Kourosh Dini's Blog, page 26

Being Productive – first five videos now free

Being Productive – Simple Steps to Calm Focus now has a demo version. It consists of the first 5 videos of the full course and is totally free.

Check out the promotional video:

 

Get the Being Productive Demo

And of course, if you would like the full course, you can get it here:

Buy the full Being Productive course

Bitter Jester Music Fest – July 4th – Grand Finale Concert & Fireworks

If you’re in the Chicago – Highland Park area, check out the Bitter Jester Music Fest on July 4th. It’s a free event with some of the best up and coming musicians competing in a battle of the bands. (I’ll be one of the judges on the panel.) 

Tasks – Pen and Paper – or – Digital?

I’ve heard whispers through the Intertubes that there is discord amongst camps between those who believe pen and paper to be the superior system medium and those who drift to the digital.  I caught some wind via a pingback to marywestonn’s blog in my recent post Settling the Mind vs Settling the System. He in turn points to a nice writeup by Gabe Weatherhead at MacDrifter.

So, which is best?

The question is a false one. There is no reason one cannot use both. In fact, I use both quite regular...

Update on Creating Flow with OmniFocus 3

Creating Flow with OmniFocus 3is in the works. I’m regularly visiting it, adding ideas, making updates, changes, and the like.

The productivity world has changed tremendously since the first edition. Contexts have morphed into tags. Perspectives have grown in power. And in general, our tools are increasingly pervasive throughout our lives.

Meanwhile, our minds are still the minds that have developed through millennia of primitive culture. The anxieties and worries we carry, the desire for the...

Live performance recording – Dual broadcast

I’ve been broadcasting performances and practice sessions to twitch.tv/kourosh. Here’s yesterday’s performance

Wake up with calm piano music – streaming live

For the last several days, I’ve been experimenting with streaming parts of my morning piano practice sessions live to Twitch. The times vary, but tend to be around 6 to 7am or so. If you’re interested in tuning in while the experiment lasts, you can do so at twitch.tv/Kourosh.

A neat thing is that we can send comments back and forth during the sessions.

I’ve always been a morning person. Hardly surprising, that tends to be when I perform music best, too.

On The Importance of Thinking Small

“Envision your goals.” “Think big.” “Dream!” Such are the refrains we often come across in some motivational lecture, speech, or blurb.

And, there is truth to these ideas. After all, our visions do inform our actions. Our actions, in turn, build our visions.

But I think it is equally important to dream small. Now when I say this, I do not mean we should aim for low accomplishments. And perhaps to some extent I do mean we should consider the smaller steps that build our larger goals.

But more...

Impressions of OmniFocus 3 – Releasing May 30 on iOS

OmniFocus 3 for iOS ships May 30th. I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of the beta, and I’ve had some time to kick the tires.

In brief, OmniFocus is a task manager. It helps you to organize and arrange your work so that you can think less about what to do next and just get started with whatever you feel is best to do. You want to have your priorities and decisions easily thought through.

At its most basic, it can take the projects and tasks you write and then list them in many ways. Some lis...

Music for a Boss Battle – Bring it on

Well, here’s the final project for the game music composition course:

It’s part two of the last post where I composed for a regular battle. It’s still in the same theme – namely by inspiration from somewhere between Deus Ex Human Revolution and Rez. There is a warm up/introduction of the baddy phase, a first battle, a temporary reprieve, and then a final battle section. Each of the fight scene parts can be looped as long as necessary.

RPG Battle Music – A Cyberpunk AI fight

My latest Udemy Game Music Composition assignment had me working on an RPG battle theme. First, we examined an existing RPG of our choice, and then built from there. I studied Deus Ex Human Revolution – Detroit Combat 2, composed by Michael McCann. The game and soundtrack are kinda awesome.

So here’s my attempt:

It’s written in a Phrygian scale with some high energy. This time I used some pre-made drum tracks with slight alterations here and there.