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Todd Grotenhuis

See "Links, About" page to. 1) Get cybersecurity help. 2) Ask me about Underground Seminary.

Music

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    🎥 Finally watched Stalker (but still haven’t read Picnic), and now things are reminding me of it. Like this Oyaarss album cover. 🎶

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    2021 Recommendations Recap Recap:

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    2021 Recommendations - Listening 🎶🎙

    As I mentioned in my 2021 Product & Service Recommendations, I primarily use Plex + Plexamp for listening to music (and Marvis Pro on the go), and track listens in Last.fm. I listen to podcasts in Overcast.fm.

    I’ll cover a little bit about my listening habits, then share top albums and top podcasts.

    Music Overview

    Here’s a rough map of my top genres over the year:

    If none of those genres are of interest to you, you may just want to skip down to podcasts, otherwise you’re going to be scratching your head (or even recoiling) at a bunch of “weird music”.

    And here were the top 20 artists:

    Thanks to last.fm and tuneR, I can see that three bands were new to my top 20 this year: clipping., Silent Planet, and Joyhauser.

    I got tuned in to clipping. via a friend on Bandcamp, but as I mentioned in my 2021 Watching recommendations, became a fan after watching their NPR (actually!) Tiny Desk Concert. If you start to watch the video and are like “wait, I know him”, then you’re probably right. Hamilton, Snowpiercer, and Central Park are just a few of Daveed Diggs’s major credits.

    Silent Planet has been a fave of mine for a while, so I’m surprised this was the first time they broke the top 20. In addition to making great music, frontman Garrett Russell is a brilliant lyricist, delving passionately and intelligently into political and spiritual themes. (You may remember I’m slowly working on a readthrough of all the books referenced in just one of their tracks.)

    Joyhauser is simply great thumping beats for when you need to focus or keep moving.

    Albums

    Unlike my other reviews, I restricted my specific album recommendations to ones that were released this year, so as to not have an overwhelming list.

    On Bandcamp

    Honorable Mentions that are not on Bandcamp (boo!)

    • Between the Buried and Me - Colors II: progressive metal, jazz metal
      • Note: some of their music is on bandcamp, but not this album, yet. Likely a problem with their current label
    • Bo Burnham - Inside: humor, satire
    • Demon Hunter - Songs of Death and Resurrection: non-metal-versions-of-their-metal-tracks
    • For King & Country - Burn the Ships Deluxe Edition: gospel, pop
    • Silent Planet - Iridescent: metalcore, homework core

    Podcasts

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    🎶 Speaking of streaming services still playing Christmas music…

    This is becoming my top fave, even surpassing the August Burns Red versions.

    You know you need a booming black metalcore Christmas carol. #MetalMennonite

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    2021 Recommendations - Watching 📺

    • Your local theater - enjoyed (even via streaming) renditions of Tuesdays with Morrie, Cyrano, and A Christmas Carol
    • See Season 1 - terrifying, mesmerizing, and incredible
    • Rememory - contemplative and crushing
    • Dear White People Season 2 - very well done
    • Resident Alien Season 1 - Alan Tudyk is great in this mishmash of all the genres into a single show
    • John Oliver on Raids - Raids are devastating and almost never necessary.
    • John Oliver on Sponsored Content - All ad-driven news creates perverse incentives, but sponsored content is particularly bad
    • Canadians rescue the USA national anthem - brilliant use of harmony
    • The Sinner Season 3 - more terribly haunting than the first two seasons, combined
    • The Commute: Walking 90km to Work - another incredibly documentary from Beau Miles
    • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 1 - in release order of Trek shows, this is my favorite, so far
    • Kim’s Convenience Seasons 1–2 - fun sitcom, though it got a little formulaic by season 3 and we got tired of the “people didn’t communicate” trope as the main plot driver
    • Endeavour Season 5 - I love the attention to atmosphere in this series. It feels like a (modern) history lesson every time, too. Warning: every episode of this show seems to end on a melancholy note, literally and figuratively.
    • I Am Mother - I’d love to discuss this sci-fi suspense!
    • The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Season 1 - This felt like the most “comic book” of the MCU so far, due to the everybody having to fight everybody, etc. Great preaching from Sam at the end of the season.
    • Venom - utterly ridiculous and a lot of fun
    • Blade - rewatched this; interesting to hear Blade will be coming into the MCU
    • Fantastic Planet - totally original french animated scifi from 1973
    • Mr. Show Seasons 1–3 - some of this didn’t age well, but I love sketch comedy and their take on the Python-esque surreal sketch transitions
    • Tenet - this was an instant purchase
    • Line of Duty Season 1 - What a wild ride! I had to space these out because they were so provocative, complex, and intense. Season 2 not recommended.
    • A Black Lady Sketch Show Season 2 - Not as good as season 1, but still good sketch comedy
    • Love, Death & Robots Season 2 - Not as mind-altering as Season 1, but still full of incredible experiments
    • Self/less - Good, interesting. Would have been even better with more of a Christopher Nolan treatment and less of a Product Placement treatment.
    • 🎶 Welcome to the Internet - “could I interest you in everything all of the time?“ Lots of good critique in this hilarious self-produced music video. Full special here.
    • Primal Fear - Very late to the party on this one. Surprised I didn’t see this back when it came out, as it was definitely my kind of movie. A little dated and a little predictable, but still very enjoyable and worth a discussion.
    • 🎶 Tiny Desk Concert: clipping. - this is the first actual tiny desk concert, and the start of my obsession with clipping. (Stay tuned for Listening Recommendations)
    • The Suicide Squad - Ludicrous, gory, and hilarious. I’m not much of a DC guy, but this was some wicked fun.
    • 🎶 Marc Rebillet and Madison McFerrin - incredible looping and improv chemistry
    • Middleditch & Schwartz - long-form improv comedy
    • Ted Lasso Season 2 - not as good as season 1, but still challenging, human, and funny
    • Foundation Season 1 - Unnecessarily brutal at at times (and I mean the storytelling, not the content…some details don’t need to be on the screen), but otherwise very good
    • Soul - Heartbreaking at times, but a beautiful movie

    Further Reading:

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    2021 Recommendations - Products and Services

    Reading 📚📑

    • Your Local Library and Libby for borrowing ebooks and audiobooks
    • Bookshop for purchasing books and supporting your favorite bookstore
    • UpNext for read-it-later (note: I will likely move to Readwise Reader once I get through the waitlist)
    • Readwise.io to automatically manage & resurface highlights and notes from all of the above and more
    • Storygraph for tracking books
    • Inkl for lower-hassle news from a variety of sources

    Further reading: 2021 Reading Recommendations

    Listening 🎙🎶 and Watching 📺

    • Bandcamp for trying and buying music
    • MusicHarbor for finding out about new music releases for bands who have made the poor choice to not be on Bandcamp
    • iTunes match to make your music collection available across multiple devices
    • Marvis Pro for listening to that library on iOS
    • Plex for serving up your whole media library and Plexamp for an incredible listening experience wherever you’ve made that library available (note: I’m looking for Plex friends!)
    • Last.fm for tracking listening, including from Marvis and Plex (above) or from Web Scrobbler in the browser
    • JustWatch for seeing where a show or movie is currently available and tracking watchlists/watching without losing your place when a show moves to another provider
    • Overcast for podcasts

    Further reading: 2021 Watching Recommendations, 2021 Listening Recommendations

    Writing and Communication

    • Craft for fun notetaking, writing, shared documents, and impromptu websites
    • Fastmail for email, calendar, contacts
    • Micro.blog for blogging, microblogging, social media that’s not a dumpster fire, and (optionally, additionally) POSSE, a newsletter service, read-it-later service, bookshelf service, podcasting service, and video service
    • Mars Edit 4 for revising, tagging, managing, or deleting micro.blog posts or importing/adding a backdated post

    Security and Privacy

    • NextDNS for blocking a lot of bad stuff (including trackers and ads)
    • Signal for direct messaging and calls
    • DuckDuckGo for search that respects you
    • A digital password vault
    • Multi-Factor Authentication for everywhere that supports it, especially for your main email provider that all your other accounts are tied to (note: avoid text messages as the 2nd factor whenever there are better options)
    • A couple hard drives and an alternate location (such as a family-member’s home or a safe deposit box) for periodic swapping of backups outside of your cloud storage

    Other

    • Parcel for tracking packages and deliveries
    • CloudMounter for accessing cloud storage on your Mac
    • Magnet for turning OSX into a tiling window manager
    • Vivaldi for a full-feature independent browser that still works on most of the Internet

    Luxuries That I Wish Weren’t

    • Levels for learning about how different foods, activities, and events affect your glucose and health
    • A periodic home cleaning service
    • A personal trainer to help with physical therapy and fitness

    Note: This page contains affiliate links. I may receive a discount or commission for things your purchase. Nevertheless, these are real recommendations for products and services I have used.

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    There’s so much good music out there that I’m tempted to make an “only buy from Bandcamp” rule. 🎶

    I’m so frustrated by labels that focus on streaming or selling from bad distributors. In the before times I could at least pickup the disc at a show.

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    🎶 I have a lot of “weird music”, but as I’ve said before…Sanctum really wins on the weird-and-amazing front.

    In the picture, this “related tracks” section is basically never empty.

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    🎶 Seeming - Go Small was one of my big jams last year. Ressurected again today in my playlist.

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    🎶 My new favorite thing with Plexamp is the “sonic journey” feature.

    You give it a starting song and ending song, and then it routes a playlist between.

    This is basically what I used to do when I DJed across both the hip-hop/electronic and metal/rock blocks (2 2-hour shows)

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    🎶 [Courtesy of @alans on micro.blog](https://deardestiny.shinyapps.io/tuneR/)

    Blue are new in my top 50 list this year.

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    🎶 the proper way to test out a new speaker is with Umek - Amnesiac.

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    🎶 I think it might be a Bandcamp Friday? 🤣

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    🎶 just learned Umek is listed as a composer for Tanz Mit Laibach…and of course that makes a ton of sense.

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    🕊🎶 Apparently some people are losing it over how Silent Planet’s Iridescent album has an expletive in one (incredible) song…

    Who wants to tell them about how John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul all use righteous expletives, too?

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    🎶 Still thinking about the Mark Solomon interview on the Labeled podcast, and how he seemed to be dismissive of his side project work…and I’m like:

    Argyle Park is probably the best music you’ve made and one of the greatest and most underrated albums of all time

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    🎶 Silent Planet - Iridescent dropped today!

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    “Sonically similar” on Plex continues to deliver interesting insights. Underworld (techno iteration) always seemed an outlier in my catalog, according to conventional genre statements, but apparently it’s got a lot in common with many of my EBM tracks.

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    🎶 Igorrr and Drumcorps are touring Europe and that’s an Ad Noiseam reunion I really want to see in the USA.

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    Quake II is still a great album 🎶

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