Tuesday, 22 August 2023
Tuesday, 15 August 2023
Wendy Wood's Good Habits, Bad Habits
This book is about using the power of habit to change your lousy diet, infrequent exercise, your weight, and many other such things. The secret is said to be habit-formation: turning whatever it is you need to do into something that you do almost without thinking. By the psychologist's own definition, the essence of habit is thoughtlessness.(1)
It's Behavioural Science. Replication of experimental results is poor, and the experiments, often involving small groups of American college students, are, how does one say this? Lacking in gravitas?
A Behavioural Science experimental result typically sounds something like this: 60% of the people who tried The Hack did 10% less / more of Whatever, while the other 40% did the same amount. The conclusion of the writer of the best-selling book is that you should do The Hack, because it works.
Well, yes it does and no it doesn't.
It works for organisations with large customer / user bases (say, a hospital, or a retailer). Running a campaign featuring The Hack results in the equivalent of a 6% increase in customers when the campaign is running. If the campaign cost is low enough, that may well be worthwhile. There are plenty of parliamentary constituencies with a margin of less than 6%. The Hack could sway the result of the next election - if it's that kind of hack.
It is no use to you or me as individuals. We don't want something that works for just over half of us and then only 10% of the time. We need something that works for us, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year (nothing's perfect). Alarm clocks, rather than putting the biscuits out of sight and leaving the fruit on view(2).
The assumption that what works on one scale (organisation dealing with a large population) will work on another scale (individuals) should have a name, maybe the Individuals-Are-Crowds Fallacy.
Hacks (bite-size bits of thought-lite behaviour suitable for habit-formation) can make it easier to achieve a goal: you can put your gym gear in the bag the previous day so you don't forget it in the morning rush. It's not going to lift the weights for us, though. We have to do that, and there are no hacks for making it easier. It's supposed to be difficult, or it isn't doing us any good.
Setting an alarm clock is a hack, and so is a To-Do List. You still need to follow-through: you could go back to sleep, and you could ignore the list.
How important are habits-and-hacks? The alternative is said to be willpower, which Behavioural Scientists say is a muscle that gets tired easily and recovers slowly. Except there never was any such psychological muscle.
One's will was an expression of a desired outcome (which is why legal Wills are called that) and by extension, one's will-power was one's constancy and determination to cause or achieve that outcome. Go too far with "willpower" and you wind up with "obsession", "stubborn-ness", and other Bad Things. Don't go far enough, and you're a quitter.
The important part is this: one is only expected to demonstrate it for something that matters, such as studying for and passing exams, defeating the Carthaginians, or losing enough weight so the insurance companies stop calling one "obese". No-one is expected to resist marshmallows, or keep their hand over a flame, except as a party trick.
Parents will go through years of sleepless night hell, sullen teenage hell, tired crying on the way home, hearing some Disney movie for the third time that week, and all sorts of other trials and tribulations, to raise their children. Because that matters. Excuse them if they put on a few pounds in the process.
People who are content with their lives and their physical, cultural, emotional and intellectual condition do not do things to change themselves(3). They do things they enjoy doing to enjoy being them.
People who do things to change their lives and themselves are in some degree ambitious or malcontent.(4) Maybe they noticed that all the senior female executives were blondes and decided to adopt the plumage. Maybe they looked at their gut in the mirror and thought "this can't go on". Maybe they just want to run the 10K a minute faster to be in the next class up. Maybe they saw their Saturday night drinking buddies from the outside that fateful evening, and realised what a bunch of losers they were. Maybe they thought that, at thirty, it was time to learn to drive. Or to stop with the late-night takeaways. Or whatever.
The Dirty Secret of making significant changes to ourselves and/or our lives is that it takes sustained effort, a sharp pair of social pruning shears, and motives that would scare the bejesus out of a therapist.
Somewhere in the margins of that is a place for hacky little habits: I like To-Do lists, but I don't get obsessive about completing them.
By all means flick through Behavioural Science best-sellers or even the academic research if you want to find suggestions for hacky little habits.
And if a Behavioural Scientist offers you a marshmallow now, or two in fifteen minutes' time... you're a busy grown-up: take the marshmallow now and keep the fifteen minutes for yourself.
(1) That's why "bad habit" is almost a tautology, and "good habit" is almost an oxymoron.
It's Behavioural Science. Replication of experimental results is poor, and the experiments, often involving small groups of American college students, are, how does one say this? Lacking in gravitas?
A Behavioural Science experimental result typically sounds something like this: 60% of the people who tried The Hack did 10% less / more of Whatever, while the other 40% did the same amount. The conclusion of the writer of the best-selling book is that you should do The Hack, because it works.
Well, yes it does and no it doesn't.
It works for organisations with large customer / user bases (say, a hospital, or a retailer). Running a campaign featuring The Hack results in the equivalent of a 6% increase in customers when the campaign is running. If the campaign cost is low enough, that may well be worthwhile. There are plenty of parliamentary constituencies with a margin of less than 6%. The Hack could sway the result of the next election - if it's that kind of hack.
It is no use to you or me as individuals. We don't want something that works for just over half of us and then only 10% of the time. We need something that works for us, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year (nothing's perfect). Alarm clocks, rather than putting the biscuits out of sight and leaving the fruit on view(2).
The assumption that what works on one scale (organisation dealing with a large population) will work on another scale (individuals) should have a name, maybe the Individuals-Are-Crowds Fallacy.
Hacks (bite-size bits of thought-lite behaviour suitable for habit-formation) can make it easier to achieve a goal: you can put your gym gear in the bag the previous day so you don't forget it in the morning rush. It's not going to lift the weights for us, though. We have to do that, and there are no hacks for making it easier. It's supposed to be difficult, or it isn't doing us any good.
Setting an alarm clock is a hack, and so is a To-Do List. You still need to follow-through: you could go back to sleep, and you could ignore the list.
How important are habits-and-hacks? The alternative is said to be willpower, which Behavioural Scientists say is a muscle that gets tired easily and recovers slowly. Except there never was any such psychological muscle.
One's will was an expression of a desired outcome (which is why legal Wills are called that) and by extension, one's will-power was one's constancy and determination to cause or achieve that outcome. Go too far with "willpower" and you wind up with "obsession", "stubborn-ness", and other Bad Things. Don't go far enough, and you're a quitter.
The important part is this: one is only expected to demonstrate it for something that matters, such as studying for and passing exams, defeating the Carthaginians, or losing enough weight so the insurance companies stop calling one "obese". No-one is expected to resist marshmallows, or keep their hand over a flame, except as a party trick.
Parents will go through years of sleepless night hell, sullen teenage hell, tired crying on the way home, hearing some Disney movie for the third time that week, and all sorts of other trials and tribulations, to raise their children. Because that matters. Excuse them if they put on a few pounds in the process.
People who are content with their lives and their physical, cultural, emotional and intellectual condition do not do things to change themselves(3). They do things they enjoy doing to enjoy being them.
People who do things to change their lives and themselves are in some degree ambitious or malcontent.(4) Maybe they noticed that all the senior female executives were blondes and decided to adopt the plumage. Maybe they looked at their gut in the mirror and thought "this can't go on". Maybe they just want to run the 10K a minute faster to be in the next class up. Maybe they saw their Saturday night drinking buddies from the outside that fateful evening, and realised what a bunch of losers they were. Maybe they thought that, at thirty, it was time to learn to drive. Or to stop with the late-night takeaways. Or whatever.
The Dirty Secret of making significant changes to ourselves and/or our lives is that it takes sustained effort, a sharp pair of social pruning shears, and motives that would scare the bejesus out of a therapist.
Somewhere in the margins of that is a place for hacky little habits: I like To-Do lists, but I don't get obsessive about completing them.
By all means flick through Behavioural Science best-sellers or even the academic research if you want to find suggestions for hacky little habits.
And if a Behavioural Scientist offers you a marshmallow now, or two in fifteen minutes' time... you're a busy grown-up: take the marshmallow now and keep the fifteen minutes for yourself.
(1) That's why "bad habit" is almost a tautology, and "good habit" is almost an oxymoron.
(2) I've done that for years. Hasn't worked so far. Alarm clock works every time.
(3) That doesn't mean they never move home, redecorate, or go to a different country on holiday each year. No matter where they are, they always take the weather with them.
(4) There are also malcontents who don't do anything, also called whingers.
Friday, 11 August 2023
Tuesday, 8 August 2023
Friday, 4 August 2023
Solving the "Low Recording Volume in GarageBand From My Katana Using USB" Problem
It's time to think about recording. Because this is the +CurrentYear and just playing for your own ears is not enough. And listening to the playback makes it really clear that my fluency sucks.
BOSS swear the USB out can be used as an input to Garageband and other DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations).
There are YT videos on how to do it. Reddit is full of people saying "I can barely hear what it records", and, "it has horrible latency", and getting not very useful advice in return. The Interwebz is full of people giving advice. I will have a post about publicly-available advice coming shortly.
So here is how it's done - and my apologies for oversights. I assume you know the basics of Garageband (or whatever DAW you use), have installed the Katana driver on your computer, and set up a project file to record from it.
My First Law of Doing Stuff is: The task is not the problem.
The task is getting a decent recording in Garageband running on my M1 Air, using the Katana 50 Mk 2's USB connection, while also being able to get reasonable tones through the Katana at living-room volumes.
The problem is to work out why I get a useless waveform in the Garageband track display like this
and then fix it to get a useful waveform like this
After some
After some more
So to get a half-decent signal into Garageband, and enough to produce a useable waveform, set the Global EQ to LINE OUT, use the Parametric EQ and give it +20dB of gain. Set that, choose the relevant colour on the Panel and never touch it again.
It won't affect the volume from the speaker.
If you want to apply gain or attenuation to a channel, my experiments suggest using the channel EQ and EQ2 controls. Those apply nice clean gain. The pre-amp gain is an attempt to emulate gain on a valve amp, so it dirties up the signal.
You're welcome.
Tuesday, 1 August 2023
Saturday Skies - It's About Clouds
The last few weeks have been all about the clouds. The Europeans may be melting in the heat (they chose to stay in the EU...) and we have been getting skies like these for at least an hour or so a day if not more. I can't remember seeing clouds like this for years. Anyway. This was taken on the last Saturday of July, and after you've finished thinking that it's a damn fine shot, let's consider that it was taken on an iPhone SE2. Somewhere in Cupertino, there's a team that really knows WTF it's doing with computational photography. Because a conventional camera wouldn't get this exposure.
Tuesday, 25 July 2023
Landing at London City Airport
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Taken from the Sir Steve Redgrave Bridge. This is heavily cropped, and it's why 24MP cameras are as good as a zoom lens.
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