Roundup 1: August 9th, 2024
It’s Friday, August 9th 2024 and it’s time for the first issue of Rosco’s Roundup. I’ve long been a fan of blogs and good email newsletters, and while I’ve maintained (that’s a word loosely used) a personal blog for the best part of two decades I haven’t really used that blog for sharing general interest content.
Some of the quirky stuff I’ve come across online felt like I wanted to share it, but without much of a home for such content I never tended to hit ‘share’. Until now.
Something new
(to the world)
Our younger son loves to make music. Guitar music, piano music, cardboard box music, stick-on-a-tree music. Noise is the name of the game.
As part of his music journey we’ve started to learn together some of the ins and outs of music production, including starting to make some tunes using Garage Band. It’s been fun to lay down a melody with the keyboard, back it up with a bass track, add drums, then manipulate the instruments and the timing of the tune to get something fun out the other end.
To progress his little productions we’ve started looking at USB Audio Interfaces and MIDI samplers. I’d always seen these as fancy ways to connect microphones to computers - which they can be - but they also allow for connection of other instruments too including his beloved Fender electric guitar.
So imagine my surprise when, as I poke around musical corners of the web looking at new kit we can share, I come across the Teenage Engineering EP-1320 medieval sampler. It’s a sampler… full of medieval instruments and effects.
It’s wild. Check out the video at the link below for a real laugh.
I’m not brave enough to show this to The Kid because I think we should just start with a normal audio interface, you know? But this thing looks like a barrel of giggles… at least for the first hour.
Something new
(to me)
Lilly isn’t, by most measures, new. She’s a two-and-a-half year old Golden Retriever, new to our family this past few weeks.
Since I was a teenager I’ve lived with dogs in our family, always inside dogs and always just there. When my wife and I married and moved out of home, we adopted two dogs - we could only keep one of them due to the need for the other to be the only target of somebody’s attention (she went to a good home, of an older retired gentleman) - and the one we held onto, Abby, lived with us through multiple house moves and the birth of both our kids.
Two years ago, on the day before my 39th birthday, I walked Abby to the local vet’s clinic and said farewell. She was about 17 years old, we think, and was so incredibly confused that it was the only kind option for her.
It took us a while to adapt to no dog to trip over in the house (not to mention the weird snoring noises, the smells, and the extra hair bunnies gathering in the corners!) but finally we were ready to bring another dog into our lives.
Lilly was with her sister when her family had to give her up due to a change in circumstances. Our boys, anxious about having a new dog again, fell in love with her as soon as they met. She trotted around the breeder’s garden happily with them and looked at us with those large gentle eyes.
It’s taken a couple of weeks but Lilly is getting used to living with us. She seems to have been an outdoor-only dog, so we have some training to do, but her gentleness and destructively—swingingly tail have bought us plenty of joy already.
On the days that I work from home, Lilly sleeps on the doormat behind me (see photo) so closely that I dare not roll my chair lest I squash her big feet. Having a dog in the house again is, simply, great. And smelly.
The photo at the top is one I posted to Instagram just after we got Lilly. She was just sitting at the top of the stairs, carefully watching us, wanting to be involved but not… quite… sure.
Something Awesome
Sometimes, getting up early to run can be worthwhile.
I‘ve been a runner for the past 10 years or so. It’s become my social circle, my therapy, my wellness outing. Most of my running tends to be on the weekends (#weekendwarrior) and after work, not too early in the morning… it’s just too cold over winter and I really enjoy my sleep.
In fact - one of my running buddies pulled me aside a few weeks ago and said “You know what I like about you, Ross? You’re committed to getting sleep when you think you need it.” Yes, he’d had a few drinks.
Anyway, yesterday I got up early for a run and strength workout before work. This is what I saw from the top of my driveway. Not bad!
That was Rosco’s Roundup for Week One. Hit ‘reply’ with your feedback, thoughts, and suggestions.