Jim Willis

Category: Uncategorized

  • After Life Season 3

    Finished watching Season 3 of After Life with Ricky Gervais last night. Felt like he had to do season 3 to wrap up the series and some of it felt forced and there were more than a few scenes of dog-walking that just felt like filler material so that they could stretch season 3 out…

  • More on sleep

    I think about it most when I’m getting the least of it. Anyway, very good piece in the nytimes about relationship between diet and sleep. I know that on nights when I get 6hrs of spotty sleep, it is very difficult to say no to the Dunkin’ Donuts drive thru.  Per several of the studies…

  • Sick all of the time.

    I’m always on the lookout for clues as to why I get sick more frequently than most folks and why, when I do get sick, my colds last so much longer. I came across this study which adds additional weight to my theory that one cause is that for reasons I cannot really do much…

  • Quickly Share Marvis settings across devices

    I was struggling to keep my Marvis player settings in sync across multiple iOS devices and landed on this really low friction solution: Go to Settings->Advanced->Export Settings and then use the share sheet the pops up to AirDrop the file to your secondary devices. The receiving device will automatically open the file in Marvis and…

  • Apple Music Library Organization & Marvis

    A few weeks ago I began using an iOS app called Marvis (which, I cannot recommend enough for helping to organize and find albums/playlists in your Apple Music). Using Marvis, I’ve created a few rule/filter sets that help me surface albums I haven’t listened to in a while. However, what I am finding is a…

  • The Tyranny of the Filing Cabinet

    I have been thinking a lot about the relative merits of two different ways of storing files: a robust and well-executed hierarchical folder/file system vs tagging/metadata files. I’m thinking about this in the context of a work project but also in light of something L.M. Sacacas wrote a while back in, A World Ordered Only…

  • 2021 Year End Music Review

    Started writing this in my journal but figure it’s probably something share-worthy, here’s a quick look at what I listened to in 2021. Planning on using last.fm this year to better track this stuff. Telecaster/Guitar music Earlier this year during lockdown I picked up a very nice used American Telecaster. I love it. It’s the…

  • iOS and Last.fm

    Really a bummer that iOS makes it so tricky to log listening to last.fm. While on vacation this week I haven’t been sitting at my computer that much and have been doing a bunch of listening on my iPhone and iPad and very little of what I’ve listened to is showing up in my log…

  • Support artists, buy vinyl?

    I’ve been buying albums from new artists for the past year or so. If I find myself repeatedly listening to a new release on Spotify or Apple Music, I buy the record. It’s usually about $30 w/ shipping which is steep but I’ve long suspected that the margin is pretty good for the artist so,…

  • Focus mode for musicians on iOS

    I’m sure there are a bunch of really excellent use cases for the new focus mode in iOS but this one that I created yesterday is a total game-changer for me. On so many occasions I’ve been playing guitar or recording something in garage band and had a phone call or text interrupt the recording…