Zingblog 2 – Page 24

Now With Style

Today was a rainy day, so I took a break from doing stuff outside to finish off a task leftover from the winter, another part of my ongoing site redesign. Remember way back when this blog was new, when blogging was the new trendy thing, and I promised to upgrade my blog’s style to be consistent with the rest of the site? Well I finally got around to it. Only took a little over five years.

The thing is, editing wordpress themes is a real pain. All I really want is a miminal, clean theme, but all the site themes are crufted up with lots of persnickety layout details that don’t do much to enhance the site. I picked a new theme for my site and the style sheet file was over 2000 lines long. This was one of simple ones mind you, and I still ended up throwing away a lot of it.

And there’s still more to go. There’s spacing issues, and I have to get into the various views, particularly the ones for individual posts, and for comments. Soon I will have gone as far is I can go with the css and will have to get into editing the php templates. Hopefully it won’t take me another five years to finish it off.

Fast Cars and Rock’n’Roll

Sounds like an exciting title for a post, eh? But no, this might be the most tedious one yet. The springtime random task agenda continues. I got some repairs done on my Mustang last week. I’m hoping to get around to getting the body restored this spring, but first I had to deal with a weird and rather nasty problem. The first time I took it out this season there was a little drippage coming from under the dashboard on the passenger side. Last time I took is out it turned into a pretty good leak, and it was radiator fluid, all over the floor mat! The leak was in the heat exchanger. My mechanic told me he’d have to take apart the whole dashboard to fix it, which was a really major job. But since I don’t drive the car in the winter I don’t run the heater. So we decided a much easier fix was to reroute the radiator hose to bypass the heat exchanger. Problem solved, fast and (relatively) cheap. He also recommended a body shop, so now I have two places to go for an estimate.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking about upgrading some of my furniture to replace the hand-me-down stuff I’ve had since college. A new sofabed downstairs for next time we have houseguests, maybe some end tables, that kind of thing. After all, they say living well is the best revenge, although I’m not sure who my vanquished nemesis is, which is probably not good. Somehow this led to the realization that our house is full again, to the point were we can’t even put things away, so before we can do anything we need to get rid of a few loads of accumulated stuff.

I sifted the thru the game closet and found some minor long-lost treasures: a bunch of wind-up balsa wood airplane kits. Michelle and I had fun putting them together and trying to get them to fly. Next I got rid of a shelf’s worth of old programming books. It’s amazing how books, CD’s, and even videos have become basically obsolete these days, because they’ve become virtualized. At least for some kinds like reference and pulp fiction; I’m sure glad I never got Game of Thrones as printouts. Instant future trash.

But for other kinds it’s still very much worth having the book. The three main categories for me are sheet music, origami books, and comic books, but I suppose it goes for any book where the layout and graphics are more important than the text itself and a bigger page works better than a tiny screen. I also sorted thru my pile of old Origami USA Convention Annual Collections. These are spiral bound and easy to take apart. I got rid of more than half the pages but also came across a lot of great stuff, some of which I want to fold, and some of which gives me new ideas for a subject or an approach.

As far as the CD collection goes, that was what motivated this whole thing in the first place. Most of the music I buy these days still is on CD. You can get pretty much album for $5 or so. But my shelf space is finite, and for the last year or more they’ve been piling up on the stereo, in my studio, and on the dining room table. Somewhere along the line I got in the habit or ripping CD’s and playing the mp3’s rather then playing them directly thru the stereo, so over time a good number of them have become ripped. So I finally sorted thru all the CD’s and put my favorites on the shelf, and put the rest in a box, which I put in the closet, completing the circle of clutter.

Maybe or maybe not an interesting data point, these are the bands for whom I have ten or more records: The Beatles, John Coltrane, Billy Joel (these are Jeannie’s), King Crimson, Led Zeppelin (they only ever had nine albums back in the day, but have since put out a few more), Steely Dan (they only had seven), Rush, and Neil Young. I guess you could say that these are my favorite bands who were also prolific and enduring.

Along the way found quite a few records I haven’t listened too in a while and ripped them for my commute. Now I’m enjoying rediscovering a lot of favorite music. I’m listening alphabetically and I’m up to Jeff Beck. Such great stuff I might just stay with it a while, but next up is Walter Becker.

Back to posting stuff about origami and/or making music soon, I promise.

Origami Publications

Winter lingers on. Believe it or not, we still have some snow on the ground from last week’s freakish snowstorm. It looks like random chunks of styrofoam. Still can’t do much to get started on the yardwork.

So instead here’s another update to my web site. I created a page for my origami publications. Enjoy!

http://zingman.com/origami/zing_origami_publications.php

Speaking of which, the video for my book is done, and I’m back in waiting-to-hear-from-my-publisher mode. I’m starting to work on a new batch of designs, including some advanced polyhedra, so I have some new stuff to exhibit at this year’s convention.

If They Can Make It Here

The school musical was last weekend, and it was a smashing success. Lizzy was one of the leads, playing a young lady name Melody who comes to New York City in search of fame and fortune in the music biz. She had six songs. The show was entitled “If You Can Make it Here”, and revolved around people coming to NYC to make it in show business. It was custom written by Ms. Gizzo, the musical director, and was well crafted to take advantage of the talent available at the school. There were six leads and multiple supporting roles, a team of dancing girls, and a class on a school outing played by the younger kids. They all did great. I was very impressed at how it all came together.

The costumes and sets were impressive as well. In particular the dads who made the sets created a double-decker bus for one scene.

I played in the band. Mainly sax, but a bit of guitar too. The book I had to read during rehearsals was Hackers and Slackers, a chronicle of NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program in the early 90’s, and the rise of the “New Media” industry. I knew the author back in the day and pretty much everyone who appeared in the book was a friend of mine. It took on a whole ‘nuther layer of meaning, reading it in play rehearsals, because at the time I had just moved to NYC to try and make it in the entertainment industry. One chapter, based on a lecture I attended that had a big influence on me at the time, featured Jaron Lanier comparing virtually reality to theatre some pretty deep and specific ways. It was pretty mind blowing.

Anyway the show went over well, and the songs were really fun to play. By the end of the second performance everyone knew what they were doing. Here’s a set list. We also got to stretch out and jam between scenes as the rearranged the scenery.

Act I:
Not For the Life of Me
New York New York (Bernstein)
On Broadway
Manhattan (Rodgers/Hart)
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Lullaby of Broadway
The Boy from New York City

Act II:
NYC
It’s Christmas In New York
New York State of Mind
42nd Street
I’ve Never Been in Love Before
Your Song
I Turned the Corner
Theme From New York New York (Sinatra)

Bahamas!

January is always the harshest month of the year, with the cold and the dark, but we ended it on a high note. Jeannie and I took a quick getaway to the Bahamas her birthday. Three days of sunshine, beach and open bar. We made essentially the same trip five years ago, and had great time, and we couldn’t find an alternative to beat it. At the time we pledged to make a winter getaway every year, but you know how life can be. It took a few years to get back to it.

We stayed at the same hotel, Breezes, which is nice and cozy and has several pools, bars, and restaurants, with great food and open bar and is right up on the beach. It has a very friendly and relaxed vibe. The place is really a little gem.

This time around the vast majority of the guests were Canadian, and most of those from the Toronto area. So it felt a little like going home. And you know, those Cannucks are all so darn nice and friendly. Most of them seemed to assume I was Canadian too. At one point one said “Is there anyone in this hot tub who’s not Canadian?” Then she turned to me and said, “You know an awful lot about Canada for an American.” One evening we gathered ‘round and watched Hockey Night in Canada. (The Leafs lost, eh.)

The day we arrived the weather was great, sunny and warm, and we went straight to swim in the ocean. Towards evening it turned stormy. The next day it was overcast and windy, too rough to do anything out on the ocean. After breakfast I wandered into the piano bar, which was empty, and practiced for an hour or so. I did some of my originals, some covers, and Jeannie sang harmony on My Old School. I guess you could hear it from the next room cuz all day people were coming up to me saying I sounded good. So ’round midnight, after the main entertainment was finished upstairs, I went back and there was just the piano player there, and maybe a few people. He was playing a Monk song (Bud Walked In) when I walked in, so I requested ‘Round Midnight. He didn’t know it, and asked my if I knew it. So I hopped up on the piano again. I did 4 or 5 Steely Dan songs and some other things. This time I attracted a bit of a crowd. Since there were so many Canadians around I closed my set with Subdivisions, which was a big hit.

We also spent time exploring the island. Nassau is great, easy to get around, and everyone we met was really friendly. One afternoon we took the bus into town, but the bus got “hijacked” by an itinerant local tour guide, who took us to this place called The Caves, which was bunch of caves where pre-Colombian Bahamians lived over 1000 years ago. Really cool. We walked around Nassau and watched the cruise ships take off. We went to Fort Charlotte, build by the British in the 1700’s. BTW, there’s a giant monstrosity of a new hotel under construction just down the beach from Breezes. Apparently being built by Chinese labor with Chinese financing to the tune of $2 billion. Our guide had a lot to say on that topic and the political and economic implications for the island.

It was a great break from the winter and from everything going on, but it was over much to soon. Now we’re back and the main thing this week is the kids’ school musical coming up this weekend. Lizzy has one of the leads, Michelle is in the chorus, I’m playing in the band and my first rehearsal was yesterday, and Jeannie is acting as producer.

Coming soon: pictures!

Celebration Day

Happy New Year everyone. We had a most relaxing and enjoyable holidays. Caught up with lots of friends and family, had some guests, did some traveling – hundreds of miles of it in snow – and got in some good partying too. Seems like we often go weeks or even months on end without having a chance to hang out with friends, but we made up for it this holidays. Played lots of games: Risk, Sorry, Carcosonne, the green screen door, the triangle game, one up/one down, open/closed, and even chess.

It seems upsizing your house this the thing right now. Mary and Lou have been putting a second story on their house out on Long Island, adding four more bedrooms. It’s almost done, they’re just waiting on a railing for the stairs and a countertop for the bathroom sink. That’s pretty amazing considering they only started work in November, and the contractor with doing lots of post-Sandy repair jobs at the same time. Meanwhile upstate, Larry and Jackie moved into a sprawling ranch house with a really cool glass-enclosed family room and loft, on a lot adjoining the woods. Very nice for all of them.

When Lou came over on Christmas day we managed to get a few minutes together for him to play and sing some of his new songs into a mic. I’m producing his new record, and these are the demos. My first step is to listen to the songs and learn them, then I’ll put together some arrangements and see what Lou thinks of them. So far he only has 4 or 5 songs – enough for an E.P. Should be a fun project. We’ll see how it goes.

Among the parties we went to was New Year’s Eve at Erik’s. I brought along my new bass to show him. It turned out the house was full of musicians, so it was a jam session. I spent most of my time on the bass cuz Erik was on the piano. There was a drummer too. The guitar player kept on calling songs that I didn’t really know but weren’t too hard, things like “About a Girl” and “I Wanna Be Sedated”. I found it wasn’t too hard to keep up and lay down a good bottom. Later on I played some piano but switched back to bass after midnight cuz we had to lower the volume. Next thing I knew it was 4 am. It was a great to chance to get a feel for the bass. I’m really digging it.

Also watched about half of the Godfather trilogy, and got some new records including the abridged Ella Fitzgerald songbook (the three-CD set, not the 16-CD one), and Celebration Day by Led Zeppelin. BTW, when we up in Buffalo visiting my parents, Led Zep were on TV receiving an award. My dad turned and asked me “Have you ever heard of these guys? That guy has really fast fingers.” I’m like, “You told me to turn down their damn music so many times when I was kid!” You’d think he’d remember. Ah well, he’s certainly mellowed out.

Going to the Mall

I’m on winter break now. Woo-hoo!

There’s a big new mall in Yonkers that Jeannie and the kids have been to a bunch of times already but I’ve been avoiding because they make you pay to park. But Lizzy needed a new winter jacket, and we all wanted to see The Hobbit, and the Michelle wanted to do so xmas shopping for Jeannie, so we all went last weekend. Figured we’d get dinner as long as we’re there too.

The mall has a Guitar Center, and I’ve been toying with the idea of buying a new guitar for a while now. I’ve kinda narrowed it down to some kind of semi-hollow-body or a Les Paul. But since I don’t know really and new guitars are expensive, I’ve taken to checking whatever they have used for sale whenever I go into a music store to see if anything calls out to me.

So that night I found a used bass made famous by Geddy Lee back in the day: the Hentor Barbarian. No, just kidding, it’s a Steinberger! It’s not an 80’s vintage, but 21st century, and in like-new condition. It has that famous headless, minimal body design. It feels and sounds great. My p-bass is like a truck in comparison. The Steinberger has a much cleaner sound, and is faster, with lower action, a flatter neck, and flatter frets. Plus it has a second pickup near the bridge, so there’s alot more control over the tone. And cheap too, a real bargain. So I picked it up. I’m really happy with it.

I played it for a while the next day. Alot of things I’ve been working hard to articulate came easy. It took me a while to realize I should play with a much lighter touch than the p-bass. I don’t know if it can really replace the p-bass for everything, but it adds a whole new area to my bass sound. I’m thinking down the line somewhere I should trade in my p-bass for a fender jazz, and that might be the one bass.

The Hobbit was for the most part amazing. The acting was great, esp. Martin Freeman as Bilbo, and it has the Peter Jackson lush locations and over-the-top helicopter shots and all that you’d expect after LotR. It feels great to be back in Middle Earth with a new movie. Riddles in the Dark absolutely stole the show.

We saw the 48 fps version and I thought it looked great. I can’t understand the controversy. You raise the sample rate it’s gonna look better. There was one shot in particular where I thought the 48fps really shined. It was a made-for-3d shot, with the camera looking straight down on the Company of Thorin as they made they way down thru a cleft of rocks to the hidden valley of Imladris. It was a dolly shot, and looked absolutely virtuosic. However, the film did actually skip and pause unexpectedly a couple times, like there was a buffering problem. That was pretty bad.

My only criticism with the movie itself is that where they deviated from the book to add new material, alot of it was focused on pumping up the action with bluescreen/CG set pieces that came off as increasingly improbable toward the end. They also altered a few important plot details. Everyone I’ve talked to who doesn’t really know the book doesn’t seem to mind, but to me it was unnecessary. If it were up to me I’d have hewed closer to the book, and started with a simpler-and-more-innocent-times vibe, and brought the party to the foot of the Lonely Mountain by the end of the picture. Then I’d have closed by following up on the where-has-Gandalf-gone question, circling back to meeting with Saruman and Galadriel and dropping the bomb that there’s something much bigger and scarier going on here!

They did have two musical numbers, both by the Dwarves, none by the Elves.

Wild and Scary

We usually put our Halloween pumpkin out on the front stoop. The local critters nibble at if for a while, and then sooner or later there’s rain and it starts to turn mushy and we have to get rid of it. This year we haven’t had any rain, and the squirrels have really be having a feast, so it’s looking, uh, really interesting.

In other news, Lizzy turned 13 recently. Yes I am now the parent of a teenager. She’s also now 5’7”, having really shot up the last few months. That’s a few inches taller than her mother. Wow. We had a party for her at our favorite local restaurant, the Oriental Palace. It was in the post-hurricane period and feels like a blur to me. After her birthday party Lizzy went on a shopping date with her friend Ella, who shares the same birthday, and bought lots of clothes. They were very excited.

Meanwhile, Erik and I resumed jamming. At this point we’re a little rusty, but it feels good to get back in it. Like I said, now that my book is done, getting back into playing music is a major goal for the winter. This includes doing a few more live gigs.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at Jeanne’s parents house. Not thinking about work for a few days. Mary and Lou were there. They’re in the middle of putting a second story on their house. Looks like they’re off to a good start. It only took a week get the walls, roof and windows up. Lou wants to record and EP of some more of his songs and asked my to produce it It sounds like a fun project.

Michelle is all excited about a new Nintendo thing she wants to get.

Diagramming is Done!

I’ve hit a major milestone on my book. Make that *the* major milestone. All the diagrams are done. Twenty-two models, almost 900 drawings. That’s 123 page without the intro or the photos. Wow and woo-hoo. If I weren’t so tired I’d be all in the mood to party.

It was alot of work and it seemed to take a long time to finish. My publisher was very patient. The last model turned out to require more diagrams than I’d estimated. The American Turkey ended up at almost 100 steps, by far the longest model in the book. I’d figured on 70 or so. But it’s totally worth it. It’s a very popular model; I’ve taught and exhibited it before and it always gets a great response.

And I must say, I’ve gotten alot better and faster at diagramming over the course of working on this book, especially in the last few months.

All that remains now is to write the intro. That should be an easy task by comparison. Soon I’ll be able to get back to working on music, upgrading my we site and a bunch of other origami ideas I have that aren’t part of this book.

Late Halloween

Jeannie went into the city today and said the trains weren’t bad, but buses and bridges are still a mess. I bought gas; long line. We’ve heard back from enough of our friends now to know that a few of them in Brooklyn and on Long Island have suffered serious damage to their homes from the flooding. Trying to see if there’s anything we can do to help. Either way our hearts are with them. And again our home was full of neighbors and kids today looking to warm up and recharge.

Everyone has cancelled Halloween because of the storm, and rescheduled it for the weekend. We finally got around to carving our pumpkin tonight. It was a big’un, too: thirty-five pounds. The theme this year is mustache. Ask Lizzy. Hope this lightens your mood.