There is the separate risk that Microsoft, Google, etc. will have a lower value in two years as governments get their migration off their platforms into full gear
I'm terrible at this because I just can't handle extended lulls in conversations with anyone who isn't a close friend. As a result, I talk too much and that's the end of building a friendship. Sigh...
I took several years of Suzuki piano method when I was a kid. Suzuki focuses initially on developing the ear.
During lessons, we did this kind of stuff all the time. I would close my eyes and my instructor would play a series of notes and I would need to play them back by ear.
I would also listen to whatever song I was learning before I went to be bed and again when I woke up in the morning, visualizing every note.
Give me a guitar today and I can work out pretty much any song I hear on the radio in under a minute just by listening.
EDIT: To be clear, I also played a LOT of guitar and piano. Ear training was in addition to the hard work of becoming a player.
It's really a great way to train your ear, and fun, too. I can play ukulele, but mostly just to strum and play songs to, but a few years ago I just started picking notes to try to recreate melodies of songs I knew or heard recently. At first it was slow-going with lots of searching on the fret for the right note, but over time I worked up the skill to mostly get the melody on the first few tries. It was the most amazing feeling to realize I could listen to a song and then reproduce it by ear.
I found that it's also an excellent way to "feel" the structure of a melody as well since you're essentially building it up again. Of course you could read music to see the actual melody, but working it out this way feels a bit more intimate.
My disconnect is I can't read sheet music. So I can hear it, then memorize where it is on the piano/keyboard... but that just teaches you play piano by ear. It doesn't teach you how to play music in the traditional sense.
I guess this showing you the sheet music as you find the notes can help with that, but as others noted - I'd like a "mess around" mode, before a "test" mode.
I have a great ear and am terrible at reading sheet music. Fine if you aspire to be a rock guitarist. Not so fine if you aspire to be a classical pianist.
Funny, but I'm final tired of my poor sight reading and have set a goal for 2025 to average one hour of piano playing from sheet music per day.
And I agree...a "mess around" mode on the app would be great. Feels almost punitive when I make a mistake.
If you're looking to improve your sight-reading and don’t mind playing church music, I highly recommend picking up a second-hand copy of an old Episcopal Church hymnal (I like the 1940 edition). All the pieces are four-voice and the rhythms are relatively simple, so you can concentrate on sight reading. Good luck!
Sounds like a good idea. Right now, I'm splitting my time between drill based content (Bartok, Gurlitt, Kunz, etc), beginner classical pieces, and the occasional blues.
Funny, but in church, I spend more time than maybe I should sight reading hymns during the sermon. :)
Why should more than one person create a layout for Risk, for example? Start storing these in a library, bearing in mind that most games have multiple releases with their own specs. Think of a site like Thingiverse.
Super normal. Let’s say at the simplest, you take 30 mins to get ready to leave from waking up, 30 mins from front door to sitting at your desk, 30 mins to get to bed and sleep that’s 2 hours of your 24 just kinda handling the bare functional minumum. Sleep for 8 and now you are left with 12 hours. Work plus breaks at work is probably 8-10 at the best.
So OK, 3-5 hours left over for everything else, assuming perfect execution on the other parts. Do you have family or pets that need something? Do you have dishes and laundry and trash days and bills to pay? Do you want to watch TV, play a game, do any kind of hobby or leaning? Are you sick? Do you have friendships? Are you tired from work being physically or mentally demanding? Do you need to exercise?
All of those things need to be handled in the same few “outside work” hours each day.
> that’s 2 hours of your 24 just kinda handling the bare functional minumum. Sleep for 8 and now you are left with 12 hours.
24 - 2 - 8 leaves you with 14 hours, not 12 hours.
Sounds pedantic, but 2 hours is a lot in the context of your argument that we only have a few hours per day to do anything.
This conversation gets repeated ad nauseum on social media, yet in the real world it’s common for people to operate fine on normal weekly work schedules. Back when I was still reading Reddit there was an endless stream of posts like this complaining that there was no time left to do anything after work. Every time when the OP was asked where their time was going, it revealed one of two things: Either they were taking way too long to go through the basic motions of life (e.g 2 hour morning routines and 2 hour dinner prep every day with a 1 hour bedtime ritual) or they realized they actually had a lot of time but it was just disappearing somewhere and they couldn’t figure it out. That latter one could almost always be traced to spending too much time on phones or in front of TV.
Yeah that’s a correct point, bad mental arithmetic there.
There are a few other unrealistic things too, but they fall in the other direction. Like I think it’s almost impossible to spend only 30 mins to leave my front door, get in the car, park at work and get into the building, get all the way to my desk and actually be in work mode. When I used to commute it was more like an hour, in busy traffic.
I have lived a lot of my life not having enough time to cook dinner mainly because I have often had a part time job in addition to a full time job, and was studying for a career change. So for a few years I was just kinda spinning plates. So that’s another way people end up caught out for time.
> in the real world it’s common for people to operate fine on normal weekly work schedules
I think it’s common but also maybe not even the majority of people are this way? There’s no good reason that “40 hours of work plus an arbitrary commute time” is a functional pattern for most people.
I think we have a mix of people who find this totally fine and have some energy left over at the end of the day, with people who are fully drained by their jobs. It’s hard for each cohort to relate to the other.
For some people, almost all leisure time is lost in an impossible quest to relax/recharge “enough” for the next day/week of work. Sometimes that explains the phone use or TV patterns. It’s an attempt to rest (plus their attention-taking and holding techniques work better on us when we are tired). It’s hard to plan on cooking if you know you’ll be in that state.
I tend to believe If you can find the right work and the right hours for you it’s a huge improvement in your life, and if you are on the wrong pattern with those it’s very bad and leads to a spiral. A lot of us have to accept the wrong pattern to make enough money to live and retire and support family.
I should have clarified it, but you hit the nail on the head. I arrive home with little energy after a day in the office.
By the time I’m home it’s at least 6:30pm, usually a bit later. If I would work until 6:30 but from home instead of the office, I’d probably still be up for cooking.
Although you also need to get gym time in, family time, chores and other stuff…
I have the same, my commute is a 10min walk, I have no dependants and make a good salary and I find it impossible to cook, I'm just depleted after work. If I add exercise and some social interaction then my time is spent recovering energy... It's probably a sign of burn out or of a bad job
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