Almost There

 

There have been many reasons why I haven't been here.

Over the past year work has been an on / off thing. Trying to sort that out has taken up way more of my time than it should have. At the moment even though I'm not in a permanent job I am at least happy and for the most part stress free which is a good thing.

This positive mood has had me put some serious work into a project that I have been working on for over 20 years. It's a cryptographic thing and I don't know if it's any use to anyone except myself but I'm happy to have concluded both the method and the research. This again has taken up serious amounts of my free time and it doesn't quite end there. I now have to typeset and publish my work, both things I'm looking forward to.

I bough the LaTeX book (above) a few years ago for this very project. Having worked through some of the early chapters I'm confident that diving back in isn't going to be as daunting as starting from square one. Although I'll still mostly fill my free time doing this the pace will be slower and so I can start finding time to dedicate to other things, this blog included.

If you're still reading this blog after my long absence then thank you.

There will be much more to see from now on. 

Small Test

Far from ignoring this blog I've been thinking about it a lot. 

It may be time to start writing again.

Hyperflow

 

It's May already but I have finally got something to show for this year.
Usually I release tracks individually but I was working on these three at the same time so I've released them together as an EP.

'Hyperflow' was one of the first tunes I wrote nearly 40 years ago and has had a few different versions recorded over the years. This is probably the last time I'll re-record it. 'Flaneur' and 'Skip' are both new tracks.

As usual all tracks are released under a Creative Commons licence so you are free to download them from Archive.org if you want to.

Too Busy To Blog

 

I've just noticed that this is the first post of this year.

To say that I'm busy is really an understatement. Since late last year I've hit a real creative flow. I often find myself with the kind of creative block that puts me in a situation where I'm just preparing to do stuff, waiting around for inspiration.

It started when I picked up a pen and started drawing, more for something to do than an inspired choice of activity. From there it was like the floodgates opened. I started almost daily sketching and then I started writing tunes again. I was hoping to release a couple of tracks this year but now my first release will probably be a 4 track E.P.

On top of all that I'm actually writing the first draft of an encryption technique that I have been working on and refining for well over a decade. And then there's the fractals. Just a spare time thing but it's a great combination of math and art and is also quite relaxing. Add to that I'm alpha testing one of the apps I use so as you can see there's plenty going on.

And all that is just my free time. I've been working through this covid pandemic so I'm still away from home for hours everyday. It'll also soon be Spring so the garden will need my attention and this year I'm aiming for a bumper herb and tobacco crop.

So there you go. If you were wondering where I'd been, now you know. I'll be back here more often as these projects start getting released but I can't say when that'll be.
Hopefully it'll be soon.

The Art Of Nature

 

 

The older I get the more I am inclined to get in tune with nature.

It possibly has something to do with the fact that I'm heading for the ground and nature wants to make sure I'm not full of junk so that I decompose nicely. Hopefully that won't happen for some time but in getting in tune with the natural world my path into that state of mind is numbers. My greatest fascination is random numbers, they're everywhere in nature but there seems to be (most of the time) some kind of controlled logic behind them. There is proof that humans are poor at trying to be random while nature just does it, and well. Maybe getting old and 'losing your marbles' is nature's way of telling you that order isn't such a great ambition after all.

Either way, I'm back making fractals. They are for all intents pure math but they are also found in nature. Mother earth likes repeating herself, regularly. Humans seem to get into that routine also, wars, pandemics etc. It shouldn't be something to worry too much about but our race, the human race, seems not to mind that we're deleting too much of nature and ourselves to have anything left to repeat. It's high time our repetition was of doing nothing. Taking some time out, on a loop, and letting everything recover.