What Apple Silicon Means for Musicians

Earlier this week at WWDC 2020, Apple announced its upcoming transition from Intel CPUs to its own “Apple Silicon” for Macs. The new line of Apple Silicon chips are of the ARM-based variety – similar to the A-series chips found in the iPhone and iPad. In this post, I’ll share a few thoughts about how the transition to Apple Silicon may affect musicians, especially those using Apple-developed apps like Logic Pro X and MainStage.

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Adding Schema Markup to a Hugo Site

For tonight’s Hugo project, I decided to add @BlogPosting schema markup to my Hugo-generated blog. Schema markup was something I avoided for a while because I assumed it would be too complicated to add to my blog. After some hacking around tonight, I was able to successfully add the markup.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
	"@context":"https://schema.org",
	"@type": "BlogPosting",
	"image": {{ partial "seo/og_image.html" . }},
	"url": {{ .Permalink }},
	"dateCreated": "{{ .PublishDate.Format "2006-01-02" }}",
	"datePublished": "{{ .PublishDate.Format "2006-01-02" }}",
	"dateModified": "{{ .Page.Lastmod.Format "2006-01-02" }}",
	"inLanguage": "en-US",
	"isFamilyFriendly": "true",
	"copyrightYear": "{{ .PublishDate.Format "2006" }}",
	"copyrightHolder": "Brian Li",
	"accountablePerson": {
		"@type": "Person",
		"name": "Brian Li",
		"url": "https://brianli.com"
	},
	"author": {
		"@type": "Person",
		"name": "Brian Li",
		"url": "https://brianli.com"
	},
	"creator": {
		"@type": "Person",
		"name": "Brian Li",
		"url": "https://brianli.com"
	},
	"publisher": {
		"@type": "Organization",
		"name": "Brian Li LLC",
		"url": "https://brianli.com",
		"logo": {
			"@type": "ImageObject",
			"url": "https://brianli.com/assets/BRIAN-LI-FEATURED-IMAGE.png"
		}
	},
	"mainEntityOfPage": "True",
	"articleBody": {{ .Content | safeJS | htmlUnescape | plainify }}
}
</script>

A few interesting things I noticed with Hugo’s rendering engine.

  • For certain pairs like "url": {{ .Permalink }}, adding quotes around {{ .Permalink }} messes up the JSON rendering. If you’re trying to add schema markup on your Hugo site, you may need to omit the quotes if you see escaped characters. I had to use this syntax for "image" as well.
  • "articleBody" required quite the workaround. {{ .Content | safeJS | htmlUnescape | plainify }} ended up working for me – notice the lack of quotations once again.

Tasty Burger for Father's Day

My parents were gracious enough to take care of J tonight, so Ayaka and I got to sneak out for Father’s Day dinner. We couldn’t stay out for too long, so we decided to go to Tasty Burger in Boston for some quick burgers and fries. It’s been on our list of places to go since our previous visit to Boston, so it seemed like a good idea. I used to come here almost every week during my time at Northeastern University. It was nice to be able to come back, reflect on how much life has changed since college, and enjoy some greasy goodness.

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Tokyo in Motion

I took this photo in Tokyo during a night out with my friend Drew. I think it captures Tokyo’s nightlife vibe pretty well. I wish I could say this was a planned shot, but it wasn’t. It was taken by accident, and I didn’t even realize it until I browsed through the night’s images afterward.

Switching Back to a System Font Stack

I’m a huge proponent of using system fonts for websites. Using system fonts is great for website performance because it doesn’t require the client to download additional fonts to render a page. I think modern system fonts look beautiful as well, especially the San Francisco font that ships with macOS and iOS.

A system font stack on brianli.com.

I love how the system font stack looks in dark mode. Very clean and sleek.

In the past, I used system fonts on this website. At some point, I switched to FF Meta Serif because Chrome, Brave, and other Chromium-based browsers somehow broke system font rendering on macOS. I opened a ticket regarding the spacing issue back in December 2019, and it was resolved recently.

I have to admit that I sort of miss the serif look, and I’m really glad that I stumbled upon FF Meta Serif during my font hunting because it’s a great font. With that said, I also love the reduced performance overhead that a system font stack brings to the table. I’m going to give the system font stack another shot, and see how I feel about it over the next few months. If I really miss the serif look, I can always switch back to FF Meta Serif.

Here’s the system font stack I’m using from CSS-Tricks.

body {
  font-family: system-ui, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol";
}

Let me know what you think of the new font!

Apparently I Have Shingles

I’ve been experiencing back pain over the last week or so. At first, I thought it was due to a mosquito or bug bite on my back. Yesterday, I noticed the pain was getting worse, and the redness had spread to the front of my body as well. Today, I went to the doctor again, and he diagnosed me with shingles, which is a reactivation of the same virus that causes chicken pox.

I always thought only old people get shingles, but there’s apparently a trend in younger people in the last few years as well. I hope the symptoms don’t get too serious, but I’m not too hopeful. It’s already gotten a lot worse since yesterday, and I had to lie down for half an hour today because it was very difficult to focus on work with the pain and fatigue. I ended up sleeping for about 15 minutes, and was drenched in sweat when I woke up. I feel better now, so maybe the pain comes in waves. Anyway, the doctor prescribed some antiviral medication for me, so hopefully that’ll help me recover faster.

After this is over, I need to review my commitments because stress may be a trigger for shingles. My baseline stress level has been elevated for the past few months from trying to raise a baby during the COVID-19 crisis, so I wouldn’t be surprised if stress was the cause of this shingles episode.

Shinjuku Station at Night

I’ve been combing through old photos to add to my portfolio over the past week. I took this photo of Shinjuku Station during a shoot with my friend Drew. I really miss Tokyo, and I hope we’ll be able to return in August.

6 Ways to Reduce CPU Usage in MainStage

MainStage is one of the most powerful applications available for live musicians. It allows you to turn ideas into sounds, which you can then organize into patches and sets. With so many features and tools at your disposal, it’s easy to go overboard with resource usage in MainStage. In this post, you’ll learn about six ways to reduce your CPU usage in MainStage, so you can spend more time performing and less time worrying.

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A Weekend Picnic by the Lake

I’m exhausted, but I just wanted to write a quick weekend recap before bed. Like I said yesterday, I tried to drop everything and take a break this weekend. While I did write a blog post for Tezos Commons this morning, I’m going to call it a success because I didn’t work on anything else.

Today was another beautiful day, so we decided to go to Lake Quannapowitt to have a little picnic. I brought my Leica Q2 with me, and was able to get a few nice shots. I seriously can’t wait to go back to Tokyo to put the camera to good use.

A sunny day by the lake.

We drove by Bagel World in Reading, MA on our way to Burger King for lunch last week. Yeah, I know fast food is terrible and isn’t really “food”, but Ayaka and I were both craving Burger King so what were we supposed to do? Anyway, she also wanted to try Bagel World, so we did that today. It was pretty good.

A picnic with bagels from Bagel World.

The playground by the lake recently opened back up, so we let J play on the swing for a little while. He really enjoyed it, but we didn’t stay for long because most of the parents there weren’t wearing masks. I just don’t understand why it’s so difficult for adults in America to follow rules and wear masks, especially at the playground where there are parents and kids running around.

Baby J on a swing.

I’m glad I was able to relax this weekend. Last Thursday, we found out that JAL canceled our flight back to Japan for the third time. We were supposed to go back to Japan in May, then June, then July. Now, we have no idea when we’ll be able to go back. If JAL cancels the BOS-NRT for August, we’ll probably try to drive to New York and take the JFK-HND flight. Just thinking about that makes me stressed out, so I should stop now.

Good night!