By November the leaves are down, grey blankets everything, and the cold starts to bite. So why is it still one of my favorite months? Part of it has to do with my birthday and the happy associations that come with it. But it goes deeper than that.
The best thing about November is knowing that December is coming. Winter is about to take hold, but not yet. November still offers days with warmth and light you can soak in and bank for the weeks ahead. It’s the same reason Sunday is my favorite day of the week: you know to appreciate it while you’ve still got it.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, too. It’s the one day each year when everybody in the United States can celebrate together. It gives me a chance to connect with and appreciate the family I have. For many Thanksgivings in my early 20s I was alone, and I’ll never forget what that felt like. November carries that weight of gratitude for me now.
The novelty of crisp cold hasn’t worn off yet in November. Crunching through leaves and bundling up can be fun the first few times. By December it gets old. November is a transitional month full of hints for the weeks to come and reminders of the days just passed.
My Picks
Anil Dash tells it like it is in typical awesome fashion: nearly all tech industry professionals think the way AI is being talked about and shoved down everyone’s throat is ridiculous. It prevents valid criticisms of the technology from being considered and obscures the actual value of these tools.
Popular voice transcription apps can cost up to $20 a month. With Handy, you get the same functionality for free. It’s a front-end for OpenAI’s exceptional Whisper speech recognition model, which they released as open source. This is the kind of software I use to interact with LLMs by talking rather than typing, and it’s a total game changer.
Marconi Union’s The Fear of Never Landing
One of my favorite bands released a new album earlier this year, and I didn’t find out until recently. The beautiful, flowing atmospheres and expert musicianship you’d expect are there, but you can also put it on and get stuff done with it as a perfect soundtrack.
The Myth of Hercules: 12 Labors in 8 Bits
This delightful TED Ed video tells the story of how Hercules atoned for his evil actions through an epic series of heroic challenges. It features a full 8-bit aesthetic, from sound to graphics, managing to be retro on multiple dimensions and incredibly entertaining throughout. [via]
Recently Published
This month it’s been all about one thing: Babbleborg.
My school recently decided to put out a press release about a custom AI educational chat interface I created with the help of LLMs. I’ve been scrambling to get something together that explains to everyone what I did, what it’s about, and how to make it their own. While I normally try to publish twice a month, this month there’s just one piece on the website: the full story about why I made Babbleborg, the philosophy behind it, and the nerdpunk aesthetic of resisting huge AI corporations by making it my own, keeping it private, and saving tons of money along the way.
The second thing I published was huge: a complete build guide on its own separate site. With it, any technically minded, curious education professional can create their own AI chat interface, learn how to work with AI coding agents, and make something perfectly suited to their students and school.
In the Groove
It’s been a fun month of music exploration, but my work on Babbleborg has been somewhat all-consuming. Music has been relegated to the back burner for now, even though I’m dipping in just about every day to play around and tweak things.
For the first time, I’m working with songs where I can practice melodies by performing them on my pads. Some days I just load up the track I’m working on and jam for a while, and it makes me smile. Musical creativity hasn’t stopped, it just hasn’t been at the forefront. That’s okay every once in a while.
Until Next Time
I’m not a winter person, but I’m working on it. Maybe this year I’ll finally figure out how to appreciate the cold, dark days. Or maybe I’ll just lean into November a bit harder while I still can.
See you next month.