Category: People

Tafari

Here’s a blast from the past: a friend recently posted this pic, an album cover from the band Tafari from the early 1990’s, of which I was a member. Tafari was a summer party band and we were only together for a few months, but in that time we gigged out a lot and even managed to record an EP of four original songs. The set was mainly Bob Marley and Steely Dan plus a bunch of reggae-influenced originals and a smattering of other stuff in the summertime party vibe. It was a large group consisting of a singer, drummer, percussionist, bass, two keyboards, two guitars and a three piece horn section. We were kind of an all-start lineup of the Kenmore music scene at the time. Led by Jim Parry, members included Bill Ross, Joe Quebral, Mark Colecchia, Chris Sierzchula, Matt Cline, Mark Hofschneider, Dan Jablon, Paul Bernstien, and your truly. I had thought Martin had sat in on a show but he says no. We pretty much used the money from every gig to buy beer for the next rehearsal.

We did the record Wiser Than Forest of Owls toward the end of the summer. Matt Cline and I did the cover art. Somehow I lost my copy over the years. If anyone has one, I’d love to hear these tracks again. From what I remember it came out quite well, and I even player clarinet on one song.

Eric Joisel

International origami master Eric Joisel passed away over the weekend. I was a big admirer of his work, truly some of the most detailed and expressive origami ever created. Eric came to paperfolding from a background as a sculptor in clay and wood, had a highly developed style both thematically and aesthetically, and was particularly adept at human figures, faces and characters. You can see some of the best of his work at: ericjoisel.com.

Colored Lights Can Hypnotize

My friend Leo Villareal is an artist who works in the medium of flashing LED’s. I’ve known him since grad school when he was just getting started with this stuff, and I did some programming on one of his light shows a while back. Yesterday CNET ran an article about him and his work, including an new exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art. Leo’s a brilliant and kind guy, and it’s good to see him getting to this level of success and recognition.

Camping 2010 Pics

Last weekend I went camping with bunch of friends. It’s become an annual tradition and the group grew so big we split into to two groups a few years back. We this year both groups came back together for the same weekend, so it was a huge, great time. Best camping trip so far, in fact. The kids are old enough now we can pretty much let them run around without worrying too much. Saturday I slept in, and when I got up went to my brother’s site, asking if my kids were there. No, but would you like some coffee and eggs? Went down to the next site where my friend Nick was staying. Same thing, no kids, but here’s some breakfast. Finally caught up to them across the road at Erik’s site. Best thing of all: no rain. We stayed until Sunday evening and until finally few drops convinced us to finish packing the car.

Beat The Heat Part II

Been doing some good summertime stuff. A week or so ago Jeannie and I took the kids to Rye Playland, the local amusement park, for an evening of rollercoasters and that sort of thing. A few weeks back we brought them into the city for a trip to the Nintendo store and the new Lego store.

I’ve been trying to watch more TV with the kids. I’ve heard that most American households watch 6 or more hours of TV a day, but I have the opposite problem. I’m trying to go from zero to one hour of TV a week, or at least every other week. Specifically I’m trying to watch NOVA with the kids to help them get more of an appreciation for science in the real world. We all enjoy the show, but we’re usually busy when its on and we forget. Last week remembered, and it was about a bunch of guys trying to salvage an old WWII airplane that’s been sitting out in the ice in Greenland for fifty-odd years. This led to a whole flurry of renewed interest in flying and flying machines.

My friend John the origami artist came down from Washington for a visit this weekend. He’s been working on a bunch of new books and e-books, including new editions of some of his classic books, and some all-new ones too. He’s in a very productive, prolific phase right now. He’s got a fourth Polyhedra book coming out. This one I think will be the most accessible yet (it eschews the most difficult shapes like dipyramids) and offers a whole bunch of new models. Hidden in the pages is a wealth of geometric folding techniques, such as about ten different ways to fold an 18 or 36 degree angle.

My day job continues to keep me busy but everyone is focused on our upcoming launch now, and things seem to have finally gotten organized, at least for the time being.

Beat The Heat Part I

Summer continues. The heat wave continues, with temperatures remaining in the mid to upper 90’s daily the last couple weeks. My friend Seth gave us an old air conditioner because he got central air put in his house. Normally in the summer we just have a cool zone in the bedrooms and we don’t even need that every day, but this year we were grateful to expand the cool zoon to the whole upstairs.

Seth’s dad Shelly passed away recently. Mark and Kelly came into town for a from the Adirondack for the funeral. A sad occasion but good to catch up. I’ll always remember Seth’s dad for a day I spent on his sailboat many years ago. I was a hot summer Saturday, when I was living in Queens, before I was married. Seth called me up and asked if wanted to go sailing. It told him I had planned on doing laundry. He convinced me to drop off my washing, something which had never occurred to me to do.

It was a great day sailing. We started up in Ossining sailed down the Hudson and under the Tappen Zee, almost to the George. Coming back we were sailing into the headwind and had to do quite a bit of tacking. Shelly had a pretty big boat (40 feet or so) and I’d only ever sailed little Sunfish before. I was really impressed at how he and Lynn could operate everything with ease, how coordinated they were. All the ropes were rigged that he could have run the boat himself, managed the sails and the rudder, from one spot if he needed to. It was a really great experience.

Zingcookie

Michelle is curious about computers and my work, and asked me to help her make her own web site. She’s got a theme, and lots of great ideas for games and videos and things. Last night I helped her get going with it. I showed her how to use an html editor, what a link is, how to do styles and layout, and how to refresh the page in the browser and upload content to a server. She’s like “That’s like magic! Okay, I know it’s not really magic, it’s technology. But it’s *like* magic!”.

So we got the first page done and she’s off to a good start. Check back periodically for updates.

http://zingman.com/zingcookie

Summer’s Here and the Time is Right

The season has progressed to full on summer. Finally made it to a long weekend, a much deserved and needed break after rather chaotic spell at work. Been trying to get our software release out the door, filling in for my boss who was on vacation, as well as running things since our project manager was gone too. Dealing with uncooperative directors of other projects, and that all-time favorite of software development, fixing other people’s bugs. Well all’s well that ends well I suppose and we met our deadline.

We went upstate to see Martin and Kathleen and Charlie over the weekend. Very nice hang. Went swimming, which was great for my back; the first time since the winter it really felt good. Unfortunately the car ride home undid that. We also watched the Queen open the British parliament on CSPAN. This was pretty random, but the girls are Anglophiliac these days because of Harry Potter, so we thought they like to see a real Queen in action commanding the Lords and Commons. The weirdest part was when the chief constable shouted “Hats off, strangers” before the Queen entered Parliament, predicted beforehand by a very blasé announcer.

I did some research into the wacky traditions of British government, and learned some interesting factoids. There is a movement afoot to replace the phrase “strangers” with “visitors” to be less anachronistic. The word strangers dates from the time of Cromwell. Smoking in parliament was banned in 1696, although snuff is available to all members at the public expense. Wearing of armor was banned in 1313. There’s a list of words banned from discourse that includes “blackguard”, “git”, and “traitor”.

Here’s some pictures from my yard and garden from 2 or 3 weeks back. The roses and fig tree are doing awesome, and we even have some ripe strawberries.