Opinion/Editorial/Life

2023 Podcast Wrap-Up

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I listen to a lot of Podcasts. I’ve been doing it for a very, very long time. Some have come and gone and some have been stalwarts in my line up. I’ve used a variety of Podcatcher apps, but this year, my current one, AntennaPod, gave me a little mini wrap up for the year. It seemed like a good time to talk about my Podcast habits.

This list has no surprises for me anyway. Other than I subscribed to ClubTWIT halfway through the year, so I kind of wonder if things would change any with the non Club versions of the shows added in. Probably not. Both TWIT shows are on top, and I listen to every episode of both.

This Week in Tech

I’ve listened to TWIT for longer than any other podcast. Since the mid 2000s sometime, probably around 2005 or 2006 or something. Quite possibly from the beginning. When I started listening, Leo was doing the shows from his home in proper Podcast fashion. There was no Brickhouse or video feeds or anything.

I listen to every episode except the yearly best-of shows, mostly because I have already heard all of it before, since I listen to every episode.

Windows Weekly

Another long term mainstay. I am pretty sure when I started listening, it was just Paul and Leo. Mary Jo Foley had not come on yet, and these days she has left and been replaced by Richard Campbell. I really enjoy Paul’s takes a lot, they tend to align with a lot of my own.

Random side note, a few years ago Paul Thurrott did a give away to clean out a bunch of stuff, and I got a copy of some version of Mac OSX from him. Which I find incredibly amusing because, you know, it’s Mac OS, not Windows. I kind of wish I could have gotten him to sign it for extra LOLZ.

WTF@TFW

I had a different Transformers podcast i used to listen to, that I can’t remember the name of at all now, but it ended, so I replaced it with WTF@TFW, which I’ve been listening to for a few years now. They used to alternate each week with different hosts, but one pair of hosts decided to stop doing the show, which kind of sucked because, while I like the line up now, I kind of preferred the other group, because I really liked Gogdog and Seth Buzzard.

If Books Could Kill

One that has become pretty popular recently. The two hosts basically mock a bunch of “self help” style books. They also have a Patreon only show that is a bit more of a broader range of topics which I also subscribe to.

Community Voices

A podcast from the local NPR station where the hosts talk to various people in the community. Of the shows I currently subscribe and listen to, which is basically just this list, I skip the most of these. Sometimes I just don’t find the topics interesting. Often they talk about local food places or music events in the area. It’s also more local to Springfield than Decatur, but it’s local enough.

Language

2023 – Language Learning and A Five Year Duolingo Streak

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I’ve posted a few times on this blog, sometimes in passing about my language learning goals. How language has always been interesting, but then, I feel like I find EVERYTHING at least somewhat interesting, which is kind of a curse. In 2023, I vowed to become, not fluent, but at least, “pretty good” with at least two other languages by 2030. My New Decade’s Resolution, among a few other (I have not learned any piano yet).

Duo does Year in Review deals, like a lot of apps. Here’s mine.

I’ve actually been super slacking on my learning this year, sometimes barely doing one lesson each day. This has become even more apparent because my Aunt and Uncle recently started using Duo and we became, whatever Duolingo Friends would be called. My uncle made like 2x my yearly total XP within a few months. Granted, they are both retired and thus have more time to learn. Also they both travel, they recently took a trip to Europe, which I am pretty sure inspired their learning.

At least I still have them beat for the streak, because that one increases at the same rate for everyone. Technically by the end of the year I was at a 1826 day streak.

Exactly 5 years.

I’ve primarily been learning Spanish in those 5 years, and the middle half of this last year, though Duo keeps changing the tree layout (it’s been like 3 layouts since I started) and it’s a little disenfranchising when it happens because it feels like I’m losing progress. I actually have an achievement for getting level 1 nodes in an entire tree. But that was like 2 revisions ago when each note had 5 levels to it. The current tree is literally a path with no choices, which sucks because I always would skip around the pain in the ass verb crap en Español.

I started off the year still on my Norwegian kick. I’m less excited about that one these days, mostly because it’s less practical in a lot of ways.

For the last month or so, I’ve picked up my third choice to learn with Duo, Japanese. I’ve actually been enjoying learning again, so it was a good course. I’m not super sure Duo is the best choice for a beginner to learn Japanese with, some of the methods don’t feel like they are very clear on some thing, but fortunately for me, I took Japanese in High School. While I don’t remember a lot of it, but it feels like “riding a bike.”

It’s all very familiar, and I breezed through a lot of the “learn the Hiragana page.”

I don’t only learn using Duo, but it’s the main conduit. For Spanish I’ve read through some books in Spanish, and occasionally watch movies in Spanish. I’m still not great at the hearing part, but I’m pretty good at the reading part. Case and point a bit, on New Years Ever, I was poking around on streaming looking for some New Years shows, and Hulu had a stream from New York going. The part I caught was doing a ball drop for the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, and was almost entirely in Spanish. With the closed captioning on, I could read and understand the majority of what was going on. Which was fun.

Anyway, I don’t plan to drop Duo anytime soon, and I have more than the normal number of Streak Freezes because it occasionally gives you bonus freezes, if I get caught up and can’t learn. I’ll probably do most of 2024 in Japanese over Spanish though, I kind of feel like I’ve plateaued there for a bit.

Listening Habits

My Music Listening Habits for 2023

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It’s that time again, when I discuss my music habits for the year, or at least, parts of it that seem interesting, to me. I’ll just start off with the 5×5 chart, from my Last.fm scrobbles. I had some Spotify Wrapped stuff too but it doesn’t capture everything and was only for like 3 months of listening, so it’s kind of worthless.

So, a bit of an interesting surprise, Wolf Alice’s Blue Weekend was my top album for the year. I guess I was listening to that one a lot more than I really thought I had been. The same goes for Paramore’s This is Why. This is Why is kind of in there twice too, because they put out a second version where every track was done or remixed by an artist that was not Paramore.

I’m also a bit surprised how high Aurora’s The Gods We Can Touch ranked, at number three. I’ve always kind of considered it my least favorite of Aurora’s four albums. In less surprising areas are Hot Mess from Dodie and CHVRCHES, The Bones of What You Believe. Bones is definitely from the tenth-anniversary release. Hot Mess actually shows up twice, probably because before Spotify I was listening to the copy I made off the Vinyl version I own, which was tagged as Hot Mess (RSD Vinyl).

Related to CHVRCHES is Lauren Mayberry, with a single. Shame is one song, and it’s number 6. The album I believe is supposed to drop sometime in January, and I can almost guarantee it will be in a top spot for next year’s wrap-up, if not at number one.

Things get a bit more interesting later in the list here outside the top ten reliable when we get into the whole “potential usurpers” area. At number 14 is Ben Fold’s latest album, What Matters Most. Ben Folds has become a bit of a weird piece in my music listening. I’m not entirely sure I am super into his music, though it’s all pretty enjoyable. But I find Ben Folds as a person really interesting. I’ve been watching a bunch of his interviews on YouTube where he talks to all sorts of creative types and talks about the music-making process and it’s all very fascinating. My last real exposure to Ben Folds was way back in High School when Ben Folds Five and Brick were on the radio all the time. I don’t really being super into that song either, I was a lot more into rock and alternative in that time period. I’ve recently signed up for his soon to be ended Patreon, so I can snag the archive content and give it a listen.

At number 15 right after is Fizz with The Secret to Life. Fizz is a sort of super band collaboration between Dodie, Orla Garland and a couple of others that I had not really listened to previously. As much as I really like Orla and Dodie, I slept on this album because I just found the acid trip aesthetics of it to be really off-putting. But I decided I really should at least give it a try and it’s really good. Like super great good. I wish I had started listening sooner.

The last couple I want to point out here, feel a bit related. Let’s start with Raffaella, at number 20, with Live Raff Love (Act I). It’s technically an EP I think, I never really got the distinction honestly aside from EPs have less tracks. Anyway, Raff has been a consistent mainstay in my library since first hearing about her back in 2019 when I went to see Sigrid. Live Raff Love (Act II) I believe is slated for January, and I’m looking forward to it.

Like Raff, I want to mention Claud, to which I was pretty much introduced in a similar way, Claud was one of the acts performing at the little festival thing where I saw Lauren Mayberry’s solo show. Like Raff, I listened to a bunch of their music before the actual show and enjoyed it, and I enjoy it even more after watching them perform live. I am pretty sure at least half my plays on that Paramore remix of This is Why, is Claud’s rendition of Crave.

Which leads me to my usual predictions for next year. Claud and Raff will likely rank up there. Lauren will probably top the list. Sigrid I think has a new album in the works and has been making a bit of a come back in my listening this year, so I am predicting she will be pretty high. Fizz will probably be around, I’m not sure they will go much higher though after a whole year. Ben Folds will probably remain, though I doubt he will break the top ten. The only one on the list above I can say probably won’t return is Maisie Peters. I enjoy her music, but I don’t really know how to describe it, but I don’t really like her. Seems a bit too bitchy in a sort of “I think I’m better than everyone” sort of way.

Weekly Wrap Up

Weekly Wrap Up (12.17.2023 to 12.23.2023)

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It’s that time of year again, when everyone is cheerful and celebrating and partying and buying gifts. That’s right, it’s my birthday. And these days, there isn’t a lot of partying or buying gifts. Which isn’t really a big deal. I have long gotten to the age when I really don’t care much for all of that.

It’s always kind of been a sort of, blessing and a curse having a birthday this time of year. On one hand, you end up being around more family more often so you end up with more “token gifts”. Often you at least get like, a cake or something, as a secondary dessert to whatever party was already occuring. It also just gets overshadowed by this other dude’s birthday.

It’s also just more meaningful when you are young, like I said, these days that doesn’t matter much these days. It’s just another year, another day. I am not even that old yet, though all things considered, I am likely on the downturn of “halfway”. I should probably buy a motorcycle or a fishing boat or go skydiving or something…

Mortality is kind of weird. I am not sure I really want to think about all that at the moment.

Anyway…

It’s going to be weird at work in about a week. We don’t really take any trips or anything and so back in like, September or October, I started doing math with my vacation days and found that I had a LOT of them. I have not worked a full 5 day work week in months. I only worked 3 days this week and will only work 2 next week. But starting next year, it’s back to normal.

I have also signed up for this CCNA course through work, so for the first few weeks, I get to work, then come home and do like 5 hours of virtual training each night. Its not paid time, which is fine, the cost is covered though. One of the nice sort of perks through work is that I get access to a few paid training deals, and we are allowed to do the training out of hours if we want.

I am almost always trying to learn something new. I almost always have at least one online course that I am periodically working on. Currently, I am doing a Javascript course, a C# Course I have kind of abandoned, a Godot4 course which has been fun, making cheesy little games, and more recently an AI/Machine Learning course.

There is also my constant Duolingo learning as well. I gave up on Norwegian for now. And Spanish was getting boring again. I wanted to try the new Music course Duo is rolling out but it’s iOS only for now. So I picked up my third planned language, Japanese.

I feel like, Duo’s Japanese course, is not super great, if you know nothing about Japanese. Fortunately, I have picked it up pretty quickly because I studied Japanese back in High School. It’s been over 25 years and I don’t remember a lot of it, but it’s coming back and it has helped me breeze through learning the Katakana and Kanji, and I was already familiar with the basic sentence structure concepts. Duo is full of new concepts and words though, since early parts of Duo courses are definitely geared towards “I am going to be a tourist”. My High School learning was more, “I am learning the language.”

Speaking of Japanese, last Sunday, I went and saw Godzilla Minus One. It’s fantastic, I recommend seeing it. I am looking forward to going to the black-and-white version that was recently announced. It has a lot of feel of the older Godzilla films, without being quite as cheesy “guy in a rubber suit and cardboard buildings,” to it. It also isn’t all “action drama” like the US-made Legendary films Godzilla. Though I really like the Legendary movies and that version a lot. Godzilla is really terrifying in it, for not really being the main focus of the film.

Anyway, time to wrap up, I hope to do the usual bloggy thing of some yearly wrap-up posts soon. Also, I did not forget about Advent of Code, I just didn’t do it this year.

Have a Happy Birthday to all.

No wait, that’s not right…

Happy Festivus!

Other Photos

2023 Decatur Downtown Postcard Signs

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Every year the city has around 20 or so giant postcards laid out downtown around a little park. Every year I try to take a walk down there and take some photos of the ones I find interesting for one reason or another. They are numbered, I think maybe there is some voting involved. I have never voted. They are created by local businesses and groups.

I just thought this one looked nice. It’s from the Staley Museum. Named for A.E. Staley, who was the founder of A.E. Staley Manufacturing. There are several things named for him in the city here, the large Staley Building down of Eldorado, the museum, Stayley Credit union, probably others. Decatur is very big on Agriculture and the Stayley business was making corn starch.

One of the local animal shelters put this one out. I thought the animals were cute. I am not sure I’ve ever been there, we do kitten fostering sometimes, but we do it through the County Animal Shelter.

I have no idea who sponsored this one, but hey, who doesn’t love dragons.

This one is from the Children’s Museum of Illinois, which is here in town. With its Nutcracker themed art that’s pretty nice. Nice aside from the almost unfortunately placement of that rat tail. I thought at first the dancer had a weird tentacle leg.

Not a lot of them have 3D elements, and I thought the stained glass effect was nice. It is from Holy Family Parish & Schools, which I assume is a church.

Theater 7 is a local theater group. I’ve been to a few of their shows and one of their members used to be a coworker when I worked at the TV station. This one is advertising their upcoming A Christmas Story Musical. Which we’re going to see in a week or so.

I’m not sure who sponsored this one but that old bus terminal pictured there is the centerpiece of the central park and appears in a lot of Decatur themed iconography.

Another mystery sponsor, but I like penguins a lot, so it’s secretly my favorite.

File this one under, “It’s kind of jankey looking but it’s clear that someone put some effort into it and thought they were doing pretty good so I guess it’s alright.” I’m kind of a sucker for that sort of thing.

I don’t know what Dennis Lab School is, but I thought this one was nice.

This one is a little basic, but that centerpiece is a proper fancy 3D piece which makes it look pretty cool.

The last one that I took a photo of, there were a few others that I did not photograph. I actually skipped this one until I realize that it had the “Bikini Tree” in it. When I do my walking in the park, I walk by this tree. I have no idea who keeps painting it but it has new colors all the time (it has Ukraine colors though for over year I think). I imagine it’s someone from the nearby college.

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