Co-Writing Music with AI

Co-Writing Music with AI
I set out last week with a simple but slightly provocative question: Can I write a song with AI the same way I would if I hired a professional producer and songwriter? I didn’t want the AI to just do it for me; I wanted to see if we could collaborate. After five days of prompts, stems, and late-night sessions in Logic Pro, I have a finished track... and a massive identity crisis. Here is…

August 2025 – Photo of the Month

August 2025 – Photo of the Month
It's not the photo of the month because it's a particularly great photo. It's the photo of the month because my favorite photo I have ever taken is a Lily in Central Park. These two are amazing because I took the photo in my back yard.

Cedar Wall 1-day Build

Cedar Wall 1-day Build
The studio room has had a white block wall since we moved in. There was no power and I had no interest in drilling to mount anything so it really blocked my options in the room. I helped a friend building a studio and he had a few sound panels left over to give me. I wanted them on that wall, so it was time to tackle. I had one main concern. I didn't want…

Nova’s Fast dev API

Nova’s Fast dev API
Today's been about getting this thing set up properly. I'm not a developer by trade, but I've always been a coder. That being said, I consider myself a prototype developer, so my projects tend to be loosely managed. I wanted to grow this project up a bit, so I took a step back to think about how it's going to work and decided that I wanted to focus on an extensible API first. The Machine…

Nova Assistant: It was only a matter of time

Nova Assistant: It was only a matter of time
My house is definitely smart to the extreme. I have a lot of automation that runs all aspects of the house, security with AI, and dedicated servers for automation and AI. One example of how I have already wired some of these things together, is a Python service using Ollama & Llava as a false positive checker for Frigate. That being said, all of this private goodness is still connected to Amazon's Alexa ecosystem for…

June 2025 – Photo of the Month

June 2025 – Photo of the Month
I can't believe I was lucky enough to catch this. It's not the best photo I have taken, but it's the first time I have ever seen an owl perched, and I actually had my camera. It was a rainy morning and a deer and it's fawn were in the back pasture. I walked out to grab a photo, and a Barred Owl silently glided past me and landed in a nearby tree. I walked…

May 2025 – Photo of the Month

May 2025 – Photo of the Month
I built the wildlife pond to attract wildlife for photography. I didn't expect to get fish at the time, but that has been a wonderfully rewarding detour. With everything settled and established, this year has been something else. This Townsend's Chipmunk is a regular visitor now. He's quite the feisty fellow, loves fresh strawberries.

A Special Place for Tadpoles

A Special Place for Tadpoles
The folks at Hoshi Koi were nice enough to let us scoop up some tadpoles with our pond plants. They said the fish wouldn't bother them, but there were no tadpoles the next day, so I decided to try again with a dedicated pond. I really just want to attract frogs, but I can always stack the deck. I added 6 White Cloud Mountain Minnows and bunch of tadpoles a few weeks ago. I was…

April 2025 – Photo of the Month

April 2025 – Photo of the Month
Sometimes it's just about having your camera at the right time. I was sitting at the pond watching the fish when this Anna's Hummingbird came up and took a bath in the waterfall.

The Wildlife Pond is Alive!

The Wildlife Pond is Alive!
There is still a little weeding and cleaning up to do, but all of the major pieces are in place. The goldfish from last year all made it through the winter split between a fish tank in the dining room and a stock tank in the garage. I built some fish hides last month and got them moved in. This week the pond plants showed up. It has really come together from that nasty hole…