Over at my other project as lead software developer on The Global Jukebox, I’m happy to announce our article in the peer reviewed journal Plos One has been published:
The Global Jukebox: A public database of performing arts and culture
Anna Wood, Patrick Savage, et. al.
Abstract Standardized cross-cultural databases of the arts are critical to a balanced scientific understanding of the performing arts, and their role in other domains of human society. This paper introduces the Global Jukebox as a resource for comparative and cross-cultural study of the performing arts and culture. The Global Jukebox adds an extensive and detailed global database of the performing arts that enlarges our understanding of human cultural diversity. …
Just got back from a fantastic trip to the capitol of the Great Lakes, Chicago. Jeannie had never been there before and I hadn’t been since the 1990’s when I used to go there for work alot, but mainly spent my time in an office park out in the suburbs.
The motivating excuse was COCon, the Chicago Origami Convention. This is the first time for a Chicago convention, and they had it in one of the big hotels downtown. We arrived a day early, on Thursday to play tourist in the city. The flight out there was smooth. We got up before daylight to get to the airport in time for our flight, and we landed mid-morning. I slept on the plane so it felt like the start of a new day. We grabbed a cab, checked into the hotel, and were out walking around the city before noon.
It must be said that Chicago is a great city for walking around. And the weather was beautiful the whole time. We were right near the waterfront at a place called Navy Pier, and there was a scenic walkway for bicycles and pedestrians. Then into a park with a funky piece of public art called The Bean. It’s basically a giant curved chrome blob that you can walk around and underneath and see really interesting reflections.
The main attraction for the afternoon was the Art Institute of Chicago. It’s a world class art museum to rival the Met in New York or the one in Vienna. It’s got a great collection, and very well presented. Famous paintings on display included Sunday in the Park, American Gothic, Nighthawks, a Van Gogh Self Portrait, and one of the missing stained glass windows from the Darwin Martin House in Buffalo (I wonder if the plan to repatriate that someday) to give you an idea. Also a wing full of great Asian bronze, pottery and sculptures, going from ancient to contemporary artists, ancient Greek and Roman stuff, and a wing of European art including lots of paintings and sculptures and a whole hall full of arms and armor. On the way back to the hotel we walked thru the Honorable Richard J. Daley Plaza where they got that Picasso, across from the Cook County assessor’s office.
Walking back to the hotel along the Chicago river we came upon a plaza with some cafes, and stopped for some beers and a late lunch. Chicago is famous for its architecture, and we were right across the river from some crazy art deco googie tower apartment buildings with parking garages spiraling up the lower half and boat docks in the basement. In and around the river, the museums and various other places downtown I noticed a pattern on the architecture that I’m calling the Chicago motif. It consists of a square divided into eight triangle by square cross and an “X”. Coincidently, this is also the crease pattern of an unfolded waterbomb base.
That night we went out to dinner at a bar across the street from the hotel where they had the football game on. I had a burger with a fired egg on top, cuz if I’m in a place with that on the menu, that’s what I’ll usually get. Later we met my friend and colleague Ann Marie, with whom I’ve been on several zoom calls a week the whole year, but never met face to face before. She invited us to join her and her friends at a different bar downtown where there was a hallowe’en themed burlesque show. It was a lot of fun, with a very positive vibe, and as she put it, classy with a capital A-S-S. Afterwards, we walked around downtown for a good hour while Ann Marie played tour guide and pointed out lots of notable things like restaurants, architecture, and historical sites.
Friday we went to another great museum, the Field Museum of Natural History. It’s alot like the American Museum of Natural History in New York which I know well, but maybe not so large and a little bit more shiny. Great architecture. The star attraction was Sue the T-Rex, named after her discoverer Sue the human. It’s the most complete Tyrannosaur skeleton every found, virtually complete. The T-Rex is the centerpiece of a great hall of the history of life on earth, with tons of fossils and other artifacts. There was also a short 3-D film about the discovery, unearthing and preparation of the Sue fossil, and how they analyzed and what they learned about the living creature’s life and death. It turns out Sue was fully grown, 40 feet long, at 19 years old, and died at 29. During his or her life he or she suffered nine broken ribs and a fractured tibia and recovered from all of those injuries. Among the things I never knew I never wanted to know was that Sue was infected by parasite worms that burrowed holes into it’s jawbone.
For all its attention to scientific detail the film’s CG animation was strangely inaccurate in several ways. For one, they showed the dinosaur’s gait as having wide-set feet like a sumo wrestler, rather than more plausibly with the feet under the the body. Second was that whenever the terrible lizard appeared, the other little dinosaurs would wait for it to get close, then turn and shreik at it before running away, rather than running off at the first whiff of trouble like real animals do. Lastly, in a visualization of an epic battle with a Triceratops a la Disney’s Fantasia, where they conjectured the T-Rex got it’s leg injury, somehow the T-Rex almost effortlessly bites the three-horned adversary on the neck under it’s protective crest. It’s almost as bad as that bit in Toy Story where the light fixture disappears into the ceiling.
There were also halls of taxidermy, a really nice collection of gems and minerals, and whole hall of jade and carved jade art, a bit of crossover from the day before with artifacts from various antiquated civilizations, shown here for the naturally historic rather than artistic value.
After the Field Museum we hit the Aquarium, which was right next door. Highlights include beluga whales, dolphins, sharks, sea turtles, jellyfish, eels, tropical coral reefs, cuttlefish, a cool movie about octopus, and a whole section of tanks devoted to Great Lakes fish such as pike, walleye, perch, trout, and bass.
We walked back to the hotel along the lakeshore trail and by the time we arrived, other origami people were starting to filter in. We spent happy hour at the bar with some friends, and then I set up my exhibit (more on that later). We went out for dinner for authentic Chicago style deep dish pizza. Most excellent. Returned to the hotel for late night folding. I mostly practiced models I would teach the following day.
It’s been a busy few weeks. The weather has been alternating between mild and sunny and cold and rainy, so I’ve been getting in a few bike rides a week here and there. Every time I do I think it might be the last nice day. It’s rainy again this week, and of course it’s getting dark earlier and earlier. A week ago Jeannie and I went for for a hike up a mountain called Anthony’s Nose, which looks down on the Bear Mountain Bridge from the summit. That’s right folks, there are alot of great hikes in the area, but we picked the nose.
I transitioned in my job from consultant to full time lead staff engineer at the Innovation Lab. Last week was heavy on onboarding and strategic planning and roadmapping meetings, as well as tactical planning for the upcoming release of our mobile app in November. Also got a new computer and been moving into that. One night after work last week there was a dinner event hosted by one of our partners in the consortium, and I met some of their engineers and some of their customers, as well as an attorney named Havona who was “raised by hippies” and is now living in Spain so her daughters can train to be future tennis pros. It’s the first time I’ve been to an event like this since before the pandemic, and it turned out to be alot of fun.
And, I’m looking to hire software engineers with a combination of full-stack and R&D prototyping skills. Ping me if you fit the bill.
Been folding tons of origami for some upcoming exhibitions. More on that as it, uh, unfolds.
Also Jeannie got me a lego spaceship recently and I’ve been trying to find the time to build it. More on that as it, uh, comes together.
Lastly, been working on music. I have two I’m working writing/arranging/tracking: In the Purple Circus, and A Plague of Frogs. Additionally, I have six tracks basically done, but the guitar sounds were all over the place. Last weekend I went back and worked on putting them into some kind of tonal shape. The main issue is that there’s lots of low end noise muddying up the mix. EQ helps but not enough. When I put it thru an amp simulator it cleans up alot of that but also alters the tone pretty radically into the treble range. I ended up creating a signal chain with 2 buses, one for the raw guitar mix and another for the amp, then mixing the two of them for the right balance. It made a huge differenceI and I applied this to five songs. Further tweaking can occur but they’re all in the zone. Hopefully by the end of this record I’ll have something like “my” guitar sound, or at least a sound I can control.
There’s an origami convention coming up Chicago next month, so I’ve been getting organized about folding some new models for the convention. Having to do an exhibition is a great motivator. I’ve also been busy at work, transitioning from a part-time consulting gig to a full time staff position as Lead Engineer of Consumer Reports’ new Innovation Lab. I’ll be building an R&D software engineering team to create prototypes and products around consumer’s digital privacy and data rights. More on that as the situation comes into being, but soon, having Fridays off will be a thing of the past.
So last Friday I spent a good chunk of the day organizing my origami studio. Since the start of the pandemic there have not been alot of in-person conventions and exhibits, so I’m really just getting back into it. I have lots of boxes of half-folded experiments and ideas. I want to take the best and perfect them and fold them at an exhibit-quality level. Some of the stuff is pretty complex and ambitious.
While I was at it, I threw out lots of old models. One has to do this every few years, but it’s always funny because the stuff I’m getting rid of was once some of my best work. Michael LaFosse told me not too long ago that if the model has a face, like a human or an animal, he can’t bear to tear it up or crumple it. Instead he unfolds it first, then throws away an unfolded sheet of paper. I found myself doing that a few times.
I registered to teach classes at the Chicago convention. I signed up to teach two classes, and am thinking of adding a third. Among the models I’m teaching is my Space Cat, which I designed at the beginning of the summer, right around the time my jazz and funk band Spacecats decided on its name. The model is a variation on my Sophie the Cat, restyled with a sleek, atomic age midcentury modern look. Very hip.
And, it looks like the Origami MIT convention is back this year, after three years off!
I wrote a country song! Well sort of at least. The second in my guitar singer-songwriter experiments, My Ol’ Brokedown Truck is pretty much a traditional country song, although with different lyrics and chord voicings it might be something like a jazz standard from the great American songbook. I wrote it around Christmastime when I was visiting my parents and my Mum asked me to explain to her Nashville notation. I did so by way of demonstration, starting by writing down the title and eight bars of chord changes, and then a bridge, and suddenly I had the beginnings of a song. The lyrics also came quite quickly and naturally, and I liked it well enough to to finish it.
I recorded a basic track with guitar, bass drums and vocal. The guitar sound may take liberties with the conventions of the genre, bringing in some energy of bands like Cake or the The Black Keys. The vocal has a low and high harmony part, and I decided it’d sound better with a female voice doing the high harmony. I asked my sister-in-law Mary, who has been in a number of singing groups over the years, if she’d like to do the part. She came in and nailed it, and lifted the song to a whole ‘nuther level.
The hardest thing was to get the right sound for the solo on the intro and middle eight. A sax was definitely not appropriate, and I don’t play pedal steel guitar or fiddle, or banjo or mandolin, and the chords modulate so a harmonica won’t work. I experimented with various synthesizer sounds, trying to harken back to a rare moment in pop music where pedal steel guitars played side by side with analog synths, as exemplified by songs Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Billy Joel’s The Great Suburban Showdown, or Jackson Browne’s The Load-Out. But the right tone eluded me. I ended up using a melodica (a funny little keyboard instrument that you blow into) run thru a boxy amp simulator, spring reverb and tremolo effect.
Enjoy!
…
My Ol’ Brokedown Truck
My brokedown truck and my rotten luck
Have left me here stuck by the side of the road
With my bleeding heart I will make a new start
But first I must get my body home
We’ve made many miles together
Sure in sunny and stormy weather
Well I could trade ‘er in for some shiny new tin
But you’ll never find peace while you roam
(solo)
We’ve rode many roads together
Fast through foul and fair weather
And I might go far in a brand new sports car
But then how can I carry the load?
So I’ll wait here stuck with my rotten luck
And my ol’ brokedown truck
– John Szinger, 2022
Just got back from a lovely family vacation in Cape Cod and the surrounding area. This was the first full-week vacation we’ve taken in years, since before the pandemic. Lizzy drove up from Buffalo at met us at Martin’s house outside of Albany, and left her car there. She was all excited because she just bought a new car a few weeks ago. We all took my car from there to make things easier. It was great to be together with both kids for a week and hang out and have fun.
First day we took the ferry out to Martha’s Vineyard. We mostly walked around town and ended up a restaurant having lobster rolls and cold drinks. Then we stayed on Cape Cod for a few days in a sort of resort hotel suite on the beach with a loft and a balcony looking out over the ocean. Went swimming in Nantucket Sound, where the sea there was surprisingly warm and gentle, although the beach was a bit stony after you got in a little ways. Enjoyed the sea and sunshine, went out for breakfast, ice cream, and more seafood dinners, played games in the evening.
One day we drove out to the end of cape, to Provincetown. It was a cute fun town, alot like Martha’s Vineyard. We took a whale watching tour and saw several groups of different kinds of whales. Spent most of our time with a pair of humpbacks who lifted their tails out high out of the water before they dove down.
Another afternoon we went to the National Seashore on the Atlantic side. Saw some lighthouses and the landing for the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable, as well as the Marconi station where they sent the first trans-Atlantic wireless communication over a hundred years ago. There was also a hiking trail thru the marsh which was pretty cool. I took a swim in the ocean on one of the beaches there. The water was much colder than on the south side.
We spent a couple of days in Boston. We stayed in a hotel right near downtown, and spent a good deal of time walking around the city. The first day we went to the aquarium, which was pretty cool, and ended up at a pub that’s been there since the 1700’s for dinner. Next day we went to the science museum, which included the planetarium and an electricity demonstration with Van de Graaff generators and Tesla coils that could play music. I found these pretty fascinating, but when I asked after the show the presenter didn’t really have a strong idea of how the Tesla coils were made to play in pitch. So I looked it up, and it turns the lighting actually can be made to fire off at a controlled frequency by modulating the voltage. This creates a tone and basically makes the Tesla coil a speaker. The voltage controller can be driven by a midi interface and suddenly, music! Now I’m thinking of getting one for Spacecats. I wonder if it’s safe in a bar or nightclub.
That evening we went to see the Red Sox play at Fenway Park. We’d been trying to get to a Mets game all summer but the timing didn’t work out, so we did this instead. It’s been years since I went to a baseball game, and it was alot of fun.
The last day we headed out northward. Spent the morning at Salem, and went to the witch museum, which was strangely fascinating. Spent the afternoon at a beach in New Hampshire, which had the same vibe as Cape Cod but a bit more low key. The beach itself was nicer, more sandy and less stony, plus has some big rocks. After that it was back to Martin’s where we hung out most of the following day, and finally Lizzy took off and we went back home too.
Slope began life as a jazz song with my pre-pandemic group Haven Street, written by our bass player Jay, and appeared on our record. I wrote a lyric for it, but we didn’t do vocals in that group, and I’ve never been much of a fan of vocalese anyway, unless it’s Ella Fitzgerald. So for this record I changed it from a jazz style into an old-timey blues, with a drop-tuned guitar now carrying the main riff rather than a standup bass.
The arrangement is fairly sparse, with just a single vocal, guitar, bass and drum. To finish it off I added a bit of Fender Rhodes, and of course a smokey bluesy sax. I also added real drums doing brushes on the snare, since I have no way to create that using midi and samples.
Just when you think that life’s looking up
And you might drink from that flowing cup
Then comes the day when it all turns around
Just then you think that life’s looking down
Climbin’ up that slope
Slidin’ down that slope
Just when you think that life’s looking up
Just then you think that life’s looking down
Scamblin’ up that slope
Tumblin’ down that slope
And you might drink from that flowing cup
Then comes the day when it all turns around
Holdin’ on to hope
Ridin’ on up and down that slope
More summer, more busy these days. The weather has been beautiful. One night last weekend we built a fire in our fire pit and hung out on the patio and considered what song we might use to break Vecna’s curse. Last summer I made a playlist of 80 favorite 80’s songs, and now I’m thinking of making a new playlist of 77 favorite 70’s songs for this summer.
I edited up some highlight form the the Spacecats gig. I’m going to update my web site soon to feature of few of the best ones, but for now, you can see the whole set here:
I got out for a bike ride five days last week. I mostly go around our neighborhood, which is kinda hilly and some streets have alot of cars. Sometimes to a local place called Nature Study Woods, which is mountain biking trails, and not particularly well maintained. The steep parts tend to be washed out and stony, and the low spots muddy. Also I tend to go on fairly short rides – a half hour to an hour, and usually go as fast as possible.
All in all Jeannie doesn’t enjoy this style of riding, but we wanted to start doing some biking together.
So on Sunday Jeannie took our bikes out to Jones Beach and biked along the scenic Ocean Parkway Coastal Greenway. It’s a great bike path, smooth and flat, that runs the length of the island, out from the main beach, through as series of smaller beaches, saltwater wildlife refuges, and the occasional marina, restaurant or bar. We went out a little over seven miles then turned around, for a total of fifteen miles or so. On the way back there was a pretty consistent headwind, but it was a very doable and fun ride. We had a lunch of ice cream and clam strips, then went out to the beach, but it was too cold for swimming. The water was unusually calm and there were lots of seashells. Also tons of giant container ships out at see, queued up to get into New York harbor, like I’ve never seen before. There’s usually maybe two or three, but this time there was over a dozen.
I also got the mustang on the road over the weekend, and continued with the yardwork. This time is was doing the edging on the driveway and front walk. Still to go is the walk around the back of the house, and the patio. It seems everything has grown in quite alot this spring, and needs an extra level of cutting back. Also I’ve never seen so many bunny rabbits and chipmunks in our neighborhood, nor heard so many songbirds.
Lastly, I’m continuing with doing origami and preparing for the convention, which starts this Friday. My two dodecahedron star balls are nearly complete, but it’s taking some work to finish them. They’re single-sheet polyhedra, a very advance form of origami, and closing off and locking the bottom where the edges come together is a nontrivial design challenge. I’ve also been experimenting with a new design called the Space Cat, a variation on my Sophie the Cat, with a midcentury modern look and proportions. Hopefully will get there and have a few new pieces for my exhibit.
Meanwhile, I’m teaching a couple classes, and agreed to pre-record them for people who are attending the convention remotely. This process grew out of last year’s online-only convention, in which all classes were taught live as Zoom calls. This year we’re recording Zoom sessions, with a camera pointing down at the work as it’s being folded. I kind of view this a run-thru, a rehearsal for the real class, and good opportunity to make sure I know the model and can teach it. My first class, Sophie the Cat, went off without a hitch, totally great. For my second class my Five-Banded Armadillo, I somehow skipped a stepped and messed of the proportions of the bands, which are created by pleating. I realized my mistake after I did the collapse and it was too late to undo, so I had to just roll with it and adjust the proportions as I finished the model. All in all it still turned out in the end, and I’m sure to get it right in the actual class.
So let’s see. I guess project dirt was completed a while ago and the new grass is well on its way to being grown in at this point. I’ve been mowing the lawn for several weeks now. We even did the first round of weeding, planting in the garden, and putting down mulch under the hedges. Next job will be trimming.
A couple weeks back I got up on a ladder to unclog the downspout of my gutter in one corner of my job. I used to have to get up there and clean out my gutters every year or so, when there were hundred-foot-tall trees all around my house. But one by one the trees got cut down and I didn’t have to do it for several years. This time instead of leaves and sticks, it was beads of whatever our roof shingles are made of. We got a new roof put on a couple years back, same time we installed our solar panels, and some of the material has worn off with the weather. Of all the jobs I do, this is the one I dislike the most, because of the potential danger of falling off the ladder twenty feet up. So far I’ve been careful and never met with any harm but you never know. Next time I’ll probably hire someone.
Now that the yardwork situation is under control, I’ve been trying to move forward with project furniture. I want to get a good armchair for the living room to replace the awful recliner we have, and a new coffee table and end tables, plus a new sectional sofa for the family room, and maybe and entertainment center too. By the end of the year, if possible. We started thinking about this at the beginning of the pandemic, but it turns out to be a kinda complicated research project, and there’s always something else to do, and every time we find something we think we like, it turns our to backordered for months. Nevertheless, it’s getting to the point where our kids have nicer furniture than us. So it’s time to get moving.
As the weather has been getting nicer, Jeannie and I have been spending more time outdoors. We’ve gone for a couple hikes, mostly at local places like Saxon Woods. I’ve also been getting on my bike alot more, averaging about three times a week this spring, and my strength, speed and endurance are increasing. My typical ride is pretty short, less than an hour, but the neighborhood is kinda hilly. My main ride these days is a loop into downtown Bronxville, then thru Chester Heights and back home. Also went to the Nature Study Woods once, but mostly it’s been too muddy cuz of the rain.
I’ve gotten the Mustang out on the road a few times. Even had to put a tankful of gas in it yesterday. So far it’s been running great. I want to get new tires put on it this spring. The tires I have are the ones from when I bought the car in 1997!
In the software realm, I’ve been working on several thing. One of which is the Origami USA convention scheduling tool. If you recall, I’m on the OUSA convention and web committees, as the person who creates the schedule of classes and events, and the one who writes the software to make that task easier. The last few years we haven’t had any in-person conventions. Last year we had a zoom convention, and I did the schedule for that. Along the way, I discarded the existing scheduling tool, basically a bunch of macros for MS Access, and wrote a web application in Drupal/PHP that integrates with the main web site and other tools. This year I enhanced the functionality in a few ways. First, I created a workflow to reschedule a class without having to first unschedule it then schedule it again. Second I added the capacity to sort the classes by name, to make it easier to find them. On the roadmap is the ability to sort and filter by a number of parameters including the class name, the teacher name, the class type, level of complexity, number of periods, etc. But Drupal and PHP are a serious pain to work with, so I’ll save these enhancements for a future convention.
Meanwhile I have a little over a month to get some new models completed, get and exhibit together and decide what to teach. I have a big pile of half-finished models and an even bigger backlog of ideas. But for the zoom conventions don’t really inspire me and I haven’t been doing that much folding lately. Luckily, this year’s convention is live and in person, at the Sheraton Hotel in NYC, the third weekend in June (I think). Should be alot of fun to reconnect with my origami friends, and hopefully I’ll have a bunch of cool new models.
Been working hard at my new consulting gig at Consumer Reports R&D Lab. Hard to believe I’ve been there three months already. They’ve just extended my contract to the end of the year, which is good news. My group is involved in this thing called the Digital Rights Protocol, which is designed to make it easier for consumers to exercise their rights to opt out of online data collection, tracking, etc., and easier for companies to comply with requests around these rights. We lead a consortium of startups involved in the internet privacy business, and last week we had the first end-to-end test of the Protocol with partners in various roles. Meanwhile Consumer reports is involved in several business-oriented capacities as well, so I am building a reference implementation of the DRP to live in our application ecosystem and provide a touchstone to our partners. Anyway, the end-to-end test was a big success, and now we’re planning out the next phase of development.
Meanwhile at my other big client, The Global Jukebox, we’re getting ready to roll out a new release to Live. This one has a new backend and a cutover to a new server, to get rid of a bunch of old headaches. Everything is all tested and ready to roll. All that remains now is to switch over the DNS server.
Lastly, my music projects proceed apace. Mary came over and laid down the vocal track for My Ol’ Breakdown Truck a week or so ago, and it came out great. Afterwards we went out for Mexican food. Now I have three songs mostly done, with the vocals, bass and guitar tracked and mixed. All that remains is the fine-tune the drum parts, and add a little keyboards and sax to fill things out. Also, Elixr – 2022 Remaster is vary much almost done; all that remains is one final listening back.
Now that my Thursday band has a name and a gig, the music has been rising to the occasion and getting more intense. Today we had a rehearsal where we really drilled down on some of the finer points of some of our songs, to really master the arrangements and make them our own.
Meanwhile, I’ve noticed my Selmer Reference ’54 tenor sax, which I was so in love with, seems to have developed a leak somewhere, so the notes below low D don’t sound clearly and require alot of force to sound at all. Plus one of the mounting posts on the low C keyguard has come loose. So I need to find a new sax repair guy. The guy I’d been using for year – Virgil Scott – was up on Yonkers, only 10 minutes from my house. Sadly, he died of covid during the pandemic. My new guy is great, he’s out in Connecticut up new Massachusetts, almost two hour from here. So I need to find someone local.
For the time being I’ve switched back to playing my Selmer Mark VII, which I had worked on last summer. The low notes are clear and effortless, but best of all, I had the action set up, which it turns out makes a huge difference on tunes like Some Skunk Funk. I’d been struggling with playing that fast and cleanly on my other horn, and now the notes just roll right off. On the downside, I have to get used to this horn’s intonation again. And even worse, I’d been busting my ass to get good on the altissimo range on the tenor, and could get all the way up to the second high D, and play riffs up there. I was developing some real chops. On this horn, the embouchure required is completely different, so I’m back to square one.
