWN

From my interview with Thought Enthusiast in 2024:

I love seeing the mask pulled off from this big corporate con-game, where these platforms made it seem like a good idea to outsource our audience and community building on their spaces rather than our own. They got us hooked on the click traffic, then turned the screws and made us pay to reach our own audience, and then oops, now we’re all sort of waking up and seeing that we built our brands and systems in a house of cards, and the shit is falling down real quick.

Read the full interview here.

BEFORE 1000 TRUE FANS

I started my Social Media Escape Club newsletter in 2021 with an imported email list of 19 people.

Maria Popova started Brain Pickings “in 2006 as an email to seven friends.”

These days I have 6,600 email subscribers, the biggest email list I’ve ever had.

Then I have around 100 paying members, which is also the largest paying membership I’ve ever had.

There’s a big distance between zero and Kevin Kelly’s “1000 true fans” dream, but it all starts somewhere, one person at a time.

There’s no one-size-fits-all path, I don’t think, because everyone we serve is human, and as humans we’re messy and unpredictable. So when people ask me about finding their “1000 true fans,” I usually ask if they found their 10, or their 50 yet.

You’re gonna learn so much with the smaller groups of people, lessons you’re going to need to learn before you even think of hitting 1000.

SOCIAL MEDIA WOULDN’T HELP ME

Wes: “…just bumming out my sponsors, you know. Like, they’d probably appreciate it if I drove the feed a little more… that would help them out a lot. I see that aspect — but it wouldn’t help me.”

That’s the big thing with not being on social media that a lot of people forget. That if we’re not staring at our phones for hours a day, then we’re doing something else. In Wes’s case, that’s obviously skateboarding, reading magazines, taking photos.

What happens when we reallocate those moments everyday? Moments add up to minutes and then hours, and for what? Like Wes says in this video, the internet never ends, there’s always more to read, view, watch.

A magazine ends. The day ends. The album ends.

Let things end.

(link, Dino)

BLOGGING IS TOTALLY NOT DEAD

From Josh Spector on LinkedIn (thanks Sarah B. for letting me know):

Blogging isn’t dead – it’s hiding.

Last night I spent a little time seeking out old school blogs and was pleasantly surprised at what I found.

Bloggers I had read regularly decades ago like Jason Kottke and Tina Eisenberg are still at it and still sharing interesting, valuable stuff I hadn’t seen elsewhere.

And I discovered bloggers who were new to me that immediately captured my attention – people like Seth Werkheiser.

I was even reminded that bloggers who I do still read regularly like Seth Godin and Austin Kleon have tons of stuff on their blogs that I had missed.

Equally interesting is that most of these bloggers are barely – if at all – using social media.

It’s funny, because I wanted to reply, but I don’t have a LinkedIn account anymore! I tracked down his email to say hello.

Absolutely humbled to have my name anywhere near the other names he mentioned in this post, sheesh! Like, what?!

But yeah – blogging was at one point deemed dead by the VC bros who bought up a bunch of the blogs we used to read, crammed them full of ads and pop ups, then wondered why no one visited anymore (I was living in NYC and working at AOL Music in 2008, I’ve seen things).

Then the VC and content moved to social media because it was a “cleaner reading experience,” and well, we’ve all seen how that turned out!

I set up this blog in 2018, and I’ve been “re-stocking it” with posts and photos dating back to 2004 from Flickr and assorted outlets. I figured since I deleted all my social media profiles, I might as well have one space for everything I’m doing.

SEEKING QUIET INPUTS

Great quote from ‘All we watch are millionaires,’ from Dense Discovery:

“Seeking out lesser-known voices isn’t just an act of cultural curation; it’s a philosophical stance, a refusal to let attention be the only metric that matters. Because the most interesting stuff usually happens on the margins.”

Link via Input Diet by Manuel Moreale

Manuel goes on to say, “I’m starting to believe that a phoneless life is, for me, the ultimate goal.”

Remember when people used to say they didn’t own a TV? Or a car?!? Someday not owning a phone is gonna feel the same way.

WALKING TEN MILES A DAY FOR NINE WEEKS

So it’s been nine full weeks of walking 10 miles per day. Over three hours per day on my feet, usually 2.5-4 miles at a time, a few times a day. Some days I ever the 10 miles wrapped up by 5pm, other days it’s a little later (as you can tell by the photo above).

I usually walk without music. Sometimes I’ll listen to a podcast. I guess I should listen to more audiobooks or something, but right now I like the singular focus.

When I have ideas, I’ll usually dictate them into my phone via Wisper Flow (affiliate link). When I get home, I’ll move those notes where they need to go, sometimes as to-do items, or ideas for upcoming Social Media Escape Club posts.

I can’t say I’ve lost a ton of weight, but I feel lighter, more mobile, clothes fit a bit better. Overall I think it’s the mental win each day, that I can do this physical thing day after day with my 50th birthday just a few months away.

NO WATCH

As I descend deeper into the undoing, I’ve landed on my watch. Earlier this year I bought a nice Coros watch to monitor my elevation gained in real time on my runs. These last two months, though, I’ve been deep into “just walking,” even though I’m covering 10 miles per day (I believe today is day 56 of 10 miles per day).

So for each walk, I hit a button on my watch, which has to calibrate the GPS and my heart rate. At the end of each walk, I have to hit stop on the watch, let it sync with the Coros app on my phone, which then syncs with Strava, which is where all my running and (lately) walking data is stored (since 2016).

Today, though, I left the watch at home. For each walk today (a total of four) I tracked the activity on my iPhone via the Strava app. Hit start, lock my iPhone, and throw it in my bag.

Now instead of two apps to track my walk, and two devices, it’s just one. This also means keeping track of charging one device, rather than two.

This season of undoing has me rethinking everything. It sounds small, but I’m out there nearly 24 hours a week, and every bit of mental clutter adds up. Simplifying what I have to manage for these walks feels like reclaiming a little peace at the end of the day.