
<figure>
![🌅 🌸](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/art/sketches-2024-09-20.jpg)

<figcaption>_Blue Sky Thinking — [09/20/24](/sketches-2024-09-20)_</figcaption>
</figure>

I had a blast spending time [creating digital paintings](/blog/chris%20Learns%20Digital%20Painting) this year!

A couple of years ago, I was overcome with the desire to _really_ learn to draw. I made crude comics as a kid, but I was itching to really figure out how it's done. And so I did, and [I learned a lot about art and creativity from it](/lessonsfromdrawing2023)!

This year I turned my focus to the world of color and texture through digital painting. It was quite the leap! From single toned, line driven analog art making in a sketchbook — over to color and shape based painting through a digital medium.

Much of what I have to say this year is a revisiting of ideas I came across last year. Only this time the context has changed. A bit of a variation on a theme!

<figure>
![💡](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/art/sketches-2024-05-04.jpg)
<figcaption>_Still Life — [5/4/24](/sketches-2024-05-04)_</figcaption>
</figure>

## Changing the Way You See the World

> I also love to listen to skaters talk about how they see the world. Skateboarding seems to reconfigure your molecules and changes the way you look and the kind of attention you pay to the world. (Exactly what we hope for when practicing any art.)
>
> — [Austin Kleon](https://austinkleon.com/2022/11/07/drawing-at-the-skate-park/)

Drawing with line art, especially in a stylized way, involves a great deal of abstraction and reduction. I spent time simplifying a form to only a few strokes and basic shapes. It changed how I saw the world. But more in a way of capturing shorthand. I was looking for the simplified essence.

Learning to see color through painting had the _exact opposite effect_! When I started studying color and light as well as doing direct-painting still lifes, it's as if I was starting to see for the first time.

A pot is just "orange" until you take a closer look at the texture, the lighting, the chips and smudges across its surface. There's a humbling amount of color in everyday life that gets simplified and overlooked.

Miranda and I went to a couple of art museums this year. Paintings are already captivating when you're not an artist. They're then astonishingly rich and awe inspiring once you know the attention to detail that goes into them!

The process of painting is great fun. Though, my favorite takeaway from picking up the craft is now how I see the world. You won't believe how something as simple as looking into someone's eyes will bring out a world of beauty hiding in plain sight!

<figure>

![Sweet little Lucy loving on this pretty sky](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/art/sketches-2024-03-09.jpg)

<figcaption>_Pup at Twilight — [3/9/24](/sketches-2024-03-09)_</figcaption>

</figure>

## Balancing Projects with Play

After a few years, I've largely gotten better about balancing [play and study](https://drawabox.com/lesson/0/2). The boundary for me has become really clear since painting has been an entirely new medium requiring _lots_ of study, master copies, and reading up on how the brush engine works.

Even still — When I work on a digital painting project for myself, I'd call it play. But it's not entirely in that category. I realized something was missing.

It wasn't until I picked my physical sketchbook back up and started fooling around that things clicked into place. Unsurprisingly, having an analog, private, free space with no large end goal helped keep my spirit up when I returned to the digital canvas.

I've since deviated from needing a hard boundary, a la [the 50% rule](https://drawabox.com/lesson/0/2/50percent). These days my energy level is a good indicator of whether today is painting day or a fool around in the sketch book day.

If I were to package this up into advice: Be mindful of the project driven work, study, and time
spent fooling around.

Actually, that lines up nicely with Robertryan Cory's recommended routine for artists from [his CalArts lecture](https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.833375406677877): "Educational, Disciplinary, Experimental. Drawing should be divided into a sustainable work routine."

<figure>

![🌅 🌸](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/art/sketches-2023-09-24.jpg)

<figcaption>_An early swing at digital painting — [09/24/23](/sketches-2023-09-24)_</figcaption>

</figure>

## In Pursuit of Truth

In music, the major scale is derived from the harmonic series: a natural occurring phenomena that represents mathematical divisions of any given frequency. (For one of the best demonstrations of this, look no further than [the Bernstein Norton Lectures](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HjEAtJXssc&ab_channel=LeonardBernstein).)

It's a major reason why tonal music is universal. It's what makes music a pursuit of Truth. [In Harmonic Experience](/bookshelf#HarmonicExperience), W. A. Mathieu walks readers through singing exercises where you experience the balance of these sounds firsthand. It's an eye opening journey.

I'm not as well-read on light as I am acoustics, but I know this much: colors themselves are different wavelengths of light. Violet is a short wavelength, red a long one.

It's one thing to know that intellectually. And a wholly other thing to experience it.

At some point, after working at a still life, spending an hour closely trying to match the color of a dull pot, I stepped outside. It was a clear day, mid afternoon. A rich blue sky, I observed. High in saturation today.

As my gaze came downward, I saw the leaves on the tree. And while it's hard to explain in writing — a resonance occurred. I started seeing the green of the leaves as a continuation of the blue in the sky. Not in an intellectual way, but on something much more deep and personal.

In the same way that each tone of music contains a multitude of different sounds, I made the connection that light was working in that same way. Obvious to some, I'm sure, but a revelation to me.

There are plenty of reasons to paint. Maybe one of the most worthwhile, though, is that — just like studying sound — you spend time with another Truth in the world. This time, through color and light.

<figure>
![🌳🌳🌳](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/art/sketches-2024-07-06.jpg)

<figcaption>_Campion Trail – [07/06/24](/sketches-2024-07-06)_</figcaption>
</figure>


Lessons From a Year of Painting



I came across Maggie Appleton's tremendous post ["A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden"](https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history)! 

I've heard of the publishing philosophy in passing and found the term itself to resonate. A counter to high-production, corporate leaning purposes for owning a domain name, a digital garden assumes work in progress, a broad spectrum of topics and interests, and an ever evolving space online where ideas and things of beauty can blossom. _Lovely!_

There are a few patterns that show up with folks that have taken on the spirit of digital gardening. One that caught my eye was "Topography over Timelines." 

> Gardens are organized around contextual relationships and associative links; the concepts and themes within each note determine how it's connected to others.
> 
> This runs counter to the time-based structure of traditional blogs: posts presented in reverse chronological order based on publication date.
> 
> Gardens don't consider publication dates the most important detail of a piece of writing. Dates might be included on posts, but they aren't the structural basis of how you navigate around the garden. Posts are connected to other by posts through related themes, topics, and shared context.
> 
> One of the best ways to do this is **through Bi-Directional Links** – links that make both the destination page and the source page visible to the reader. This makes it easy to move between related content.
> 
> Because garden notes are densely linked, a garden explorer can enter at any location and follow any trail they link through the content, rather than being dumped into a "most recent” feed.


_Love it!_ My favorite discoveries are with sites that link well. It's a blast hopping around, continuing the conversation from page to page. Wikis are the prime example of this. Tough, some bloggers like [Austin Kleon](https://austinkleon.com/) also do this particularly well.

So! Why only be bound by linking in one chronological direction? I took to the idea and whipped up a script to employ this myself!

## Developing Bi-Directional Linking

[This site uses markdown](/parsemd) for posts. So doing this job is largely about text parsing. Much of the logic, in fact, is similar to [how I parse my posts to display an art grid](/artgrid).


I'll start by writing the function to actually get the url value from my links. The regex is looking for the value with parenthesis in the typical markdown shorthand for links: `![alt text](link)`

```JavaScript
// api.js

export const getInternalLinksFromMarkdown = (md) => {
  const regex =
    /(?:__|[*#])|\[(.*?)\]$\/(.*?)$/g;
  return Array.from(md.matchAll(regex)).map((res) => {
    if (res && res.length > 1) {
      return res[2];
    }
  });
};

```

The value of index 2 of the array will give me the capture group I've targeted because that's [how it's done in Node](/noderegex)!

From here, I'll then pass in my posts and systematically generate an object that grabs both the targeted url as well as the current post url.

```JavaScript
// api.js

export function getAllPostRefs(
  fields = ['content', 'slug', 'title'],
  options = {}
) {
  const slugs = getPostSlugs();
  let posts = slugs
    .map((slug) => getPostBySlug(slug, fields))
    // Filter false values (.DS_STORE)
    .filter((post) => post)
    // sort posts by date in descending order
    .sort((post1, post2) => (post1.date > post2.date ? -1 : 1));

  const links = {}
  posts.forEach((post) => {
    const postLinks = getInternalLinksFromMarkdown(post.content);
    postLinks.forEach((src) => {
      if (src && !src.includes('/')) {
        if (!links[src]) {
          links[src] = [];
        }
        if (!links[src].find(entry => entry.slug === post.slug))
        links[src].push({
          slug: post.slug,
          title: post.title,
        })
      }
    });
  })

  return links;
}

```

A Set data structure would be ideal for keeping duplicates out of the list, but we'll be converting this to JSON, and I'd rather avoid the hassle of bringing in a library for the conversion.

Finally, I'll call this function and save the results to a JSON file for refference.

```JavaScript
biDirectionalLink.js

import { getAllPostRefs } from "./api"
const FileSystem = require("fs");

export const getRefs = () => {
	const links = getAllPostRefs();
	FileSystem.writeFile('_cache/backlinks.json', JSON.stringify(links), (error) => {
    if (error) throw error;
  });
}

```

Here's an snippet of what it generates:

```
{
	"30": [
		{
			"slug": "2022",
			"title": "2022"
		},
		{
			"slug": "iwataonpeople",
			"title": "Iwata on Creative People"
		},
		{
			"slug": "transcience",
			"title": "Transience"
		},
		{
			"slug": "web2000",
			"title": "A Love Letter to 2000s Websites"
		}
	],
	"2022": [
		{
			"slug": "testingandwriting",
			"title": "Testing Software for the Same Reason You Write Notes"
		}
	],
	
	...
}
```

Voilà! Now I have the data of pages that are referenced. I can now call this method anytime the site regenerates and use this as the source of truth for back-linking.

To consume this in Next.js, I'm going to read the file in `getStaticProps` (or in an RSC if I were using the App Router)

```
// [slug].js

export async function getStaticProps({ params }) {
  if (post) {
    const file = await fs.readFile(process.cwd() + '/_cache/backlinks.json', 'utf8');
    const backlinks = JSON.parse(file);
    let pagesLinkingBackTo = null;

    if (backlinks[params.slug]) {
      pagesLinkingBackTo = backlinks[params.slug];
    }
```

And, following some prop drilling, I can now programmatically display these on matching pages:

```
// backLinkSection.js

import React from 'react';
import NextLink from './NextLink';

const BacklinksSection = ({pagesLinkingBackTo}) => {
	if (!pagesLinkingBackTo) return <></>
	return (
		<aside>
			<h4>
				Pages referencing this post:
				<ul>

				{pagesLinkingBackTo.map(link => (
					<li><NextLink href={link.slug}>{link.title}</NextLink> </li>
				))}
				</ul>
			</h4>
		</aside>
	);
};

export default BacklinksSection;
```

Assuming I haven't link to this page yet, you can see this in action at the bottom of my [Parsing Mardkown in Node](/parsemd) post. Now with handy links to click and explore related topics.

I'm excited to keep tending the garden! I've already seen themes emerge through the regular tags I use. Here's to a great harvest someday!

Generating Back Links For Optimal Digital Gardening

Jimmy Van Heusen – Polka Dots and Moonbeams


![🌱](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/art/pratchettonenglishgardens.jpg)

I revisited a passage from Sir Terry Pratchett's ["A Slip of the Keyboard."](https://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/books/a-slip-of-the-keyboard/) The essay "Magic Kingdoms" illustrates the English dedication to maintaining a garden in any environment. Pratchett uses this as an exemplification for how the garden is a portal to another world, and a widespread fascination with planting a garden is why fantasy is part of the fabric of the culture. 

> I remember a back garden I used to see from the train. It was a very small garden for a very small house, and it was sandwiched between the thundering railway line, a billboard, and a near-derelict factory.
> 
> I don't know what a Frenchman or an Italian would have made of it. A terrace, probably, with a few potted plants and some trellis to conceal the worst of postindustrial squalor. But this was an Englishman's garden, so he'd set out to grow, if not Jerusalem, then at least Jerusalem artichokes. There was a rockery, made of carefully placed concrete lumps (the concrete lump rockery is a great British contribution to horticulture, and I hope one is preserved in some outdoor museum somewhere) There was a pond; the fish probably had to get out to turn around. There were roses. There was a tiny greenhouse made of old window frames nailed together (another great British invention). Never was an area so thoroughly gardened, in fact, as that patch of cat infested soil. 
> 
> No attempt had been made to screen off the dark satanic mills, unless the runner beans counted. To the gardener, in the garden, they did not exist. They were in another world. 

For me there's another comfort in the scene. Even if we're not nurturing plants, we all have the means to cultivate our own creative gardens. A sketchbook, journal, blog, a song. And it doesn't matter how humble! A jar of soil and basil goes a long way for bringing life to a space. So it is with strumming strings and moving the pencil.



Pratchett on English Gardens


That equation feels right.

This comes from the legendary Disney animator and teacher Walt Stanchfield (A lead character animator for the Aristocats, to name one.) I've written before about how Walt Describes [the curious act of performing with no audience](/stanchfield). This equation come in context from [his handouts for gesture drawing](https://ia601302.us.archive.org/15/items/Gesture_Drawing_for_Animation/Gesture_Drawing_for_Animation.pdf):

(Here, Walt is talking about the benefits of staying healthy enough to have the energy to create, another juicy point)

> You must create. The injunction of life is to create or perish. Good physical and mental
> conditioning are necessary to do this. Remember this: the creative energy that created the
> Universe, created you and its creative power is in you now, motivating you, urging you on -
> always in the direction of creative expression. I have a formula: "Impression minus expression
> equals depression". This is especially applicable to artists. We have trained ourselves to be
> impressed (aware) of all the things around us, and in the natural course of our lives those
> impressions cry out to be expressed - on paper, on canvas, in music, in poetry, in an
> animated film. So shape up.

Ain't that the truth?

It's still worth the reminder. When you do professionally creative work (like animation or software!) you are still constantly taking in the world and are falling in love with all sorts of things - books, music, stories, and technologies.

The best way to express that love is through getting down to business and making something.


Impression Minus Expression Equals Depression


I don't always find the inspiration I'm looking for from the bios and stories of full time artists. Those select few who can spend most of their week in the studio. Winston Churchill, who was surprisingly an enthusiastic, self proclaimed hobby painter, can speak much more clearly to the situation of having to find time to be creative in the nooks and crannies of the day.

![And a surprisingly sensitive painter, at that!!](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/images/churchillpainting_Large.jpg)

I've been rattling in my mind all the different reasons I like drawing/piano/guitar/writing music/blogging, and why someone else might like to do them too.

To Churchill, it was no contest comparing painting to more typical leisure activities:

> Even at the advanced age of Forty! It would be a sad pity to shuffle or scramble along through one's playtime with golf and bridge, pottering, loitering, shifting from one heel to the other, wondering what on earth to do – as perhaps is the fate of some unhappy beings – when all the while, if you only knew, there is close at hand a wonderful new world of thought and craft, a sunlit garden gleaming with light and colour of which you have the key in your waistcoat pocket. Inexpensive independence, a mobile and perennial pleasure apparatus, new mental food and exercise, the old harmonies and symmetries in an entirely different language, an added interest to every common scene, an occupation for every idle hour, an unceasing voyage of entrancing discovery – these are high prizes.

A particularly sobering passage acknowledges that, as a hobbyist, you won't reach the same great heights of technique as the life-long, full time painters. It's a problem I find myself wrestling with frequently, but Churchill brings it up so matter-of-factly and without much concern:

> But if, on the contrary, you are inclined – late in life though it be – to reconnoitre a foreign sphere of limitless extent, then be persuaded that the first quality that is needed is Audacity. There really is no time for the deliberate approach. Two years of drawing-lessons, three years of copying woodcuts, five years of plaster casts – these are for the young. They have enough time to bear. And this thorough grounding is for those who, hearing the call in the morning of their days, are able to make painting their paramount lifelong vocation. The truth and beauty of line and form which by the slightest touch or twist of the brush a real artist imparts to every feature of his design must be founded on long, hard, persevering apprenticeship and a practice so habitual that it has become instinctive. We must not be too ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paintbox. And for this Audacity is the only ticket.

![These trees ❤️](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/images/winston-churchill-art-collection-pr-0518-1600x800.jpg)

It's still worth the pursuit all the same. The rewards for that Audacity are many:

> I have written in this way to show how varied are the delights which may be gained by those who enter hopefully and thoughtfully upon the pathway of painting; how enriched they will be in their daily vision, how fortified in their independence, how happy in their leisure. Whether you feel that your soul is pleased by the conceptions or contemplation of harmonies, or that your mind is stimulated by the aspect of magnificent problems, or whether you are content to find fun in trying to observe and depict the jolly things you see, the vistas of possibility are limited only by the shortness of life. Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

So beautifully said. It all rings true for me:

- Playing with shapes and sound, their interaction with one another, is fun unto itself
- Creation is largely puzzle solving. Even playing piano is a finger puzzle
- There's no better way to express love for the world than to try to recapture it as you see it
- Progress, itself, is a joy! Learning an instrument more intimately or refining a line stroke, they all lead to small victories
- There are infinite paths to explore. None right or wrong, only guided by your curiosity and interest

And why wait? The time to plant a garden is now:

> Try it, then, before it is too late and before you mock at me. Try it while there is time to overcome the preliminary difficulties. Learn enough of the language in your prime to open this new literature to your age. Plant a garden in which you can sit when digging days are done. It may be only a small garden, but you will see it grow. Year by year it will bloom and ripen. Year by year it will be better cultivated. The weeds will be cast out. The fruit-trees will be pruned and trained. The flowers will bloom in more beautiful combinations. There will be sunshine there even in the winter-time, and cool shade, and the play of shadow on the pathway in the shining days of June.

While the earlier, the better for overcoming the initial hurdle of learning the vocabulary, it's never too late. Thankfully, the barrier to entry is not technique or years of experience. Just Audacity!

![☁️](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/images/churchillpainting.jpg)


Winston Churchill on Painting as a Pastime

Phone Lines

Goose Creek

Hike

Cloud Covered Mountains

Cycling

You sense the opening...

You've traversed to this space several times now.
Instead of becoming more familiar, it's only deepened in mystery.
It's in equal parts awe and curiosity that you decide...
to step into the realm.

---

Getting lost in the atmosphere of Liquid Drum and Bass... 💎🌊

Largely inspired by Seba, as well as Tayla, LTJ Bukem, and Wax Doctor.

🔮 Visit Amethyst (Interactive Short Story)

Amethyst

Rosewood

⋆.˚🐠‧₊ _Frutiger Aero inspired music!_ ˚✩ ₊˚🫧⊹♡

Late 2000s tech had a unique vibrancy that made it feel almost magical. A new wave of color and light, glowing portals that illuminated worlds imagined and real. It was truly alive, how you interacted with it was so novel. More intuitive than ever before.

The anticipation for this promised future was at it's strongest as you began to load up that new system you brought home. Powering it on. Walking through the startup process. Being greeted to something wholly new...

SkyBox

Installation

Mostly Sunny

Cool guitar driven music for hot summer days.

Largely inspired by the great Masayoshi Takanaka.

Snow Cones

Watermelon

Raspberry

Video Game inspired Drum and Bass! Influenced by Soichi Terada and Jun Chikuma.

Space Cowboy Forrest Frog pilots his galaxy F-5 aircraft in search of the Hyper Fragment — a now rare material used to power warp speed travel. A group called the Black Hole Herons has aggressively taken control over the mines in the Lake Lenticular Galaxy, and there's only one gunman for the job!

Space Frog 64

Lily Pad Sector

Hyper Fragment


<figure className="reset">
  <video
    autobuffer
    loop
    type="video/mp4"
    playsInline
    controls
    className="full-width"
  >
    <source
      src="https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/video/BeethovenRageOverALostPenny_480p.mp4"
      type="video/mp4"
    />
  </video>
</figure>

Will [this piece](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_Over_a_Lost_Penny) still be funny now that [pennies are no longer being produced](https://www.usmint.gov/news/media-kit/penny)?


Beethoven – Rage Over A Lost Penny


Western music is founded on a phenomena in nature. Certain relationships between frequencies create a harmony, a certain sweetness, where there is little dissonance. Art seems to have a similar counterpart in composition through the [Golden Ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio).

I've been having fun crawling through the [One Perfect Shot](https://x.com/OnePerfectShot) Twitter account to find film screens of this composition principle in action. A few of my favorites below:

<figure>
  ![Kiki's Delivery Service](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/images/KikiGoldenRatio.png)
  <figcaption>Kiki's Delivery Service</figcaption>
</figure>

---

<figure>
  ![Days of Heaven](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/images/DaysOfHeavenRation.png)
  <figcaption>Days of Heaven</figcaption>
</figure>

---

<figure>
  ![Twin Peaks](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/images/TwinPeaksGodlenRatio.png)
  <figcaption>Twin Peaks</figcaption>
</figure>

---

<figure>
  ![The Naked Gun (2025)](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/images/NakedGunGoldenRatio.png)
  <figcaption>The Naked Gun (2025)</figcaption>
</figure>


Golden Ratio In Film


![Music grid for days](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/images/musicshelfscreenshot.png)

_In short — I made [a new webpage](/musicshelf) to chronicle my listening history. Woohoo!_

---

In the distant past of 2010, I distinctly remember two things:

1. Reading headlines on LifeHacker about a neat new service making a splash across the pond called Spotify — where you can legally stream a seemingly infinite library of music.
2. From that same evening: ripping Plastic Beach by the Gorillaz onto my computer, loading it into my iTunes library, and transferring it to my iPod.

A year later, I was shocked by the instantaneousness of having access to all music ever recorded.

15+ years later, I find my relationship with listening to music vastly different from those days. Teen-specific sentiments aside! I'm listening to a broader range of music, going deeper into sub-genres, and have heard international artists I otherwise would have never been exposed to. That's all good and well!

At the same time, I find myself not listening as deeply, not listening to whole albums, and allowing a large portion of my listening to be guided by unseen forces. Perhaps the pace of life has changed this, perhaps age, perhaps the coming and going of fascinations and interests.

Whatever the reason, I had a moment ripe for reconsidering my listening habits and the technology that supports them.

## CDs

Visiting my childhood home, I found stowed away a bunch of physical CDs that I hadn't thought of, let alone heard, in ages. Tucked in jewel cases, some in plastic sleeves from friends who burned playlists for me, nostalgia ensued. I popped several into a physical CD player. (One of those big 2000s era boomboxes was available. After that, I popped one into my car. Being built in 2016, it still has a CD player.) I felt the nearly forgotten anticipation of waiting for the music to start, the tactile satisfaction of placing media into it's reciever.

Seeing a natural trail of my listening history in physical form, I realized this sort of thing was too important to me to leave it to chance, tech companies that come and go, etc. I enjoyed being curious about what caught my ear, collecting it as a source of inspiration, and saving it in a way that it can serve as a time capsule later. There's a seeming urban legend about how Andy Warhol would wear a different perfume daily for a couple of months so that he could then remember that point in time. Music has a similar effect; it's a great memory maker.

Unfortunately, physical CDs are not the answer. I found out all too soon that my favorite Japanese City Pop CD's would be $30 each + international shipping. Too many recent favorites don't do print runs of their music. Even so, the practical reality is that most of my listening is done through apps. A physical purchase would be reserved for special albums, not for the entire collection.

It begged the question — what was I really trying to accomplish? If it were to be more intentional about my listening and saving my listening, the nerdiest answer I could come up with was _a webpage_. I had remembered those times curating my iTunes library intentionally, and I was suddenly interested in doing the same on my own domain.

## The Data Wrangling

The development was largely trivial — the project's meat was in data collection and cleanup. I had to pop my physical CD's into a spreadsheet. But that only accounted for a fraction of my listening. It took crawling my iTunes library from ~2012 when I made the switch to streaming, as well as [exporting my Spotify playlist data](https://exportify.net/).

With that done, several rounds of lassoing data ensued. More memories came flooding back — it took considerable effort to keep good hygiene with an iTunes library. It's easy for naming conventions to get off, for the same artists to have different names based on stylization (ex: Arcade Fire and The Arcade Fire, or Tune-Yards and tUnE-yArDs), and for album art to be inconsistent. At times, it was frustrating. Now, though, it was the right amount of resistance to help me slow down and really savor the collection as a whole.

Tagging by year listened was a goal, as this was meant to reflect a timeline of listening. The 2000's required big ol' estimates, while for 2016 on I could use Spotify listening data.

While I was at it with my exported Spotify data, I decided to transfer over the top songs by year. This feature is universally beloved — I listened to my first (2016) playlist for years after the fact. Spotify doesn't cover the entire landscape of my listening, but it'll do. Those tracks were tossed into JSON and are now listed under [/topsongs/{year}](/topsongs/2025).

Violà! A full day's effort later, and I have 930 albums listed on [my new Music Shelf page](/musicshelf). I know that to most readers this is just a list of albums. But for the curator, this is a delightful wall of memories and favorite melodies that spans a mile long.

---

The page itself is simply a list with cover art, album, and artist. Of course, there's more I could do. Were I feeling particularly clever, I could whip up integrations with Spotify for further automation. BUT! The point is for this to be manually maintained. To have a process that even, ever so slightly, resembles the modern-day equivalent of getting into the car, driving to FYE, walking through the stacks, making a selection, bringing it home, and _THEN_ putting it on the shelf. It allows time to [live more deeply](/opportunitytolivedeeply) with the music.

Will this change my listening? It already has. Metaphorically, I've gone from only ever listening to the radio to finding my favorites and spinning them on repeat. Even without abandoning Spotify ("[Yet you participate in society](https://i.imgur.com/sl3fXat.jpeg)"), I have a reason to manually add albums, skip the MASSIVE UI encouraging I hop to the next listening destination right away, and get to know albums better. (Significant for me, since for a time I was almost exclusively [listening to algorithmically suggested tracks](/weeklyplaylist) before it got to be too much like the snake eating itself.)

The aim is to balance the best of both modernity and older practices. Like any choice around modern technology, our approach informs the tools we use and how we use them, not vice versa.

[✌️](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOj0EU4IaPg)


A Lifetime of Music Listening


The difference in speed between accessing data from disc and accessing from an in-memory cache is significant, by the magnitude of 10-100 in some cases. When serving data in our applications that is frequently accessed, we want to place a cache in front of the DB to increase speed and lighten up read access to disc.

How that cache is populated & read, however, takes careful consideration of requirements and trade-offs. Is it important for the cache to be highly consistent with the DB? Of the two, is it permissible for one to be eventually consistent? Do we want our application to manually manage write and read access to both data sources?

Following is an exploration of several strategies with their strengths and considerations:

## Cache Aside (Lazy Loading)

Perhaps the most common pattern is to manage the cache strategy ourselves in the application with this gradual building of the cache. When requesting data, the cache is checked first for a given value. On a cache-miss, the application will then query the DB, and update the cache with the result.

Several fine benefits here: We have a high degree of control in the caching strategy — setting different TTL's based on certain parameters, custom caching keys, and our cache only contains data that is actually requested. With that control comes overhead — we will need to manage invalidation ourselves and, additionally, we must accept that the first request for a piece of data may be slow before the cache is populated with it. The tradeoff for an individual request having higher latency, however, is often worth it for overall higher throughput across the system.

## Write Through

Here, if we wanted our application to allow for abstraction of our data writes, we could encapsulate that logic in the services that are responsible for our DB and cache interactions.

One such way is a write-through strategy. Here, we have separate services for the DB and cache. Our application is writing to the cache, which then updates the DB synchronously. This has a few tradeoffs: Slower writes since we are waiting for both the DB and the cache to finish their writes, and we may be storing data to the cache that is never read. The benefit, however, is that the cache is never stale, and the data is highly consistent. Ideal for financial applications where consistency is a requirement.

## Write Behind

Similar to the above strategy, we are writing to the cache, and the database is updated from the cache. However, this is done asynchronously. This change will reduce the latency of our writes, though we are then at risk of potential data loss if the cache is down before a write completes to the database. This strategy is well-suited for logging systems and metrics where occasional data loss is acceptable in exchange for a high volume of fast writes.

## Write Around

This is similar to our Cache Aside strategy, except our database service manages the writes to cache. We gain the benefits of simplicity while maintaining flexibility with what we cache. Ideal for rarely-read data such as historical logs.

## Refresh Ahead

If your application is in a situation where you can predict spikes in traffic, a refresh-ahead strategy is advantageous. Here, this read strategy proactively refreshes data before it expires, rather than waiting for a miss to trigger a reload. The cache will monitor the TTL, and when reaching a certain threshold, it automatically fetches a fresh value in the background. If traffic spikes are predictable, a warm-up time can be set. This is also advantageous if it is very expensive to calculate the result, such as with dashboard data.

## When To Use Which Strategy

Most API's can benefit from a cache aside strategy that allows for a high level of control and flexibility. Exploring which alternative is suitable is dictated by the requirements — Write through for high consistency financial apps, write behind for metrics monitoring, write around for archival applications, and refresh ahead for computation-heavy data such as financial aggregations. In many cases — an app will employ different strategies for different portions of the application depending on the services provided.


Caching Strategies


![Dusk view of the mountains from the trail.](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/art/WesternRailway.png)

A farewell to Boulder 👋


Western Railway

Hey, I'm Chris!

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