Just listened to the first suite. The Menuet was soulful and haunting. The Gigue was fierce and fascinating in contrast to Yo Yo Ma’s. I felt a profound sense of “there’s not enough time left in life to fully appreciate this piece of music.” Thank you for sharing.
I love this so much, as someone who tends to listen to a single piece of music on repeat (especially while coding) and has spent a lot of time with Yo-Yo Ma's "Six Evolutions".
Loved learning about the deep diversity of recordings from other artists, the ambiguous history of the music, and that there's a question if the music was even originally written for a cello!
Also loved that the site recommends different recordings based on the mood of interpretation.
This all reminds me of the HN favorite, "Reality has a lot of detail." Feel like I just discovered fractal complexity in a piece of music I naively thought I knew well.
Different renderings of classical pieces can be night-and-day difference. There are some pieces that have been worn grey from over exposure and then you hear that one special version and it's like it is a completely new piece all over again.
Now just imagine you lived during the romantic period of music where the virtuoso's highly personal interpretation of the piece was not only encouraged - it was downright expected.
Even today where the printed note is considered sacrosanct - you'll still find that artists are able to inject quite a bit of their own personality into a piece.
Great example is the Well-Tempered Clavier as performed by Glenn Gould versus Sviatoslav Richter.
…which of course is a good reminder not to make assumptions about domains in which one has limited or no knowledge. I too have spent my entire life in classical music - I’m a collaborative pianist. But I have to guard against making judgements about popular genres which I don’t regularly listen to.
My year in review music roundups from Spotify or Apple Music have always been totally useless because I code to Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians almost daily. Something about that composition just gets me in the zone and I've been using it to study or work to since I first heard it in college 20+ years ago.
Oh great, I'm glad! I vividly remember the first time a friend that was studying 18 Musicians for a class at Berklee came over to my apartment with the original ECM vinyl and we just sat there silently listening for the hour. I don't think I'll ever grow tired of listening to it.
One of my favorite AI How-tos in the last year. Barry and Erik spend 80% of the post saying ~”eh, you probably don’t need agents. Just build straightforward deterministic workflows with if-statements instead.”
And then, when you actually do need agents, don’t over complicate it!
This post also introduced the concept of an Augmented LLM — a LLM hooked up to tools, memory, data — which is a useful abstraction for evolving LLM use beyond fancy autocomplete.
“An augmented LLM running in a loop” is the best definition of an agent I’ve heard so far.
I have ADHD, and my daughter was recently diagnosed as well.
Been reflecting on this post as it's been soaking up the front page for the last 24 hours.
I want to commend you for shipping maybe the perfect HN post:
- Personal Journey
- Old school hardware
- DIY software
- Productivity hack
- Great title
- Quantified results (2-3x productivity) over non-trivial duration (few months)
- A low-effort offline solution that delivers real value for the 98% who will never build the thing
- Great polish on the reading experience with lots of little details
- Effective call to action (subscribe to get the software in a few weeks)
You inspired me to get my organization back on track. After researching receipt printers for 30 minutes, I realized what I actually need is to dust off the system that has worked for me in the past. But I'm picking up some post-its today and my daughter and I are going to try implementing your system for her over the weekend.
AirBnB and Uber both have a dynamic where the host/driver has often taken out a loan and modified their lifestyle to depend on this income, which makes them the easier party to squeeze.
Go Bills.