The “Reitoff principle”: Why you should add “nothing” to your work-life schedule.
The Reitoff principle gives us permission to write off a day and intentionally step away from achieving anything.
Read in full here:
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It’s great! I do this every day.
What do you do with your days then Oisín? Hiking? Gym’ing? Relaxing? Anything interesting? 
Ah, too many things with not enough focus or progress on any one thing! I play a few musical instruments (not all of them every day though), learn programming languages that seem interesting (like Prolog, Picat, APL and J), work on some game ideas with Defold, some volunteering work and watch way too many Youtube videos.
Actually I really do need a bit more “nothing” time, and to spend more time completing projects and less time in researching and learning mode 
They all sound great and I’m sure are enriching your life Oisín, well, apart from maybe the youTube videos 
Which instruments do you play?
I took piano lessons for years and really basic rhythm guitar, but recently started learning violin and Irish concertina, since the kids have been doing trad music classes. It’s a bit of fun, and quite different to the piano (esp. the violin, just getting any kind of clean tone out of it is a challenge). The kids play violin so I accompany them on the piano. Do you play too?
Recently I’ve been thinking about making some kind of computer game involving MIDI input. Going back to the Reitoff thing, I think it might help there because usually I spend too much time in “input” mode, i.e. reading, watching videos, doing tutorials etc. I rarely take the time to just sit down with pen and paper and think things through in “slow time”, which is needed to come up with creative ideas and flesh them out.
Ah nice! I keep meaning to learn music theory but never get the time for it. I don’t play anything myself but I used to have a home recording studio as I dabbled in D&B production - it’s been in my mum’s garage for years but I’ve started to bring it all here as I want to set it back up. What kind of music are you into yourself?
Ah nice! One of @rvirding’s LFE team members has been doing stuff with music - if you’re up for learning a new language lfe it might be of interest to you:
It’s been a while since I watched the video in that threat but I think it was a program controlling synthesisers. If you like Lisps you might like LFE 
Nice! I used to listen to a lot of stuff from the label Reinforced Records in Dollis Hill, after hearing the ridiculous but brilliant job they did on the English dub of the Fist of the North Star anime – they threw out the original soundtrack and put in crazy D&B / jungle stuff instead.
I did classical piano since I was a kid, and started sight-reading jazz from whatever books I could get (especially Dave Brubeck’s work). But in the last few years, my kids have been playing Irish trad music, so I started accompanying them on piano and eventually learning violin and concertina, because… well why not 
Over the years I’ve dabbled a little with MIDI sequencers, trackers and DAWs, my favourites lately being probably LMMS and Ardour, but there’s a whole world to those that I’ve barely tapped into.
I do like Lisps and spent a bit of time with Common Lisp and then Scheme (which was much smaller and easier to form a mental model about). Heard of LFE a while ago but didn’t look too closely, thanks for the link 
The one you should talk with about this is Duncan McGreggor, @oubiwann in the Erlang Forums, who is the musician. I just gave him LFE 
, which he has also contributed a lot too as well.
We need to get Duncan to sign up here and then introduce him to @Margaret …maybe they’ll be able to come up with a book idea for LFE
Ah nice! What DAW/s do you use? I’m on a Mac so bought a copy of Logic. Some of them have some neat AI integrations now - I bet these will be a huge help to prospective producers or musicians without any kind of formal training…
OK, but how do I point him here? https://forum.devtalk.com/ but then how? I can’t remember it 
Yep, let him know he can join us at devtalk.com, which has a LFE portal at devtalk.com/lfe and a general dev forum at forum.devtalk.com (which is where all the chat takes place).
The signup button will appear on our homepage (or forum homepage if not already signed in) but here’s the direct link to it: https://forum.devtalk.com/signup 
Hey all!
@rvirding got me signed up and clued-in
Music and LFE make a great combo (mostly because I love them both so much!). I’ve done a lot of MIDI with LFE (well, MIDI in Go as a server that an LFE client talks to, passing messages bi-directionally, etc.). In fact, I got so into music with LFE that it got me back into the whole scene (had been out of music since my 20s … classically trained as a kid, played in a chamber music group in HS). I’m now studying at Berklee Online, following a different path this time (when I was younger, I couldn’t resist physics and maths). Taking the composition route, etc.
Anyway, if you have questions about LFE and music, feel free to join our discord! (linked at the bottom of our site at https://lfe.io). We even have a channel dedicated to algorithmic sound
Welcome to Devtalk Duncan 
@Margaret if you see this, @oubiwann is a core team member of the LFE programming language, which, like Elixir and Erlang and Gleam, runs on the Erlang VM. It was created by @rvirding, who is also one of the creators of Erlang. I reckon a PragProg book on LFE with Duncan and Robert could become the de facto LFE book
Nice! I keep meaning to do a music theory course but never seen to get around to it. Have you composed any tracks? You’ll have to post them here (Or in our What are you listening to? thread!)
Hello Duncan @oubiwann, nice to e-meet you. I’ve sent you a note through DevTalk’s message system. Aston @AstonJ thanks for the introduction!
-Margaret
I must warn you about suggesting me taking part in writing a book. I am a terrible writer, absolutely terrible. If you check the LFE documentation and info site Lisp Flavoured Erlang you will see that most of it has beewn written by @oubiwann and not by me.
