The Black Music History Library

This digital library was born out of a need to make resources about Black music history as comprehensive and accessible as possible. It contains well over one thousand entries (and counting) in the form of books, articles, documentaries, series, radio segments, and podcasts about the Black origins of popular and traditional music, dating from the 18th century to the present day. These materials range from informal to scholarly, meaning there is something in the library for everyone.

There are many notable archives doing similar work, yet it isn’t uncommon for some to have a limited view of Black music—one which fuels US-centrism and a preference for vernacular music traditions. This collection considers the term “Black music” more widely, as it aims to address any instances in which Black participation led to the creation or innovation of music across the diaspora. Plainly speaking, that means just about every genre will be included here.

Black artists have often been minimized or omitted entirely when it comes to the discussion, practice, and research of many forms of music. This library seeks to correct that. It is time to reframe Black music history as foundational to American music history, Latinx music history, and popular music history at large.

via Kottke.org.

[…] if I make a website for a client, I don’t offer accessibility as a line item with a price tag attached. I build in accessibility by default because it’s the right thing to do. The only way to ensure that accessibility doesn’t get negotiated away is to make sure it’s not up for negotiation.

Accessibility - Jeremy Keith

(Content warning: rape)

I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South.

If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument.

You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument - Caroline Randall Williams

Books mentioned:

• Natives : Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire - Akala
• Brit(ish) : On Race, Identity and Belonging - Afua Hirsch
• Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge
• How to Argue With a Racist : History, Science, Race and Reality - Adam Rutherford

“Binge Watching” is a sci-fi short film by Nigerian-British film-maker Nosa Igbinedion.

In the near future, a woman comes across a VR film where she will experience a tense encounter with a pair of policemen… through the eyes of a black man.

Content warning: Depicts an assault from the victim’s point of view.

Noto is a collaboration between Monotype and Google to create a typeface covering over 100 writing systems and more than 800 languages.

The brief, “No more tofu”, tofu being the nickname for the blank boxes that you see when a computer lacks support for a particular character. So that’s a thing I learned today.

There are some characters you can only see on stones. If you don’t move them to the web, over time those stones will become sand and we’ll never be able to recover those drawings or that writing.

I love this kind of project, that touches on communication, history, society, and preserving the past.

I never thought I’d be completely captivated by watching someone solving a Sudoku puzzle, yet here we are.

The moment when the 3s click for him is sublime.

(via Metafilter)

There’s only one rule in Calvinball, and that rule is that you never play it the same way twice. Otherwise, you make it up as you go. You change the rules as you see fit, and arguably, if you care to find a game in the gamelessness of it, it’s a game of one-upmanship where invented rules defeat rules that defeat other rules. It is a chimera. A slippery eel. It is the search for order swiftly dissolving into the delight of anarchy and entropy.

You might have to make up a song. Or recite a poem. Maybe you go slow-motion, or turn invisible, or whirl about until you’re dizzy.

And once again it occurs to me: this is where we are.

Do the days feel like slow-motion?

Have I gone invisible?

Why am I dizzy? Am I dizzy? I’m dizzy.

We’re all touching the Opposite Pole. We’re all in the Song Zone. We’re all jumping about until we find the Bonus Box. There are no rules but the rule of impermanence. The score is Q to 12.

Calvin and Hobbes and quarantine - Chuck Wendig

Overall I’ve been fine when it comes to the lockdown. I’m very comfortable with my own company (as I joked to a friend recently “I’m built for solitude”) and I’m one of those lucky ones that has a lot of experience of working from home. My routine hasn’t changed too much.

That being said, it does start to have an effect when you know that you can’t go out, and I really miss things like hanging out in a pub with friends, going to gigs, and visiting the cinema.

So here are some things that are helping me cope when the “dark teatime of the soul” comes knocking. They might be useful for you too.

Music

I love music. I’m not great at making it, but I devour other people’s ravenously.

My iTunes library contains nearly 30,000 songs at last count (over 80 days continuous listening, number nerds).

With a library that big it’s easy to forget what’s in there, and find comfort in the same old things. I’ve created some iTunes playlist that I leave playing through the day to help me deep dive into the collection.

One randomly plays things that I haven’t listened to in over 6 months.

If I’m feeling in an organisational mood I have one that randomly plays songs I haven’t rated yet, and another that plays anything I’ve rated 3 stars or below. It’s always good to re-evaluate old assumptions.

These lists, combined with some Alfred shortcuts to rate things quickly via keyboard shortcuts mean I can feel like I’m achieving.

And If I just fancy dancing around the house like a loon, I have one that randomly plays tracks I’ve “loved”.

Films

As well as the weekly ritual of Cinema Under The Stairs CUTSFLIX screenings, I’ve been trying to work my way through some lists on Letterboxd. Truly, if you’re stuck for things to watch, dive into a random list on Letterboxd, they’re great.

Gaming

I’m a very casual gamer, and I get frustrated easily, so I have an embarrassingly long list of unfinished games. However, with nowhere to go I’ve been picking some of those old favourites back up, and discovering some new ones.

My tastes run to the puzzle and sneak-around genres, I’ve never got on with multi-player or FPS shooters, so your milage might vary, but here are some I’ve been enjoying recently (on Xbox, but most should be cross-platform):

• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - A single player Star Wars game, this was a no-brainer for me, and I loved it.
• Torchlight - pretty standard dungeon crawler, but its a lot of fun and very satisfying.
• Outer Wilds - an open world mystery about a solar system trapped in an endless time loop. I won’t say more than that because I wouldn’t want to spoil it, but it’s lovely.
• Portal and Portal 2 - I must be on my 7th or 8th play through by now.
• The Witness - I love this game, but it frustrates the hell out of me and I’ve recently hit a wall of comprehension.
• Untitled Goose Game - Honk.
• Donut County - If you like Untitled Goose Game, then this might be for you.
• Astroneer - Explore planets, build things, fall down holes.

I would be getting involved with the whole Animal Crossing thing, but trying to track down a Switch has proven impossible.

Reading

I set myself a challenge at the beginning of the year to read 40 books (I managed 38 last year). Thanks to the lockdown I’ve nearly finished 20 already, which is pretty easy when you’re rereading “The Watch” and “Technology” arcs from Discworld.

Gardening

I’ve started gardening. I find it equally frustrating and rewarding. I’m not sure what I’m doing (my Mum has the green fingers in the family), but things are growing. Some of them are even things I want to grow.

Yoga

I do yoga now.

I’m not sure who I am any more.

More seriously, since an injury last year, jogging is completely out of the question, and the lingering effects of that injury mean that I haven’t been walking as much as I used to. I was looking around for something low impact that I could do at home, and Down Dog made their app free for March and April, so I gave it a go.

I’m really getting into it. Like the gardening, I’m not really sure what I’m doing, but the app has lots of introductory levels to get you going, and I haven’t injured myself yet. A half hour session first thing sets me up for the day.

(Although it was super weird a few days ago when the app started playing a piece from Nick Cave & Warren Ellis’ soundtrack for The Road as a background track.)

(Feels like I’ve been trying to work out how to write this post for a few months now. Damn lockdown brain.)

TL;DR version

After attending the always excellent New Adventures Conference in January I was inspired to leave my job and find something new.

So I handed in my notice without having a position to go to.

Then all this… [waves hands] happened.

Timing!

It all worked out well in the end though.

Less short version

Back in January (which feels like a lifetime ago!) I was off to Nottingham for one of the highlights of my calendar, New Adventures conference.

I’ve written before about how much New Adventures means to me, and once again Simon, Geri, Relly and the rest of the New Adventures team delivered.

This years was a more sombre affair, posing serious questions about catastrophic climate change, the ever widening gap between rich and poor, inclusivity in society, and our responsibilities as designers and developers to interrogate what this means for us and the things we put into the world.

During the morning of the conference, listening to Akil Benjamin talk about the power to make meaningful changes in your life, I started to feel this itch in the back of my head. An itch I’d felt before, I’d been dissatisfied with my job for a while.

This wasn’t a people problem. My team were (are still) among the best people I have ever worked with. A smarter, more caring, compassionate, amazing bunch of human beings you couldn’t hope to find.

I miss them a lot.

No, this was a matter of process and structure. Things are slow in a large multinational. I didn’t feel like I was making the kind of impact that I wanted to and I hadn’t been finding the work very satisfying.

Then Akil posted this slide.

(He’s a much bouncier and warmer person than this photo suggests)

And the itch got more insistent.

I decided was going to hand in my notice when I got back.

I’ve never left a position before without having something to go to, so I was nervous, but I knew there was a lot going on out there, and I am extremely lucky to have a great network of friends and peers, so it was a good nervous.

I (slightly) drunkenly told both Akil and Simon my plans at the after-party. A way to force myself to commit and not chicken out.

I did the deed, and my last day was set as March 20th.

I had some interviews, and was getting good feedback from everyone I was talking to, I even got an offer early on, but none of the positions felt right. Until I got an email from an old boss, saying that a friend of his was looking for a front-end dev, and would I like him to set up an introduction.

Yes please!

The first chat was back at the beginning of March with Dan, the CTO. A meeting that was originally scheduled for 1 hour became 3 hours in a cafe showing each other bits of code, designs, talking about the web, education, and all manner of things. An encouraging start.

Looking back it’s strange how the follow-up meetings mapped themselves onto the encroaching pandemic.

The second chat was the following week with my now (spoilers!) CEO Elspeth. By this point health advice had turned to limiting physical contact. I visited the office this time, but we didn’t shake hands, and there was plenty of hand sanitiser at the main door.

A week later I had my third chat, with Paul the Head Of Engineering, and although it was pre-lockdown, people were beginning to social distance and I was already working from home. This was a completely remote affair.

Everything went well and I was offered the position the week the lockdown was announced. I’m now the Front-End Developer at Learning With Experts.

My lovely team threw me a remote leaving party, there were lots of hats.

I hope we get to meet up for actual drinks in the future.

So, yeah. That was an interesting few months!

This thing is already too long, so I’m going to end it here, and follow-up with a post about how I’m dealing with lockdown, and things that have helped me.