The Mad, Joyful Chaos of the Creative Process
After yesterday's unhinged, painfully cathartic threnody of a post, I really wanted to post something short, light and enjoyable. I was considering writing down my thoughts on my favorite TV show, The Good Place, but that would have taken altogether much too long, so that is going to remain a somewhat long-term plan, but I might get to it within a week or so.
So anyways, while watching an episode of said show last night, I noticed that I really liked the opening riffs of a song that plays during something akin to a nightmare sequence (or fantasy sequence) in that episode.
Using the FOSS music recognition program on my phone, I determined that the song was Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4." Given the enigmatic nature of the song's title, I knew that there would be some enjoyable sleuthing to be had in learning its background and meaning.
I first looked up the lyrics on genius.com to get some background on the song, but finding that interface a bit annoying to use, I just looked up the article directly on Wikipedia.
I learned that while there had been many accusations of a drug theme surrounding the song, it was actually written very early in the morning: "twenty five or [twenty] six [minutes] to four [am]."
Reading that while getting ready in the morning, I laughed out loud. The story behind the title is also self-evident in the first two lines of the lyrics:
Waiting for the break of day
Searching for something to say
It reminded me of so many times in my undergrad university days when I was scrambling to prepare a paper just a couple hours before class, and somehow knocking out a homer with nearly no time to spare.
And it's so amazing to me that the entirety of this hit song is just the author basically saying, "I have no idea what to write, I'm bleary-eyed and trying to stay awake, here's this song where I'm basically saying nothing."
It's a good day when the Muse is that cooperative. :)
invidious link (nadeko)
invidious link (yewtu.be)
youtube link
Why Do We Blog?
A few days ago, I was reading someone's blog (I don't remember who)* that was talking about the art and the "why" of blogging (or it might've been in a chat conversation, I'm not sure). I had been thinking of posting something about it, because when I told someone IRL …
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My Approach to Online Notes
Note: When I say "Online" in this context, I literally mean "on a computer," vs. "on paper." This is the older, more classic meaning of the word, similar to "on-line documentation" (i.e., "on the computer," not "on the internet").
Background
I know a lot of folks like solutions like …
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A Fine Vintage of Sass
Just now, I was doing what all great bloggers do when they run out of (easily) actionable blog post ideas:
I got around to cruising my RSS feeds!
To be fair, there are many wonderful bloggers that keep up with their RSS feeds and dutifully read and comment on all …
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What is a blost, anyway?
Welcome to the PADDING.
This blost is a part of the interstitial spaces that make up my blog. It's here to support other blosts. Think of it as one of the glial cells supporting the superstructure of the twisted online brain that is https://rldane.space/.
Of course, that doesn't …
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A Toast to the Prolific ones
I wanted to take some time out today to acknowledge some folks on the fediverse that are remarkably prolific, just for fun.
Prolific blogger — Rubenerd
Oh holy moly. This fella has words. Lots of words. Many very fine words. Just look at bro's output for 2024:
~ $ curl -s https://rubenerd …
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Blog Questions Challenge 2025
I came across this set of questions from hyde (a.k.a. Lazy Bear)'s blog, and immediately loved it. It reminds me a bit of the kind of overly personal* questions that got passed between friends on facebook circa 2008, and email circa 2000.
* They didn't feel overly personal …
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100 Days to Offload — Kicking 2025 Off Right
After the enjoyable success of Writing Month last November, I feel like I want to start a new challenge for 2025: "100 Days To Offload."
I'm going to aim for 10 blog posts per month (which is an average of one blog post every 3.04 days), finishing on October …
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Goodbye NaNoWriMo, hello Writing Month!
FediFriend Amin wrote this in Early September:
Well, NaNoWriMo has made an official statement that they believe categorical condemnation of "AI" to be classist and ableist. I'm… I'm just done with them.
I used to overlook issues I was seeing with the organization behind NaNo, but… this is too much …
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A first foray into miniblogging: `blogme`
I've often enjoyed using my tootme script to easily toot from the command-line.
The reason I wrote this script is that the excellent toot utility which I had been using to toot from the command-line would just fail ungracefully if it encountered an error (like crossing the benighted 500-character post …
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