A regular gathering of thoughts and their friends

I don’t remember what I was listening to the other day, but it was something airy and jazz. The sound of the bass was just beautiful and I thought to myself that I could listen to bass lines like it all day. I typed in a few quick searches, stumbled on this list of someone’s 50 best jazz bassists of all time, and scrolled to the bottom.

For some reason it was Ron Carter’s blurb that stood out the strongest as I started scrolling up. It’s probably the “joined Miles Davis’s quintet in 1963” that made the call. So I looked up Ron Carter on Spotify and started playing random stuff. His All Blues album is fantastic and I listened to it a couple times over the course of a day.

And then a slightly serendipitous moment: The recordings from a night in Stockholm at Fasching on November 17, 2018—originally released as two volumes in 2019 and 2020—were released as a combined “Foursight – The Complete Stockholm Tapes” on January 22—yesterday!

So here I am, enjoying that night. It’s been nice.

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My dreams have been a popular place lately. Many different people from several different times in my life appearing together. I don’t always interact with them, but they’ll walk on through like it’s not strange that we’re all appearing together in the same place.

I started to wonder if it’s my brain’s way of dealing with the lack of in-person contact during the pandemic. My dad also mentioned that more people show up as you get older. We’ll see what happens now that I’ve said it out loud.

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One nice thing for me about web development is that I never really learned Sass and now I don’t really have to. Modern CSS is generally feature rich enough. PostCSS makes it easy to use imports and nested rules so that things can be organized in a friendly way. Overhead, gone!

I think my complaints about the overhead go back to the original Ruby version and troubleshooting that on various designer and developer machines. Then the npm install overhead that came with the Node Sass project (and troubleshooting that on various designer and developer machines).

I probably combine all of that with the actual CSS I remember being output by Sass and how if not planned well—just like plain CSS—the rules get so out of control and over-specific and annoying.

All that said, and my preference for solving nesting/importing with PostCSS aside, I’ve switched a couple projects over to Dart Sass recently and it’s been so nice because it’s quick and just works.

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The half-way mark in Finnegan’s Wake is in sight. I’ve established a habit of reading at least 10 pages a day since restarting on January 1. Friday seems to be the only day I don’t find time for it, so I double up on weekends.

I’m at page 250 now and it’s satisfying to see the bookmark in the hefty part of the book rather than seeing only the flimsy few pages at the beginning complete.

It’s been a fun experience so far, especially now that I’ve gone all in and accepted it for the strangeness it contains. There are parts where I’ve read many pages without understanding a thing. There are also parts where I’ve laughed out loud and actually been engaged with a story-line for multiple paragraphs. The language is fun, and that’s keeping me going.

At the current pace I’ll be finished by February 25. And then? Well, the last sentence is the first, so maybe a repeat with a companion guide. Or an easier book. We’ll see.

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I recently finished Angela Pelster‘s collection of essays on trees, Limber. It was very pleasant and readable and I think a nice companion—or precursor, really—to The Overstory.

Also, John Le Carré’s Secret Pilgrim, which was like sitting down with old friends.

All in all, book reading for 2021 has started off well.

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Rich has started sharing thoughts weekly and I love it.

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In the norms and notions of what just is isn’t always justice.

Angela Gorman, The Hill We Climb

I agree completely with his assessment of Angela Gorman’s recital of The Hill We Climb at the inauguration. I’ve joined much of America (the world?) and pre-ordered all three of her upcoming publications.

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My parents got vaccinated this week!

I’ve been amazed at how good it feels. I’m also amazed that Washington State announced the shift in age to 65 and older on Monday of this week and three days later my parents had their first shots. For all of the confusion in the rollout, it’s nice that things sometimes work.

From all accounts, the atmosphere at the hospital was one of joy by all involved. Shots in arms!

Related, a good opinion: If You’re Offered a Vaccine, Take It

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In Pullman, we have an hour more daylight at the end of January than we do at the beginning. 5pm daylight is just around the corner!

Right. It’s the new year. This is the first in a series of thoughts related to the last series of thoughts, but with a fresh name and fresh self-expectations.

2021 is going to be something.