Franc Moody @ Danforth Music Hall

I went to see Franc Moody at the Danforth Music Hall on Tuesday. I bought the tickets only knowing one song:

But I thought it was such a bop and I don't mind going to shows knowing little or nothing. 

The show was good, not great, the first half I was pretty surprised by how low energy it was for an electronic heavy band. It really picked up in the second half and drove it home at the end with a keytar and cowbell coming out. The band chemistry picked up at the point, with everyone starting to interact with each other. For most of the show it seemed like everyone was enjoying what they were doing on stage, but separately.

Two big shoutouts, the drummer raided a thrift shop in Toronto and managed to find an old and pretty sick Labbat's/Bluejays collab shirt. The bassist/synth absolutely carried the team though. You can find she's pretty consistent with this in videos of other shows bouncing around the stage.

Two things really hurt this show.

The venue choice was not it. The Danforth is hands-down the best venue in the city. But I don't think it's the best setup for electronic acts, especially if your set is kind of bland. History or Rebel would have been better choices. 

Second, the flow of music was not great. There was a lot of dead air between songs and the audience interaction was pretty meh. I don't need musicians to be excellent story tellers or comedians, but you can fill that air with music that flows from song to song or interesting interludes. Those interludes are great moments for the band to interact with each other or the audience.

On a personal note, I had some reflection on how I refer to the different ratings categories while at this show. "Spectacle" and "Stage Presence" are the two most important categories (to me) for what makes a concert a concert. But the naming is off. What I really want to convey is "What makes this concert worth seeing over staying at home and listening to the CD" and "Does this show feel like something bespoke that is unique to just this tour and/or just this performance", respectively.

So "Spectacle" is becoming "In person only factor", "Stage Presence" is becoming "One night only factor". I'll probably change it a dozen times before I find the best way to word those.


The Ratings
  • Venue: 1.5/5
  • Audience: 4/5
  • Band: 4/5
  • Vocals: 2/5
  • In person only: 1.5/5
  • One night only: 1.5/5
  • Song choice: 2/5

Overall: 2.35/5

My Email is My Blog (Updated)

Updated: My email is no longer my blog, but I've linked to a copy. Turns out I really like posting to my blog via an email.

For several years I've been using Fastmail for my email and calendar. I love it! But the entire time there's been a "sites" feature to host a static website that I've toyed with but never really used. 

What I've really wanted to use it for all of these years is to host my blog. There wasn't an out of the box way to do it so I settled on paying for Posthaven most of the time and more recently moved over to Bear.

Going back to my more recent post of wanting to move away from subscriptions, this one became a surprisingly difficult one to shake.

Fastmail could be so easy, a blog is just static content. But if I throw in a bunch of markdown files, it just winds up looking like this..

That's a problem right?

Well, if you look at it as a directory listing, it is. But really, that's just a database. A bit funky, but it's clean and simple and pretty easy for Javascript to parse. 

You can still go to https://experimental-blog.noahkoch.com/blog/ to see that same directory listing. But on this page you're reading it's a bit of a magic trick. The URL has secret info in it (query params, for my nerds out there) that's instructing the browser where to fetch the contents and metadata (post title, date) from.

It's a fun little trick and means I have a blog hosting platform via a service I was already paying for. Yet another subscription cut out!

That being said, I really recommend Bear Blog, it's one guy and he's building a great thing. If I wanted to go back to a hosted blog, that's where I'd go.

Matt Andersen @ Massey Hall

Matt Andersen must be 300 years old. That's the only way to explain how one man's voice can sound like it had several lifetimes of experience.

Massey Hall was both the best and worst place to host this country-blues singer when my Fiancée and I went to see him this past Friday. On one hand, there's few places in Toronto that have the acoustics to do his music justice. Backed up by an incredibly talented band, every one of his slower songs just made you feel like you were a little baby being swaddled in a blanket of passion. 

On the other hand... when songs like Free Man were played, you just wanted to rip out the seats so you could dance. 

Two things I appreciated out of this performance. Mariel Buckley, his very talented and funny opener, was invited back on to the at the end of the show to do a duet of Bob Dylan's I Shall Be Released. I really appreciate when artists do this. It makes the show feel like something more put together and cohesive rather than a way to stretch time. It's a surprisingly rare thing.

Second, he didn't leave the stage before the encore. It's something I'm noticing more artists and bands do. The encore has become a pointless tradition. There's no surprise to it anymore, let's stop pretending, let the music play.

You can give Matt Andersen a listen on a recording. But truly it is nothing compared to seeing him live. I don't say that lightly. I enjoyed Pink Martini at Massey Hall but I wouldn't say you couldn't get an idea of what they're like from their recorded music.

I don't know if it's because he needs a better recording setup or if he just can't be captured well on an MP3. 

The Rating

  • Venue: 3.5/5
  • Audience: 2/5
  • Band: 4.5/5
  • Vocals: 4.5/5
  • Spectacle: 1/5
  • Stage presence: 4/5
  • Song choice: 4/5
Overall: 3.35/5

1984 + Brave New World

Our phones are Soma

Swallowing half an hour before closing time, that second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds.

A nod to subscriptions today

'Look at him working away in the lunch hour,' said Parsons, nudging Winston. 'Keenness, eh? What's that you've got there, old boy? Something a bit too brainy for me, I expect. Smith, old boy, I'll tell you why I'm chasing you. It's that sub you forgot to give me.'

'Which sub is that?' said Winston, automatically feeling for money. About a quarter of one's salary had to be earmarked for voluntary subscriptions, which were so numerous that it was difficult to keep track of them.

Communication is hard without big tech

The Verge’s Installer recently asked their readers to provide some details and feedback about their favourite devices and services from non Google/Amazon/Apple providers. I accidentally made a blog post in the email, attaching that below. 

----


Hey! Heard your callout for people dropping services from the big guys. (Top list at the bottom)

I’m emailing you from my Fastmail account that I started using back in 2018, that was my first attempt to de-google and later extend to de-apple. Every new years I try to live “more intentionally” so it’s largely a focus on getting rid of my smartphone but it also extends to thinking about how I’m using my data, what I’m subscribing to, etc. 

It’s been really hard. Where I’m at today is I have a small iCloud subscription for my fiancée and I; we cap our streaming services at one at a time. I use Ente for photo and video backups. For my personal documents, I don’t have a lot, so I just use the small amount of file storage I get through Fastmail.

I listen to music I own, I’m 31 so some of that is from the pre-Spotify days. The rest I’ve collected through Bandcamp or the library. Books and TV I largely get through the library. 

The hard part is not with ditching the devices and services. That largely one or two clicks away. It’s with communicating with others. We’re planning a wedding right now and Google Drive is the best place to collaborate on shared documents. Even thought I’m very comfortable with technology, I don’t want to mess with a home lab or NAS. Our shared calendar is through iCloud. I don’t mind moving it but it’d be a pain for my fiancée. WhatsApp needs a primary device like an iPhone or Android and that’s where my fiancée communicates the most as she has friends and family overseas. Even my rec leagues communicate through WhatsApp. 

I’ve generally accepted that I can’t fully move away from Apple or Google but I do what I can and try to do a bit more every year. 

My top list:
  • Hoopla & Libby from the library 
  • Fastmail - probably the most reliable service on the web right now
  • Ente
  • “nothing” - not the brand, but sometimes you get something in your life that you try to look for an alternative and realize nothing is a good replacement. I found that to be my case with an Apple Watch, I didn’t really need to be tracking every data point. 
  • Pocketable notebooks


Finding a Studio

I've tried a lot of fitness classes over the years and I've only found a couple things that I've enjoyed. My current one is Spinning. Yoga and Boxing are also up there but with asterisks.

Through trial and error I've figured out what makes me not want to do a fitness class:

  • Difficult to access -- if it takes me more than 30 minutes to get there and it's not on the way to something else (like work) then I will stop going
  • Evening classes -- I lose my motivation after about 11am
  • Any partner work -- this is where most boxing classes lose me
  • Not having a clear spot -- this is where yoga classes can sometimes lose me
  • Anything where I constantly feel in the way -- again, certain boxing

Spin I enjoy because it checks all the boxes. The studio I go to has two locations that are very transit accessible. You have your bike assigned before the class begins. And the only partner work to speak of is cheersing water bottles at the end.

The problem with Spin is it's only cardio. So I need to find something to build up the rest of me (in addition to spin!). Over the next few months I'm going to take every trial I can find that's reasonably close to me and seems like it might be enjoyable. Here's what I've found so far and will update this post after every trial is up.

I'm going to change my goal from 100 spin classes to 100 classes in general and include these classes in them.

Chains

F45

In progress

Barry's

Up next

Orange Theory

Soon

Local options

Soul Fuel

Soon

Recess Fit Club

Soon

Virtual Subscriptions

There's a tendency for me to want to try to find the new perfect thing to replace a whole host of things. I've now understood for a while that "nothing" is a very good replacement. Much much harder said than done. For instance, do I need a full fledged file management and syncing system? Or is just having a good photo backup service and using the very basic file storage in Fastmail good enough?

While my dad was still alive, he would time and time again caution us about "re-occurring revenue". This was back when you still owned your music, having a cell phone wasn't a given and most homes had cable. We actually "cut the cord" well before Netflix was a thing, just watching over-the-air programs.

I hate to say it, but my dad was right. Everything that comes out automatically becomes the price of what we need to live. I think that I haven't been spending too much one month on coffee -- and maybe that's true -- but it doesn't really matter because my floor has been set by the decisions I committed to months before.

Where I want to draw the line is on "virtual subscriptions" or things that don't result in anything tangible. Apple Music is intangible as I'm not getting sent a CD that I can hold nor own anything on there. Transit pass is tangible because it's physically moving me.

In an ideal world, I would have no virtual subscriptions.

My recurring payments of of this writing

This is literally everything that comes out of my personal or joint account on a regular basis

  • Kagi
  • Fastmail
  • Apple One
    • iCloud
    • Apple TV
    • Apple Fitness (Rarely use)
    • Apple Music
    • Apple News (I don't use this)
    • Apple Arcade (I don't use this)
  • Communauto
  • Carshare
  • TTC Monthly Pass
  • Koodo (dumb phone)
  • Fizz (iPhone)
  • SpinCo (gym)
  • Various donations
  • Set App
  • The Globe and Mail
  • NYTimes Games
  • Bear Blogging
  • Posthaven
  • Bikeshare
  • Transit App
  • Google Drive
  • Renters insurance
  • Pet insurance
  • VPN
  • Ente
  • The Verge
  • Betches Media
  • NPR+

That's a long list

I've been working on this post for a while because every now and then I'd remember something else. It's all so... automatic, it's a feature and the issue. Personally, I don't struggle with forgetting to cancel things I don't want. I audit this list fairly often but I do struggle with feeling like I need all of it.

But not everything on that list is the same. Let's break it down

The Basics

  • Hydro
  • Transit
  • Renters Insurance
  • Pet Insurance
  • Cell phone main line (Koodo)

Work expenses I get an expense fund through work, these are things I use for work and personal. If I didn't need them for work I probably wouldn't subscribe to these things at all.

  • Kagi
  • Setapp
    • I'm actually getting rid of this one and instead purchasing lifetime memberships to the few apps I do use
  • The Verge
    • Keeping up on tech news
  • NPR+
    • Again, news
  • The Globe and Mail
    • Once again, news

Non-essential, tangible

  • Gym (SpinCo)
  • Fizz (iPhone)
  • Donations
  • Bikeshare
  • Communauto
  • Carshare

What's going soon

  • Posthaven
    • To be replaced by Bear, need to migrate things
  • Google Drive
    • Started using Linux and this is easier to use as a holding place while I migrate between Mac and Linux. Plus there was a first year promo. Gone after this year.
  • VPN
    • Got it for a bit, thought about trying my hand at sailing the high seas but decided against it, gone in Feb
  • Transit App
    • Great app! But I'm using my iPhone less
  • Bear Blogging
    • I'm not actually getting rid of Bear, just going to buy the lifetime membership
  • NYTimes Games
    • Not renewing
  • TTC Monthly Pass
    • Cheaper to just pay as I go
  • Apple One
    • Getting rid of everything except for a smaller iCloud Drive tier
    • Most storage will move to Ente for photos, trying Fastmail for the few documents I need to keep backed up

Virtual Things Left

  • Fastmail
  • Ente
  • Betches
    • My guilty pleasure, U Up? Podcast, ad-free


2026 Goals

2025 is almost over and I've once again decided to turn my attention to the constant quest to be more intentional.

What this has really meant for me is to waste less time and do things I love doing and spend as much time with people in my life. In previous years, incredibly, I didn't actually spell this out. It was more of get dumbphone and my life will be perfect.

I've had to grapple with what exactly it is that I like doing. I like to learn and I like to be in good shape. If I am to effectively live intentionally then I should have no issue to accomplish the below.

Outcomes

Read 23 Books

This is roughly 30 minutes per day of reading at the pace I normally read.

Post 52 Times

Added rule of posting at least once per month. That's roughly one post per week. It doesn't have to be about anything in particular, a one sentence post is perfectly fine.

Finish Two Notebooks

I keep buying notebooks to use them and then I just don't use them. Two notebooks should be easy to complete between todos and regular life stuff.

100 Spin Classes

Recently got into spinning, I like it, it makes sense. 100 classes is fewer than 2 per week. I like to workout in the morning so getting to a spin class means I spent my night well and went to bed early enough for me to get to a class before work. Honestly, this should be 200 for the year but I know my motivation ebbs and flows.

Areas of Focus

Dumb phone first

This year I signed up for a second phone line. My iPhone has that SIM card and my dumb phone has my main line. The goal here, unlike previous years, isn't to get rid of my iPhone. Some things are too impractical to replace or not even possible (concert tickets shockingly being one of them).

But 90% of my life only requires I be reached in emergencies by text or call. WhatsApp can wait till I'm at my computer (which is often) and if I need my iPhone, I bring it along, nothing special.

No virtual subscriptions

This is the hard one and my personal Everest. I don't mind a subscription (like a phone bill or gym membership) what I do mind is a subscription to something that just enables me to do something in the virtual world. Think music streaming, photo back ups, cloud storage, app subscriptions.

I've flirted with the idea of a NAS for a while but maybe an external hard drive is sufficient. This is all a post in its own. I don't know how achievable it is but I always want to try. Switching to Bear is part of this goal, Bear supports buying a lifetime membership which I'm more keen on. I also know I won't be getting rid of my FastMail subscription, it's too good of a product.

iPadOS 26 is almost perfect

I recently picked up an iPad after not having one for a few years. I definitely don’t need it but I find them very fun. iPadOS 26 pushed me over the edge to get it and am currently rocking the current beta.

The features they added with window tiling and just overall making it more computer-y is very welcome. I probably won’t replace my MacBook Air when the time comes because an iPad with a keyboard can do whatever I was doing on the laptop. But there’s new window management is actually too computer-y, especially when trying to use it as a tablet.

The current version of iOS does a really nice job of easily allowing you to have 2 things on the screen and resize those two apps, slide over can also get you a third thing in a pinch. The new version of iPadOS does not allow you to just drop in two things on the screen and get to work. Settings gives you three options:
  • Full screen apps
  • Windowed apps
  • Stage manager
Let’s start with that last one. Is anyone actually using stage manager? With windowed apps I can’t really see a point in them. Windowed apps is the new feature, it’s great, works like a computer wonderful. Full screen apps I expected to act like how iPadOS has acted in previous versions but it’s not. It’s how iPadOS was like ten years ago. Literally one screen, one app, no multitasking at all.



In a perfect world, for me, that multi tasking screen would contain two options. Windowed apps and “simple multitasking”. 95% of the time, I just want one or two apps on the screen. I don’t want to have to mess around with moving windows around on the screen to be in the right place. iPadOS had this nailed down. The power of iPadOS 26 is that I always have the ability to turn this little tablet into a computer when I need it to be. Or for other power users that it’s the default but they have the ability to dumb down their “computer” into a tablet when they want to go into vacation mode.

It is incredible, every iPadOS version seems like it’s closer to replacing your laptop. This year it actually seems to be the case for the vast majority of people. I just worry that they’re also getting rid of the fun tablet in the process.

No rules

I can write absolutely anything here. And it’ll appear. Coming from the world of computers, this is the most wonderful idea. There is basically nothing I can do with just my brain and the keyboard attached to my iPad that will make this website crash and burn. 

Maybe my point won’t get across, maybe my English will be a bit garbled or covered in typos. But nonetheless, when I hit publish there is nothing (technologically speaking) bad that can happen. That’s so freeing.

Sure there are some rules that I take for granted. For instance, that “a” comes after “r” in “granted” or that my brain is able to process what “granted” means in this context and can pronounce it in my head. The ability to remember my login to my blog, or know what application to type on my iPad or remembering the login to said iPad. Sure sure sure. All of these are technically inhibiting me. But once I clear those hurdles, it’s just simple text. There’s nothing to debug.

No matter how bad bland or boring my writing is up to this point, all of these text before it is still there. It’s really magic.