{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1", "title": "steinkamp.us", "home_page_url": "https://steinkamp.us/", "feed_url": "https://steinkamp.us/rss.json", "description": "Zack Steinkamp's website posts.", "icon": "https://steinkamp.us/logo.png", "items": [ { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2026-03-03_how-i-got-into-trail-work", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2026-03-03_how-i-got-into-trail-work", "title": "Journey to Trailwork", "summary": "My path to finding a new joy in life through the art and science of trail building.\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/trail-work/undercrossing.jpg", "date_modified": "2026-03-03T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2025-10-28_your-own-custom-chai-tiffen", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2025-10-28_your-own-custom-chai-tiffen", "title": "Your Own Custom Chai Tiffin", "summary": "If you love chai like I do, check out how to put together your own custom cup each day.\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/chai/00_all.jpg", "date_modified": "2025-10-28T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2025-06-06_being-just-a-little-smarter-with-money", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2025-06-06_being-just-a-little-smarter-with-money", "title": "Being Just a Little Smarter With Money", "summary": "If thinking about money, 401k, and investing makes you tired and you have your\nnest egg just in a savings account, then read on...\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/money.jpg", "date_modified": "2025-06-06T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2025-04-30_first-class-travel--1994-96", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2025-04-30_first-class-travel--1994-96", "title": "First Class Travel, 1994-96", "summary": "Memories of the job I had when I lived in Costa Mesa. First Class Travel was a corporate travel agency in the US Bank building next to John Wayne Airport.\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/first-class/first-class.jpg", "date_modified": "2025-04-30T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2025-04-30_version-updates-in-max-for-live", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2025-04-30_version-updates-in-max-for-live", "title": "Version Updates in Max for Live", "summary": "This post details a system I've put together to provide notifications inside of my Max for Live devices when I publish a device update.\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/m4l-versions/version-arrows.png", "date_modified": "2025-04-30T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2025-03-01-knobbler", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2025-03-01-knobbler", "title": "Knobbler - The Pursuit of an Auto-Labeling Control Surface for Ableton Live", "summary": "I originally wrote this in 2022, but updated it in March 2025 after the release of Knobbler for iPad. I'm a big fan of purposeful physical interfaces to computer interfaces for the same reason why I'm a big fan of fully keyboard-controllable apps. When we can use our whole hands, including fingers, we are easily an order of magnitude (10x) more productive compared with the single point and click nature of using a mouse or touchpad. I'd wager it's more like two orders of magnitude (100x) in terms of real val", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/knobbler/2025/overall.jpg", "date_modified": "2025-03-01T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2025-01-31_howto-save-music", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2025-01-31_howto-save-music", "title": "How To Save Music", "summary": "tl;dr :: the Streamers (Spotify, Tidal, etc) do bizdev with Bandcamp to link up tracks in their streaming catalog with artists' Bandcamp catalogs. Streamers become a sales funnel to Bandcamp for these artists. Normal sales money relationship rules apply.\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/cds.jpg", "date_modified": "2025-01-31T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-11-23_evolving-parenting", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-11-23_evolving-parenting", "title": "Evolving Parenting", "summary": "Parenting changes not just from year to year as your kid gets older, but societally we understand more as time passes. It's time to evolve!\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/evolving_parenting.png", "date_modified": "2024-11-23T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-10-16_community-comet-support-group", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-10-16_community-comet-support-group", "title": "Community Comet Support Group", "summary": "I had a wonderful night meeting some lovely people in my community, with a comet backdrop.\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/2024-10-16-comet/35mm.jpg", "date_modified": "2024-10-16T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-10-11_shop-light", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-10-11_shop-light", "title": "The Ultimate Shop Light?", "summary": "Really happy with this recent shop light purchase. I'll tell you why!\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/shop-light/charging.jpg", "date_modified": "2024-10-11T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-09-12_ode-to-pickled-red-onions", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-09-12_ode-to-pickled-red-onions", "title": "Ode to Pickled Red Onions", "summary": "A bit about what is one of the easiest, cheapest, and most versatile\ncondiments around.\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/pickled-red-onions/chilaquiles.jpg", "date_modified": "2024-09-12T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-09-01_magsafe-monitor-mount-evolution", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-09-01_magsafe-monitor-mount-evolution", "title": "MagSafe Continuity Camera Monitor Mount", "summary": "I figured out a cool way to mount my phone to my monitor using a wireless charger. Check out the evolution...\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/phone-mag-mount/IMG_0236.jpeg", "date_modified": "2024-09-01T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-08-26_the-story-of-quantize-midi", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-08-26_the-story-of-quantize-midi", "title": "The Story of Quantize MIDI", "summary": "All about the Max for Live device that can variably quantize a MIDI note stream in real time.\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/quantize/device.png", "date_modified": "2024-08-26T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-07-27_why-did-the-runner-cross-the-road", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-07-27_why-did-the-runner-cross-the-road", "title": "Why Did the Runner Cross The Road?", "summary": "A little post giving my $0.02 on what side of the road a runner should run on.\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/runner/turn-good.png", "date_modified": "2024-07-27T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-06-27_jpl-care-package-from-1983", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-06-27_jpl-care-package-from-1983", "title": "JPL Care Package From 1983", "summary": "In March 1983, perhaps in response to a parental request for some nerdy materials for a nerdy kid, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent a large envelope to my house. Find out what was inside...\n", "image": "https://photos.steinkamp.us/photo/2024-06-26-jpl/jpl-01-f.jpeg?size=1600x1600", "date_modified": "2024-06-27T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-05-31_current-status-music-space", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-05-31_current-status-music-space", "title": "Current Status Music Space", "summary": "A rundown of what my creative area looks like right now.\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/music-desk-2024-05-31.jpg", "date_modified": "2024-05-31T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-05-31_sock-strategy-success", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-05-31_sock-strategy-success", "title": "Sock Strategy Success", "summary": "Please don't bother unless you're the kind of person that thinks that having 12 pairs of the same sock is the way to do it. Otherwise, Welcome Friend!\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/sock-drawer.jpg", "date_modified": "2024-05-31T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-09-28_simulscrub-videos", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-09-28_simulscrub-videos", "title": "Simulscrub Videos", "summary": "I published some videos on YouTube showing and demonstrating Simulscrub.\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/simulscrub-herk-yt.jpg", "date_modified": "2024-05-28T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-05-17_leaving-the-full-time-world", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-05-17_leaving-the-full-time-world", "title": "Leaving the Full-Time World", "summary": "Lucky me to be able to leave this kush job to focus on the more important things in life.\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/retirement.jpg", "date_modified": "2024-05-17T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-05-11_20-years-ago", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-05-11_20-years-ago", "title": "20 Years Ago", "summary": "A look back a couple of decades to see how the heck I got here.\n", "date_modified": "2024-05-11T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-03-05_filesystem-apps---own-your-own-data", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-03-05_filesystem-apps---own-your-own-data", "title": "Filesystem Apps - Own Your Own Data", "summary": "Cloud services will come and go, but your memories are yours forever. Take\ncharge of your media legacy with Filesystem Apps.\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/fsapps/photodirs.png", "date_modified": "2024-03-05T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-02-25_zack-s-no-bull-youtube-list", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-02-25_zack-s-no-bull-youtube-list", "title": "Zack's No-Bull YouTube List", "summary": "YouTube is a wonder of the modern world. Sure, there's a ton of garbage there, but there is also quite a lot of gold.\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/youtube.jpg", "date_modified": "2024-02-25T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-02-23_lenticular-clouds-majesty", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2024-02-23_lenticular-clouds-majesty", "title": "Lenticular Clouds Majesty", "summary": "I had a run-in with a cloud structure I've never seen, myself or in any\nphotos. Follow the story of how I figured out where it was.\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/lenticular/lenticular-zoom.jpg", "date_modified": "2024-02-23T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-11-30-wielding-authority", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-11-30-wielding-authority", "title": "Wielding Authority", "summary": "How our views of competent authority as adults is shaped by our experiences as children, how that shows up in adult life, and how we can benefit from a categorical reboot of the role of authority.\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/authority.jpg", "date_modified": "2023-11-30T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-10-27-the-positive-roi-of-therapy", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-10-27-the-positive-roi-of-therapy", "title": "The Positive ROI of Therapy", "summary": "Beyond the usually understood benefits of therapy (dealing with trauma, triggers, relationships, etc.), this post presents a thesis that regular therapy yields a positive ROI over traditional investments.\n", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/brain-money.jpg", "date_modified": "2023-10-27T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-10-20-dev-team-blueprint", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-10-20-dev-team-blueprint", "title": "A Dev Team Blueprint", "summary": "It's possible that your organization needs to scramble. Perhaps strategy takes a sudden left turn. It's crunch time and you are a part of making it happen. This is your mission, right? Well, sort of. This is your superficial mission. Perhaps this mission can also be leveraged as a tool to achieve something a lot more important. Reflecting Perhaps your organization has a heavy feeling. I'm using \"heavy\" emotionally, not physically. I'm sure everyone is lovely and has impressive backgrounds in your teams, but", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/blueprint.jpg", "date_modified": "2023-10-20T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-10-19-video-future", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-10-19-video-future", "title": "On Video", "summary": "Origin The origin was colorless and still. Then we added movement. Next was color. The movement became smoother. The resolution achieved par with human vision. VR Present and Near Future VR takes over. Every recording device records stereoscopic. All entertainment is VR. Omnipotent Virtual Experiences and Industry Breakthroughs in optics, sensors, ambisonic microphones, computing power, and vast amounts of media and metadata collected on every individual allows for a complete virtual representation of any s", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/video/console_tv.jpg", "date_modified": "2023-10-19T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-10-05_introducsing-esstraba", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-10-05_introducsing-esstraba", "title": "Introducing Esstraba!🎉", "summary": "Continuing on my apparent obsession with filesystem-based applications (musics, photodirs, etc...), I present Esstraba!🎉 your self-hosted Strava bulk download zip file viewer. Check out my Esstraba!🎉 Umm ok, and, so, um, why? This is for the people that have some of their most treasured memories in Strava -- pre-dawn trail runs with friends, PRs, races you trained for months to prepare for. These are memories I want to keep forever and to revisit any time. Strava may not be around forever, so I don't want", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/esstraba/screenshot.png", "date_modified": "2023-10-05T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-09-09_stepwise-chord-ripper", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-09-09_stepwise-chord-ripper", "title": "Stepwise Chord Ripper", "summary": "I just finished a marathon session with Max For Live and have two new devices to show for it. Download the Devices KeyStepper ChordRipper What I wanted was a way to play a chord of MIDI notes on one track, and have the individual notes from the chord sent to different tracks, so that I could have different instruments playing the different notes from the chord. Once the notes were at the destination track, I also wanted to be able to sequence patterns of note pitch variations and rest patterns in arbitrary ", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/KeyStepperChordRipper.png", "date_modified": "2023-09-09T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-08-10_easy-https-with-nginx", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-08-10_easy-https-with-nginx", "title": "Easy HTTPS with NGINX and ACME", "summary": "Bottom Line NGINX has just open-sourced a project that drastically reduces the effort required to add HTTPS support to your NGINX webservers. This project makes use of NJS (which allows for extending NGINX with JavaScript) to integrate an ACME (Automated Certificate Management Environment) client into NGINX itself. This client communicates with ACME services like Let's Encrypt to manage SSL/TLS certificates automatically on your NGINX server. If you want to try it out, head over to the njs-acme repository f", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/njs-acme/njs-acme.png", "date_modified": "2023-08-10T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-07-14_jury-duty", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-07-14_jury-duty", "title": "Jury Duty Recap", "summary": "Prior to 2023, I had never received a jury summons. This seemed odd to me, given my eligibility for over 30 years and that it is supposedly a random process. It was something I'd mention here and there as friends and colleagues received their summons, but always with a little superstitious hesitation. Lo and behold, a summons arrived in the mail in February 2023, with an April appearance date. I had just started a new job, and I was imagining things would be in full swing come April, so I chose to use my on", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/salad.jpg", "date_modified": "2023-07-14T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-06-17_st-lucia-recap", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-06-17_st-lucia-recap", "title": "St Lucia Trip Recap", "summary": "Marina, Naomi, and I decided last April to book a trip to St Lucia. When we were deciding where to go, we didn't know we wanted to visit St Lucia specifically, but we did know we wanted a Caribbean vacation. After doing a bit of internet research (e.g. googling \"how to select a caribbean island\") as well as looking at flight times to each, St Lucia came out on top for us -- it's a very nature-oriented country and is not terribly difficult to get to. It ended up being a great decision. We flew on a redeye fr", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/2023-06-17_st-lucia/IMG_8821.JPG", "date_modified": "2023-06-17T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-04-11-modulation-lerp", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-04-11-modulation-lerp", "title": "New Max for Live Device: Modulation Lerp", "summary": "Yesterday after work I was reading my personal email, and a very sincerely interesting email was waiting for me. My strategy of putting my email address everywhere has been paying off in the contacts I've been making, and today was no exception. Good Ben Sulzinsky shared an idea of his for a modulation machine that I loved from the beginning. His idea could be accomplished a string of the stock Live LFOs, but the ergonomics of that solution were really lacking. Ben's idea was to have explicit controls for l", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/lerp/lerp.png", "date_modified": "2023-04-11T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-01-22-my-history-of-programming-ish-languages", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-01-22-my-history-of-programming-ish-languages", "title": "My History of Programming(-ish) Languages", "summary": "I thought it would be good to write down the programming languages I've used and the context that I learned them in. So here we are. 1980 - Logo (Turtle Graphics) My earliest computer programming memory was from a computer lab with Apple ][ computers in some school at night when I was 6 years old. I was there for a computer class (I can't remember the lead-in to that), and was blown away by being able to type things and have the computer draw what I asked it to. I learned the 'repeat' command either this ti", "date_modified": "2023-01-22T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-01-21-nice-backup-solution-for-pfsense-truenas", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-01-21-nice-backup-solution-for-pfsense-truenas", "title": "Nice backup solution for PFSense => TrueNAS", "summary": "For the last couple of weeks, I've been nerding out on some home networking stuff. I blame my friend Eric for introducing me to the wonders of TrueNAS and pfSense. This post outlines how I use TrueNAS to back up my pfSense configuration, and a special trick I used that I feel was cool enough to write about. Background TrueNAS is an open-source network attached storage (NAS) system that can run on pretty much any hardware. I use it for centralized, reliable file storage for the house, to host a photo sharing", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/pfsense_bk/snapshot_config.png", "date_modified": "2023-01-21T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-01-01-truenas-for-awesome-home-storage-media-and-backups", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2023-01-01-truenas-for-awesome-home-storage-media-and-backups", "title": "TrueNAS for Awesome Home Storage, Media, and Backups", "summary": "yo I'm a constant optimizer and evolver with basically everything. I also enjoy working with computers, so challenges around technology are more fun for me than they are chores. This post captures my current solution of using TrueNAS for home network file sharing, media serving, and backups. Context A while back, I wrote about how I was using a Raspberry Pi as a fun Linux server for the home. I attached a couple of 2.5\" 4TB HDDs to it and shared them with Samba for general file storage and Time Machine back", "image": "https://photos.steinkamp.us/photo/zzz_blog_images/truenas/truenas_box.jpg?size=300x300", "date_modified": "2023-01-01T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-12-25-request-chain-views-in-ableton-live", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-12-25-request-chain-views-in-ableton-live", "title": "Request: Chain Views in Ableton Live", "summary": "As an Ableton Live user, I appreciate its approach to interface. Part of their interface philosophy is the extreme consistency within the Ableton-provided devices. This allows for a deeply opinionated model for user experience, since many basic constraints like \"device height\" are controlled. This allowed Ableton to make the decision to devote a slim portion of the bottom of the interface window to present a track's devices. This component scrolls horizontally to display more than a screen's width of device", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/chain-view/current.png", "date_modified": "2022-12-25T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-12-08-bringing-customer-focus-to-your-engineering-team", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-12-08-bringing-customer-focus-to-your-engineering-team", "title": "Bringing Customer Focus to Your Engineering Team", "summary": "In my experience, one attribute that makes a great software engineering team is their level of customer focus. By customer focus, I mean understanding their customer's needs and placing that front and center in decision making. It's critical for a team to understand that the only reason they exist is because their customers find value in the product or service they are offering. Without the deep understanding of that customer that comes from direct engagement with the customer, the team will likely impede t", "date_modified": "2022-12-08T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-11-10-perpetual-storage", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-11-10-perpetual-storage", "title": "Perpetual Storage", "summary": "Where does the data go? Where does it go after you die, after the app company folds, after the powers of the world shift? Your phone is a single generation of a very long line of obsolete devices. Your computer and its backup drive in your house is subject to fire, flood, or earthquake. An online backup provider is but one solution, each with an average corporate lifespan of 5.4 years (I made that up). \"The Cloud\" is a single corporate entity that you chose for your specific data. It's subject to regime cha", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/stone-tablet.jpg", "date_modified": "2022-11-10T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-11-10-what-i-learned-at-stripe", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-11-10-what-i-learned-at-stripe", "title": "What I Learned At Stripe", "summary": "In February 2022, I left my job at Splunk to take some time first to relax then to focus on finding a fantastic next job. I managed to do both during my three months of funemployment, landing a job at Stripe in the Atlas team in May. I was laid off in November 2022, along with most people who were hired during this time. Despite it being a very short stint in my career, what I learned at Stripe was nothing like I had experienced in more than 20 years in the industry. The intent of this post is to capture th", "image": "https://marketplace.mypurecloud.com/e381987c-6f3e-4fc7-b562-8526d3e0ac45/companylogo_bf4b0be5.jpg", "date_modified": "2022-11-10T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-11-10-ye-olde-yahoo", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-11-10-ye-olde-yahoo", "title": "Ye Olde Yahoo!", "summary": "Early Yahoo! was a very special place. It was magical and rudimentary at the same time. I joined probably past the true magical era, and was hired in Yahoo!'s first hyper-growth, bulking-out phase (empno 850) at the beginning of 1999. What made it special? We were inventing how internet-connected distributed apps can work at scale (well, one way!). Nobody had ever solved problems like these before, and Yahoo! made some very smart decisions along the way. I was hired to work on My Yahoo!, a customizable inte", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/yahoo.png", "date_modified": "2022-11-10T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-10-01-four-year-checkin-tesla-model-3", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-10-01-four-year-checkin-tesla-model-3", "title": "Four Year Checkin: Tesla Model 3", "summary": "In November 2018, I decided to order a Tesla Model 3. So far it's been a joy to own and drive. This post details my history and experiences with the car, and gets into just how much money I've saved by choosing this car over something comparable. Spoiler: It's seriously no contest. History I owned a Volkswagen e-Golf since 2015, and while it was a super fun car, its meager range (realistically 80 miles on a full charge) made anything but an around town trip something of an anxiety-fest. Fast chargers that w", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/tesla-thumb.jpg", "date_modified": "2022-10-01T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-05-28-so-you-have-a-new-teen-driver", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-05-28-so-you-have-a-new-teen-driver", "title": "So You Have a New Teen Driver!", "summary": "So your teenager is old enough to learn to drive. That's awesome! For a parent, it can also be terrifying. I mean, they're the most precious people in our lives -- isn't it irresponsible to put them out there with all those crazies?!?!? We all know that car accidents are the #1 killer of teenagers. How can we reconcile this, and let our kids grow up to be responsible adult drivers? I wrote this post to help parents help their kids survive to adulthood, and not wrapped in a cocoon locked in the house. Give t", "image": "https://photos.steinkamp.us/photo/2022-01-01_ccc/IMG_3961.JPG?size=300x300", "date_modified": "2022-05-28T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-05-05-TapPanVerb", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-05-05-TapPanVerb", "title": "TapPanVerb - A Reverb + Delay Tap Field + Feedback Effect", "summary": "Last week I had an idea for an effect. I was thinking that a reverb effect should give you control over the pan position of the reverb at a given time after the initial impulse enters the reverb. This could make for some neat movement, since it's not just panning the whole reverb signal -- each moment of the reverb's tail has its designated pan position. After a walk through my current reverb plugins, I decided that I needed to build this if I wanted to hear it. My first attempt was to mock up the idea with", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/tapPanVerb.png", "date_modified": "2022-05-05T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-04-14-max-tips", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-04-14-max-tips", "title": "Top Things I Wish Were More Clear In Max/MSP", "summary": "I really enjoy working in Max/MSP, especially on Max For Live devices. This is something that sets Ableton Live apart from other DAWs, and really speaks to the Art+Science part of me. I didn't always enjoy working in Max. As a beginner, it all seems so opaque, and others' patches just seem to magically work. But I've worked with computers for long enough to know that when anything feels like magic, I just need to learn more about it. This post exists to help others get over the hump of feeling comfortable a", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/max/trigger.png", "date_modified": "2022-04-14T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-04-08-automation-math", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-04-08-automation-math", "title": "Automation Math", "summary": "tl;dr If you just want to install it, then head over to the GitHub project page for download links and instructions. Context In Ableton Live, once you assign an automation source to a control, you cannot assign additional automation sources for that control. There are situations where it would be nice to have two sources for one parameter, for instance an LFO at a vibrato frequency modulating filter cutoff, while larger manual filter cutoff moves are provided by a MIDI control surface. When combining signal", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/AutomationMath.png", "date_modified": "2022-04-08T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-03-16-knobbler", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-03-16-knobbler", "title": "Knobbler - The Pursuit of an Auto-Labeling Control Surface for Ableton Live", "summary": "I'm a big fan of purposeful physical interfaces to computer interfaces for the same reason why I'm a big fan of fully keyboard-controllable apps (bonus points for modal interfaces and a bias for the home row – 'vi' for the win!). When we can use our whole hands, including fingers, we are easily an order of magnitude more productive compared with the single point and click nature of using a mouse or touchpad. I'd wager it's more like two orders of magnitude in terms of real value, given the much lower fricti", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/knobbler/external-with-hand.jpg", "date_modified": "2022-03-16T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-03-05-consolidate-and-loop-in-ableton-live", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-03-05-consolidate-and-loop-in-ableton-live", "title": "Consolidate and Loop in Ableton Live", "summary": "I'm an efficiency freak. In either my personal or professional life, I'm always looking for ways to eliminate steps in a process, especially if those steps are ones that a person has to take. Sometimes, process changes are big and fundamental and sometimes they are micro-efficiencies. A micro-efficiency may save 2 seconds of waiting time, or eliminate one mouse click. If that savings happens frequently, then the investment in finding the efficiency can pay off. Another advantage of finding micro-efficiencie", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/consolidateAndLoop/install.png", "date_modified": "2022-03-05T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-03-01-vim-mac-external-editor", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-03-01-vim-mac-external-editor", "title": "Using Terminal vim as an External Editor on Mac", "summary": "If you're reading this, then please allow me to welcome you -- a fellow person of specific needs and preferences! It has bothered me several times in the past that I can't use my text editor of choice everywhere I can edit text. There is an insect brain muscle memory that comes from being a long-time vim user. For example, I regularly find myself resorting to vim commands/shortcuts in places like GMail. I think it's just my body trying to get me back to using mutt to read email again. Regardless, this isn't", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/automator-vim.png", "date_modified": "2022-03-01T12:00:00.000Z" }, { "id": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-02-16-access-virus", "url": "https://steinkamp.us/posts/2022-02-16-access-virus", "title": "Access Virus and Me", "summary": "The Access Virus is a music synthesizer that was first sold around 1997. It was one of the first \"virtual analog\" synths, which means that it uses computer code that simulates the behavior of analog circuits, rather than using computer code to play back samples. This approach brought more liveliness to its sounds compared with other synths of the time, and this appealed to a lot of different kinds of musicians. The Virus was a staple of many studios in the late 90s and through the 2010s, with people like Ha", "image": "https://steinkamp.us/images/Access_Virus_A.jpg", "date_modified": "2022-02-16T12:00:00.000Z" } ] }