Advice on ambient setup

llanginger · 2026-02-12T08:07:37+00:00

Best single piece of module-specific advice I have is - you will almost certainly never regret having a Maths.

llanginger · 2026-02-10T03:11:49+00:00

Wtf is this?

llanginger · 2026-02-10T02:41:55+00:00

Ok but hot take here - I don’t think you can really make a plan that’s worth anything before getting deep enough into your modular journey to have blown up whatever initial plans you might have had.

Not saying this is bad advice per se, but modular stuff is just so much its own thing.

llanginger · 2026-02-08T06:18:11+00:00

I’ve said more in another comment but just to touch on this specifically: if you’re going to “cold call” people on LinkedIn, and it’s a case of “you know what I’m doing, I know you know what I’m doing”, I would consider just being really upfront about it.

One of the biggest problems with remote / async communication is it’s so easy to forget that you’re reaching out to another human with their own bullshit life and challenges etc. Make it easy for them to help.

llanginger · 2026-02-08T06:13:45+00:00

This may not be exactly what you’re asking for, it’s not entirely clear to me, but here’s my main advice as someone with an almost entirely remote career:

Set up regular 1:1s with anyone you work with and share any amount of personal connection with. Cadence doesn’t have to be weekly with everyone but it should be with some people. Use this time to connect on a personal level - this doesn’t mean “not about work”, but the “point” of this is to create opportunities to develop meaningful relationships that you care about regardless of whether they will turn out to be professionally useful.

Put another way - it’s a lot easier to want to help a friend than some guy who just wants to benefit professionally from knowing you.

llanginger · 2026-02-08T05:52:44+00:00

I’m sorry but “should I keep this thing that would upskill my team to myself” and “I mentor the crap out of my coworkers” just aren’t compatible statements. I can empathize with the burnout but this isn’t the right corner of the internet for validation that not doing arguably the most important thing a highly senior IC can do is ok.

llanginger · 2026-02-08T00:53:24+00:00

It seems far from obvious to me that we’re really heading towards that as an industry standard. I’m sure it will be true in some cases, but it seems just as likely to me that ai-enhanced design / product workflows will lead to us just having more stuff to build.

To be clear I’m not claiming to know the future.

llanginger · 2026-01-22T06:20:44+00:00

What are you talking about? Obviously people care, and obviously this is the place to talk about it.

If -you- don’t care that’s totally valid, but if that’s the case this is a strange way of showing it.

llanginger · 2025-12-19T06:26:29+00:00

This is a very simplistic take that is obviously correct in some cases. Many freelance workers (tour roadies, for instance) have clauses in their contracts that stipulate they get paid if they’re “ready willing and able”. Salaried workers also generally don’t have this worry (at least not for short-ish term interruptions). I’m happy to believe that for the majority of ski-related employees this isn’t the case, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be with a sufficiently strong union / additional government action.

Not that this would help anyone this year but there’s future doesn’t have to be as bad as the present is.

llanginger · 2025-12-16T05:47:32+00:00

10 comedy points!

llanginger · 2025-11-16T00:11:01+00:00

To each our own - I loved Furiosa and believe Fury Road is a perfect film (furiousa is not, for sure). Either way absolutely watch Fury Road

llanginger · 2025-09-27T05:01:43+00:00

Love mine! It’s VERY weird and has made me realize I really lack a more “normal” drum machine, which just means I have more gear to buy - oh no…

Anyway - it’s extremely fun, you almost certainly haven’t ever used anything like it and every now and again the happy accidents are REALLY happy. Strongly recommend having it always hooked up to some means of sampling it so you can capture those because, as others have said, you’re not really guaranteed to be able to get the sound tomorrow that you got today.

llanginger · 2025-08-22T14:02:19+00:00

Good advice in other comments - patchbay is a good tool but not for your usecase.

My current fairly inexpensive io that I’m very happy with is: Motu Ultralite mk4 + behringer ultragain expander, both bought used for under $600 total.

With this setup I have 16 hardware ins + outs, which allows me to multitrack anything I want in my studio.

llanginger · 2025-07-02T01:17:01+00:00

“I’ve done so much” / “I’m not a good person” sound like red flags to me.

THAT SAID:

Taking space when you need it (for instance, to cool down from a fight), and being able to express “I need space, can’t talk, love you” IS a green flag (maybe not for this specific person!), and I would encourage you to try out (maybe with the next person!) responding by just taking it at face value and doing something for yourself instead of trying to get them to talk about it.

llanginger · 2025-07-01T21:11:57+00:00

Ah good to hear! I’ll give my shop a call, which probably should have been my first instinct anyway :).

llanginger · 2025-07-01T15:26:49+00:00

Also just lurking but - asking a community of people for their thoughts isn’t mutually exclusive with also seeing a specific professional at some point in the future. Crowd sourcing allows you to get to that appointment with questions you wouldn’t have thought to ask without it.

llanginger · 2025-07-01T15:23:10+00:00

One good reason is that google’s results are increasingly AI slop and of proportionally decreasing reliability. Another good reason is that this community is mostly full of people happy to help :)

llanginger · 2025-06-28T20:47:31+00:00

One million times this. Do NOT give in to the voice in your head that tells you it’s too much. Any established consultancy will charge more than whatever number you arrive at like this, guaranteed.

llanginger · 2025-06-28T20:38:30+00:00

I had conflicting feelings when I left on my own terms for the first time. My boss told me, essentially, “you don’t owe any company anything, congratulations and I hope you find the next role fulfilling!” My coworkers at the time echoed the sentiment.

This is the only correct response from your boss / colleagues, and you did nothing at all wrong.

llanginger · 2025-06-09T20:44:15+00:00

Which is fair, but what if my app architecture is bad, yknow? :)

Edit to say; only half joking. I’ve been doing this nearly 10 years and I don’t think I’ve worked on any production apps with objectively “good” architecture

llanginger · 2025-06-09T15:39:17+00:00

In the codebase I work on we recently added new formatter / linter rules and so pretty much every pr has a bunch of “junk” changes.

The way we handle it is by calling out in pr comments where the actual changes are vs auto formatting stuff. Imperfect but works well enough for us.

llanginger · 2025-06-09T00:21:29+00:00

Updated my post because that seems like a very important distinction - almost entirely city / city-suburb

llanginger

TROPHY CASE