Category: People

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.

Ski Season Woo Hoo!

We just got back from a great weekend skiing with our friends Seth and Cathy and their daughter Erin. Thanks guys for a great time.

We went up Seth’s place Friday night and got up early and skied all day Saturday. The grownups skied on our own in the morning while the kids were in lessons, and in the afternoon we all skied together. The snow was really good and Lizzy and Michelle both did really well. Michelle went up the chair lift for the first time, and skied down the mountain a few times with good form and control, doing nice S-curves. I spent my afternoon mainly with her. One run we tailed along the end of a lesson of two other kids who were at Michelle’s level, joining in their train.

Sunday only Seth and Lizzy I and went skiing, while Jeannie and Cathy and Michelle and Eric hung around the house and plated in the snow. Seth, who used to be a ski instructor, gave Lizzy a lesson and I followed along working on my form, which was a good thing to do. Lizzy is getting good, skiing blue trails and even some diamonds, to the point where I have to work to keep up with her sometimes.

We only skied a half day Sunday, and as an added treat we got to see an awesome Jets game. I haven’t watched much football this year because: 1. I’m generally pretty busy and usually have things to do on Sunday, 2. I generally don’t like television cuz of the ads, and football on TV is like one giant commercial, and 3. I’m still down about the Buffalo Bills losing four Super Bowls in a row. But if there’s ever a time to get into it, it’s when your team makes the playoffs.

Right around the kickoff I was loading the car for the trip home, but we decided to stay until it looked like the game was getting to be a blowout. It turned out to be a real game, and we ended up staying for the whole thing. The Chargers made a few mistakes for sure, some stupid after-the-play penalties and some missed field goals. And while no one on the Jets made any spectacular plays, they really showed some discipline and came together as a team. Good defense, good running game, the classic way to win a football game. So now we’re all getting psyched about the possibility of the Jets making it to the super bowl. Still one game to get thru before that though.

And now, it looks as if our month-long frozen streak has abated. The weather this week looks to be mild, with highs into the forties. Feels positively balmy.

Californigami

I just got back from a great trip to San Francisco for the Pacific Coast Origami Conference. It was Jeannie’s idea for me to go, and I must say I was kind of ambivalent about the whole thing until I actually started the journey. But it was great and she deserves a big thanks. The conference went from Friday to Sunday and was a ton of fun. I lived in the Bay Area from the mid-90’s to the early 2000’s, but haven’t been back for a few years, so I also spent an extra day visiting old haunts and catching up with friends.

I must be getting older. Old people are famous for getting up early. It didn’t really bother me to have to get up at 4:30 to get to the airport in time. It felt like getting up for a normal day of work. A few random skipped meals didn’t bother me either, nor did the time zone change or lack of sleep. I cashed out the last of my frequent flier miles from the 90’s when I flew 100,000 miles a year and got an upgrade to business class. It was awesome! The seat was like a living room recliner chair. Since I’m well over 6 feet tall it made a big difference for me being able to nap on the plane.

I was flying alone and wanted everything to fit in my carry on including the models for my exhibit. For my exhibit I made a new batch of models from the designs I know well; sort of a greatest hits collection. These included my Elephant, Moose, Lizard, Turtle, Balloon, UFO, Luv Bug and Loon.

The Pacific Coast Origami Conference (PCOC) is smaller than the New York convention, but a bunch of friends showed up, including some NYC people like Jan and Tony, and the M.I.T. crowd including Brian, Jason, Aviv, Andrea and Tian, who are smart and geeky enough to be fun to hang out with, and others like Eric G, Jared, and Nathan. Brian makes lots of puns and Jason quotes Monty Python enthusiastically and inaccurately and sings contagiously. Andrea has moved to San Mateo and is working for Oracle and Aviv was out there for an interview. Nathan is done college and living in SF working as a school teacher. And so it goes.

I stayed at the hotel where the conference was, which made it pretty convenient. We had some really good Thai food in Japan Town after wandering around in an indecisive group looking for a place Robert Lang recommended, but knew neither the name or location. I bought some really nice origami paper and won a sheet of handmade origamido paper for participating in a folding challenge.

While I was there I folded (among other things) a new original model: an Eve robot to go with Brian’s Wall-E. I taught a class which was a hit. I’m working on a book and brought a whole stack of diagrams, hoping people would fold them and give me feedback. Everyone wanted to fold my Turtle since it was in the model menu, and so I taught that from memory while a few people folded from diagrams on the side.

I’d forgotten what a beautiful city SF is. So mellow and picturesque, especially compared to New York. Saturday morning I took an epic walk. I went from the hotel across town, down the crookedest block of Lombard Street, up to Coit Tower, and then down and around to the waterfront, Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf. I had planned on riding the cable car back to the hotel, but when I got there the line was way too long and there was a bad guitarist playing guitar and singing badly to try and get tips from the people in queue. So I walked back up to the hotel.

Monday I rented a car and drove down 280 to Silicon Valley. I had lunch with my friend Wanda in Palo Alto. It was great to see her and catch up. It was a beautiful day and fun to see my old neighborhood. I went for a hike at a place called Windy Hill, which is just up at the top of the hills from there. The ride up is a crazy switchback road thru redwood forests. From the top you can look down and see Stanford, Moffett Field and the whole bay, and even San Francisco off in the distance. Turn around and you see the Pacific Ocean out over the hills to the west.

Ah, my heart is torn in two. I loved living there and love the land and the climate and the culture and people and everything about the place and would love to go back.

In other news, Lizzy got her cast off the day I left. She was born in California and fantasizes about going to college at Stanford as her destiny. I tell her get good grades. She’s with me in pining to move back. I suppose if the right opportunity comes up. But then there’s reality of there here and now.

The last thing the happened at work before I left was that I packed up my office. My whole project moved to a new floor. I flew the red eye overnight Monday and worked at home yesterday, so today I got in to see my new space. It’s much nicer than my old one. It’s a corner office with windows on three walls and a view of Hell’s Kitchen and Times Square. The movers didn’t take my chair (which was a nice one that I brought with me from Nick when I joined the platform group), and my colleagues told me the chairs all were gone and lost. But I went up there and another guy had appropriated it, and gave it back without me having to get too insistent. Another thing, my company just announced extra days off for everyone for the holidays, so it looks like I can take a good long xmas vacation this year.

Coming soon: pictures!

Origami Polyhedra Design

My friend John Montroll has a new book out, called Origami Polyhedra Design. It’s been in the works for quite a while and is a real tour de force. Congratulations John! This is his third book on origami polyhedra, and his first for the publisher A. K. Peters. (They publish a bunch of origami books including Robert’s ODS, and the Proceedings from the 3OSME Conference, which contains a paper by yours truly.) Unlike most origami polyhedra, which are modular, John’s are always from a single square sheet. This a challenging and rigorous style to fold in.

In a change from John’s usual style, this book is much thicker, almost 300 pages, and divided into three major sections. The first is a wealth of theory including general principles, design techniques and consideration, and methods for dividing into nths, for finding angles, folding various polygons, and other related topics. This is really good stuff. The second section of the book is devoted to a variety of models related to the Platonic Solids, including color-change and sunken variations. Totally awesome. The third section is Dipyramid models. This a particular specialty of John’s and there is a great variety of dipyramids with different proportions and number of facets, and a chapter of really cool dimpled (semi-sunken) dipyramids.

All in all the book is really quite amazing, and really takes origami polyhedra design to the next level. And while it is a real Magnum Opus, John has enough unpublished polyhedra to form the basis of anther book, so I hope this one does well and a sequel materializes.

John asked me to fold a few of the models pictured on the cover. I must say it’s very nice looking cover, with the model well arranged and photographed. John’s site is not yet updated to list the new book, and if you go to order it on Amazon there is no cover image yet. So I was taking some pictures of my models for the upcoming PCOC origami convention in San Francisco, and thought I’d share a shot of John’s book while I’m at it. (I know the lizard there doesn’t strictly fit with the theme, but it reminded me of an Escher print and I thought it looked cool.)

Blues Forever

Back in the day my brother Martin decided to teach himself how to play guitar. Once he got the basics together it seemed that almost out of nowhere he started writing a stream of songs, all of them quite good and some of them really powerful and beautiful, and some surprisingly dark. In short order he put together a band named Shade and started gigging out with the material. Sort of an distortion-guitar-driven post-prog pop vibe. I was an instant fan. We even played a few double bills with my band and his.

Shade broke up and Martin went on to commit these songs to tape using a four-track cassette recorder, very advanced technology for the day. He recently digitized the songs and put them online as The Shade Songbook. You can hear the tracks here. The songs hold quite up well and I’m really having a blast listening to them again. (I suppose they could use some modern EQ and tape hiss removal, but Martin made no attempt at such twenty-first century revisionism). Favorites include At The Show, Blues Forever, Just Another Heart Attack, Frozen Ocean, Making Miles … well there are alot of songs. You can get Martin’s take on the project here.

Fall Groove

Well it’s more of the same over here. Nonstop busy. Work work work, making Jack a dull boy. My job situation with the clueless manager seems to have sorted itself out at least. The fall has come. Leaf raking season is upon us, although I expect I’ll still have to mow the lawn one more time. It’s getting darker and colder. We have to turn the heat on every night these days. Starting to get up before the sky is fully light. Ugh. And it’s no longer light or warm enough to go skating in the evening when I get home from work. So I’ve switched to using the Nordic Track indoors, which is not as much fun but I can listen to music while I’m doing it, so it gives me a chance to listen to the mixes from my record. Continuing to chip away at that, thank you very much.

I did some cool origami stuff. I made some “megafauna” models to donate to the American Museum of Natural History for their holiday tree. More on that soon. I’ll take some pictures tomorrow in the daylight. I’ve also started diagramming my Medieval Dragon. It starts with dividing the paper into ninths, which is something I always used to eyeball, but for the diagrams I worked out how to do it the legit mathematical way, which is pretty cool.

Jeannie and celebrated out Crytsal anniversary last week (I looked it up). It was a school night and so we did laundry and helped the kids study. Ah, married life after 15 years. We did meet for lunch in the city and go to a nice Thai place called Yum Yum. Afterwards we went to Toys’R’Us in Times Square and I bought her a lego dwarven catapult.

Denis and Sarah came to visit last weekend. We all had lots of fun. Carrie and Michelle always get on great and little Anna is walking already. Saturday Mary’s all came over and Jeannie’s parents too. Jeannie made a fantastic dinner for sixteen people. Chicken parmesan, eggplant parmesan and pasta. I was surprised to discover we had enough tables and chairs for everyone to eat once.

Fall Down

Well the fall weather has arrived. We’ve passed the equinox and turned into the dark side of the year. The sun is setting sooner; not many days left for rollerblading after work. Last night it got down into the forties and we had to turn on the heat in the house. Today it’s only up to the mid fifties. Definite jacket weather. I mowed the lawn for possibly the last time this season this afternoon.

I’ve been very busy, but have had some time for family and friends. The kids have been watching more Star Wars, and I discovered episodes I – III are tolerable when you watch them in half-hour chunks. Michelle has been learning Weird Al’s “The Saga Begins” on the Ukulele and actually doing a pretty good job.

Last weekend Martin and Kathleen and their baby boy Charlie came down for a visit. I was great to see them and get caught up. We went down to Long Island for a party for our friend Nick, which was great too, and included a wider circle of friends to catch up with.

Towards the end of the night, the kids were playing scooters in the front and Lizzy fell down and hurt her arm. It turned out she has a hairline fracture in her radius and had to get a cast. So she’s out of gymnastics and swimming for the next month, but otherwise OK, and in good spirits. Everyone at school signed her cast, which made her quite happy.

New Recording: Touch The Ceiling Rough Mix

Here’s a rough mix of my new song Touch The Ceiling. As mentioned previously this was an original from the prog rock party band Infinigon, written by our drummer Mark Colicchia. My friend John Neumann, the original Infinigon bassist helped me with this song, contributing the bass and guitars, backing vocals and some synthesizer textures. It was a lot of fun collaborating with John. He had a bunch of new fresh ideas that expanded my idea of what the song could be.

The arrangement was true in spirit to the original version, but updated as well. The major difference is now we have all this machinery making modern music where back in the day we had to cover all the parts live. The spine of track is my Fender Rhodes part, on top of which I layered a lead synth that was fairly faithful to the original. On top of that we layered a few more synths. John broke down the guitar part into layers and built it up track by track, and in the end I had six tracks of guitars to integrate, a veritable guitar army!

Mark was one of the best drummers, if not the best drummer I ever worked with, and I tried to do justice to his style, energy, and chops in my drum track. I record my drums using the “four finger” method. I use a general midi drum kit layout and the left hand covers the kick drum and snare and the right hand does the hi-hat and cymbals. Then I go back and punch in and/or hand edit anything extra I need. I don’t typically use a lot of fills, but in the song it seemed like a good idea. There’s even an eight-bar drum break after the guitar solo that was a lot of fun to do.

My vocal on this song was delivered in a more hard rock style than usual. I was inspired by John’s suggestion to listen to David Lee Roth on some classic Van Halen. John later claimed he was joking, but I think the vocal is quite successful. I even added some spontaneous lyrics in the ending jam, as all chaos breaks loose among the synths and guitars. There’s going to be a fade out in the final version, but for now it just runs out to the end of the jam.

So this is it for the songs on my new record. Next I’ll be going over them one by one with an ear to fine tuning the levels and effects and cleaning up anything I might’ve missed, in preparation for the final mixdown and mastering.