Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Month: June 2021

  • Testing Windows 11 Pro out

    Yesterday things were looking bleak for my #Windows11Release adventures, but the @windowsinsider program account saved the day. While the very scary “This PC can’t run Windows 11” warning came up on the next reboot it installed anyway. My Intel i7-7800X chip not withstanding…

    To my complete surprise the Pro Tools application I use for recording guitar launched and was perfectly happy running on Windows 11 Pro right after the upgrade. I’m still getting used to the Taskbar being at the bottom center of the screen. I’m one of the few people that used it across the top. I no longer have the date and time in my peripheral vision. That is something that will probably take a little bit to get used to throughout the day. 

  • No Windows 11 for me…

    It should have been a joyous day with the installation of the latest @windowsinsider preview 10.0.22000.51 of the #Windows11Release version on my primary computer. It was in a pending downlead state this morning at 05:37 when I started my day.

    It turns out that “This PC Can’t run Windows 11” in the latest build format as “The PC must support TPM 2.0” and that is the end of my journey into the #Windows11Release party… thanks @windowsinsider for the ride over the last few years. I enjoyed the builds…

    My @intel Core i7-7800X CPU is not on the supported processor list for the #Windows11Release preview from @windowsinsider. The idea of buying a motherboard, CPU, and RAM to actually be able to use the latest version of windows is disappointing… HT @backlon @verge #NotaTPMfan

    https://twitter.com/nelslindahl/status/1409864246700085255
  • A little bit of focus on a book

    Today for the first time in a long time, I sat down and opened the hood on chapter 1 of a new as of yet untitled book. The writing process got off to a reasonable start and it could be an interesting one. That is all I’m going to share about that one at the moment, but I’m sure more details will be forthcoming as things move along. I had sat down to write a weblog post, but the content quickly got a lot deeper than something that could be finished up in a single writing session. Maybe that is how things start to get a bit more interesting. The first chapter already has footnotes so things are probably going to get truly interesting at some point. A new category of weblog post content has even been created to house musings about, “Book writing efforts.” The adding of new content categories does not happen all that often so that is a surprising turn of events for the morning.

  • Just a bit of moving along

    All the leftover notes beckon for completion. Some of them I’m sure are worthy of proper consideration and some of them of course are fall starts waiting to be revisited. Right now at this very moment I’m writing with my eyes closed just trying to focus on the moment. No sounds are in the background and the only thing making any noise is the mechanical keyboard in front of me. Each moment now is a pause from the flow of consideration and it is evaluated in the span of time it is allowed. Progressing from one thought to the next is really just an expression of the flow of time at the moment. Electing to ignore that flow of time does not stop it or even make it less impactful. 

    I’m working on completing the latest Hugging Face course they recently published: https://huggingface.co/course/chapter1

  • That golden hour of writing

    Things seem to take off after those two shots of espresso in the morning. It is sort of like a golden hour of writing is possible before everybody starts to get up and move around in the morning. Capturing that potential productivity is the hard part it seems. I have to make a conscious effort to make that golden hour of productivity happen. It is about more than trying to translate the writing process to something useful. It is about activating the writing process in terms of engaging in some deeply reflective thought. Being aware of the possibility of activating that gold hour of writing is the keystone. You have to be aware of the possibility before you can actualize it in practice as a daily routine. Stumbling upon the situation is possible and could yield great results, but moving from a one off type of situation to something more sustainable requires a more active level of participation and planning. 

    All of that build up and all I want to write about is my new internet modem… 

    Earlier this month my internet provider elected to increase my overall service speed from 1 gigabit per second to 1.2 gigabits per second. This change in speed required getting a brand new modem from the internet service provider. I guess the old one was only capable of reaching that 1 Gbps threshold and the new one is slightly better. Functionally the overall speed of the internet has not changed at all in the house. The speedtest is exactly the same with the new modem running as it was with the old one operating at peak performance apparently. Both modems result in a roughly 900 Mbps experience. That speed is perfectly fine for everything that we are doing in terms of internet usage. After that realization I began reading about the CGM4331COM model and that was like going down a 15 minute internet rabbit hole. Sure that is one of the things that the internet provides. It is an nearly endless mesh of things to surf and it contains more and more rabbit holes of content daily.

  • The forefront of my considerations

    During the course of Saturday mornings I’m investing in the production of, “The Lindahl Letter,” series of weekly newsletters over on the Substack platform. Generally, that has been going well enough. The first 20 weeks of posts have been written and content has been planned out for 37 issues. My big plan is to work on that endeavor for 52 weeks. I’m not even halfway to the end of that goal at this point and I’m already thinking about the conclusion. Part of the goal of this effort was to help sharpen my thoughts on the topics of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Maybe the more important part was to allow me to consider directionally where I wanted to take my efforts and focus. Writing a few paragraphs for a newsletter each week is not a huge commitment of my time and it should serve as an anchor to help me focus on what really comes to the forefront of my considerations. 

    Spending some time wrestling with the trajectory of my future writings is probably worthwhile. It would be easy enough to get out a blank sheet of paper and start in the middle with a bubble of what I most want to write about and then just sort of fill up the paper with ideas until something is compelling enough to spark the commitment of words to the page. For the most part the main method of my prose creation is sitting in front of a word processing document prompt at the specified hour in the early hours of the morning and beginning to type. That is the opposite of planful and for the most part the writing it produces could go anywhere. My writing trajectory from stream of consciousness style writing does not necessarily move forward toward something. It really just builds from the moment into the next like waves hitting the shore. It’s reliable and it happens every day, but it is the same sort of routine unless a storm approaches. In my case I’m typically waiting for that writing storm to show up based on a spark of creativity.

    This post will go out via my Twitter link automation that is deployed in WordPress. It did sort of entertain me when I used that automation to send out entire posts as Tweet storms. I’m not entirely sure why that was such an amusing event to create, but for some reason it really did bring some joy to the process. After this post is submitted and published out to the internet I’m going to capture an extra backup of the whole thing just for fun. A daily backup occurs, but for some reason I like to capture my own off cycle backups from time to time. It is probably akin to the same reason that I still buy Blu-ray movies in their physical form. Streaming from the cloud is probably more popular, but the act of collecting the Blu-ray movie discs and storing them in the living room still has some value to me and probably a few other people. The number of people who get volume from it is shrinking. That is obvious from the diminishing sales numbers.

  • A bit of audio work

    For some reason over the last couple of weeks I have not really wanted to write on a daily basis. My daily writing routine has been disrupted. I had a pretty good writing streak going and then it fell apart. Right now I’m listening to the Colorado Avalanche hockey game on the radio. Earlier today I was struggling with my Pro Tools First recording setup. The Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (Gen 3) runs via USB Type-C and pretty much just has to be plugged into the computer. That part of the setup seems to be working fine. Every once in a while the input level needs to be adjusted a little bit up or down, but for the most part it requires very little interaction to work. Exporting audio from Pro Tools First seems to work, but the file takes up storage space and has no volume to it at all. It is super frustrating to try to figure out. I’m probably going to un-install the software entirely and try to set it up again.