Category: Fitness

I Love New York In June

Well it’s summertime and the living is easy. The last few weeks the weather has been really pleasant. Since I expanded my patio last fall I’ve started working outside for an hour or so in the afternoons to work on my tan at the same time. I made a shade screen out of cardstock for my laptop that slides onto the edges of the lid. Practical origami skills. I usually go out after I’m done working out (which is usually lunchtime), and I’ve found it’s usually the best part of my workday for deep concentration. I’ve had a run of increasing good workouts since the springtime, and have gone up in weight and distance on my various exercises. Been getting out on my bike too. This week, however, it’s turned brutally hot (96 degrees today) so getting a walk in the early morning, and going outside to move the sprinkler from time to time is enough.

Work has been pretty interesting lately. We’re gearing up for a big new product launch at the end of the summer, a new electronic musical instrument with wifi network capabilities. The project involves hardware and software. As the cloud architect, I’ve been reaching across into our client codebase to work stuff like analytics integration and authentication. Our backend is in Firebase, which works well if your client is a mobile app or web site. And indeed all my end-to-end prototypes so far have run on that stack.

But our clients also include embedded hardware devices and also desktop applications. I’ve been learning our application tech stack built in C++ and JUCE. It’s set up to compile to Mac OS, Windows, iOS or Android. Only problem is, there’s only Firebase SDK for the mobile platforms, even in C++. Of course the Firebase SDK ultimately sends http requests over a REST API, which is documented. So we’ve put some REST libraries into our JUCE app, and got things working that way. Now I’m taking the building blocks and assembling them into reusable components for use in any future app.

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In music world, I bought a new synthesizer from Josh, the piano player in my jazz group. It’s a Nord Stage 3, their current flagship product. It’s pretty cool because it combines a digital stage piano, a dedicated organ simulator, and a synthesizer/sampler unit. All the controls are laid out in a gigantic spread, but it’s very readable, and because each knob or button has a single purpose, there’s no menus to scroll thru, and it’s very friendly to live performance. And it has great sounds and a great-feeling weighted keyboard. Plus it’s red!

I have the the 76-key model, and Josh sold it to me because he’s moving up to the 88-key version. Of course that’s a good deal more expensive, and I’m happy with the deal we worked out. In any event the 76-key version is more portable, in case I ever start gigging again. I did my full piano practice on it the other day to put it thru it’s paces. It’s funny, I only missed the really high and low keys on a couple songs, and they’re all written by piano players: Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, Donald Fagen. There’s one Keith Emerson song – Karn Evil 9, 2nd Impression – that literally uses every single key. Luckily, it’s not to hard to adjust the voicings to fit in the available range. And hey, it’s still three keys more than I have on my Fender Rhodes.

Now I have an old keyboard I want to get rid of. It’s a nice enough keyboard, a Privia PX-5S, with great sounds and layering, and its own performance-oriented array of knobs and sliders. It’s just that the new board is a serious upgrade. While I’m at it I have an old soprano sax I want to unload as well. I hope I can sell them, or at least give them to a good home.

The new jazz group as been coming along, lots of fun, good chemistry. We do a mix of jazz standards, jazz interpretations of pop and rock tunes, some funk/fusion stuff, and a bunch of my originals. Now that the pandemic is pretty much over, I’m thinking it’s time to get some gigs.

In my recording studio, I was kind of stuck for a while on my song Lift Off. It’s basically a bebop number with some twisting melodies and chord progressions. This being a computer jazz record, I sequenced the drums in midi, but for some reason the groove wasn’t really happening. I worked on different ways to embellish the arrangement with synths and things, but as they say, it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing…

So I bought a couple books on jazz drumming, and began to work thru them. One is The Art of Bop Drumming by John Riley. In addition to writing out alot of patterns, it gives some good theory about how to play, how to swing, what to listen for when you practice, and how to balance and control the sound. So I adjusted my midi drum pattern following the advice in the book as best I could, lots of subtle changes to the patterns and accents, adding some hi-hat behind the ride cymbal on the backbeat. And it made a huge difference! I mean it still sounds like a sequencer, but it grooves now! It still remains to flesh out the arrangement with accents in the comps, and this includes the other instruments too. But now it’s a matter of closing the distance to get the sound I want.

I was telling Steve, my drummer about all this, and he was giving me advice on things like how to mic a drum kit, and offered to lay down a human drum track to my song. That would change everything, but he’s a really good drummer and he’s set up for recording in his home, so I figured let’s go for it and see how it turns out.

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Last topic for this post: this weekend was the Origami USA 2021 Convention. I was a member of the OUSA web and convention committees this year, on account of me having built a new scheduling tool for classes that integrates with our web application, replacing an old offline tool. I built the convention class schedule with the new tool too. So it’s satisfying to be able to say all my hard work has paid off, and everyone else’s too. I must say, before I got involved, I had no idea how much work went into one of these conventions.

This year’s convention was completely virtual and online. Classes were via zoom. We had something like 140 classes being taught in eleven parallel tracks. There was also a virtual hospitality space provided by an app called Gather, and an online exhibition. Of course it’s not as satisfying as the real thing, but I did get the sense of being able to hang with my origami friends, talk about origami and do some folding together.

I taught two classes, which is my favorite part. To run the zooms, there is a tech manager, a host and a Q&A manager (all OUSA volunteers) in addition to class teacher. Jeannie is tech volunteer, doing three five-hour teaching blocks.

I had my phone on a tripod over my shoulder with the camera pointing down at the paper as it’s folded, and my laptop facing me, to speak into. I taught my Martian and Flying Saucer from my recent Air and Space kit book, and Gladys the Platypus, a previously undiagrammed model that I submitted to this year’s annual collection. Both classes went quite well, although for the Platypus we just barely finished in time.

Because I spent so much time writing software and attending committee meetings, I didn’t do as much actual folding this year as I would have liked, so I had very little new stuff to put into the exhibition. I spent a good deal of time this spring work on a single model, but it’s really complex I never quite got it finished. It’s a single-sheet polyhedron, a half-sunken cuboctahedron with an embedded hydrangea tessellation on each square face. Making the grid of hydrangeas was large effort by itself, but the collapsing the model into its 3-D form was something else again. The issue was that there’s just a ton of layers that need to be managed, and they all tend to make the model want to spring apart.

I kept at it, facet by facet, working out the inner hidden geometry. Saturday morning of the convention I finally got it to close. But I wasn’t fully satisfied, so I unfolded it and cut off two corners from the sheet, making the square into a hexagon. This substantially reduced the inner bulk, and made the final close much nicer. Unfortunately, by this time the paper had gotten pretty worn from handling, so it’s not the tightest lock ever. Nothing a bit of tape or glue (gasp!) can’t take care of. Still, it works, and so we can declare victory! It looks great as long as you don’t turn it over.

And now I feel I’ve gotten my origami energy active again to get back into folding. I have several half-finished books, and lots of designs in my head waiting to be worked out. A few people told me they love my work and would really digging seeing a book on this or that theme. That’s pretty motivating.

Romantic Warriors

Well the big news this weekend is that we went downhill skiing. It’s been seven years since the last time we went, for a variety of reasons. This year the stars aligned: I have no band and no gigs, Michelle had no robotics competitions, everyone is feeling healthy, and most of all, we had three or four good snowfalls in the last few weeks; it’s the first traditional winter we’ve had in a long time.

We all need some new kit. My old ski boots no long fit, so I got some new boots. They’re lighter and more comfortable too. As it turns out my skis are so old that the ski shop refused to service the bindings and set them up for my new boots. I didn’t know that was a thing.

Meanwhile Jeannie sent her ski pants, gloves and goggles up to Lizzy, who told us she was going skiing before we started to make our own plans, and asked if we had any equipment she could borrow. So Jeannie got new ski pants, gloves and goggles, and while she was at it, she decided to get a helmet. Luckily her boots still fit and her skis are in good shape. Last time Michelle went skiing she was maybe fifth grade, so she needed a new ski jacket, pants and gloves and goggles too. We decided to rent skis and boots for her on the mountain.

We went up to Catamount in the Berkshires, a mountain about two hours from here that we know well. Our friend Seth, who has a house nearby met us there. We decided to go night skiing cuz the tickets were much cheaper and we didn’t really know how it would go or how long we’d last. Plus we didn’t want to have to get up early and drive. It turned out to be the right call. We got there in time to get the first two or three runs in in daylight. We were all kinda wobbly and unsure but soon found our stride and gained some confidence. The conditions were great and by nightfall there were virtually no lines at the lifts.

I decided to demo skis at the mountain. It turns out skis have evolved in the time we were away. I still think of my old skis as my new skis, even though they’re at least fifteen years old. They’re parabolic, from when that was in fashion, and replaced a pair of much longer and straighter skis from the late 1980’s or early 1990’s. Modern skis are still kinda parabolic, but wider in the middle and wider overall, with rounder tips. The skis are almost like two narrow snowboards. I’m told they’re designed for stability and I must say I was really impressed with how they handled. Once I got used to them I found I was able to carve and hold my turns with less effort and energy than my old skis; I could just lean and let them do the work. Also they’re much more consistent in how they handle across moving from deep snow to the occasional icy patch. So yeah, looking at getting new skis now.

We ended up skiing 12 runs and stayed on the mountain for over four hours. Alot of these were spent a nice wide gentle run where we could practice and gain confidence. After a few of these I was basically pointing my skis straight down the mountain and going for it. We ended the last run going all the way up top and coming down some blue runs.

Couldn’t’ve asked for a better time. And now that we got all new kit we’re hoping to go again before the end of the season. Lizzy went skiing the same night as us, up at Holiday Valley. The package Jeannie sent arrived today.

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On the drive up and home, we listened to a bunch of records by Return to Forever, the seminal jazz fusion group led by Chick Corea, the groundbreaking jazz piano and keyboard player who passed away last week. Chick is one of my big influences, and I’ve seen him live a few times, including with his Electrik Band, doing a Mahavishnu crossover with John McLaughlin, and in acoustic trio setting. He has over 100 albums across all styles of jazz from the 1960’s to last year, and has tons of stuff I’ve never heard. Of course he has lots of stuff I know really well. I decided to focus on Return to Forever cuz I only own one of his albums, although I used to have a few on cassette as well. I haven’t listened to it in a long time. It’s great stuff, really holds up. Lots of mind-blowing synthesizers, and the other players, Stanley Clarke, Lenny White and Al Di Meola are total monsters. They’re capable of a wide variety of expressive styles individually, and as a group come together as a singular force. At times it’s more prog rock than jazz, but without lyrics.

I Got a Feeling the Bills Are Going to the Super Bowl

A brave new year is underway. So far the winter has been pretty mild, if not exactly warm. Even as the chaos of the world continues to writhe around us, one surprising good thing is the Buffalo Bills are back! It’s been twenty-five years or something since they won a playoff game, and now they’re gonna be in the AFC championship! As a fan back in the day of Jim Kelly and Bruce Smith, I gotta say this is pretty fun and exciting.

One thing I accomplished in 2020 was to work my way thru the entire book Patterns for Jazz by Jerry Coker et. al. on saxophone. It took me about three years to do it in high school, and I must say my facility has leveled up. I’m now starting to work thru to book on piano, and am immediately encountering little tricky things I never thought of before, like how to cross over fingerings when going up a half-step after every riff. Meanwhile in soxphoneland I rediscovered a book called The Bebop Bible by Les Wise. It’s an encyclopedia of jazz riffs for major, dominant, minor, ii-V-II, etc., organized by starting tone. Should keep me busy for a while.

I also went up in weights on my workout toward the end of last year. Winter is usually the hardest time of year for working out cuz the cold makes you sluggish and more susceptible to injury. But so far so good. The last few winters have been pretty rough, so here’s hoping I can ride it out thru to springtime.

Our Friday night D&D campaign had a particularly exciting night this week. Michelle got me the book Tales From the Yawning Portal for my birthday last summer. It’s collection of all-time great D&D modules from the game’s entire history, and includes classics like the Giants’ Saga and The Tomb of Horrors. Since the fall we’ve been playing the Forge of Fury, in which the party explores a once-abandoned Dwarven Mine, which is now overrun with orcs, troglodytes, evil Drow Dwarves, dwarvish and orcish undead, animated armor and other strange Dwarven craftwork, and other assorted nasties. The module has a great pacing to it as each level flows into the next and the level of danger and isolation increase. Also, Michelle got all her cousins new dice for Christmas, themed to their characters, and I bought a pack for myself, all sparkly and cool colors.

This week they reached the very bottom of the dungeon, where a young Black Dragon dwells in an cave with a subterranean lake. It was one of the best combats ever. It began with the dragon killing half the party in the first six seconds, first with a bite attack (natural 20!) on Phil’s character Philbert, a Druid doing advanced scouting underwater with a Cloak of the Manta Ray, and then a breath attack on everyone else. Michelle plays the Cleric Thea and luckily was able to heal everyone. A few rounds went by where the dragon swooped in close to bite and claw, and everyone unleashed everything they had for spells and weapons attack. Lou, playing the Dwarven fighter Luca, jumped onto the dragon, hacked it with his great axe, fell into the lake, swam to shore, scaled a cliff wall and jumped onto it again. He delivered the killing blow just as the dragon used its breath weapon a second time, killing everyone in the line of fire (actually acid). The dead dragon crashed into a cliff wall just past the party’s position, causing further mayhem. The only other surviving member was Phil, who was still in the water. He was able to climb up the bank and heal Thea, who then cast Mass Cure Wounds to restore the party. Epic fun! Next week they’ll try and get out the hoard of treasure out in the middle of the lake. Who knows what nasties they’ll encounter when they get there…

In addition to D&D, other gaming, watching LotR appendices and now football on TV, Michelle has been really getting into baking. She got a cookbook of deserts for Christmas and has been making coffee cake, pumpkin break, cookies and other yummies. Much as this interferes with my new year’s resolution to diet and lose some weight, I find it hard to object.

And finally, I started a new job a couple weeks ago. Suddenly I’m busy all the time and have to plan ahead to get around to minor random tasks. So far it seems good and the people seem pretty cool and and decent. It’s a small company, only six or so engineers and half of them are doing stuff like hardware and industrial design, which is fascinating and a whole ‘nuther area of expertise.

The company makes electronic musical instruments and they hired me to create a media hub which can connect to all the devices and their companion apps and people can share musical content. Right in my wheelhouse. Also the first time I’ve started a fully green-field, all new technology stack with completely free reign in many years. So right now it’s basic requirements gathering and system design.

They do seem to really like meetings, including agile and all the overhead that goes with it: daily progress reports, sprint planning, backlog grooming and all that. It occurs to me that I’ve gone fifteen months of working without having to go to a single meeting that wastes my time, as I don’t use agile in my other projects. I’m wondering if I can help them get better at this, to be lighter and not conflate the map with the territory so much. Of course projects need to be managed one way or another, and alot of it is good, helping me get to know the people and the situation faster than I would otherwise. This week I plan to spin up a web server and start prototyping.

Sea of Time

What is it now, week ten? Even less has happened than last time I updated my blog. The kids are almost done with school. Spring and the nice weather have finally arrived. I got sick, got better. Not the plague, thanks for asking.

I’ve been trying to get in shape for spring. In my regular home workout I’ve gone up in weight on both dumbbells and bench press, and have added some new leg exercises. I’ve also gone out biking a few times, which is refreshing and lots of fun. I haven’t gone to the Nature Study Woods yet because the trails there are narrow so it may be hard to keep distance form other people. Instead I’ve been going around the neighborhood streets, which is still a good workout cuz it’s pretty hilly all over. I’ve gotten as far as downtown Bronxville and back. I haven’t been on my skates yet this spring because my street is so laden with potholes it’s useless. I need to find a nice smooth place to skate.

I spent Saturday catching up on yardwork that I’d normally do in April, and spent some time out in the sunshine. I took the Mustang out for the second time this season too. I suppose we ought to wash the cars at some point, but we’re literally not driving anywhere. Last time I put gas in the tank was in February.

In the recoding studio I’m well into mixing my songs, getting pretty close to done. I’m at the listening back and tweaking phase. Tonight I went in to EQ the bass on one of my tracks, but I ended up EQing the guitar instead, scooping out alot of low and accentuating the high treble. Suddenly the bass has alot more space and everything is clearer.

I’m thinking about what songs to do next. Whatever I pick, there’s going to be a phase of laying down basic tracks, working out keys, tempos and song structures, and programming the drum parts before I can get into actually tracking and arranging. It’s Raining Frogs is the new working title of the next song up. It’s a long and complicated song so this phase will take some time and effort. I liked working on two songs in parallel this time around, so I think I’m gonna keep that going and pick another song or two. I have a few half written rock/pop songs that I could develop, but I’m holding out hope that eventually the quarantine will end my nascent new rock group will return, and then I’ll have some material to use for that.

So my other idea is to polish off some of my jazz demos and work them up into some kind of computer jazz thing, like I did with Sun of the Son. I have three originals completely worked up from the jazz group that we never recorded and probably never will. I have two more from our set that I want to rework with a new approach, and I two or three others that have the core idea and they could jam out any number of ways. I think I might do the first three of these. I have a feeling they’ll go down pretty quickly.

Oh, and my Charlie Parker Omnibook in Bb arrived, so I’m woodshedding Donna Lee and Confirmation, trying to work out when I should go up the octave. An the Patterns book I’m to pattern 98 and they’ve finally introduced dominant 7th chords.

Lastly, spinning of from Jeannie’s weekend Zoom call with her family, I’ve started a new weekly D&D campaign with Michelle and Lou and most of my nieces and nephews. This time the campaign includes Denis’s kids Carrie and Anna, who are 15 and 11 and really having fun. We’re doing the whole thing online now. TSR has a web site that automates character sheets including spells, HP, XP, weapons and attacks, really everything, and that’s super helpful. I haven’t yet found good mapping software so for now we’re using the whiteboard built into Zoom.

We’re playing the classic module Keep on the Borderlands, adapted for 5th edition, and with some extra monsters, and trying to give a bit of a plot beyond hack and slash with a backstory and some hidden magic items among the treasure. The party is pretty and very diverse. There are alot of Elves, some Druids, Witches and Sorcerers, plus a Barbarian (Katy), a Monk (Michelle) and a Rogue (Addie). Lou, as is his way, is a Dwarven fighter. It’s a pretty sprawling dungeon, but that’s a good thing cuz we could be stuck inside a long time.

Still in Motion

Lots going on these days. But somehow at the same time things seem to be moving slowly. That suits me fine these days. I’ve transitioned into a new day-to-day mode in the new year, working mainly from home as a consultant.

Right after the holidays Anna from the Global Jukebox asked me to help draw up a development roadmap for the next round of features. She has alot of things she wants to do and my plan was approved without hesitation. I had previously been doing the Jukebox as a side project, but now it’s my main thing. With luck it’ll keep on rolling and I can take on other consulting gigs here and there to round things out. I’d love to get back into doing more stuff with the arts, like a museum or cultural organization, or music software, or computational origami, or R&D, any of that kind of thing really. Just whatever looks fun. Meanwhile I have more time for music, origami and other worthwhile pursuits. Sure beats some banal VC backed blockchain bro startup

I’ve been establishing new patterns of time. I tend to alot of actual software development work at night, since it’s quiet and conducive to deep focus. That means I have a fair amount of unstructured time in the daytime. So I’m inventing a routine that works for me to keep things in balance and reduce the burden of figuring out what to do next all the time.

The first thing I did was to reboot my workout routine. I had been working out very early in the morning, usually rushing thru it to get out the door and on time to the office. In the wintertime that means before it gets light out. That’s a major drag. Now I’m working out in the mid to late morning and it feel so much better. I’ve been going up in weight, reps, and distance, and adding in more leg and core work, and taking more time. I feel much better overall. Winter is always the harshest season on my body and my health, but this year I’m doing pretty good so far, and the worst of it is probably over. The days are already getting longer. Spring is coming pretty soon.

Another thing I’ve been trying to do listen to more music, and by that I mean whole albums. For a little while I was shooting for an album a day, but that’s actually quite alot to absorb, so now I’m going for three new albums a week. Sometimes I like to listen to music when I work out, and sometimes I like it quiet. Then I’ll listen to a record first thing in the morning.

I tend to jump from genre to genre, spend a few weeks and move on. For a while it was 70’s smooth jazz (George Benson, Grover Washington Jr., that kind of thing). Before that it was 20th century modern like Holst and Aaron Copeland. Then I was listening to alot of old 70’s and 80’s heavy metal, because Michelle and I have been watching the anime Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, in which alot of the characters are names after classic hard rock and metal bands. I got really into Dio, Black Sabbath, Ozzy, Deep Purple and Rainbow (all interconnected), and most of all Iron Maiden, the best of that ilk. I was fan of all of that stuff back in the day, and it was fun to rediscover.

Most recently I’ve been trying to get thru the entire discography of Rush. But man, they have alot of albums. I started at Power Windows, since all the records before that I know really well. Power Windows, Hold Your Fire and Presto actually have 2 or 3 awesome songs each, and then a bunch sorta in the middle. That was their peak synth era, then Roll the Bones feels like they’re coming out of the woods, it’s maybe half great songs. All their records from that era are one or two songs too long.

I skipped ahead to Feedback, which is just great fun. Covers of The Yardbirds, Buffalo Springfield, The Who and Cream. Mr. Soul alone makes it worth it. Then I got to Counterparts. That album is pretty much wall-to-wall amazing. It’s the return to no synthesizers, so it’s petty metal sometimes, but also with prog and 90’s alternative. There’s alot in there. I can’t believe I never got into that album when it was new. The next album after that is Test for Echo, which has a similar tone and maybe half great songs. I’m in the middle of that one now.

I’ve been practicing sax and piano more. Generally I do this in the late afternoon, in lieu of an evening commute. I’m up to three times a week now for each, and at least one of those is a good long session with time to explore new or deep ideas. I’m trying to focus in and improve my actual playing at a technical level, phrasing, dynamics, all that.

I’m particularly trying to level up on sax these days. I’m continuing with Patterns for Jazz, going about ten times the rate it took me in high school (which ended up as two years). I’m doing about ten to twelve patterns a day, shifting ahead by 3 or 4 patterns every practice. These patterns are in all twelve keys (but only written out in C) and move around by different intervals: semitone, whole step, minor third and fourth, so you really get adept a moving thru different keys quickly. I’m also woodshedding more standards.

I think when I’m done on sax I’m gonna go thru the book on piano. For now on the piano I’m working on voicing and moving thru chords without playing melodies. Also learning some standards, and dusting off some of my originals, as it looks like the prog-funk originals project might be happening after all. I put an ad on Cragislist and got a hit, a guitarist who sings and writes. We’re trying to work out a time to get together. Hopefully more on that soon.

I’ve trying to devote more time to origami as well. However, this post is getting pretty long, so more on that next time.

The Devil You Know

Fall is proceeding apace. Hallowe’en is just around the corner, time for fun costumes, jack-o-lanterns, lawn decorations, witchcraft, devilry and all.

Things have actually been pretty boring around here recently. Work work work, getting things done. Sunday was a quiet rainy day at home, Hallowe’en devilry aside. There’s been lots of rain this October, which makes up for a dry September, but the weather has been generally pretty warm and mild. I’ve been able to get out skating and for a bike ride every week.

A couple weeks ago I was out for a bike ride in the Nature Study Woods. It was Sunday morning and there was a half marathon going on that included a trail section, with the runners coming the opposite way that I wanted to do. I ended up taking a bunch of trails that I don’t normally travel, just to find the road less taken. By the time I got to the far end of the woods I decided to take the road back rather then the trails. As I was pulling up a long hill I noticed my chain slipping of it’s sprocket into the next gear. Then without warning the chain snapped.

The bike is over twenty years old, and it was the original chain. I bought the bike in California, when Google was still a tiny little startup with their offices above Palo Alto Bicycles. (I actually talked Jeannie out of applying for a job there – worst mistake of my life.) I’ve ridden that bike over tons and roads and trails. So it was not too surprising.

I took it to a place in Pelham called Danny’s Bikes, that used to be Pelham Bicycles. The replaced the chain, which was fine, but I paid for a tune up and told them specifically that the derailleur was out of alignment and need to be adjusted, but they failed to do that. I ended up adjusting it myself, which I’d done plenty of times before, since it was easier that taking back to the shop and complaining. But still.

Last weekend Jeannie and I went on a hike in the Palisades. We’ve done a couple hikes around there, down near the George and up near the Mario. This time we picked a spot midway between the two bridges, right on the NY-Hj border. We got all the way down the cliffs to the river; it was very cool.

The same weekend we saw the famous guitar player Larry Carlton at the Iridium in NYC. We went with my origami friend Marc, who is also a guitar player and into cats like that. It was a great show, and the band consisted of Larry, his son Trevor on bass, who was most excellent, plus a sax, trombone, piano and drums. He played maybe six Steely Dan songs and the rest was his own stuff, sort of bluesy funk fusion. As luck would have it, Steely Dan was playing the same night uptown at the Beacon.

Speaking of origami, the OrigaMIT convention is coming up in just a couple weeks, so I’ve been folding and diagramming, ramping up and trying to finish and perfect some new models. Meanwhile OUSA has asked me to contribute some models to the annual Holiday Tree. The other night I folded one of my Giant Squid out a a 24″ square of some kind of cool paper I bought a while back. It’s over a foot tall. It looks great, very impressive. Just the finals sculpting to go.

In other news, my new recording Sun of the Son is almost done. (I know you’re been wondering since I haven’t talked about it in a while, but yeah I’ve keeping at it.) I’ve actually been working on it since the springtime, and even dusted of my alto sax to play the lead back at the end of the summer. Since then I recorded the synth solo and the piano solo, plus a few backing keyboard parts to pad things out. For the synth solo I had a concept in mind from the start, and was able to dial in the sound I wanted (a layering of several synth tones) and went down pretty smoothly. The piano solo turned out to be a bit more challenging. Since it’s just a piano you can’t rely on fancy patches or effects, it’s all down to the lines you play.

I had in mind a jazzy, bluesy solo something like Herbie Hancock or Chick Corea might do. But it turns out I can’t really play like those guys. Whatever I did came out sounding like a deranged mashup of Thelonious Monk and Keith Emerson. I guess that makes sense since I have studied those guys pretty deeply and have a fair amount of their pet riffs in my bag. So I decided to roll with it. Even so, I ended up stitching the solo together from multiple takes and it took a fair amount of effort to make if flow.

Now the tracking is done and next up was rendering out all the midi files (mainly the drums and keyboards) to audio for mixing. I finished that this weekend and began applying effects to the drum kit, mainly EQ’s and compressors. I have a default set of effects I use on my drum kit, but it always takes a fair amount of tweaking to make the drums sit right and really groove. Right now I’m honing in on the kick and snare. I want them to be present without being overpowering. The song has a fair amount of dynamics, and it has to sound good soft, loud, and in between. Almost there, then it’s on to the bass.

In the rock world, I’ve been keeping an eye out for new opportunities. One ad on craigslist caught my eye recently. It’s a drummer and guitarist starting up a originals project, looking for a creative keyboardist. The cited among their influences King Crimson, Tame Impala and the Delfonics. Well this seemed weird enough, and Crimso is one of my all-time favorite bands, so I got in touch. Now he’s putting together some audio demos and wants to schedule a rehearsal/audition. Meanwhile I sent him a few of my tracks, and learned how to play In the Court of the Crimson King. We’ll see how it turns out.

Also a reminder my jazz group, Haven Street is playing Saturday November 2 at the Bean Runner Cafe in Peekskill, eight o’clock downbeat. Hope to see you there.

Endless Summer Slacking

We get the nicest days this time of year. It’s getting on a month since we got back from our trip, and for the most part it’s been just beautiful and great to spend time outdoors, although it’s starting to get dark noticeably earlier.

I’ve gotten back into biking and skating.

I took my mountain bike out three times now, to a place near my house called Nature Study Woods. It’s mostly pretty flat but the hilly parts also tend to be the stoniest trails, which is unfortunate. First time out it felt pretty difficult. I was thinking of getting a new mountain bike since mine is from the ’90’s and doesn’t have any shock absorbers like modern bikes have. But then it got easier next time out. Still it might help with pulling up a really stony hill.

Last time out I saw a fox, which is cool, and there was a tree down across the trail, which was not so cool. It had become so overgrown with vines that the weight of the vines caused the tree to collapse. So to get by I had to hack out a tunnel thru the wreckage with my bare hands.

As for skating, I haven’t gotten off my block yet. Three times so far I put on my skates and rolled up and down my street and to the dead end around the corner for a half hour or so. My skates are old and pretty shot too, and the pavement around here is old and bumpy. I used to go all over the place and it never bothered me, hills and all. But I’m thinking of getting new skates too, and also finding a place where the pavement is nice and smooth.

I told my friend Brandon at work I was thinking of new skates. Like me he’s a half-Canadian former hockey player. He said, “those are words I haven’t heard in a long time.” It’s question whether it’s worth it, if I’m likely to keep on skating thru the fall and again next spring. As luck would have it, they paved part of my street last week, up near the dead and, so I have a nice smooth place nearby now. I’m gonna test it out next time I go out and then decide.

We also managed to do a camping trip this summer, over Labor Day weekend. Jeannie and I went up to Mongaup Pond in the Catskills, where we met Martin and his family. It was a great campout, best I’ve had in years. We used to go for many years when our kids were little and it was a whole lot of families. Now our kids are older and not into camping, but Martin’s are at the age where they really enjoy it. So we did some hiking an built some fires and cooked lots of meat over flame, stayed up late talking, even rented a couple canoes and paddled around the lake. It was actually really cold at night, and I’m glad we brought lots of warn stuff to bundle up in. All in all very relaxing, and perfect break before the new school year and all that.

Last fall Jeannie and I went for a few hikes, and this weekend we started up again. We went to a nearby place this morning called Saxon Woods. The hike was about three miles of moderately hilly trails, nothing too taxing, very pleasant. We have a whole list of places to check out but many are further afield, so it’s good to explore what’s close by too.

Now all the fall stuff is back and happening. Michelle is in school, Jeannie is working five days a week, my jazz group is rehearsing again and has some gigs coming up (more on that soon). My new rock band looks like it’s getting off the ground; everyone is in and down with the plan. Now we’re picking tunes and lining up the date for the first rehearsal. Meanwhile I’ve recorded all the sax parts for my song Sun of the Son, and it’s sounding great, including a shredding solo. Next is to fill out the keyboard parts and go back and tweak the drums, then on to mixing.

At work we seem to have finally won the epic marathon battle against bugs. It’s been my primary focus off and on the last year, as well as lot of other developers and management and the company as a whole. My team has gone from hundreds and hundreds of open bugs to just a couple dozen and still dwindling. Along the way we’ve made substantial improvements to the code quality at every level from architecture to formatting.

In other news I’ve been putting alot of time on the Global Jukebox. We’ve been making an educational section called Find Your Musical Roots, for use in New York City School classrooms. It’s been a big effort and there’s still a way to go. We have a major check-in tomorrow. It ought to be ready to go live sometime this fall.

Heavy Skies

Last Friday my jazz group Haven Street had a gig at Hayfields in North Salem, NY. It was a cool place and a fun time. Hayfields is out in the woods past Katonah, and it’s a sort of cafe restaurant with wine and beer and yummy food fresh farmer’s market fare. They treated us really nice.

The band set up in an enclosed porch area with roll-down plastic screens in case there’s a change in the weather. Which was a good thing, because right at the start of the second song the sky opened up and it started pouring down rain. A few songs later I announced the next song was called Heavy Skies. Just then a huge gust of wind came up, knocking everything over in the outside area just beyond us and causing a general panic. We had to stop the song and start over. The rain continued off and on the rest of the night.

All in all it was a good show. The crowd wasn’t huge because of the storms, but a good number of people turned out and enjoyed the music. We played most of the music of our record, plus four new originals: A Fat Cat, Fever Dream, Lift Off, and Closing the Distance, as well as a handful of covers and standards. The group’s sound and playing and solos were all right on, a couple minor glitches in the new tunes aside. The Hayfields said we sounded great. I hope we get to go back.

On the way home the weather turned stormy again. At one point it looked like we had just missed a tornado touching down. There was debris swirling in the air everywhere. At another point it the roads were starting to flood and I drove thru some pretty deep water.

We were supposed to go camping the next day, but we had to cancel cuz of the weather. In fact we were supposed to go the week before but that got rained out too. So we replanned again for next weekend. On Sunday the weather finally broke and it went from weeks of being in the 90’s down to the 70’s. In lieu of camping Jeannie and I decided to go for a hike.

We picked Anthony’s Nose, a trail near the Bear Mountain Bridge. It’s only about three miles there and back but the first half is very steep, about 700 feet vertical, and very rocky. The view from the top looks down on the bridge, and across the river at Bear Mountain and Harriman Park, and the whole vista of that part of the Hudson Valley. You can even see the new Tappen Zee bridge far to the south. We did the hike in about two hours and afterward stopped by a scenic overlook to check out the eagles flying around. It was as great hike and we felt invigorated afterward, and now we want to do a few more hikes this summer and fall.

As the summer draws to a close we’ve been trying to maximize our weekends. It turns out Sunday morning is a good time for some good outdoor time. A couple weeks ago we went to the beach and swan in the ocean, and the week after that we went to a BBQ brunch out on Long Island for our friend Antonio who is moving to Florida for college.

This morning Lizzy drove off for her second year at college and now she’s on her way upstate. It was great having her home for the summer, but wow it went by fast. We’ll miss her but we wish her well.

Bustin’ Out All Over

It’s June already, the summer’s here the time is right. Lots going on right now. Settling in to the new job, doing the GJB at night, ICS carnival came and went, a pair of great back-to-back band gigs too, the origami convention coming soon, the kids having their shows and recitals, getting into final exam time, counting the days until the end of school. Wow. Amazingly everything is going smoothly.

I must say the springtime really flew by. I started my job, consequently spending alot of time indoors, back in April when it was just getting warm and things were beginning to grow. Easter was early this year, as saw the kids’ spring break. Then BAM! greensplosion. But you know summer is my favorite time of year and I’m happy it’s here. Soon it’ll be time for tiger lilies and fireflies.

This just in — Lizzy got a 95 on her recent NYSSMA solo for voice, singing a grade 6 piece. Very good!!!

Lots to say about the new job, but it’ll save most of it for another post. One thing I’ll say is that I’ve been getting up early every day to work out, and that it’s been going better than expected. I feel energized in the morning, I’m drinking less coffee, and no matter what the day has in store I’ve already worked out. On even days I do a full workout with weights, getting up at 6:00, starting by 6:30 A.M., takes about an hour. I’ve gone up in weight twice for the bench press. I’m back up to 155lbs now, and up 90/110lbs on the dumbbells. Going up about 11lbs/month. Not bad considering I had to start from zero last fall — I’m still rehabilitating from a torn muscle. Ought to be back up to 185lbs — nominal full weight — by the end of the summer or so – just about a year since the injury. I’ve also added deadlifts and squats, which are really good for the back, yet amazingly no one suggested when I was PT years ago. On odd days I’ve been adding the Nordic Track in the morning, or going into the office early, or a combination of the two. The commute to the Westcehster office is nice and short, which helps alot, and the Mahnattan office is about as convenient as it gets, although you have to factor in waiting for the train. Trying to do something physical every evening too.

Winterlong

All quiet on the western front. It’s getting into the second half of winter and I’m starting to feel hopeful about spring. Lizzy is in Switzerland. Michelle got her braces off the other day.

I’m working from home these days, and I must say for the most part it suits me. My health is better then it’s been the last few winters. No getting up before daylight to stand out on the train platform in the bitter cold. No colds or flu, no back or leg pain.

I’m still rehabilitating my shoulder. I can do all the exercises I used to before I injured it, pushups and free weights, but on bench press I’ve plataeued, and every time I try and add weight it starts to hurt, so I go back down and wait a few weeks to try again. This last time the soreness went away faster and I’m ready to try again after only a week.

I have a pullup bar that sets up in a doorframe, and I’ve been using it in the doorway of wizard room (the closet under the stairs) for like 2 years. The other day the molding there cracked, so now I’m thinking about how to rebuild it stronger.

OTOH with working from home there’s less human contact. I’ve been getting out on the weekends, to dinner and the movies (Star Wars) for Jeannie’s birthday, to a party at Nick’s, and surprisingly saw a really good jazz group at a fundraiser at Michelle’s school. The band director is an amazing drummer, especially at Latin jazz.

For Valentine’s day I took Jeannie out to a local restaurant, Infusion, that I’ve passed by hundreds of times but never went in. But then I found out the bass player Jay from my Saturday jazz group was playing there with a guy on vibes as a duo. It turned out to be a very nice place, classy, dimly lit, with very good quasi-French food. They seated us right up near the band so I was able to suggest a few songs: My Romance, My Funny Valentine, All the Things You Are, that kind of thing. They were really good. Just the perfect thing, and a really pleasant surprise.

Before I found out about Jay’s gig the plan was to go to Burke’s bar, where LEFT HOOK is playing next week, to check the place out. So we went there afterwards for a drink of two. It’s a pretty big place, a step up from the joints we’ve been playing. The calamari is yummy and they got lots of different beers. They have a nice big stage, but we still have to bring our own PA. I don’t think they had a band that night cuz it was pretty dead. I’m sure bitter cold snap was keeping people home.

…

The Global Jukebox project is coming along. There was a bit of a crisis a couple weeks ago cuz they’d used up the money for my initial contract but we were only about halfway thru the projected work. By the end of the first week we were already several weeks behind schedule, as we discovered that the database needed some serious work, the codebase I was taking over was a mess, and there were lots of little things they’d need to go live that they’d never thought of. Growing pains getting from a prototype to a product. Like I said, they’re not software engineers. But they found some more cash and were able to extend the project a few more months, and they’re working on getting funding for a whole year. I hope it comes thru. They have alot of great ideas and I’d really love to be able to do it right.

I finished a major milestone build last week. Done the first major round of refactoring and getting the core features in place. Still lots of little cleanup and loose ends, but I hope to have something sharable soon.

I’ve also been learning Python and Django (the D is silent), since our database guy has limited availability and there’s lots to do on that side.

…

Believe it or not I’m still negotiating with my publisher about the origami airplanes and spaceships book. I thought for a while it was totally dead, but now it may happen after all. The point of contention was the graphics they want printed on the paper. I have a pretty strong idea of what I want and what I don’t. My feeling generally is that it should be pretty minimalist and not detract from the folded form. After they saw my samples they thought it’d be a useful guide, but wanted to have their staff graphics guy do the graphics, and to add insult they want to pay him out of my advance.

Then the sample graphics they sent me were a travesty. It was not my model, and not for my book, but it was a picture of a very cartoony robot slapped on a sheet of paper that didn’t look like anything like a robot to begin with. It looked like they reinvented the back cover of Mad Magazine!

So I said no way, I’ll do the book my own way and get another publisher. Then they decided they wanted to negotiate. First they agreed to pay their graphics guy out of their share. Then I said I’d only go with them if they gave me some sample graphics for my models and I approve of them. Surprisingly they agreed. So that’s where we are now, waiting for them to produce some graphics.

…

I’ve been thinking of buying a new synthesizer. It turns out Moog is making reissues of their classic analog synths, but with modern components and with midi and digital control/memory/recall. You can get a full-stack modular moog a la Keith Emerson for a mere $35,000, not including keyboard, ribbon controller, extra modules, etc. Or you can get a modern day MiniMoog for about a grand.

BTW, I learned the other day the original voice of R2D2 was an ARP 2600 synthesizer, one of the first “semi-modulars”. It also appears on a bunch of Rush albums beginning with 2112, and on Edgar Winter’s Free Ride, which my rock group learned and then abandoned because it was too high for our singer.

So in closing, here’s a reminder that LEFT HOOK has a gig coming up a week at Burke’s Bar. We learned 5 new (keeper) tunes including Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel and Beginnings by Chicago. Very rockin’!