Recent content in Home on Brady Salz
I love the idea of a now page, so I decided to make my own Last updated: 2026-03-22 Double Working This is still somehow not over? Let's tackle them one at a time. Consulting is allowing me to flex those EE + SW muscles that I built up so hard over hte last decades. While I don't personally think I have the time or energy to tackle this at the levels I want all the time, it's been incredibly…
Sign of the Dune by Hard Girls step one of a plan how to make a mouse into a man oh you do it with your hands a jumbled collection of thoughts on what it feels like to say goodbye to something you desperately love and then have it say hello again Florida It left and I followed it. I did it my way, taking a pit stop in Colorado to sweat out the anxiety with a mosh pit and a foreign language.
Scott Get the Van, I'm Moving by Cayetana The hardest part of moving out, moving out, moving out is I remember moving in I remember moving in The lyrics pound around my skull. For something that so many people assume is filled with the world's most brilliant specimen of grey matter, it's ringing quite hollow tonight. I've done my best to simultaneously drain it of all substance (both solid and…
Do You Still Hate Me? by Jawbreaker Are you out there, do you hear me? Can I call you, do you still hate me? Are we talking, are we fighting? Is it over, are we writing? I love the bus. The bus is a great normalizer. When I'm on the bus, everyone else doesn't fade away, they do the opposite. They promote themselves to main characters in this story because they and I and everyone else is doing the…
Concorde by Black Country, New Road And you, like Concorde I came, a gentle hill racеr I was breathless Up on evеry mountain Just to look for your light Some Thoughts 2022 was the biggest singular step I could take in a new direction. It doesn't mean I moved a large distance, but it does mean things changed. In the larger picture, nothing appears to have changed: same apartment, same company, same…
You Can Call Me Al by Paul Simon Why am I soft in the middle? The rest of my life is so hard I need a photo-opportunity I want a shot at redemption Another night out on the town and another night when I remember who I get to be. My soul sings and my wrist aches.The last 20 hours have been filled with wide eyes, knowing nods, and comforting smiles.
Trailer Trash by Modest Mouse And it's been a long time Which agrees with this watch of mine And I know that I miss you And I'm sorry if I dissed you I wish I could remember what it felt like five years ago. I have ideas, whispers, hints even of what it felt like to jump off that edge. But I can't tell you what the highest dream could have been.
After Hours by We Are Scientists This night is winding down but Time means nothing, As always at this hour Time means nothing Ach! They think he does not move. They think he does not lift a foot. They think that he does not even breathe. A perfect quiet, with no difference between him and the rocks in his surroundings. Blink after blink, breath after breath, no changes.
I've done a few look back posts about my time here in San Francisco (One, Three) but wanted to really sit down and stew on Five. It's a big number. Once In a Lifetime by Talking Heads You may ask yourself, “What is that beautiful house?” You may ask yourself, “Where does that highway go to?” And you may ask yourself, “Am I right? Am I wrong?” And you may say to…
I'm in a hurry to get things done Oh, I rush and rush until life's no fun All I really gotta do is live and die Even I'm in a hurry and don't know why I'm in a Hurry (And Don't Why) by Alabama I've been on a bit of a bender when it comes Silicon Valley media content recently. There's been a recent explosion of content:
Now I'm looking to the sky to save me Looking for a sign of life Looking for something to help me burn out bright Learn To Fly by Foo Fighters I've been doing this gig just short of five years now. We're two months out at this moment. If I round up, would you be offended? Aerospace is a bizarre juxtaposition. Designing hardware that costs million of dollars, but it's put together by people with…
Office Hours I've hesitant to hit publish on this one for awhile, but here we are anyways. I use Twitter in two ways: a professional development platform a shitposting platform My output to the rest of the social world is all nihilistic garbage1. My inputs are fascinating technical deep dives by a variety of folks putting their knowledge explorations out there for free. While I'm enjoying the…
Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time. I started writing this on 2021-02-07, as he just won his 7th Super Bowl (first with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers). I finished writing it a year later, as he retired from playing in the NFL. Tom Brady has done more for more my personality than anything else in my life. Not engineering, not drum corps, not Astranis - nope, they're not taking the gold…
DigitalLung.exe by Hey, Ily I am brainwashed But I like it Buzzing like neon lights under projector skies Time for a big pivot, depending on who you ask. On paper, it's a massive sharp turn for my career. In reality, it's probably somewhat closer to a formalization. But let's stop dancing around it: last Friday was my first day as the Electrical Integration Lead at Astranis. It wasn't really my…
Get My Mind Right by Fiddlehead Make up the mind to find your motion. This is not the review one, but it is the wrap up one. The last couple of years have been pretty damn strange, haven't they? Sometimes it feels like summarizing a year is impossible, but that seems trivial compared to the daunting task of the previous two. Why is that? Is a sum larger than it's parts?
Why Kant I Be You? by Laura Jane Grace Feel the distance collaspe I know the in between Are you held in the grip? Lost somewhere in the scene It's a different place and mostly better place now. It didn't happen over night. It was a long, drawn out process with a lot of rapid change. What's that look like? Knowing Better After three years, I stopped caring about being new.
hand crushed by a mallet (Remix) by 100 gecs [hand crushed by a mallet (Remix) by 100 gecs] Both are fantastic exploratory lovely electro hyperpop rock hits. This feeling's going to my head I'm thinking things I shouldn't say You circled me inside my room I couldn't go, go, go, go It hasn't been the most fun set of weeks here. Overall, I have been angry.
The First Time I Met Sanawon? by Bomb The Music Industry! from the album with a title that can not be forgotten: Adults!!!: Smart!!! Shithammered!!! And Excited By Nothing!!!!!!! As we get older every day feels longer And although I know I'll struggle I will Do my best to never get tired I know Chicago will be cold tomorrow Let's cash in on our thin blood and have another one
Be Good by Off With Their Heads I had assumed I would have been gone by now But the ship has weathered the storm At some point it will probably be cliche to say “hey, it's been awhile?” but we're not there quite yet. My last prediction was shockingly accurate - 2021 will be better. If it's this bad at the end of 2020, I won't be around for 2021 I think.
Kawasaki Backflip by Dogleg will you be the fire or the wind? will you be the fire or the wind? Whenever things get bad, I feel like I become a caricature of myself. I'm not actually Brady, I'm just someone who goes in and fills the gaps until he can show back up. I stretch myself thinner than butter over stiff bread, as a religious Bilbo Baggins fan would (possibly?
Career Boy by Dorian Electra This is the review one - only looking backwards for now. Same style as last year: start with the summary then explain it. Traveled 32,371 miles recorded with Google Timeline Wrote 19,803 words for the blog thanks bash: find . -maxdepth 1 -mtime -365 -exec cat {} \; | wc -w Read 9,036 pages recorded with Goodreads Worked 2,668 hours recorded with Toggl time tracking app…
Spooky Scary by Spraynard (from the Pink Couch Sessions via IfYouMakeIt) The only thing we'll regret is not knowing what regret feels like cheers to that It's been a goddamn wild October. So wild that I really didn't have any time to sit down think about how fast things were moving again. This blog post is probably going to be half for me and my memory, and then half for others.
Under the Cover of Darkness by The Strokes Don't go that way I'll wait for you And I'm tired of all your friends Listening at your door I want what's better for you Two years deep now. Halfway in. Halfway… or perhaps more? An arbitrary mark if I'm being honest. We screen so many resumes and wonder why people on having a new job every year, despite very well knowing that humans aren't meant…
He's A Good Sposato (I Love Ya Blue-Blue) by Latterman This is an overdue post. I try really hard to know every single person who works at the company. I think the only way to break down “work silos” is to actually befriend people and know what they're enjoy. If you don't feel comfortable walking up to someone and asking how their weekend was, how could you possibly ask them for…
Lauren (Track 2) by Prince Daddy and the Hyena I got a new tattoo last Monday (8/19/2019) at Mission Ink. I had been thinking about this tattoo since senior year of undergrad maybe? I tried to dig up the original image but have never been able to. I texted it to a few friends but oddly, none of them remembered. It's not like it's been four years or anything. Gross how fast time flies by –…
Overview Github Link I've been working on this project on and off (mostly off) for about the last year. Decided it would finally be a good time to upload (“publish”) the work I've done so far. This is really just part of my 2019 goals of closing out projects. This project is mostly just data download and cleanup. That means I'm basically a machine learning engineer1, huzzah we finally…
Wells Fargo by Dreamville Impossible to not get pumped up when listening to this track! Huge personal milestone yesterday: I bought my first vacation tickets in a looong time, definitely the first since college! Let me clarify a bit here. I've obviously gone on vacation before. My family would always go up to Maine for a week in the summers. We'd rent a cabin, enjoy the beach, eat lobster. All the…
Baby (How Much I LFO You) by DJ Koze. Fun track from a coworker with many Avalanches vibes. Dang, I make one happy post then take a break from writing forever? Well a month is certainly not forever, but it feels like it when you're going away at a two week cadence pretty consistently. It hasn't bene perfect but it's been pretty damn good. I can look back on each weekend and see things I've done…
This Must Be The Place by Talking Heads (Live from Stop Making Sense) Home is where I want to be Pick me up and turn me around I feel numb, born with a weak heart I guess I must be having fun That sucked… Wow. That was a lot. That was… a lot. I finally taped out my big design at work. This goddamn SDR has been a long time coming, but now it's finally out of our hands.
Temporary Tantrum by pronoun. Alyse made a stunning album and I am here for it. It's a niche thing to fall in love with, but the background vocals are so, so powerful. Listen to the way she supports and contradicts herself with staccato beats in the back that just give way and collapse into the next measure. For once, not thematically appropriate to the rest of things I'm writing below, but still…
Clear The Air by Off With Their Heads (Live from the Rock Room, acoustic) I have very high peak anger levels. I originally wrote “I had anger issues”, but that sentence has way too many connotations with it. It probably peaked in high school, and I've gotten far better at controlling it now that I'm older. Half is self-medication, and half is self-control. I don't think anger is a bad…
Am I Dead Yet? by Cayetana. One of the first “small” bands I ever got to watch and follow, they're finally calling it quits this year. What a bummer, because they wrote some stunningly great tracks. And I'm not dead yet, but this doesn't feel so great And I'm not dead yet, but I'd like to take a break Is there a way out of this? Is there a way out?
Ghost With A Boner by Diarrhea Planet. I struggle to think of a medium where the line “ghost with a boner” would not make me roll my eyes, but… musically? It really works. If you don't think it does, try doing the (only) other line and getting back to me. I've hinted to and alluded this before in a couple other posts, but it's definitely something that merits a full mental deep…
Basil's Kite by Cap'n Jazz (Live at Fun Fun Fun Fest 2010). Tim's yell is one of the most raw sounds I've ever heard. Probably second behind Roger Daltrey for me. I've been punching harder and faster to keep my head above water. I've done it so much recently that sometimes I forget I'm even swimming anymore. By that point, it starts to look like I'm lashing out and flailing.
Anthems For A Seventeen-Year Old Girl by Broken Social Scene Updated my home page / intro page. Previously it used to say: I write some [very] personal stuff on here. Why? Because I always wanted to be a musician and write songs about how I feel. I never ended up being that good at that, so a blog will have to suffice. I have no problem if you read this, but I would really like it if you don’t…
Black Friday by Iron Chic. I normally try to think of original titles, but this one was simply perfect. George Orwell introduced the dictator Big Brother in his novel 1984. as I’m sure you know. The book was an allegorical treatment of Stalinism, of course. And ever since then, the term ‘Big Brother’ has functioned as a social icon. That was Orwell's great accomplishment. But now, in…
The Bus Song by Jay Som One of the “perks” of working at a startup is that they're down to pay for Lyft rides home if you work late. Originally, despite being aware of it, I really just kind of refused to use it. I would always bike home, or take the bus, the subway, etc. A coworker tried being real with me and flat out asked me: why I don't value my time?
Gratitude by Big Red Machine is the theme, but I'm going to interleave paragraphs here. The irony isn't going to be lost on me here. Last post: why do you work so much? Answer: I'm fine with it. Current status: unsure if I'm fine with it. The workload has rapidly stepped up recently and it's kind of been drowning me. It really feels like a lot of the goals I set out for 2019 just got immediately…
You Can't Always Get What You Want by The Rolling Stones I wanted to take a little bit of time to reflect on what ended being a surprisingly controversial number for me in 2018: approximately 2,600 hours worked. I had originally just written it down and moved on. A few people pointed it out and asked some hard hitting questions I hadn't really thought about, or at least hadn't thought about in a…
Danny Nedelko by Idles A nice little pick me up song for backing me up when I set the 2019 bar too high. Last year I promised myself to track all my goals (which were effectively just habits) with the Loop - Habit Tracker app. I abandoned that sometime around April, because I realized it wasn't really working for me. The goals I had set were in fact not really habits, or maybe habits were just not…
How Far We've Come by Matchbox Twenty This is the review one - only looking in the past here. Forward thoughts come next time. If you're just here for the fun stats rollup and then moving on, well, here ya go: traveled 85,422 miles* recorded with Google Timeline wrote 31,722 words thanks bash: find . -maxdepth 1 -mtime -365 -exec cat {} \; | wc -w read 14,091 pages recorded with Goodreads worked…
One of the more niche electronics scenes I love to follow is #Badgelife. It's a dedicated group of people who create electronics badges (usually palm-sized) that can be anywhere from passive decorative art to full-on video game emulator systems waiting to be hacked. Most of these end up being in the infosec community for whatever reason - likely due to the size of the scene? Regardless, I've been…
“If you ever meet a Malkieri,” Noal said, “you tell him Jain Farstrider died clean". The Wheel of Time has dominated the last 11 months of my life. It's a massive saga that is not easy to read. It's not always thrilling, the pacing is trash, characters are frustrating, but oh my god, I think it's finally worth it. “Worth it” almost doesn't do it justice in this…
List season is here and it's hot y'all. I use Google Play Music for my music streaming and it doesn't have any fancy schmancy Spotify features that tell you how your year in music was. What it does is an excellent library that I can fill basically endlessly, so I'm happy with that. Still, can't help but be a little jealous of everything they have over their on that green grass…
What's My Age Again? by blink-182 Six hours of being officially able to comfortably say I'm on the young half of my twenties. Once that rolls over, I'll hit 26 and then we won't be able to play any fun games with truncating or rounding anymore. Luckily I think I'm still in the prime of my life. I never quite understood that, the prime of your life occurs whenever you want it to.
Jesus Christ by Brand New It's been awhile hasn't it? Life has been a bit challenging, and that's not the most fun thing to write about, so I haven't. I feel kind of bad about taking a two month long break from this experiment, because it's now hard again to think about what to write about. I thought I had succesfully solved that problem, but it turns out that it just keeps coming back if you…
Famous Last Words by My Chemical Romance I started this experiment for two reasons: to write more to put myself out more I didn't know the seoncd reason at the time. I always had trouble telling people how I really felt. Once I found out people actually read this, I wanted to vomit. I thought it was just a joke thing that no one would ever find. I've said this hundred times and I'll repeat myself…
Another day, another delay, another first world problems blog post. Recently I've had the absolute worst problem: not responding to friends who say they want to hang out. I have this weird symptom where if I don't respond to the first person, then I'm going to ignore everyone else after them. It really shouldn't be a a priority thing, but it totally is. I feel like I have to treat social media…
Grass Stain by Waxahatchee*. Specifically the NME Session one. It's more fiedelity and more real than the album one (which I still love, don't get me wrong) I've been tweeting about it a bit, but one thing I'm super pumped to talk about is I'm now in a band again! It took a while to actually get it up and going, but it's been worth every piece of effort I put in.
If you didn't see the last post, I recommend you start there before jumping into here. We covered some basic scale and chord generation, but from a software point of view. In this one, I want to go through get one level more abstract. The goal is to be able to turn something supposedly unreadable like this: into something we can generate and understand with code. This one will primarily focus on…