Weeknotes 25
- I had the coronavirus vaccine on Friday. I was invited by St. Thomas’s hospital (where I see the cardiology team) and attended the vaccine centre at Guy’s hospital. It was a pretty life-affirming experience to be honest, plenty of people there, well organised, cups of tea, blitz spirit etc. I felt a bit odd about being in an enclosed space (a big tent) with lots of other people (probably the largest gathering I’ve attended for over a year, ironically) but everything was being constantly sanitised. My arm was sore for a day, and I had chills/fever type symptoms for a few hours yesterday afternoon but back to normal now.
- Afterwards I enjoyed a short walk along the Southbank in the sun.
- When I got home and before any side effects kicked in I managed to do a bit of woodwork for the first time in months. I’m building a small cabinet on wheels for A- to store her sewing machine and overlocker in (hopefully making it easier to get started on sewing projects when she had an hour or two in the evening). Nothing special joinery wise, I’m using pocket screws to join poplar plywood. The top of the cabinet folds out to make a larger surface for the fabric being fed into the machine. I used bar-counter style flap hinges, which involved morticing into the ply. Poplar ply is pretty soft, so I was able to cut the curve with a sharp knife. I used my router plane to level the bottom of the mortice.
- I’m still enjoying making music. For a bit of discipline I’ve been trying to complete whole songs even if I have very limited time, to develop a workflow and some muscle memory. I’m putting them in a folder and hopefully listening back will give me some concrete things to work on. Koala Sampler is amazing, particularly with the recent update that enables piano-roll editing of sequences. Perfect for writing music while rocking F- to sleep, but it does involve a lot of staring at a screen, which I was trying to avoid. I’ve pulled the trigger on a Norns Shield which I’m hoping will be the right balance between hacking on music software and stand-alone music making. We’ll see.