Ideas & Projects

My first job in high school was as an intern at a local college radio station (RIP KBTC). It was about what you’d expect of an internship, until they realized I knew how to use Cakewalk. That’s when I became the “bumper guy”. If you’re not a terrestrial radio die-hard, bumpers are the short transitions between segments or coming in or out of commercials. Often the ones you’ll recognize the most are the mandatory “station IDs” that remind you what station you’re listening to. I recorded many variants of “You’re listening to KBTC 91.7FM, Tacoma’s home for Classical Rock” (don’t get me started on the term “classical rock”; I had to live with it, so can you). I would cut up clips from my favorite songs and movies, avoiding talking all morning so I could record with my gruffest (for a 16-year-old) morning voice. Was it art? Probably not, but it was absolutely creatively rewarding.

I’ve read Jeff Tweedy’s How to Write One Song at least half a dozen times over the last couple of years. It’s a quick read, super practical, and I love the way he fights against the mysticism of creative practice. He argues that waiting for inspiration to strike is folly, that instead you can invite inspiration through intentional routines. You can choose to be creative through purposeful practice. I love the message, and I really thought that I understood the lesson, but it took the nonstop grind of February Album Writing Month (FAWM) for me to really internalize it. By forcing myself to work at a songwriting cadence more aggressive than I’d ever tried, I had no choice but to actually make the creative output happen, and once I broke through that barrier the songs just started flooding out.

Reject the Vibe

When I first heard the term “vibe coding” I immediately hated it, and it took me a minute to reflect on why. Is it just because I’m a grumpy geriatric millennial refusing to ride the vibes? Maybe, but I think it has more to do with how it implies a lazy sort of magical thinking. Vibes are nuanced. Reading vibes is a deeply human activity, and it implies an unspoken (and often high-bandwidth) understanding that just doesn’t reflect what I see when using AI-assisted programming tools. Computers can’t read the vibe in the room, and they can’t read your mind. If anything, we should be calling AI-assisted programming Therapy-level-detailed-communication-coding, but that’s a mouthful, so I guess we’re stuck with “vibe coding” for now.