Weeknotes 56

I spent most of the day on Monday at Royal Brompton hospital receiving my first dose of a new medicine/placebo. I’m taking part in a stage three clinical trial of a new drug for treating obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It was an uneventful and slightly drawn out day that culminated in me taking 4 tiny white pills that may, or may not, be the drug. I spent most of the rest of the week trying to guess which branch of the test I’m in. I have no idea! I feel fine I think. Is that good?

On Tuesday I pressed the “publish” button in Bandcamp and released my first EP. I’d been fiddling with the details of the page for about a week for no good reason and eventually decided to go for it. I don’t really know why it’s so difficult to put creative things out into the world. I had no expectations that anyone would listen, but I did make an effort to promote it via Mastodon, Instagram and a couple of forums. As of today Bandcamp tells me over 200 people have listened and tracks have been played 700 times. It even got a bit of radio play in Luxembourg. This is much more than I expected and very humbling.

Mostly it’s been touching to hear people have enjoyed it or played it as part of their day to day activities. The good thing about ambient music is that if someone tells you they fell asleep while listening or had it on in the background while they did something else, that’s a strong signal of approval.

I’m already working on ideas (in my head) for my next project and looking forward to spending time making music again.

It was good to write some code and do some pair programming this week, but I’m feeling a bit rusty, it’s been a while since I had to spend all day reading and writing code.

We’re spending the Easter weekend with my parents, the kids have enjoyed Easter egg hunting, a soft play visit, chasing the cat and trying not to break my Dad’s model railway.