🎧 Songs of the Week #30: You're making me sweat just to hold your attention.

Welcome to week #30 of the Steel Orca Songs of the Week.

I’ve made it to the 30th issue of this newsletter, and it’s served its initial purpose. I started this in September of last year, and it’s April now, and I have a newfound appreciation for music and officially own a DJ controller. So the train to me making music is officially back on track.

On that note, this will be the last newsletter for a while. I’m planning on taking a 6-week break to work on the following:

1. Migrate this newsletter to ghost.org (the new site already exists, but I haven’t done anything beyond a test post). You can at least see how the code injection works at the top with the crazy flashing title I made;
2. I want to change the format of this newsletter to be more general and include more tech, culture, and lifestyle content. I also want to pressure Clara Beth to include more anecdotes from her travel stories to accompany all the fantastic pictures.
3. I’m going to stop hiding behind a cybernetic cetacean and get more personal with steelorca.io v2, though the Steel Orca as a digital entity should (if all goes well) get more robust;
4. I want to make the Steel Orca “real” by training a large language model on personal data like health data, music preferences, nutrition, my calendar, etc. Whatever I can think of (or has an available API). Ideally, I would then expose the Steel Orca as a chatbot on the footer of my new site so people can talk to it (me?).
5. I want to make more music (my goal is a 20-minute EP by the end of this year), and I want to practice DJ-ing (now that I have a setup);
6. I want to start a Twitch stream. That seems silly, but if I’m going to practice DJ-ing, I might as well do it where my friends can make fun of me (and I can build an audience);
7. I want to start jiu-jitsu/MMA training again. A current UFC fighter (Chad Anheliger) just opened a gym five minutes door-to-door (walking) from my house, so it’s almost like I have no choice. Muay Thai classes are on Mondays/Wednesdays at 7:30 pm, and jiu-jitsu is on Tuesdays/Thursdays.
8. Last (but not least), I will be coaching my kid’s soccer team. Superdad.

That seems like a lot, but I work from home and with some planning and coordination with my wife, I feel I can make it work. With that being said, I can’t do all of that and also write a weekly newsletter post (with all the sweet content included therein), so I’m taking a break to re-adjust and re-align. However, given that this is issue #30, I’m proud of how much I’ve done thus far. I’ve learned a lot about writing on the internet and SEO, and it’s time to get a bit more serious if I’m going to continue (and I want ever to make any money from my online writing).

As a result, there will be a pause in the newsletter, but we’ll continue to post on Instagram and Twitter semi-regularly (at least to the same extent we do now). However, because this isn’t a regular week, and I plan to stop posting for about six weeks, I figured I would do something different for the playlist.

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Wedding Songs

I got married in 2015 at SpringBreak Flower Farm in Hillcrest, Alberta. For context, Hillcrest is the site of the worst mine disaster in Canadian history (my wedding was lovely, though). I had my wedding songs in a folder on an old 2006 MacBook Pro with a failing motherboard. I had this laptop for years, but because the motherboard was failing, it wouldn’t turn on or hold a charge so I couldn’t get to any of our old wedding songs.

It turns out that if you use one of the slightly newer Apple MacBook charging cords (an 85W instead of a 60W, I believe, but I don’t have it in front of me), the difference in wattage will jolt the computer, and you’ll be able to start it up (at least with the cord plugged in). This worked for me, but your mileage may vary.

I did that successfully and found all my old wedding songs. To get more personal this week, I figured I would choose ten songs and discuss their importance to the wedding. This is in place of doing detailed research on each song, as I don’t have the time this week.

Anyway, I figured this would be a good way to get a bit more personal as I transition to a new phase of the Steel Orca project. I imagine I might lose some readers between now and June 1st, but hopefully, we’ll see some of you on the other side.

Enjoy the playlist.

Playlist Breakdown

▶️ Youtube Music: Songs of the Week #30

1. Explosions In The Sky - Your Hand In Mine (With Strings)💒 Played at the beginning of our ceremony.
2. Florence + The Machine - You’ve Got the Love👰 Played as the ceremony was wrapping up.
3. American Authors - Best Day Of My Life🍸 Played as we transitioned from the ceremony to the reception.
4. Band of Horses - No One’s Gonna Love You👩‍❤️‍👨 First dance as a married couple.
5. Passion Pit - Until We Can’t (Let’s Go)🙌 Everybody dance (the party starts).
6. Jamiroquai - Little L🎉 Party is ramping up.
7. Phantogram - Fall in Love🥳 Party continues.
8. Purity Ring - bodyache🎂 Cutting the cake.
9. Ki:Theory - Open Wound (ODESZA Remix)🎊 The party is in full swing now.
10. Josef Salvat - Every Night🎀 Garter toss song.

That’s it for this week from all of us here at the Steel Orca.✔️👋

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