Author: zingblog

The Adventure Continues

This was the first weekend I’ve been home in a month. So here’s a quick post to bring you up to date. After our big vacation in mid July, we spent last weekend camping with Martin’s and Nick’s. It was a great time, and great weather. Just a bit of rain as we were setting up camp, but then it cleared up. We were lucky; they were predicting a major storm. The whole thing was nice and mellow. Did some hikin, swimming’, barbecuein’, storytellin’, and just hangin’ out. Charlie is bright, well tempered and energetic, and getting big fast. Martin is moving on building his new house, so it’s only a matter of time until asks for his guitars back.

When I’ve been home I’ve been crazy busy at work the last two weeks, staying late and going back to work after the kids were in bed. Friday was our big demo. It was a tree browser for related records in our content management system, with all kinds of complex functionality for auto-expanding the tree and including related records, and managing duplicate records, circular dependencies and other kinds of relationships. I was pair programming with a colleague much of that time, and it was an interesting experience trying to build a huge, complex feature set under time pressure. We didn’t always see eye to eye on the approach, but in the end what we came up with was probably better than what either of us would have done on our own, and certainly faster. Olga is clever at using hash tables to speed things up, and good at low level implementation. On the other hand, her communication skills aren’t great, and I had a better understanding of the feature requirements. So I was focused on the architecture, the classes and methods, and how to keep it forward-maintainable, which often gets sacrificed in these situations. A well-written application should read like a good story. I ended up rewriting a substantial portion of here work to put all the business logic in one place so it could be easily read and (if necessary) modified down the line. Anyhow, we made our deadline and the application looked great and performed fast, so it was a big success and things will hopefully get back to normal.

Next up: I need a new lawmower.

1655 Trip Miles, Part 2: The Great White North

Our first stop was Toronto. On the trip up I realized it’s been three years since I last visited Canada, and many more since TO. The downtown area is all built up with apartments now. But it’s good to know that Q107 is still rockin’ the airwaves from the top of the CN Tower. Emotional feedback on timeless wavelengths.

We visited the Ontario Science Center. I’d been there once as a kid and again in college and remembered it as a very cool place that the kids might enjoy. Of course back then it was just about the only hands-on museum of its kind. Now there’s the Exploratorium in San Francisco and the New York Hall of Science in Queens. Still the Ontario Science Center stacked up well, with exhibits on space and physics and other cool stuff. And a great live exhibit about reptiles, which Lizzy especially loved. We also saw the Imax movie Under the Sea. This was a big, old-fashioned Imax with the nine-storey tall 180 degree screen, and it was pretty impressive. Lots of weird fish, squid, cuttlefish, nautilus, sharks and even some seals. I’d been interested in folding origami cephalopods (squid, cuttlefish, and nautilus) and feel I now have a good sense of how they look and move. And, I got a cool wind-up dancing robot in the gift shop.

We spent the evening downtown on the waterfront, walking around after a fantastic seafood dinner. Touched the base of the CN Tower and looked up, seein’ tower. Briefly snuck into the 12th inning of a Blue Jays game.

1655 Trip Miles, Part 1: Shufflin’ Off

Just got back from a major road trip family vacation. Great to change your mode of living every once in a while. The last couple of years we’d taken flights to faraway lands, but this year, between having a new car and a desire to avoid any Imperial entanglements at airports, we opted for a car trip.

We started with a drive up to Buffalo a few ago Friday. The kids were already up there with my Mum, having all kinds of adventures of their own. Meanwhile Jeannie and I had a week to catch up on our work and our rest. So it was just the two of us for the drive up. Got an early start; it was smooth and mellow. Made great time and explored the satellite radio stations.

We spent a few days in Buffalo. It was a very chill scene. The kids went swimming at the local lake. I put new wheels on my rollerblades. Jeannie and the girls did some shopping. Went out to see the new Harry Potter movie one night. It was probably the best of the bunch. We hooked up with Larry and Jackie at a beach bar on the Lake Erie waterfront; it was a good time and good to catch up. Larry had the good fortune to see the circus elephant walk last time he was in NYC. Sunday we went out to Rochester for my niece’s birthday and swam in Denis and Sara’s pool. Sara made me a Jayne hat for my birthday. Awesome thanks!

Monday we went up to Old Fort Niagara, which is now a very cool living museum. It was established by the French in pre-revolutionary times, and subsequently captured by the British in the 1751, handed over to the Americans in 1783, re-captured by the British in 1813, and returned to the Americans a year later. Lots of history, old stone buildings and wooden furniture, cannons, muskets and bayonets. Re-enactors really brought the experience to life, garbed as colonial soldiers in layers of hot wool on sweltering summer day. They put on demos and answered questions about weapons, food, and lifestyle from back in the day, and were knowledgeable and friendly. The high point was the drum and fife exhibition by two lovely ladies in colonial military drag, followed by firing a cannon into Lake Ontario by a group of more veridical soldiers.

After that we headed down to the falls. Hadn’t been there in a few years and it was great to walk around and take in the views. We took the tour of the Cave of the Winds. It takes you down an elevator carved into the rock of the falls. At the bottom you can walk around on some boardwalks and get the view from the bottom. They give you sandals and ponchos because it’s really wet down there. The kids got completely soaked. It was an awesome experience.

Tuesday we lit out for part 2 of our trip, a tour that included several destinations in Ontario and upstate New York.

Two New Songs on CDBaby and iTunes

I’m happy to announce I have two new songs for sale on CDBaby and iTunes.

Rocket To The Moon
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/rocket-to-the-moon-single/id449723308
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/buzzytonic2

Sea of Tranquility
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/sea-of-tranquility-single/id449720581
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/buzzytonic3

The concept here was to have a single and a b-side, but nobody knows what b-sides are anymore, so it’s a double single, like, uh, Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever.

I did this a bit out of order, in that I usually put a page on my site for my next record as a work-in-progress and updates about the tunes along the way. But for these I decided to release them as mp3’s so I don’t have to wait for an album’s worth of songs to be done.

You may recall from previous posts that the songs have been basically finished for a while. Since I decided to release them as singles I had to do my own mastering. My stereo upstairs died on me, so I had to get a replacement receiver and power amp just so I could listen back to my mixes in a known listening environment. Once I took care of that I could hear the mixes sound great. So here they are, go ahead and enjoy!

…

I have a whole bunch of half-written songs, and I have to decide which ones to work on next. But sometimes it can take a while to really sharpen up a song, and I’ve had enough of the studio for a while. It’s time to come out and play. For the rest of the summer I’m going to focus on getting together a live set to play out. More on that soon.

Fire On The Mountain

In other news, my brother Jim and his family live in the mountains of New Mexico, where they’ve been experiencing the worst forest fires in the history of the state. About a week ago, the fire was threatening their town and everyone had to evacuate. After almost a week firefighters were able to contain the blaze at a road at the edge of town. Yesterday people were able to return home. Luckily their home was intact, if a bit smoky, and the threat to the town has been averted.

See Ya in the Funny Papers

It’s been a while since I wrote, because I’ve been busy folding for the origami conference. Now that it’s come and gone I’ll be writing a full update soon. Bottom line it was a great time and I got a bunch of new ideas. Meanwhile, the paper of record, the venerable New York Times, sent a reporter and photographer around to see if they could locate some human interest. They interviewed my family and me among others. The article was mostly good but a bit weird, implying (unfairly) that we’re a nerdy and scruffy bunch. Ah well, any publicity is good publicity I suppose.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/at-this-gathering-everyone-knows-how-to-fold-them/?ref=nyregion

Casiotone Nation, Part 2

Now on to the main topic, music. If you know me you know I’ve been a long time synthesizer enthusiast. From my first experience playing with a Moog in middle school I was hooked. Since then I’ve been thru many generations of gear, but of lately my rig has focused more and more on software.

Last week after our gig, Erik suggested putting together a set featuring mainly originals with some covers and, me playing piano. I have two albums worth of originals and he’s been working on a new album, so there’s plenty of material. This fits in well with an idea I’ve been working on, of getting together a group to play out live, doing substantially my own material. I’ve been wondering how to get started, and thinking this kind of thing often works better with a partner. This is perfect; we can get a set together and play a few gigs, and then start looking for a rhythm section to take it to the next level. So the time is right.

Only problem is, my gear is all pretty old. In particular, my main keyboard is a vintage Fender Rhodes 73 Suitcase electric piano. I got it used about 20 years ago when it was the best thing out there for playing piano-ish things with a rock band, and used to gig out with it regularly. (Digital pianos back then were either crappy of way too expensive, or both.) Now the Rhodes has become something of a collector’s item, and also it could use a bit of a tune up to get the action and pickups tip top again. In any event, I don’t really want to take it around to gigs because 1.) it’s really heavy and 2.) it will eventually get destroyed.

So I went shopping for a new keyboard. I’d been looking into this for a while already. I wanted a keyboard controller for doing studio recording, since my old one (a Roland Juno for the 80’s, another classic) is getting long in the tooth, and was looking for a full-on 88 key hammer action keyboard, and if had a good built-in piano and Rhodes sound, that’d be nice too. Once I started looking, I discovered there’s a category called digital stage piano, which is pretty much exactly this. They go as expensive as you wanna get, but I was looking for something that’d fit into my budget.

I hate shopping, and usually my strategy is to take my best shot at figuring out what I want and show up at the store and see what’s the best match, and just get it over with. So I went to my local guitar center and walked into their keyboard room. The best one there was a Casio Privia PX-330. Casio is mainly known for their digital watches and cheap synthesizers, but they make high-end keyboards too, and at a resaonable price compared to some other makes. I had a Casio CZ-1000 back in the 80’s that was a fantastic keyboard, one of the first generation of programmable, polyphonic digital synthesizers. The 330 had good action and good sound, particularly its grand pianos, and it had a pitch wheel, which is important for when I track synth parts. On the downside, the selection of Rhodes, clavs and organs was so-so, and it had a built-in sequencer I had no need for.

I brought it home and played it and was pretty satisfied, but then I went online to learn more about it, and it was then I discovered the PX-3. This looked to be just the axe for me. It doesn’t have the 330’s sequencer, but instead sports large, deep banks of Rhodes, clavs and organs. It also has lots of built-in tweak controls including brilliance and velocity curves, a four-band EQ, and an effects unit with phase/flanger, so I could for example get the sound for “No Quarter”. And pretty blue lights too. Only problem, it was a limited edition model, and no one had them in stock. I really didn’t wasn’t into the idea of buying an axe without auditioning it.

Luckily my office in midtown Manhattan is right near music row, the historic home of the music stores, although in the last few years they’ve all be bought up by Sam Ash. (The first time I worked at MTV back in the 90’s I ran an interactive music R&D lab where we invented Guitar Hero ten years before its time. My first day on the job I went down to Manny’s and bought 50k worth of gear). Manny’s is now the Sam Ash keyboard store, and they have a much bigger demo room than anyone else. And it turned out they had a PX-3 to demo. I was really blown away. The action was better and, while the grand pianos were basically the same, the electric pianos were just phenomenal. The No Quarter sound is one of the presets! They had one in stock too, so I bought it on the spot and brought it home, first schlepping it back to my office, then down to Grand Central and home on the train. When unpacked it, I learned Casio made only 3,000 of them, and mine has a serial number in the 2,000’s, so I was lucky to get it at all. Guitar Center took my 330 back no problem, and the kids had a fun time checking out all the instruments.

So I’ve been getting to know my new axe. Now it’s on to the question of the set list…

Summer Kick Off

After all that rain and cold, summer arrived full blast, just in time for Memorial Day weekend. It was in the upper 80’s and maybe even the 90’s the whole weekend. This is the earliest I can ever remember putting in the air conditioners.

I worked a half day Friday, and it seems like the first time since the new year I didn’t have something on my todo list that needed my attention. I managed to do some shopping: bought a new pair of shoes and a couple shirts suitable for work. Jeannie was with Lizzy in Philadelphia for a class trip on Friday, so Michelle and I had some time together to ourselves.

Saturday I had a gig, my first live appearance in quite some time and my first ever as a guitar player. It was a coffeehouse kind of scene, at the BeanBerry Café in nearby New Rochelle. Nice place. Erik and his cousin Jerry had worked up a set of music in the unplugged classic rock vein. I’d jammed with them a few times around the campfire, so they asked my to join in. They’d rehearsed together, but I was winging it. I gave Erik a list of songs I knew and he told me which ones he know too. And so I led a few songs including I’m Only Sleeping, Friend of the Devil and Wish You Were Here, and followed along with a a bunch of others. (Sorry, no Elvis.) The first song was a bit rough for me, cuz as soon as I started singing I realized the mic wasn’t set up right, but I (unlike with keyboards) I couldn’t take my hands off the guitar for even a second or so to adjust it. Erik and Jerry did a few originals from an album they’re writing. After The Fall was a standout. For me the high point of the show was Erik doing Wild Horses. I’m not really a huge Stones fan, but he really sang the hell out of that song. I didn’t know he had it in him.

After the set, Erik suggested we come back and do a set with me on keyboards, which is much more my main instrument than guitar. This got me thinking. More on that soon.

We went to a barbecue on Sunday at our friend Nick’s. Good time, but I got eaten alive by nosee’ums.

I bought a new digital stage piano Monday. I’d been meaning to for some time, and after months of spending my shopping cycles on utilitarian things like snowblowers and cars I finally had the opportunity. Spent the evening working on music. Felt really good.

Riders on the Storm

We had exactly a week of pleasant weather a week ago, and now its been back to cold and rainy every day for a week once again.

My next-door neighbor put in a new driveway. It looks really nice, but it sidles up right against the property line, and is edged with stone blocks that make it a good deal higher than his old driveway. I was concerned about the possibility of the watershed patterns changing, creating the potential for flooding on the side of my house, where I re-concreted the foundation a few years back and re-graded the earth. But seven days of solid rain have pretty much shown it’s not going to be a problem. Still, it motivated me to do a bit of landscaping on the shrubs on that side of the house.

I finished a few longstanding tasks. For the first time in a while there’s no big pressure to get stuff done. Even work is at an even keel these days. Summer’s coming soon.

We finished the project of painting the trim in the house: all the baseboards, door frames and window frames. Started back in February, the whole thing took eight sessions. Now everything is clean and shiny. Starting the fall we’ll paint the doors that need it.

Jeannie helped me put a new hard drive in my computer. I bought the drive last December but I’ve been too busy to get around to it. Then once we got into it, what was supposed to be a simple task took three days because of difficulties doing the backups.

Got my Origami e-book done. Hooray! Look for announcements about its availability soon.

Been continuing to get to know the Pilot Hoban. Lots and lots of buttons for the heater and the radio. Last week for the first time we took it further than the train station or kids’ school. Had fun with XM radio working my way thru a zillion station. They have about 20 rock stations, cracked into subgenres like petroleum distillates, but apparently no prog station and no steely station. I noticed an Elvis station and a Grateful Dead station. I want a combination of the two. “Fire – fire on the mountain, where you can be lonely, uh-uh-huh, yeah-eah!”

We watched The Blues Brothers movie with the kids, since Lizzy had done the song Soul Man in honor band, and I’d played her some of the Blues Brothers records. She was surprised it wasn’t a documentary. Michelle was upset that Jake and the rest of the band ended up in jail since it was Elwood was doing all the driving and Jake was just in the passenger seat. And besides, the light was yellow in the first place!