mastodon 4.7.3Composer and audio programmer in Rochester, NY | Lecturer in music tech and film/game scoring at SUNY Geneseo
For music, I use Max/MSP, Tidal Cycles/SuperCollider, and Lilypond, as well as writing for acoustic instruments, and I like to mix glitchy, noisy, microtonal sounds with “cheesy” retro synths
For audio programming, I use C++/JUCE, Rust, and C; I made my IndieWeb-style website with 11ty; and I like Neovim
I also like fountain pens, analog photography, and TTRPGs
No LLMs
I've been using Lilypond to write musical notation with code, and here I write about how to get a convenient, smooth experience while writing that code in Neovim!
I'm definitely planning to stick with this, and I'll be writing about some more fun things to do with Lilypond soon.
https://reillyspitzfaden.com/posts/2026/02/friendly-lilypond-with-neovim-audacity/
#Lilypond #Composition #ClassicalMusic #ContemporaryClassical #Neovim #MIDI #Audio #Audacity
I'm looking for recs on C/C++ package managers, especially Conan vs. vcpkg!
TL;DR: in a vacuum, vcpkg looks nice, but it's made by Microsoft, and the repository has the "a user you've blocked..." warning (i.e., it has Claude contributions).
My main question: is vcpkg nice enough/is the behavior by its maintainers good enough that people would recommend it over Conan?
Some of the details I've heard about the two:
I've heard people mention that vcpkg has a higher learning curve but ultimately "just works", and that Conan can be a bit more fiddly. I've also noticed that many of the comparisons I've seen are pre-Conan 2, whereas now version 2 seems pretty stable.
For anti-monopoly reasons, I like that Conan doesn't have one centralized list of packages, but I also hear that can make it harder to have reproducible builds.
I've seen Substack claim that they're important for growing your readership, and it's nice to see people leaving and disproving that
Of course I would prefer people left because of the Nazis alone, but a win is a win I guess
https://www.theverge.com/tech/927294/substack-tax-ghost-beehiiv
They did it. Goncharov really is on Poob: https://watchpoob.com/
https://mk.asie.pl/notes/ap3juc046l
> "Is this repo manually coded? If it's manually coded you're being left behind."
> Ma'am, that is a twenty five thousand LoC slab of C++ code. It targets a console designed twenty two years ago and discontinued twelve years ago… It is a physical declaration of mankind's contempt for entropy. It is hubris manifest.
> We also have an SDL3 port if you would prefer that.
I'm learning Tidal Cycles, and it turns out it's pretty easy to get cool J Dilla-style microtiming effects:
Today is Send a Friend a Webmention day — here's my note about that: https://reillyspitzfaden.com/notes/2026/07/send-a-friend-a-webmention-day-2026/
@ho@sonomu.club thanks for the tips! For the note names, I ended up switching to that out of necessity — I was setting up 8th/quarter tones (https://codeberg.org/reillypascal/forget/src/branch/main/include/eighth-quarter-tones.ly) and I didn't want to try researching what 8th tones “should” be in Dutch.
For the transposition, is there a difference between typing e.g., \fixed c' and using \transpose? I had been trying out \fixed plus a reference octave.
