It’s rare (exceedingly rare) that I get the playlist finalized before June. Life (in the form of kids, wife, job, inherent and pervasive laziness) tends to take over. Not this year, though! I murdered my wife and kids which caused me to lose my job! (Just kidding.)
I was surprised by this year’s list. Some decidedly “Top 40” tracks made their way in, but it was through the brilliant, musical mastery of the artist. My favorite album of the year ended up being the soundtrack to a musical I haven’t seen. And peppered between are new tracks by long-loved artists and undiscovered tracks that wouldn’t let me go.
2016 was quite a year for changes for the kids: they both began attending a new school, they both began a weekly extra-curricular, and they both discovered Pokémon Go. Well, we pretty quickly knew what should be the theme of this year’s card: Rauschémon Go! Catch us all to learn what’s new in 2016.
Every year I evaluate the best of the music I discovered during the previous 365 days. My aim is to get the playlist finalized in January, but life usually exerts itself instead. And this is it! The moment you’ve all been waiting for! The (2015) Best of Last Year mixlist!
(Yea! Hurrah! Awesome! Uh, what… what is this, now?)
Some old favorites released disappointing albums in the past year, while some up-and-comers released phenomenal ones. Ben Folds and Death Cab for Cutie both had new releases that failed to resonate with me. Meanwhile, Cold War Kids, The Decemberists and Shakey Graves really brought it home.
There’s some EDM, some covers and even some French hip-hop in the mix (so to speak). I guess there’s a little something for everyone! (Unless you really love polka; there’s no polka.)
Bolstered by my reception at the South Dakota Code Camp, I updated and presented my PostCSS talk at dev.Objective() 2016, one of the best web development and CFML conferences in the states. I think it went well, despite my quickly expiring laptop.
While Of Miles Rausch will always be my heart and soul, my personal diary in the world, it isn’t always very focused. In fact — like me — it’s intentionally varied and unintentionally disorganized. How can one separate the scientist from the artist, the developer from the writer?
Well, now there’s an easy way to separate out the writer: Miles.ink. Miles.ink is my writing website. It’ll have writing news, information on how to read and discover my written works and even information on how to support my art through services like Patreon.
If you’re interested in learning more about Miles Rausch, the writer, check out Miles.ink.
Well, another year has come and gone, and so I’ve finally come up with a new mixlist: (2014) Best of Last Year. Every year, I make a mixlist of the best songs that I discovered in the past calendar year. The songs may come from any decade, any era, but the uniting feature is that I only just discovered them in 2014.
Visit the mixlist page to listen to the playlist via an embedded Spotify playlist and to read more of my thoughts on it.
I completed the NaNoWriMo challenge in 2013, but it wasn’t pretty. My month-long, prosaic journey was a study in perseverance against myself. That November was tough. My output was sporadic and entirely too little, the novel itself often lacked direction and drive, and that final day I was a ghost to everyone around me in an effort to make up for those two things.
But I did it. I completed the challenge. This year I did it again.
My 2014 NaNoWriMo was a much different experience, and I think it’s best summarized in the following graphic comparing 2013’s word count statistics to 2014’s.
NaNoWriMo daily word counts for 2013 (left) and 2014 (not left).
I’ve spent 2014 developing a habit of writing, and the much steadier and more consistent graph shows how that work has paid off. I try to fill my early mornings with writing — and I am not a person who enjoys mornings, early or otherwise. However, having a routine made this year’s challenge easier on me and my family.
Although the recommended NaNoWriMo word count was higher than my normal, I had arranged my life to allow writing time, giving it a due time slot. What I was writing (or how quickly) was then just a detail.
The downside to this year’s event is that my novel is still unfinished. From November’s novel push, I went right into working on our 2014 Christmas Card called Familial and haven’t been back. The novel aches in the back of my mind, waiting for the telling.
Thankfully, January is a good month for getting back into habits.
