Home Improvement – Page 2

These are Road Games

Summer continues. The weather has been beautiful and I’ve been spending alot of time outside. We’ve been busy. Lots of the usual, including work, practicing music, biking, and taking the mustang out for rides. Lots of yardwork the last few weekends, including trimming the trees and hedges. So far I’ve filled up all my yard waste cans two weeks in a row. Probably one more session to go, but it will be up on the ladder.

Over Memorial Day weekend we went out to a barbecue at our friend Nick’s house. The presence of a pull-up bar in his backyard inspired me to add some new exercises to my workout to focus on my lats.

We got some new furniture, including an armchair for the living room and a sectional sofa for the downstairs room. A new pair fo end tables arrived today and need to be assembled, and a coffee table is on order. It all looks nice and is comfortable, is a big upgrade from our old stuff, and represents the culmination of a long and tedious research project. Well almost. Now we want to get a new entertainment center, bookshelf and end tables downstairs too.

Of course now we have to deal with getting rid of the old furniture. A friend of mine who just moved into a new apartment may take our futon and gold chairs. Meanwhile we have to store it somewhere, so we cleaned out a whole bunch of old junk and boxes from the garage. Big step forward in project defrag the house.

The other big item is over the weekend I did the class schedule for the Origami USA convention, which is coming up at the end of June. This is our first in-person convention in three years, and around 140 people signed up to teach classes. You’ll recall I wrote the software for the scheduling for last year’s (virtual, online) convention. I made several improvements to it this year. Still not everything can be automated, so the weekend was full of back-and-forth with the teaching committed as we juggled classes around until it met with everyone’s satisfaction. I’ll be teaching two classes, my Five-Banded Armadillo, and Sophie the Cat. I’m also working on some new models for the exhibition.

Lastly, the Global Jukebox 4.2.1 is now live. The cutover to our new, node-based server is complete, and we can now retire the old backend servers.

Spacecats II

Life continues to be busy on a bunch of fronts. First, check the new poster and web page for my band Spacecats.

https://zingman.com/music/spacecats.php

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 things. 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.

Dig a Pony

Spring continues to tease us with alternating spells of warm and sunny then cold and stormy weather. We got out in the yard again last weekend to turn over the flowerbeds and plant some seeds. Also, I initiated project dirt 2022. If you recall, my neighbor across the street had a big pile of dirt that was dug out from having a swimming pool put int. A year ago he encouraged me to take as much as I wanted. I ended up taking fifty or sixty wheelbarrows to fill in low spots in my yard, and grade the area around my newly expanded patio. This year he moved what’s left of the pile closer to the street and again asked me to help get rid of it. Now I’m just filling in a few remaining low spots, mainly in the front where there were once giant trees and the ground continues to settle years later as the stumps underground continue to decay. Also I did the front yard last last year, and was getting tired of the job toward the end. So far this time I’ve put down six wheelbarrows worth, and am maybe about half done. In the end It’ll probably be twelve to twenty loads total. Anyway, it’s good to spend some time out in the sunshine.

Clubs and concert venues are finally opening again after more than two years. We saw the first of a run of spring concerts last week. The Ed Palermo Big Band played the Iridium in NYC. They’re famous for doing big band arrangements of prog rock songs, particularly the music of Frank Zappa. Usually each show has a different theme, and that night they did a tribute to Gary Brooker featuring the music Procol Harum mingled with a bunch Beatles, Yes and of other prog psychedelia. The highlight was toward the end of the show, when the band did A Whiter Shade of Pale, and the horn section joined in on the organ solo toward the end, and just went round with it and built it up to be absolutely huge and soaring. I’m hoping they’ll do Thick as a Brick Sometime.

Hippity Hoppity

Spring continues. The days are getting longer faster, and the nice weather appears more often than not. More and more people I know have gotten the vaccine and getting hopeful about life returning to normal soon.

We didn’t have much of a spring break this year, but it was enjoyable. Busy with work and stuff. Jeannie and I both took a long weekend off from work, and Lizzy came home for the weekend. Hard to believe she’s graduating college in just a month or so. We had family game night Friday night, which was lots of fun. On Sunday we went down to Queens to visit Jeannie’s parents, and Lou and my neblings came over too. It was good to see everyone in person, even if it was pretty low key.

We normally try to go to a museum or day trip this time of year. We haven’t picked a place yet, but we’re looking at next weekend. Most places are running at limited capacity and you have to get tickets in advance. Michelle has asked that we go Washington D.C, this summer to visit a few more museums. That might happen. We might even get back to Ohio for the Centerfold origami convention, and swing my the National Air Force Museum while we’re out that way.

I finished diagramming my Platypus model, called Gladys the Platypus, for the Origami USA 2021 Convention Collection. This is my first new diagram in some time, and hopefully I’ll get back into the groove with that. I hadn’t been that motivated to do much origami during the pandemic, cuz all the conventions were cancelled, and I don’t enjoy the online ones that much. But I’ve been involved in planning and setting up the 2021 OUSA, that includes a virtual gallery, and there may even be some live, in-person conventions later this year. So I’m starting to get back into folding again.

Project dirt continues. I’m up to thirty wheelbarrows of dirt, and have gotten maybe two-thirds of the way around the yard. I filled in one really big low spot on the north side of my house that took four loads by itself. It’s good to spend some time outside, and it’ll be really nice when it’s finished. I made a pretty good dent in my neighbor’s dirt pile, but he has a whole swimming pool’s worth, so there’ll be plenty left.

Spring Into Action

It looks like winter is finally at an end and spring has emerged. It took a while but all the snow on the ground finally melted and we started having some nice days. A week ago on the weekend I started spending time outside to work on the yard, beginning with scraping up all the leaves and debris from the flowerbeds. Also, we finally admitted ski season is over and we wouldn’t get a second day skiing in this year, so we went for a hike instead. We went up to the Palisades in New Jersey, overlooking the Hudson River across from Hastings and Yonkers.

This last weekend on Saturday I took the Mustang out for a drive for the first time. Happy to say the engine turned over right away and everything seems in great shape. On Sunday I went for the first bike ride of the year, up to my local Nature Study Woods. Since I was tuning up my bike, Jeannie asked me if I’d get hers ready to ride too. It’s been a couple seasons since she did any biking, but she wants to get back into it. I’d like to get my rollerblades on sometime soon too, but the snowplows tore up our street so badly this winter I’ll have to find another place to go skate.

The yard work continued as well. Last fall after I expanded my patio, I had some leftover dirt that I used to fill in a few low spots in my yard. Once I got into it I realized there were quite a few lumpy areas and wouldn’t it be nice to have some more dirt. Well last fall my neighbor across the street put in a new swimming pool, and now he has a great big pile of dirt, that until recently looked like a sledding hill. He invited me to come over and take away as much as I wanted. So far I’ve take eight wheelbarrow loads, about a cubic yard. I’m probably about twenty percent done. So more next weekend. I’d like to get it down and covered with grass seed in time for things to really start growing.

In other news, I demoed the scheduling tool that I wrote for scheduling classes for conventions to the Origami USA convention committee today. It went over well. Still a few details before we can take it live, but it’s basically there. Thanks to Robert Lang for all his help.

Now I’m starting to think about designing and folding some new models for the convention in June. I have some ideas, but haven’t really been folding much since the pandemic began.

I’ve found some new and interesting stuff to practice on piano. One source was from out continuing movie nights on Saturdays. We recently watched a few classic scifi films including Start Trek IV and 2001: A Space Odyssey. I haven’t seen either in many years and 2001 was particularly inspiring. Among the composers whose works Kubric lifted when he put together the soundtrack, beyond the famous Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss and Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss, was Atmosphères, Lux Aeterna, and Requiem by the Hungarian modernist Gyögy Ligeti.

The Ligeti stuff was some intense, crazy music, and so I decided to check out more of it. This eventually led my to his Musica Ricercata, a series of pieces for piano that are mostly not crazy but express a variety of moods and styles and are notable for progressively building from simple to complex. The first one uses just one note. His approach to modernism reminds me a bit of how Monk approaches jazz, often unexpectedly humorous in the way it plays with conventions of form and genre, while remaining very self-consistent.

Another series of piano pieces in a similar vein is Mikrokosmos Béla Bartók, which starts with both hands doubling the same figure using the pentatonic scale and a limited range, and progresses to the complex and bizarre.

The third piece of sheet music came from my trying to find a chart for one of my songs I’m introducing to my jazz group. On the way I came across a cache of old sheet music someone gave me once that I didn’t even know I had. In there was a book of Art Tatum transcriptions. Art Tatum is one of my all-time favorite piano players with a unique and virtuosic stride-based swinging style that influence Keith Emerson and Eddie Van Halen, as well as countless jazz carts. I doubt I’ll be able to play these pieces at speed any time soon, but they’re worth studying for his approach to voicings and rhythm, particularly in the left hand, as well as where and how he inserts embellishments while maintaining the flow of the tune.

Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?

Since I started working from home full time about a year ago, I’ve been going for a walk every morning in lieu of a morning commute. (I’ll usually practice music in lieu of an evening commute.) Since the pandemic started, alot of other people in my neighborhood have been going for walks too, so I’ve been getting to know my neighbors past my block better than before, although we’ve lived here for many years.

I’m not the only one on my block who’s doing home improvements these days. The guy across the street is putting in a new deck, and the people two houses down are putting in a new patio too, although theirs is made of paving blocks not bluestone flagstones. My next next door neighbor Jose is rebuilding his front porch.

Over the weekend Jose helped my transplant my hydrangea shrub. You’ll recall that I tried to dig it out and basically gave up because I couldn’t get any leverage underneath to pry it loose. Jose is a professional landscaper, which is great cuz his yard always looks fantastic, plus he’s got alot of tools and knowledge. He had a couple shovels with extra long handles, which made it much easier to get underneath and pry the rootball from the earth. One we got it out, Jose had the idea that we could split the plant in half and have two of them. We planted one in the new spot I had picked out, and the other we put back close to where it came out, but about a foot further from the house and two feet further away from the patio, so it has room to grow.

Meanwhile things have been busy with work and various projects. I was on at least one zoom call eight days in a row. About half of these are recurring weekly meetings. While the circle of people I talk to face to face has grown extremely local, the circle of people I’m in social contact with has grown very wide indeed. In just the last week or two it includes people in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, Long Island, New Jersey, Buffalo, Victor, Westerlo, Saranac Lake, Illinois, Texas, Florida, Colorado, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Singapore, Vermont, The Netherlands, Saugerties and Fredonia. Very 21st century.

Na-Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye

It feels like I’ve been so busy recently I have no time to get anything done.

The patio is all finished, and it came out great. I got the patio itself done before the end of October, finishing up on Halloween day by filling in the cracks between the stones with sand. The last week of October was kinda stormy and rainy but the first part of November has been mild and beautiful again. The leaves area all golden all around right now. But the days are getting short fast. Suddenly it’s nighttime at five o’clock.

After the patio there was some landscaping to do. The main thing was to use up the pile of dirt that I created digging out the area. Some of it went to fill in low spots in the yard, and the rest to making a slope from the edge of the patio into the existing yard.

I have a hydrangea shrub in my year, right at the edge of the patio where it meets the house. The last task was to move it a couple feet so it would have more room to grow. Unfortunately the thing has grown so big that I was unable to get it out of the ground. I dug around it but couldn’t actually get underneath, and it wouldn’t budge. So I filled it back in and that’s that.

With that done and winter coming, hopefully I’ll get a bike ride or two in before the end of the season. And get back to origami soon.

The recording project proceeds apace. I got my strings and bells in on Autumn Eyes, just a subtle of backing in a few parts. For the bells I’m going for an 80’s DX7 era ice chimes kinda sound. Still gotta track the drum brushes and mallets parts; been thinking that thru.

I did a first pass at a sax solo on Why Not Zed, and the mood is right but I need to get more facile on this changes. It’s an easy part on guitar but on sax it’s got alot of modulation. Kinda like Well You Needn’t by Monk. I added a synth part too. Each new voice is pulling it in a different direction. I like the chaotic effect but it might be a bit much.

Stone Free

I’m still in the middle of mostly the same things. The dude abides.

The patio project nears completion. Just two more big stones to place, and three little ones. I been working an hour or two a day most days, sometimes more. The first week I got alot done, but the second week was slow due to several rainy days. I put in the fill but had to tamp it down and wait for it to dry and tamp it down again.

Last week I got back up to speed, putting in the bed of sand over the fill and laying the stones on top of that. I had originally estimated the amount of sand I’d need based on it being about and inch to an inch and half deep, but it was more like an inch and half to two inches. On top of that, the existing patio had sunk a bit over time on the side away from the house. I had to lift up and level off a bunch of old stones along with the new ones. I didn’t really count on the extent of this so it added a few days and I had to go back and buy more sand.

I should be done this week if the weather is good.

…

I’m close done two of my songs – Autumn Eyes (formerly Winter Wolf Whisper) and Why Not Zed.

Why Not Zed is a post-punk rocker. It now has the guitar and vocals down. All that’s needed is a solo, probably a sax, and maybe some noisy synths back there and some extra background vocals.

Autumn Eyes is a jazz ballad I wrote for the group last year. My recording is another experiment in computer studio jazz; I’d say it’s pretty successful. I played all the instruments, including a piano solo and bass solo, and all hangs together nicely and gives a convincing illusion of spontaneity among a group of players. I tried to approach each solo differently in terms of melody, rhythm and pacing. I was thinking asking Jay to do the bass part, but he wanted to play to a more-or-less completed track and I wanted to have a bass track laid down pretty early, so I did my own, and kept it cuz I like it. Now I’m experimenting with effects to get a good jazz tone out of a fender bass. Lots of treble and chorus.

I wrote the song with soprano sax in mind. Somewhere along the line I played it on tenor and the guys in the group said they liked that better. I recorded it both ways cuz I can’t decide. Each is good in their own way but changes the character of the song.

I still wand to add a little 80’s style string-synthesizer and maybe a few other background instruments for sweetening. Also gonna try some real drums, particularly snare drum with brushes and cymbals with mallets.

My third song Heavy Water is coming along. It was originally gonna be a 70s-ish funk-fusion thing a la the Headhunters, but its evolved into a more videogame vibe. Today I laid down a rough take of the sax. I have a pretty specific idea of how I want two saxes and a synth to weave in and out. But boy, I’ve gotta learn how to improvise on those changes. The original idea of the chord progression was to just have a four-chord loop, but I ended up using two contrasting chord loops, alternating in a complex pattern that catches me off guard from time to time.

In any event, I’m on track to have all these done before the end of the fall. That’ll put me at about 25 minutes of produced music this year – a new record!

And the Cradle Will Rock

It turns out it’s alot easier to listen to all the Van Halen albums than all the Rush albums. There were only six of ’em back in the day with Diamond Dave, and many of them are barely over a half hour long. I guess I’ll try some of the Van Hagar stuff to, since I stopped following them after 5150 and only came back for A Different Kind of Truth. In other listening, I’ve been getting into Mingus, Gershwin, Ravel and Franz Liszt lately.

The patio project is on! Two weeks ago Friday I went down to the stoneyard and met with the guy and placed an order. A couple days later he called me saying he didn’t have all of the big 2’x’3′ stones in inventory (yeesh!), so I had to adjust my plan. A week ago Friday the stuff was delivered.

Last Saturday I started digging out the area, down 8″ or so. Shoveling is probably the hardest single job because dirt is pretty heavy and after hundreds of reps the stress accumulates on lower back. So I decided from the beginning to mainly work in sessions of a couple hours every day.

Since the project involves alot of heavy lifting, I’ve temporarily modified my workout to reduce the number of reps and amount of weights I’m doing. Unfortunately I haven’t been doing much biking recently cuz the time I would spend doing that is going toward the patio instead. Ah well.

Sunday I started laying in the stones to form the edge. I’m using 16″ x 8″ concrete pavers for this, and need 21 of them for my perimeter of 28 feet. The work involved more digging out, and lots of measuring, as well as actually seating the stones and packing them in with dirt and fill. So the first session I only got three done. Next day my pace improved and I got five in. The day after there was less measuring, just filling across in a straight line, so I got six done, and the last seven on Wednesday.

Thursday I took a day off. Friday I pulled out the old stones on the edge of the patio where I’m extending it, leveled out the bottom, and started filling in the fill. This was an extra long session, three or four hours. I got 10 wheelbarrow’s worth of fill in, probably half the total if you include what I brought in to seat the edging stones. Sunday I was hoping to finish the fill, but it got harder to shovel as the pile got lower, so I stopped after another nine wheelbarrows. I have about that amount remaining.

Today it rained all day, and it’s supposed to rain tomorrow too, so I’ll get back to it in a few days. After putting in the fill I have to tamp it all down, then start in with the sand and the actual stones. Finally there’s some landscaping, moving a shrub, grading the edges, filling in low spots in my yard with leftover dirt, putting down grass seed. I’m hoping to be all done by the end of October. Jeannie is already shopping for a fire pit to put on the new patio.

The weather had been super nice the last few weeks up to today. September just kinda slid into October without us even noticing. It’s been sunny, in the low 70’s and dry; we haven’t had rain in weeks. Last night was the first night it got cool and today I even ran the heat for a little bit. I’ll probably take out the air conditioners this week.

…

My recording project is proceeding apace. I tracked the bass parts for Why Not Zed? and Heavy Water. Once the bass part is down, the song feels reel because it’s the first audio (as opposed to MIDI) instrument. No more going back to change the tempo or key or structure or feel. I’ll usually practice and do a few takes over a few days, to really get a feel for the song. While I’m at I’ll tweak the drum part if necessary to make it groove better here and there.

This evening I also laid down the guitar part for Why Not Zed? Y!Z is a heavy rock song, while the others are jazz ballad and a sorta funky fusion number. A few months ago I did the guitar for The Story Lies. It felt so laborious and involved alot of experimentation before I got the setup right. This time it couldn’t have been easier. I split the output of the guitar and recorded one channel clean and the other thru my stomp box. I used preset #60, a basic heavy distortion, very meaty. The part went down just like that, in one take. I discovered a great voicing for a 7#9 chord to end the song on. I recorded a second take, even though I probably didn’t need to, just cuz I was having fun. I almost feel like the guitar is secretly easier than any other instrument, at least at a certain level. Maybe that’s why there are so many mediocre guitarists out there.

Anyway, next up is vocals for Y!Z, then it’s on to saxes on all three songs, and then whatever synths and keyboards I need to round things our.

Meanwhile, my drumming is continuing to improve. I’m up to 5- and 9-stroke rolls in my rudiments, and that’s also really improving my long roll. I can jam thru all kinds of basic rock grooves with different patterns on the kick drum, with more endurance, precision, dynamics and phrasing, and I can sustain faster tempos. Also learning my first Latin patterns, and some grooves in 5/8 and 7/4.

…

I’ve been learning Drupal for the OUSA web project. Recently it’s been alot of reading documentation cuz there’s alot of baked-in concepts, and bit of poking around and experimenting. Then the other day my friend Mark up in the Adirondacks called me up (yes they’ve already had snow) and asked if I wanted to help him with a freelance project. It’s in Drupal too, so this gives me a chance to sink my teeth into something way less complex, leveraging what I already know. The timing couldn’t’ve been better.

Lastly, Jeannie and actually left the house to do something social. We didn’t feel like going to a restaurant or anything for our anniversary. But then my friend Nick out on Long Island had an Oktoberfest party. He usually has a few parties a year, but not so much this year. This one was greatly scaled back, just a dozen or so people, and was all outside. We ended up staying late and talking half the night. Good to catch up with friends, but these are strange days and lots of people are going thru different things.

Party on the Patio

As sometimes happens, I’m in the middle of a number of things, all of which are at a point where there’s obstacles to moving forward.

Fall is here, the days are getting shorter and nights are turning colder. Soon the season for biking and rollerblading will be over. We ran the heat for the first time yesterday morning. Jeannie is back to commuting into the city, at least for the next few weeks. Michelle has started school. Last week she attended classes online; this week she’s going into the the school. She’s pretty happy and excited about that. I’m picking her up in the afternoons, since we don’t want her taking the bus or train under the current circumstances. I have the house to myself in the daytime for the first time since March. I’ve started getting up early again.

I narrowed down the number of songs I’m actively recording to three. They’re all coming along. This is the most satisfying thing I’m doing at the moment. Mostly it just takes time, but it’s fun to spend time on it. Doing creative work of any kind means a certain amount of thinking and exploring, which to an outsider can look an awful lot like doing nothing, and of course there’s always has the risk of coming up empty, or with an unsatisfactory result. So one must keep trying or move on to something else. Then, once in a while and idea comes together and way forward is clear, at least until the next obstacle.

For Why Not Zed? the chords and song structure came together pretty quickly and I’ve laid down a basic track with midi bass and drums. I’m practicing the bass and guitar parts to lay down fairly soon. It’s a fairly heavy, rocking uptempo number. I originally envisioned it as something like They Might Be Giants might come up with, but it’s leaning more toward Crimso Astronomy Domine with a pop-punk edge.

Heavy Water is also coming along nicely. I have the song structure, the piano part, a synth bass, and a sketch of the melody, which will weave between the sax and synthesizer. Also practicing the bass guitar part, which I’m gonna lay down at the same time as Why Not Zed?

Autumn Eyes (a.k.a. Wolf Whisper) is further along. The main thing it needs is the sax part, which I’m gonna record when I do the sax for Heavy Water. I took my midi drum part and sliced up up so I can control the level of the different elements of the drum kit, but the drums are pretty minimal on this one. I’m thinking of recording some live drums on it too, to get sounds I can’t get from a drum machine, like brushes.

Plague of Frogs and the others are on the back burner for now. I’ll continue to work on the arrangements while I track these three.

I’m improving playing the drums. I can do a roll now, although there’s room for greater speed and evenness. Working on that and a handful of other rudiments. I can play more and more beats with more solidity and consistency at different tempos. Working on solid kick drum and building up endurance, especially for double and triple hits. In addition to the grooves I’m reading out of books, I’m putting together a few in 5/8 and 7/8 time with different feels.

And – this is potentially exciting – I’ve put together a new jazz group. I think I mentioned I started playing back in July at Lagond, with Mike O. and Rich F. and a new version of the old jazz circle. I haven’t played with them for over a year, so it’s good to be back and nice the group is finding it’s sound and seems to be hitting pretty strong. We’re doing an interesting mix of material, some of which is new to me.

But that’s just a rehearsal band. So in addition, back in August I hooked up with a piano player named Steve, who was looking to get together and jam. I invited Ken on bass and Steve on drums (it seems there’s always two guys with the same name) and we had a quartet. In addition to jazz standards we’re doing some fusion things like Metheny, Joco, Michael Brecker, Chick Corea and Weather Report. Well dig prog rock too. We’ve gotten together three or four times. So far it’s pretty fun, sounds good, and it seems like everyone is on the same wavelength. Too early to really tell, but it may have legs. Or wings. On the downside, the piano player seems to have to travel alot for his job, so that may make it hard to get a weekly thing going.

Alas, the original-oriented rock group remains grounded for want of a guitar player, even though Ken and Steve are into it.

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In other news, my origami book got to be far enough along that I’ve begun looking into publishing options. I have diagrams and page layouts done for nine models, and was working on the table of contents and planning out how many photos I’d need and of what models. The book was looking to be around sixty to sixty-four pages. I reached out to my friend John M and Marc K, who have a lot more experience publishing than I do, and they both had some good advice.

The main thing is I’ve decided to bring my book up to 120 to 128 pages or so, because that seems to be more commercially viable sweet spot. This of course means adding more models. In addition to the nine I already completed, I have five more diagrammed and ready to go; I just need to do the page layouts. Then I have three of four more designed and partially diagrammed, and another five or so that are partially designed but not yet fully worked out or diagrammed. So we’re looking at a few months at least. In the meantime I’ve decided I’m going to take some of the models and put them together in groups, essentially like a chapter of the book, and sell them as digital downloads on the Origami USA web site. So watch this space for that.

Speaking of the OUSA web site, I’ve signed on to create a new scheduling app for conventions and such, and began actively working on it in July. I’ve been working with Robert L., our webmaster, to get up to speed. The level of software to install and configure is pretty heavy. There’s Drupal, Drush, CiviCRM, PHP, a bunch of custom scripts, and whole host of other technologies on the stack. I’m the first person Robert ever tried to onboard, so we worked our thru issue after issue until I finally have the whole web site running on my local machine. Whew, it only took about six weeks.

Now I’m starting in the actual design and development. So far that’s been reading the existing code, the Drupal User’s Guide and Developer’s Guide and discussing thins with Robert. I’ve never written a Drupal module before, and the requirements are only partly clear. Ah fun.

Elsewhere in software development, the Global Jukebox proceeds apace. We’re looking to do another push to live in a few weeks, so it’ll be all shiny for the school kids using the classroom module. I recently put in a new piece of UX/UI to browse the new world taxonomy. It’s called the New Wheel, and unlike the Old Wheel, which radiates out from the center, but became too dense wit the introduction of the new Taxonomy, this one winds inward like the tumblers on a combination lock. It’s built entirely out of javascript, svgs and css and features cool animations. Very informative, intuitive and beautiful, plus the code itself is really quite good if I say so myself. After my last job at that chaotic startup, it’s so nice to able to have control over the codebase and actually write high-quality, well thought-out and well structured code.

Now we’re in the long tail of of random little bug fixes and usability issues, plus we want to get in a couple more minor features. I spent the last few days tweaking icons and going back’n’forth with Anna and Kiki about what everything things looks good and communicates the right idea.

Meanwhile Martin’s been looking at the backend, where our creaky old django/python app is in danger of being made obsolete due a pressing need to upgrade to a newer version of linux on our servers, in order to fix a timekeeping issue. Long story, big headache. Anyway he’s been doing alot and we’ll get there.

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And lastly, the topic that was the point of this whole post, the Patio Project. Well this is actually Patio Project part II. Back when Michelle was a baby and our house was new I built a stone path around the side of the house and patio in the back yard. My dad came down and helped me with the patio part. It’s made of bluestone flagstones on a bed of compacted sand over crushed stone. It took us five days if I recall, and one of those days was making a concrete step.

Well now I want to enlarge the patio to go deeper into the yard, so I’m adding an extension of 4′ x 20′. There have been a few delays getting going on this project. I first started thinking seriously about it last summer, but it was too hot to work on it then. The fall came and went I was too busy with other stuff. Then I figured I’d do it in the spring, but then it was the pandemic and the lockdown, and suddenly building supplies were scarce and I was sick for a month anyway. Then it was summer and too hot again. But at least I made a plan and figured out what materials I’d need.

Shortly after Labor Day looked up the place where I got the stones and other supplies for the original patio. But they’re out of business, and the lot is now a parking lot for school busses. So this weekend I researched where else I might get stones and sand and all that. I found three places within a reasonable distance and sent them each an email describing the project, listing the materials I think I need, and asking for a quote. Two of them got back to me and were both helpful, although one forgot to actually attach the quote to his reply.

In any event, it looks like it’s on! Hopefully this week I’ll go to one of these places and pick out the actual stones and arrange the delivery. I figure it’ll be three or four full days of work on my own, all though I’m more likely to break it into several sessions of a few hours each spread out over a few weeks. I figure I should get done pretty easily by the end of October.