Recently, I’ve enjoyed a lot of Brandon Sanderson’s novels. If you don’t know who he is, he’s a popular fantasy author with a wildly optimistic outlook on people, and a knack for world building and magic systems. 

He’s also extremely prolific.

Since George R.R. Martin published Dance of Dragons in 2011 (the most recently published book in his Song of Ice and Fire series), Brandon Sanderson has published ten novels. (That’s not including his novellas.) Some of those books are lengthy tomes that take dozens of hours to read.

Not that Sanderson and George R.R. Martin are in a competition, but if they were, Sanderson wins the output competition. And, at this point, I think he’d win the quality competition. Sanderson is becoming a better writer all the time, and I think it’s because he writes constantly. (Quantity breeds quality.)

I thought about this in light of my own creative practice, of course, and wondered how somebody like Brandon Sanderson gets all that writing done. That’s a lot of words. It turns out, Sanderson’s website has a whole section about his process. He has a page about his daily word count and time goals that I found interesting:

I write every day, and I give myself wordcount goals. (Usually, it’s 2k min, or a certain page goal if revising). It varies though. 10 pages is often my goal. I usually hit it, and sometimes do much more… Also, some days I write for four or five hours – some days I write fourteen or sixteen… The truth is, I love what I do. So if I have time when I’m not doing something else, I work on books… Most days, usually, formally, I write from about noon until four, and then I’ll hang out with my family and do other stuff until about ten, and I’ll start writing from about ten until midnight. No from about ten until 4AM.

First, Sanderson writes a lot more than many other authors who have documented their process. Stephen King writes for four hours a day (his process also includes an afternoon nap, which sounds awesome).

Second, Sanderon’s word count is impressive. Two thousand words a day doesn’t sound like a lot, but two thousand words a day about stories and people you’ve conjured out of thin air is no picnic. Two thousand words is double what Stephen King writes in a day. (Again, this isn’t a competition, but it’s interesting to compare two prolific writers. King has written eighteen books since Dance of Dragons. His books are shorter, in case that’s not obvious. Later was an excellent read, in case you wonder if he’s still got it after all these years.)

Put all this aside, though, for just a minute: how do writers like Sanderson and King write this much, all the time? How do you show up every day?

Of course, Brandon Sanderson has something to say about that:

Writer’s block for me is where I’m a few chapters in and the story’s not flowing ​‚or I’m in the middle of the book somewhere and a chapter is just not working… I deal with it by writing the next part anyway, and it often doesn’t work, but I can set it aside and try it again the next day. I find that just writing it anyway, writing it poorly, and setting aside what I wrote and trying again fixes the problem almost every single time. 

Sanderson writes the hard part anyway, then moves on even though it stinks.

I know it sounds a lot like I’m saying ​“just do the work to be creative and you’ll get it done,” and that’s not helpful. But stay with me here: there are at least two takeaways from what Sanderson is saying that I think are immensely helpful.

1. Set aside a time in your day when you get to do your creative work. Stephen King writes the same four hours every day. On ​“most days,” Sanderson writes from noon to 4, then 10pm to midnight. Make an appointment on your calendar and keep it.
2. In that time period, don’t worry about perfection. Your first ​“draft” might stink. That’s why pencils have erasers, Adobe Illustrator has so many ​“Dupe” shortcuts, programmers have the Delete key, and writers have editors.

The hardest thing is point number one. Let’s say you have a 9 – 5, but you take photos in the evening. That sucks. The best light is gone when the sun is down. You have to come up with some creative ways to make a daily practice out of that, but this is a creative process — coming up with creative solutions to hard problems is the work.

Even if your day job is doing creative work — maybe you’re a freelancer like me — it’s still hard to find a consistent time. Trust me, people love meetings, and many clients are more interested in meeting with you than they are in your completion of their work.

But if you can find the time to show up every day, and keep that appointment with yourself, the second problem solves itself. Your first drafts get better. You get blocked less often. The mere act of showing up triggers your brain’s neurological pathways into doing the work.

The hard part is making the time to do your creative work. To do the stuff that matters. Don’t try to find the time. You won’t. You must make it for yourself.

Last week, my wife and I streamed Girl, Interrupted, which I hadn’t seen in about twenty years. There’s a moment where a psychologist explains the protagonist’s central problem: she is unnecessarily choosing to embrace her pain and live in a psychiatric institution: 

Quis hic locus?, quae regio?, quae mundi plaga? What world is this?… What kingdom?… What shores of what worlds? It’s a very big question you’re faced with, Susanna. The choice of your life. How much will you indulge in your flaws? What are your flaws? Are they flaws?… If you embrace them, will you commit yourself to hospital?… for life?

I immediately rewrote this quote in my mind to be less negative: The choice of your life is this: What are your flaws? Are they flaws? Will you embrace them and embrace yourself?

Naturally, this whole thing reminded me of the creative process, which to me is about embracing ourselves and our imperfections. If we can’t accept our flaws, we’ll never make anything worthwhile. I think we can create from a good place or a bad place, but each unique creation of ours bears the signature flaws that make us unique. So if we want to commit ourselves to doing good creative work for all our lives, we have to embrace our flaws. 

Of course, the central question is, are they flaws?

Like many things in life, non-western cultures are much better at this. The Japanese allow imperfection and accept it in all things, including art. They even have a word for it: wabi-sabi. For them, something isn’t beautiful unless it is imperfect, or impermanent, or incomplete. I’m struck that we as humans are all imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. We want to find things that remind us of ourselves.

Traditional Hebrew rabbis encourage the admittance of imperfection. As Rabbi Ari Lev writes, ​“And amidst our imperfections may we have the courage and compassion to to say to ourselves, Hinein — Here I am, I am not perfect, but I am very good.” (Modern western Christianity barely has a basic understanding of this concept and has made ignoring it a cottage industry of theirs.)

The flaw in my work, or maybe the flaw within myself, is a fear of impermanence. I have struggled with the impermanence of my work for years. I design websites and web apps for a living. They have a life cycle of somewhere around seven minutes before some executive gets the brilliant idea that a redesign will fix all their problems, which is disheartening when you spend months or even years of your life working with clients on large projects.

But wabi-sabi: embrace your flaws, and embrace the flaws in your work.

To counter this, I make music. I record it. I share it. I have a little Youtube channel, and a Patreon, and a Bandcamp page, all that junk. In my mind, it’s evergreen: a piece of music lasts a lot longer than most websites. The music I make and put on Youtube will be as valuable in 2033 as it is in 2023. 

Every week, I spend at least one day a week just making music. It keeps me sane when I make something as impermanent as a website the next day.

What are your flaws? Are they flaws? Will you embrace them and embrace yourself?

When in your life did you feel like you were the most creative?

I don’t mean productive. Creativity and productivity are different.

I mean creative. When in your life did you feel like your output matched your input?¹

The concept of achieving a flow state has become so popular that it has a detailed Wikipedia page. What if one could achieve flow for longer than a few hours at a time? What if one were able to pursue flow, relentlessly, without ceasing, for months or even years at a time?

I don’t really think of that as a flow state any more. I call it ​“relentless creativity.” And I think I achieved it once for a period of a few months, or a year.

This period of relentless creativity began in March of 2020. This was the beginning of the COVID lockdowns, of course, but I’m not sure it was just the one event that created these circumstances. And I’m also not sure how long it lasted. For all I know, I was in this state for two years. Thanks to the way COVID compressed the feeling of time², I couldn’t say how long the state of relentless creativity lasted with any certainty³.

I would like to experience that flow state again. And I’d like to stay there.

With that in mind, I plan on writing a lot more about achieving this state in the coming months. I thought it would make sense to start by thinking through what allowed me to become relentless creative in 2020:

• Certainly, COVID was part of it. COVID meant there was nothing to do but keep up with the news (and lose your soul), or get to work. I chose the latter.
• I was fortunate, though, to have a great workspace in my home. At the time, I was working on an iMac Pro in a den in the condo. There was a designated space to get to work. I couldn’t just pick up a laptop and go lie on the couch. My desk was on wheels, but I couldn’t move it too far. Our condo wasn’t that big!
• The condo might have played a role in it too: when a third of your living space is designated to be your working space, it’s pretty easy to make your way to the studio each morning and get to work.
• And another thing that might have helped were the clients I had at the time: thanks to COVID, my work exploded, and I had more work than ever before. I was at the magical point in my career where people wanted to work with me specifically, and had started to seek me out. Suddenly, my thoughts carried real weight, and my opinionated designs were welcomed and encouraged. (I’ve been blessed to have a great roster of clients ever since.)

All of this to say that my environment was extremely conducive to creative work at the time (James Clear says your environment will dictate your behavioural defaults.

None of that accounts for the other half of this equation: the inputs.

• In 2020, my wife and I watched 166 movies. (That remains our record.)
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons had just come out for the Switch. I was playing it every morning. I would hop on before work for fifteen minutes and check turnip prices (IYKYK). Something about that small (and extremely cheerful) dopamine hit would trigger something in my brain and I’d happily get to work after.
• In the evenings, if we weren’t watching movies, I was often playing hard video games. According to my notes, during COVID, I 100% completed Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Dark Souls III, and 2018’s God of War on the highest difficulty. It was in this time period that I fell in love with these high-skill-level games. For me, it was a way to cope with depression. (It’s still a way I cope with my depression.)

Between video games and movies, I was absorbing a lot of visual media every day, and I was often engaging with the material at an intellectual level. I was allowing my work to be influenced, in some subconscious way, by all the media I was working with.

I don’t mean to state that the best way to become more creative is to mindlessly binge Netflix for hours. But we all need to become inspired somehow. Curating what we engage with, and picking the thing that most inspires us to do our best work, is going to go a long way to making us more creative.

The point is: creativity isn’t exclusively a measure of our output. It’s also an indication of our input.

My thoughts on becoming relentlessly creative right now are fairly simple:

1. Create an environment where creativity is your default. To repeat my own example: if you work with computers, there is a lot of value in getting a nice desktop and a good monitor. (I’d love a Mac Studio.) The whole point is to create a dedicated environment to do your work in. You will not be more creative if you lug your tools to all sorts of different rooms. You’re just rearranging the furniture in an effort to procrastinate.
2. Consume as many good inputs as possible. This might not mean reading a book or watching a movie; it might mean engaging with another hobby. Maybe you play the piano to engage different mental muscles (playing an instrument has similar effects to learning another language), or perhaps you like woodworking on the weekends.
3. I didn’t mention this above, but showing up every day to make your art is going to have a big impact on your work. ​“Quality is a probabilistic function of quantity.”
4. And again, I didn’t mention this above, but exercise as often as possible. Some research suggests that creativity and physical health are linked. The connection is probably not direct, but even an indirect connection with positive effects is worth exploring in our own lives.

Go make something beautiful.

Today, I get to eat a little crow: contrary to my publicly stated intentions, I did not return my iPad Pro. The short version is that my old iPad Pro more or less died on me. 

In my previous post, I wrote that I could do everything I needed on an iPad with pen and paper. The thing is, I didn’t inventory my work on iPadOS until after I wrote that post. (This was stupid of me.) That was when I thought to myself: ​“Shoot, I do a lot of iPad-only stuff when I’m working on wireframes.” I’ll frequently grab screenshots of apps and websites and place them alongside my sketches. I tend to iterate on ideas from left to right, duplicating old ideas, erasing what didn’t work, and sketching more (as though I were duplicating art boards in Figma). 

On top of that, a lot of my clients are long-term clients, and the work that I do months or years prior might (and has) become useful again, even if it were disregarded prior. I do not want to keep stacks of draft paper filed away for months or years at a time.

At that point, I made a decision: I still don’t need this new iPad, but I do need my old one.

So I booted up my 2017 10.5” iPad Pro, which I had previously formatted for trade-in, and set it up again. I had a bit of work to do, so once Freeform was ready, I got to it.

That was when I noticed the smell.

The iPad had this faint smell of burning plastic, but only when I held my face near it (which I tend do while drawing; please do not judge me and my weird habits). I’m no engineer, but I know that anything resembling the smell of fire in a battery-powered product was bad, so I shut the iPad down, and made a new plan.

Clearly, my 2017 iPad Pro was kicking the bucket.

So, in an effort to get the best bang for my buck and make the new one last, I would keep the 2024 iPad Pro, and trade in the 2017 iPad Pro.

A day or two later, I brought the 2017 iPad Pro to the Apple Store to trade it in. I explained what I just wrote, but the Apple Genius seemed nonplussed. ​“Does the device power on?” he asked. I said yes. ​“Does the screen work?” he asked. I said yes again. Finally, he asked if Touch ID worked and there were any large dents or scratches. I said yes and no, respectively, but I added that the battery only lasts an hour and may or may not be swelling. He again, said this wasn’t an issue and they would check all that during their diagnosis.

So he used whatever fancy tool Apple has for this, signed off on everything, and gave me a refund of $100 towards the 2024 iPad Pro (which felt pretty generous, all things considered).

Then he got me to wipe the 2017 iPad Pro, and something happened.

The iPad froze after I entered my password to disable Find My on the iPad. ​“Oh yeah, this happens all the time,” the Genius said. ​“On every product, not just iPads. iPhones and Macs all freeze here too. Don’t worry.” 

Then the iPad unceremoniously shut down. 

I asked if we should have seen an Apple logo with a loading indicator below it (we should have), and the Genius said yes. But then he added nonchalantly, ​“Who knows though? I’ll be back.”

He spent a few minutes helping other customers before he returned. My iPad still hadn’t rebooted.

“You said the battery doesn’t last, right?”

I said yes.

He took about thirty seconds to find a Lighting charger buried somewhere in the deep recesses of the store and plugged the iPad Pro in. It still didn’t turn on. 

The Genius’ brow furrowed. ​“I think your iPad is dead.” Seeing my immediate look of concern, he added, ​“but we already gave you the money for the trade in, so it’s our problem now.”

I spent another several minutes with him while he tried every troubleshooting method I knew of and a couple I didn’t. Eventually, the iPad rebooted long enough just long enough for us to see the iOS welcome screen. ​“There. Your data’s been wiped,” he confirmed. 

Then the screen turned off again as the iPad shut down, while plugged directly into an outlet.

And that, dear reader, is how my old iPad Pro died the moment after Apple gave me my trade-in value for it. As my father-in-law pointed out to me, it is rare in life for a system like that to work in your favour, so cherish it while it lasts.

I did, however, return the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, which only served to help me procrastinate on the iPad before returning to my Mac. I replaced it with the Smart Folio cover, which is totally fine.

About a week ago, I took delivery of a new M4 iPad Pro. My old iPad, a 2017 model, lasts about an hour on battery life, and the Pencil is starting to get laggy. Now seemed like a great time to upgrade.

In the past couple weeks, I’ve really enjoyed my time with the iPad. But I’m going to return it, because it’s not a tool I can use to get my work done. I wrote about this in 2020, and the situation hasn’t changed. (In fact, it’s more true for me now than it was then; I’ve added audio and video production work to my plate, and I need Mac-specific tools more than ever before.)

I’m not upset about this. My brain is most compatible with macOS, it turns out. I like having many windows open at once, and I like having a file system. Every time I sit in front of the iPad with its Magic Keyboard attached, my brain tricks itself into thinking I’m sitting in front of a capable laptop, and then I waste hours of time not doing my actual work. So the iPad Pro is going to go back, because there are many other interesting ways to spend that $2,000.

What this did make me realize is that the tools don’t matter. As makers, creative pros, we can use whatever we want to use. If we like fancy pens and paper, use them (​“you will not be the reason that our forests disappear”). And if you like iPads, use those, if you can.

That being said, it’s our responsibility as makers to discern the right tool for the job. Two weeks ago, a plumber came to our home to fix an issue with a toilet. He did not need to use a hammer to fix our toilet, and thank goodness he didn’t try! (Imagine the thunderous crack of a hammer colliding with porcelain.)

Instead, the plumber used a screwdriver and a couple minor objects unique to his trade. He disassembled a couple things, replaced a part, and put it all back together in under twenty minutes.

Let’s pretend, though, that the plumber always admired the shape of hammers and the satisfaction he gets when he swings one. If he were a little off his rocker, he might attempt to use a hammer for all his work. Even an outside observer would recognize this as problematic.

I think I feel similarly about the articles I’ve read in which folks suggest the iPad virtualize macOS as a sort of ​“escape hatch” for Apple (Steve Troughton-Smith put it best). I’m sure I would love macOS on an iPad. I’m not arguing with that. But, to continue with my tool metaphor, let’s call a spade a spade and deal with the object as it is. Let the iPad be an iPad.

One other thing I’ve been thinking about is the continued movement to digitize everything in our lives. The a‑ha moment for me about my iPad came when I realized I can just sketch wireframes for my clients on a piece of paper. Not only is the tool I use for wireframing irrelevant to my clients, but the increased focus I’ll get from paper’s inherent limitations (no wifi!) is a boon in the context of work.

Or, to put it another way, does every room need to have a computer in it? We are so addicted to computers. New computers promise to work better in daylight and remove blue light in an effort to suggest, I suppose, that you can use their product anywhere, anytime — or more aptly, everywhere, all the time.

Perhaps we need to get better at saying no thanks to technology that doesn’t dramatically improve our lives.

After years of contemplating Youtube as a medium, I finally started my own channel about two weeks ago. To my knowledge, I’ve done it exactly right: I picked a niche, decided on a schedule and a flow, made a few videos on my own before posting anything to see if I could do it at all, and started scheduling my uploads.

(I’m not going to share the link to the channel here, because I don’t want to disturb the algorithm while it identifies my audience. The people who read this blog are probably not the people who would be interested in my Youtube channel, which is just rhythm backing tracks for guitar players to practice over.)

It’s been an interesting couple weeks, and I’ve learned a lot very quickly. I uploaded my first video nine days ago. My understanding is that you’re lucky to get ten views on your first video. My first video has 474 views.

At one point, the first video tapered off with fifty views or so. I wondered if I just picked a bad day to upload it, so I opted to try a different schedule going forward. I posted my second video only a few days later, and it got somewhat cannibalized by the first video. My second video has been up for six days, and currently has 169 views.

These numbers are very good! I’m pleased with them, I suppose. I think I’ve identified a good niche.

That all being said, after staring at the numbers for a week, I had a few observations that I thought I’d share, mostly out of my own interest:

1. It’s so easy to develop an obsession with checking these numbers. An obsession. I think I check the numbers twenty times a day. This actually hampers enthusiasm, because instead of seeing the numbers go up by dozens every day, you see the numbers go up in increments of two or three, which is less encouraging.
2. My first video has 16 likes, but got its first dislike this morning. It turns out that the dislike is not a useful metric for the creator. It tells you nothing about what that person disliked, but it does give you a reason to feel bad about yourself. 94.1% approval is great — a number I should be totally okay with — but all I really feel is the 5.9% disapproval.
3. The other reason the dislike means nothing is because, for all I know, somebody clicked or tapped the wrong button. In the same timeframe, I got a new subscriber. For all I know, this person is also the person who gave my video the thumbs down, but they did it accidentally on the way to the Subscribe button. The web designer in me knows that the margin for human error on the internet is… huge.

The biggest takeaway I have so far about the Youtube algorithm is that it operates similarly to Google’s SEO algorithms: it’s interested in content that gets eyeballs, and it’s pretty heartless about anything that doesn’t do that.

One person said that if you plug away at your channel for a while, and you never develop an audience, there’s a good chance that people simply don’t care about your videos. That would obviously be extremely painful for the content creator behind those videos, but there’s an element of truth there.

I think Google’s search engine algorithm operates at a similar level, but because Google doesn’t control the entire internet (thankfully!), they don’t have the same level of control. That creates an opportunity for abusive and scammy sites to make their way to the top. (One could argue page one of Google has become increasingly useless.) In that sense, this is an apples and oranges comparison, but there is still some truth there. 

Real success is, of course, a little more complicated than understanding the algorithm. Youtube Ali Abdaal has a great video where he breaks down how to be ​“internet successful” better than I ever could: ​“find your unfair advantage.”

His theory is very interesting: successful Youtubers stand out because they have an unfair advantage. Everybody can work hard, but not everybody who runs an industrial design-focussed channel can claim they, say, worked for Apple.

Basically, you need to be a little lucky.

It was a good reminder for my client work, though: if you want to make a successful Youtube channel or a successful website, you need to have decent presentation, publish consistently, and be lucky enough to have a perspective people want to hear from.

… Yeah, super simple.

I’m a huge fan of Paul Reed Smith — the man and the instruments. Paul is smart and well-spoken. The way he talks about his guitars reminds me of the way Steve Jobs spoke about Apple products.

So when Paul speaks, I listen. Like Apple, PRS typically makes incremental improvements to their products, rather than the static lineups or complete refreshes other brands often do. This year, the ​“big” change are new ​“Wing” tuners (PRS claims they look like wings, which, okay). Instead of aluminum, they’re made out of plastic. The shape is different too.

What interests me is that Paul says this opens up up the guitar and makes the midrange sound more vowel-like. You have to take him at his word for it, because how would one measure that? And if it were true, is that actually more desirable? Every time I’m mixing a sound, I get rid of some of the more obnoxious 800hz midrange. If the vowel sound lives in that 800hz range (and again, there’s no way to really know if that’s what Paul means), then I don’t want it.

So I’m not convinced this is an upgrade. This sort of seems like cost saving measure sold as an upgrade (getting iPhone 5C vibes, which was also an interesting sales pitch). But I’m also not convinced it would sound better or worse than before, so much as different.

But it’s interesting to read all the hoopla surrounding NAMM 2024, and compare Paul’s announcement here. It’s very low key by comparison.

For me, PRS makes some of the nicest guitars money can buy right now. My Silver Sky SE is an incredibly inspiring instrument, and my Custom 24 Piezo is insanely versatile and feels like it was built for my hands. The violin carve also sits well on my body. I don’t mind the plastic tuners at first blush, but I’ll admit that I’m suddenly encouraged to buy 2023 models of anything I’m interested in.

This past week has been all about the 2024 NAMM Show for me. (With the exception that I’ve also been very into coverage of the 40^th anniversary of the Mac.) I like NAMM a lot — it’s CES for guitar nerds. What’s not to love?

It’s no secret that guitar journalism is less relevant every year, but thankfully Guitar World still has actual writers covering this thing, so I’ve been able to keep up throughout the week. The show isn’t over until Sunday, but there have been some interesting announcements so far.

The Epiphone Dave Ghrohl DG-335

I’ve been waiting for this guitar for a while, and I’m excited the DG-335 was finally announced. Much like Epiphone’s takes on the Korina Explorer/​Flying V and Lazarus Les Paul models, this looks like a quality instrument: one-piece neck, Gibson Burstbucker pickups, Graphtech nut, and Grover Mini tuners. All the components in this thing look like good stuff.

It sounds like this model streets in March. I’m thinking about getting a semi-hollow, so I plan on looking for a copy to try as soon as they’re in stores.

A lot of signature guitars

A lot of artists get signature guitars, including a bunch of folks who probably have no business getting deals like that. There are always a few that are worth commenting on, though:

• Alex Lifeson has partnered with Godin to create the LERXST Limelight signature guitar. I don’t know if I’m interested in the guitar, but I like that Canadian musician Alex Lifeson partnered with Canadian guitar company Godin for his latest signature. I don’t own any Godin guitars, but they make nice instruments, and as corny as this is, some small part of my heart is warmed by this partnership.
• ESP has released Bill Kelliher’s (of Mastodon) signature guitar, and it looks awesome. It’s worth looking at the photos, but it’s sort of like a Les Paul Doublecut, but with a lot of attitude. The one downside? Apparently they can weigh up to 13 pounds! That’s part of the marketing for the thing, as though the weight will help make the guitar sound bigger (it won’t). This is one of those rare cool-looking guitars, though. I’m a big fan.
• Gibson announced a new Slash colour — this one is called Jessica. Look, who cares? It’s just Honeyburst. But I wanted to mention it because I have one of the current Slash Les Pauls, and it is the best Les Paul I’ve ever played. If you’re on the hunt for a good Les Paul, consider this a reminder that you really ought to check out the Slash Les Paul. (And maybe Epiphone’s Lazarus 1959 Les Paul Standard, while you’re shopping.)

Some Gibson news

Gibson isn’t at NAMM this year, but they’ve announced a few interesting things I wanted to comment on.

First, there’s another new Kirk Hammett Les Paul. Kirk, if you’re reading this for some reason, I appreciate that you’re cashing your cheques. Good for you! But enough is enough. I love the Greeny model (I particularly like the standard), but nobody needs this 1989 Les Paul Custom — especially at the $9,000 USD price point.

I genuinely don’t get it. Is Gibson crazy? The aging on this new reissue looks pretty bad. The pickups aren’t accurate to what Hammett used in 1989, and instead use Gibson’s T‑Type pickups. I’m all for modern updates, but I don’t think the T‑Type pickups are good — especially at this price. Obviously, EMG active pickups have fallen out of fashion (they still sound great, by the way, but fashion is fleeting), but T‑Types are not the sort of thing I’d imagine your average Kirk Hammett fan (I am one!) is into.

In other Gibson news, they’re back into the amp game. It somehow never occurred to me that part of the reasoning behind Gibson’s acquisition of Mesa was bringing Gibson amps back, but it makes perfect sense in hindsight. Their first amps are the Falcon 20 and Falcon 5. These aren’t for me, but it’s worth keeping an eye on what Gibson does here.

Pedal news

I think guitar pedals are a dime a dozen, but the industry is fun to watch. Like the candy industry, there’s a new flavour every week:

• Andy Timmons, who has golden ears, announced a new overdrive pedal with Keeley called the Muse Driver. I think it sounds good. Anything Timmons releases is worth your time. The man has taste.
• In the category of ​“holy ***” news, Jackson is bringing back Fulltone. On top of that, they’re rereleasing the OCD overdrive pedal, and plan on bringing back other pedals from the archive, as well as working on new designs. There’s a very cool documentary-style Youtube video announcing the partnership. Mike Fuller is publicly an awful person. I respect him as a maker, because I feel a kindred spirit with anybody who makes* things, but it’s too bad that Jackson Audio chose to bring him back too. (In the words of one subreddit, ​“bigotry and racism are back.” Yikes.) I like how Fulltone pedals sound, and I’m excited that folks can get some of these great pedals again, but it’s too bad the man who designed them was so empowered to air his hateful poopy opinions in public forums. (In other words, it’s great that folks can buy used Fulltone pedals.)
• EHX sold a reissue of the Big Muff Pi, and it sold out in barely over an hour. It was a limited run. I don’t love that. But it is interesting!
• Jack White has announced an inexpensive 3‑in‑1 multi-effects pedal in collaboration with Donner. Neat!

Amp news

Two interesting things in the ​“amp news” category this year, outside of the aforementioned Gibson Falcon series:

1. Laney released a new tube amp, but also released a matching plugin at launch. Nobody has ever done this before. Power move, Laney.
2. Vox announced a new hand-wired series of AC amps. They say this will be ​“the ultimate recreation” of AC amps. It’s neat that this is an option, but the way I see it, hand-wiring things just introduces a lot of margin for error, which means odds are good that your hand-wired Vox AC-30 is only like the originals in the sense that they’re very inconsistent from one to the other. Still interesting, though!

The show isn’t over yet, so I’m looking forward to potentially hearing about more gear. Honestly, though, the Epiphone DG-335 was the headlining news for me. Hard to imagine what will top it.

I have three main hobbies: watching movies (which I log on this site), playing guitar, and playing video games. Inspired by Matt Birchler’s post about every game he played in 2023, and Elisa Gabbert’s post about every book she read in 2023, I thought I’d share every game I played in 2023 and what I’d like to play this year — along with some commentary.

God of War: Ragnarok

I had a lot of fun with this, but it didn’t blow me away the original did. The hub-centric world of the original was something I really enjoyed, and its leaner running time made it feel a little more like a Metroidvania. In this game, the scope got larger, but I’m not sure they pulled it off as well as the first’s big story more intimate approach. 

I’d still like to replay this, though, particularly because of the free Valhalla DLC that just got released and partially because it feels like I rushed this one. I think I would enjoy the story more if I took it at a slower pace, but after waiting for years, I really wanted to see how this ended.

Mass Effect 2

This is my first time playing the Mass Effect trilogy. I adored the first game (I have the benefit of playing the remade version with less janky controls), but this one kind of burned me out. I thought I’d be fighting the Reapers, but instead it felt like I went on a very long series of fetch quests. 

I’m only a couple hours into Mass Effect 3, but it feels much closer to what my expectations were for the second one.

Red Dead Redemption 2

One of the best games ever made. I’ve been very slowly playing it through a second time since early 2021. I only have a couple story missions left, but I’ve spent hundreds of hours in this world and I still feel like I experience new things all the time. It feels very alive.

I didn’t like this game the first time I played it, probably because I rushed the story, but if you play this game slowly and really chew on it, it might be the best this medium has to offer. Plus, a buddy of mine and I occasionally play online together, and we still have a blast.

Tears of the Kingdom

I really liked Breath of the Wild more. I’m sorry. I am 80 hours into this and I’ve beaten three of the main dungeons, and it’s a great game, but there’s no comparison to the magic of BOTW for me. What drew me into BOTW was the focus on exploration and making your own story. TOTK has much less of both of those things.

Witcher 3

Playing it through again on modern consoles. This remains a great game. No notes.

Starfield

I actually liked this, and played a ton of it for a few weeks. But something happened around hour 60 or so where I just completely lost the desire to play. I don’t quite recall a game where I played so many hours and then immediately lost interest with no desire to ever return. It’s still on my Xbox, but I’m more likely to play Skyrim again than I am to return to this in any capacity. I know why everybody dislikes this, but none of that stuff really bothered me much, so I don’t know why I lost interest.

Sea of Thieves

I play this one online with a friend and we have a lot of fun hunting for treasure. No idea what else you can do in this game, and I know there is a lot of other stuff, but we honestly just go digging on islands. We’re simple men. We like shovels and gold.

Spider-Man 2

I loved this. It was possibly my game of the year. Beautiful, fun, great story that wasn’t too long. Can’t wait for New Game Plus. This series is the best reason to own a PS5 right now.

Alan Wake Remastered

Got this through PlayStation Plus. I genuinely don’t get the hype. I thought it was pretty bland, with bad combat, sluggish controls, and uninteresting characters. I finished it because I thought it might ​“click” eventually, but it never did. Thankfully it wasn’t very long. I played a couple hours of Control too, to give that a shot, and I disliked it for largely the same reasons. (I might give it another shot next year. We’ll see.)

Tunic

Wonderful game! Had a great time with this, but the final couple hours were a real slog. Once you reach the gauntlet of bosses you’ve already fought, it feels like the game has run out of ideas.

One thing I loved, though, was the in-game use of the instruction manual. Discovering a page and realizing you had a skill all along, but didn’t know how to use it, was a macial experience.

Forza Motorsport

Absolutely not for me. Driving every track for multiple laps before I can actually race on those tracks is an unnecessary level of realism for me, a person who isn’t into cars, but likes zoning out after a long day in a racing game. Horizon 4 and Horizon 5 are two of the best racing games ever made, though, and I’m back to playing them for the same fix.

Elden Ring

Second playthrough. Great stuff. Exactly my jam. No notes.

It Takes Two

This is one of my wife’s favourite games, and we replayed this over Christmas and immediately made plans to replay it again in the New Year. It’s just fun. Great voice acting.

Baldur’s Gate 3

I didn’t buy this until just before the holidays, but oh my gosh. Surpassed Spider-Man 2 for my game of the year. It’s easily my favourite game since Elden Ring, or perhaps Red Dead Redemption 2. Just a total delight. I’m almost done act 2 and will spend a lot of time in this over the next several years. I’m already planning a few more playthroughs with wildly different characters. 

This is the first video game RPG that has me interested in actual role play. We talk a lot about player agency in video games, but most video games have the same basic ending no matter how you play them. This feels like you actually get your own unique story. Maybe Mass Effect largely pulls that off too, but the scale that Larian is operating in here is unparalleled in my mind. I’m trying to convince my wife to play this with me and have a couple friends I’d like to play it with too. 

I nearly gave up on this halfway through the first act, though. I’m new to CRPGs and had a hard time understanding how to play. Once I got over that hurdle and it clicked, this went from a fun novelty to being one of the most rewarding games I’ve ever played.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is my game of the year at the moment.

2024 list

I’ve got a long list of titles I’d like to play in 2024. A lot of these were released recently and I just haven’t had time for them. Some of them are on in my backlog and I’m finally going to play them this year.

Most of these were games I played for an hour this year and went ​“Oh man, this is cool, too bad I’m already playing (insert another game here).”

Here’s the list:

• I plan on wrapping up Baldur’s Gate 3, RDR2, Witcher 3, TOTK, Elden Ring (unless I have something new to say about them, don’t expect me to mention these again next year)
• Star Wars: Jedi Survivor
• Ghost of Tsushima
• Metroid Prime Remastered
• Super Mario RPG (a couple hours in and this is hilarious)
• Super Mario Wonder (I’m on world 2 right now and this is delightful)
• Lies of P (played for a couple hours, but was already playing Elden Ring and my brain had a hard time adjusting to the very minor differences in combat)
• Dead Space (the remake)
• Mass Effect 3 (I’m a few hours in and can’t believe how much talking there is in between each mission. I’ll have more to say once I’m done, but they might as well have just made this a linear game with 20 minutes of cut scenes between each mission.)
• Control (I’m going to try it in the summer and see if those late summer nights suit the mood of this better)
• Plague Tale: Requiem (played the first in 2021 and enjoyed it)
• Death’s Door
• Hollow Knight (have started this four or five times and never finished it)
• Cocoon
• Dredge (this looked amazing)
• Resident Evil 4 (remake)
• Final Fantasy 7 Remake
• Avowed (I’ll be amazed if this actually releases this year, though)

It’s a long list. I won’t get to all of it. I’m truthfully quite grateful there aren’t a lot of 2024 releases that interest me, because most of this list is just me playing catch-up from last year still.

Here’s to a great 2024.

The Verge reports that Adobe and Figma no longer plan to merge, largely thanks to legal pressure from the EU.

First off, this is great news. Adobe acquiring Figma was obviously bad for the industry, at least from the perspective of the designers who work in it. Adobe has a history of buying and subsequently squashing beloved industry tools.

Figma is also the only player keeping Adobe from a total market stranglehold. Bohemian Code’s Sketch would be a player if they offered a Windows app, but they’ve chosen not to pursue that market (and I think missed a big opportunity in the past decade as a result).

For the most part, life now goes on: Figma gets to do their own thing, Adobe does their thing, and all the smaller players (of whom Sketch is probably the biggest) keep doing their things too.

That being said, it’s not all sunshine and roses here. Adobe sunsetted XD, their design tool competitor, shortly after announcing the Figma acquisition. That tool has been dead in the water for a year, with little to no updates in that time. 

I have colleagues who use and like XD who will now have to migrate elsewhere. And let’s not forget the XD team: the folks Adobe had working on XD over the years were all top notch and had great ideas (Khoi Vinh is one of my heroes). I don’t know if those folks are still at Adobe. While life goes on for most of us, this sideshow has caused some actual destruction for a few.

In classic Adobe tradition, nothing meaningful has been accomplished, and a lot of people got hurt along the way.