Category: People

Angel Or Alien: Rough Mix

Okay, here it is, my new song:

http://zingman.com/music/mp3/roughMixes/AngelOrAlien0734.mp3

Thanks to John Neumann for rendering out the midi of my synth solo on his Nord Lead synthesizer, providing an extra dimension of analog wow. It’s mixed in with my software simulated Moog.

Still have to do the actual mixing — you know, the faders and pans and most of the effects, but the arrangement is there and the idea certainly comes across. I will probably add some vocal harmonies in the chorus and some percussion in the second half of the synth solo, and possibly a few scifi synth effects. Other than that I’m not sure if the song needs much else.

Enjoy!

Plumbing the Depths

The leak in our laundry room ceiling was getting larger and damper until we decided ignoring it and hoping it would go away on its own was not a good strategy. I was really dreading having to work in it, since I didn’t really know how to diagnose the problem, or quite possibly fix it, plus I just came off a rather large unexpected home improvement project. Luckily for us, help was at hand. Lizzy has a friend at school, Hannah, and as luck would have, Hannah’s dad Peter is a plumber, and was happy to help us out. Thank you Peter!

He came over and cut a hole in our ceiling and had a look. He knew just what he was doing and had the tools, and so pretty quickly he spotted the problem and fixed it, so that was just great. It turned out to be the toilet — a slow intermittent leak because the main seal was starting to go. So whew. My big fear was that it would turn out to be the bathtub and we’d have to tear out the whole tub surround. We’re planning on tiling out bathroom this fall, so now would be a good time to know about it any event, but luckily that turned out not be the case. Everything else up in the space between the floor and the ceiling looked nice and dry and clean.

As it turns out, Peter is from Liverpool, UK, so I get I by with a little help from my friends. Now all I have left to do is fixing a hole. Sheet rock, taping and painting. From this point on there’s nothing I can do that can’t be done, even if it’ll take another weekend or two. I feel like I’m in a ever-widening circle of projects like this, so hopefully I can finish getting things fixed before something new breaks. But then tomorrow never knows.

Chippy With Legos

Tonight we have a guest blogger. Elizabeth wants to talk about her new Lego project.

“I have two littlest pet shop hamsters Chippy and Chipply and I wanted them to have a place to sleep. I built them a Lego bunk bed with a canopy on the top bunk. Here are some pictures. I hope you like it. And one more thing: Chippy is my favorite Pet Shop pet. He was a birthday present from my Unlce Martin.”

GE Music Update

Here’s an update to the GE Music music player. Erik and Glenn have put up hundreds of new tracks! Wild stuff, and an incredible range of diversity, masterful treatment of lots of styles. Rock, jazz, heavy metal, orchestral, electronic; its in there. In addition to lots of instrumental tracks for TV shows, commercials, and the like, there are a few straight-up songs with vocals. Just leave on shuffle play for few hours for a mind-expanding tour of sensational sounds.

Go to GE’s homepage (http://www.gemusic.com/) and click on “Music” in menu on the top. Or if you prefer, here”s a direct link (http://www.gemusic.com/player/geMusicPlayer.html) to the player.

Fun With Chess

I’ve been having lots of fun lately teaching Lizzy chess. I’ve tried this before a few times over the last couple years, but she was mainly interested in the drama of the game (“Oh no you captured my knight!!!”) and then the captured pieces would make friends and collude to plot their escape, or the king and queen would go off and get married. Girls, go figure). Now she’s at an age where she can think in terms of groups of pieces and sequences of moves, attacking, guarding etc., so things are a lot more interesting. Perhaps most importantly, having a Nintendo has taught her it’s fun to play a game even if you lose again and again, because slowly building skill with the end goal of beating the boss can be rewarding in its own right.

I remember about that age – 7ish – being really into chess and playing mainly against my brother Martin. It seemed like the thing to do once checkers got boring. Our dad started us off but we learned fairly organically, playing game after game until we got pretty good. When we got older we studied it a bit, but I’m no great expert. Also, I haven’t really had anyone in my life in ages who was regular chess partner at me level, so it’s nice to have a chess partner, even a beginner. However all this said, we play fairly loosely, and I often spot her a few pieces, or even a lot of pieces, and give her hints on what might be a good move, let here take back moves and play out “what if” scenarios. Sometimes we’ll switch sides in the middle of a game. So we do get into some rather uncommon board positions from time to time.

One of them came up the other day when I had a king on the run with just a few pawns and a bishop. I moved onto a square that would normally be check, but the pawn that was threatening the square was pinned because if it moved it would mean discovered check for her side. So the question came up, is this a legal move? Is the pawn really threatening the square if it can’t move? Is the pawn considered to leave the starting square *before* arriving the end square, or is it in some sense simultaneous? I’ve never seen this situation before and wondered did I happen upon something extremely clever, or was I just breaking a rule? Since we had no immediate way to decide the question, I just moved somewhere else instead. My guess is it’s probably not a legal move or would have seen it used before.

Summer Camping, Part II

We just got back from another weekend of camping, this time in the opposite end of the Catskills, with our friend Seth and his daughter Erin, and our friends the Blickers, and bunch of friends of theirs. We’ve been doing this a few years now, and it seems to get larger every year, so we’ve dubbed it Blickapalooza. More hiking, canoeing, hanging around the campsite making fires, cooking food, singing songs and drinking beers. How can you complain? Well this trip was too cold for swimming, and hikes we took were kinda short, but we had lakeside campsites and I got to do a lot of canoeing with Michelle and Lizzy. And it rained Friday night, but at least the fire kept going and then the stars came out and our new tent stayed dry, so now we know it rocks!

Also, after years of never practicing guitar and having only a basic knowledge of simple chords and a repertoire consisting mainly of Neil Young songs, I’ve decided for what I do it actually sounds pretty good, and it might be worth it to learn some more chords and some new songs, so I’m thinking of getting a new acoustic guitar to replace the one I got for trading an old boom box years ago. That guitar is amazing in that it has almost no wood at all in it, but it still has a great bright tone. Unfortunately neither the action nor the intonation is very good, so it’s a bit hard to play.

We took tons of pictures. I think Lizzy took about 20 just of Erin’s feet. Here are a few to start with; a more complete gallery will follow on sometime later. Most of the feet pictures will be removed as part of the curating function.

Summer Camping, Part I

We just got back from a weekend of camping in the Catskills with our good friend Nick and his family, and my brother Martin and his girlfriend Kathleen. The weather was great (no rain!), and we got to do some good hiking, swimming and canoeing, and lots of hanging around the campsite making fires, cooking food, singing songs and drinking beers. Ahhh, good times.