Software – Zing Blog 2

Nice Work If You Can Get It

Yeah it’s true, I got laid off from my day job as lead engineer at [company’s] Innovation Lab last month, as part of a massive company-wide restructuring. Or, putting it another way, I got replaced by an AI bot. You see, [company] has been losing money for a while now, its core value proposition of well-researched and authoritative product comparison information being attacked and eroded by AI internet chatbots that, while perhaps not as accurate or nuanced, tend to be cheaper and more convenient. So, the Innovation Lab is no more. They got rid of a bunch of us including Ben our VP and visionary leader, while the rest got reassigned into other business units in the organization. Ah well, it was a good run while it lasted. We built some excellent products in the space of consumer privacy protection, advocacy, and digital rights, including the Permission Slip app and the Data Right’s Protocol. I was the tech lead for both projects, and they rank high as proud achievements in a career that has included many fun and cool accomplishments in software R&D and product development. And I learned alot about alot of things in my time there too. Sadly [company’s] commitment to continuing working in that space had diminished prior to the restructuring, so the writing was on the wall. Meanwhile, the other main thread of the lab’s work, focused on AI chatbots of our own, had pretty much graduated from R&D and folded into the main digital group. I have no idea what has become of the remaining R&D initiatives.

But there’s no point in sitting around feeling bitter about it, although they do try hard to make you feel as bad as possible when they give you the boot, suddenly cut off from your friends and colleagues and your own work that you’ve put so much into over many years. For my part, I had a lucky bounce in that I’ve been able to increase my level of commitment to The Global Jukebox, and it’s a good time for it too. We’re building towards a major release later this year and there’s tons of work to do, and it’s a fun project. Last week I listened to over a hundred and fifty pop songs to review the Cantometric codings done by a team of consultants. Kind of amazing how vast and diverse the last hundred years of recorded music is, and how many great songs are out there.

Other than that, my plan for now is to relax and enjoy the summer, and not worry until the fall about whether I want to look for another full-time job or just continue doing consulting. My sense is that now is not a good time to try and jump back in, since all the big tech companies are sacking their workers by the thousands and replacing them with AI. Eventually this will blow over like every previous cyclic downturn. What really matters to me is to find a cool and exciting project to work on that is worth my time and effort.

Anyway, it’s a good time of year to have some time off. As mentioned before, I’ve been doing alot of biking. I’m averaging about sixty miles a week now, and plan to for the rest of the summer. This past weekend Jeannie and I finally got out to the Empire State trail. I did sixteen miles in an hour and twelve minutes. Not too bad, but a little slower than my best times last year. I’ve also increased the level of weight in my weightlifting workout, up to 202 pounds on bench press, and 120 on curls and the other dumbbell exercises. 200/120 was the goal I set for myself a long time ago to hit before I turn sixty. I’ll be fifty-eight this year, so from here on out it’s gravy. Oh, and I’ve lost ten pounds since the winter too.

There’s tons to do outside this time of year, and I’ve been spending time every day working on the yard. Project patio is nearly done. It involves spending time outside and lifting heavy things, so double fun. My patio is made of flagstones laid on a bed of sand and compacted gravel, and over time the stones tend to settle and shift. Five years ago during the pandemic I enlarged the patio, so this year I’m straightening up the new area. This involves lifting up the stones one by one with a crowbar, putting in some new sand under them, putting the back and filling in the gaps between the stones with more sand. The new area all done and I just have one more spot near the stairs to go. I might need to go out and buy more sand before I can finish.

In music, my jazz group Spacecats has a gig coming up in late June. We would have liked to make it sooner, but different members of the groups have scheduling conflicts, so we’re off-and-on for rehearsals for the next few weeks. We’re also trying to schedule our long-awaited recording session. Meanwhile we’re continuing to learn new songs and have fun.

My recording project Spellbound is progressing as well. I’ve been working in the 18-minute epic that fills most of side two, which I’m calling The Sailor’s Saga because I don’t remember what title we gave it back in the day. I’m tracking the first three sections, leaving the big instrumental fourth movement to the end, because I’m going to rewrite it pretty dramatically, whereas the first three parts follow the original demo fairly faithfully. Back in the winter I started with a click track and basic piano part. To this I’ve now added a pretty much full (midi) drum part, and electric bass. The first section is fast and grooving, the second is slow and atmospheric, and the third features a carefully crafted slow build in the rhythm section over a long, repeated chord progression.

Now I’m up to the first of the guitar tracks, basic rhythm guitar. The jaunty first section went down pretty easily, although I had to practice the part a few times to get it together. There’s no part in the section section, so now I’m up to the third section. It starts out doing arpeggios on the eighth notes, which is surprisingly hard for me. I’ve been practicing every day, and consistently improving, but I imagine it’ll be a few more days at least before I’ll be able to get a good take.

Finally, we have an origami event coming next week. It’s CFC, the Conference for Creators, and this year it’s in Ann Arbor Michigan, hosted by Beth Johnson. I’ve never been to that part of the country before, so Jeannie and I are going out a few days before the start to tour around the upper midwest. Also, I’m scheduled to give a seminar on Folding with Fivefold Geometry, so I need to get my presentation together. And, I want to have a new model for my exhibit, a perfected version of my Pentagon Human Figure that I came up with at CoCon in Chicago in March. More on all this as it, uh, unfolds.

Wait for a Springtime Tide

Seasons change and so do I. I’ve been trying to focus on springtime projects these days, and striking off a bunch of long-standing tasks from my todo list. Last week I took the mustang into the shop for some maintenance, including an oil change and inspection. The car is almost sixty years old, so it’s good to have some confidence that everything mechanical is in good shape when I drive it. I also began and completed project dirt, which started with getting a cubic yard of topsoil delivered to my house. I used it to fill in some low spots in my yard, mainly where there had been trees years before and now decayed remnants of the stumps and roots have left sunken and uneven areas. The last step was to cover it with grass seed and start watering it. We had an unusual heat wave last week, and it got up to ninety degrees three days in a row. These happened to be the days I was out working in the yard shoveling dirt. Ah well, at least once I was done it rained for a whole day, so the watering is off to a good start. Next up: project patio!

I’ve been biking more and more. Last week I did five days in a row agin. My longer rides have been getting progressively long, the last one being thirteen miles, with a good amount of pulling up hills, and half of it on mountain biking trails. Meanwhile I’ve added an extra loop to my short ride, brining it up to six miles. The weather had been widely variable from day to day, so it’s not easy to figure out how to dress. I’ve yet to get out to the rail trail this spring. That’s flat and smooth, and I usually go between sixteen and twenty-four miles on it. Last year I got up to thirty miles one time. I also went up in weight on my weightlifting working a few weeks ago. I’m now up to two hundred and two pounds on the bench press, and one hundred fifteen on the curls and other dumbbell exercises. Hoping to go up again later this spring.

I’ve been putting alot of time into The Global Jukebox lately. Plenty to do for the upcoming release of version 4.0. Recently I’ve been focusing on making the wheel and the map work with alternative taxonomies for language and peoples in addition to the default taxonomy for people. Nick did alot of foundation work for this: reading in the data and building the models in memory, and a first pass at the interactive UI stuff. I thought it would be pretty quick to finish of the remaining functionality and fix a few minor bugs, but it turned out to be surprisingly deep. I ended up doing a major refactoring across five classes. I’m pretty much done the functionality, but still want to do some more foundational work. Now that I’ve come this far it’s become alot clearer what theright abstractions and design patterns are.

This last Sunday I went into the city to teach origami at OUSA Special Sessions at the American Museum of Natural History. My class was Fun Spaceships, and included a bunch of intermediate level models from my book Air and Space Origami. The class was small, and two of the students were really bright kids. It was great because it was a fun and casual vibe, and I could give everyone enough attention if they needed it. We ended up folding five models in two hours. One of them was the Space Probe, which I haven’t folded in a long time and had forgotten what a fun model it is. Jeannie and Michelle came too, and after the class we did a quick tour of the museum, hitting the dinosaurs, which are always amazing, a loop around the planetarium, and the halls of big dioramas of African and North American Mammals, and ending with the Whale Room.

Endless Winter

Another week has gone by and it feels like forever. We’re almost at the end of February and we’re back into deep winter.

We did another pre-recording rehearsal with Spacecats last week. I now have my new computer more fully set up, with drivers for my audio interface installed plus several DAWs. We made progress on several fronts including headphones, getting a great bass sound, and the arrangement of the musicians and equipment in my space to minimize bleedthru from other instruments. However, it turns out my plan to use my old MBox alongside my new Quantum 2626 didn’t work out because it’s too old; it had firewire, which apple no longer supports. So I’m getting a second Quantum 2626. You can hook them together using an optical cable and combine 8 channels on each to have 16 channels. I also ordered some long cables of various kinds (headphone, XLR, 1/4″ phono, etc.)

The Spellbound project is progressing quite nicely too. I finished editing up the various takes of the 12-string guitar on the song Frozen Ocean into a single track, and from there moved pretty quickly onto a satisfying mix of the whole song. While was in the mixing headspace I went back a listened to the other five songs and did improved mixes on all of them. Only one more song to go, but it’s a doozy.

At my day job, they sent around an email soliciting people to take voluntary severance. I’d be tempted if they were offering a year or even six months salary, but it’s targeted at people who’ve been at the company a long time, the longer you’ve been there the more you’d get. In my case it’s only a few months. Ah well.

Meanwhile the Global Jukebox is also moving along. I’ve finalized the color palette for the geography-based taxonomy, and integrated Nick’s work on taxonomies for languages and peoples. Still lots more to do, but we’re aiming for a release later this spring.

Lizzy was home for a quick visit this weekend. She came into town Friday with her friend Nora, and Jeannie, Michelle and I met them for drinks and dinner and a Broadway show Friday night. The bar was The Perfect Pint, which was a favorite hangout back when I worked at MTV. The show was Death Becomes Her, a musical adaptation of the movie from the 1990’s. It was lots of fun with great comedy, costumes and production design. The acting, singing and dancing were all great. The music was good, but nothing really catchy that got in my head after I left the theater.

Saturday we went skiing again. Friday it was warm and rainy in New York City. We finally started seeing patches of our lawn again between the melting snow piles. We were worried that it might not be good weather for skiing, but it was colder upstate and they even had some fresh snow. We met up with Kathleen and the kids. We took Charlie with us, although he snowboards rather than skis. The others went snow tubing. It was pretty warm, above freezing until the end, but the conditions were surprisingly good. Afterward we all went out to dinner.

Lizzy came over to visit us Sunday, and her plan was to fly home Monday morning. But then last night we had a great big blizzard and her flight got cancelled so she’s staying an extra day. On top of that, we lost power this morning. Luckily it came back on before noon. Shoveling out was a huge effort, even with Lizzy and Michelle helping. There was over a foot of snow, wet and heavy, and in some places the drifts were two or three feet high. So it looks like there’s gonna be snow on the ground for a while. On the bright side, we’ll probably get to go skiing again this weekend!

Snow Days

Well first off, we got the biggest snowfall we’ve had in the last few years yesterday. It snowed from Sunday morning to Monday morning, for a total of eighteen inches or so. It was also very cold, so the snow was dry and powdery. I went out Sunday evening with Jeannie to do the fist round of shoveling, and there was already over a foot. I went out this morning with Michele to do round two, including re-clearing everything from the night before and cleaning off her car. At lunchtime I went out a third time to finish off the apron of the driveway where the plow had passed, and to clean of my car and Jeannie’s. We had ample warning the storm was coming, so Saturday I got out my snowblower to see if it still worked — happily it did; I haven’t used it in several years — and filled up my little portable gas can. Now everything is cleared up and there’s no snow in the forecast but plenty of fresh snow on the ground. I think I’m gonna play hooky and go skiing one day this week.

It’s been a very productive January so far. On the Global Jukebox project, the style and UI redesign work is substantially completed. This was a major piece of work that took me about six months to finish, and touched many areas of the code, user workflows, and practically all of the css. Meanwhile Nick has made additions to the data architecture to let the app model taxonomy data for language families and peoples, as alternatives modes to the geographic taxonomy, and display them in the map and wheel. Another big piece of work, and I just approved his PR and merged in his branch. Still lots of stuff to do before the upcoming 4.0 release, but these are a couple important milestones.

The other thing going on these days is I’ve been practicing tons of guitar, learning Martin’s guitar solos for the song Frozen Ocean on the upcoming record Spellbound. This is the first time I’ve really played lead guitar, and it’s a fun challenge. The song actually has three guitar solos, a light atmospheric one in the beginning and ending, and a heavy one in the middle. They all have some twisty phrasing, with bendy notes, hammer-ons and pull-offs, as well as long sustained notes. So phrasing is very important, and so is tone. At this point I’ve been woodshedding for a few weeks, and have laid down a number of takes, steadily improving. I think I may actually be able to edit together an acceptable solo from what I have tracked, but I’m still trying to nail it consistently every take. But there’s other stuff to do, it may be time to move on.

Drums in the Deep

We’re getting into the season of maximal darkness. When Thanksgiving rolled around last week I was grateful to have a few days off to rest and get caught up on random tasks. Lizzy and Josh came home for a visit, which was very nice. As it was, I caught a cold on the Monday after Thanksgiving and am only starting to feel better today.

My day job has been busy with everyone trying to jam in as much as possible by the end of the year. I’ve been updating the data sources for our AI app with the new data for the 2026 car model year. Unfortunately, we don’t have a good workflow for this, so there’s synchronization issues, compounded by AI’s tendency to make stuff up and be just pain wrong.

In the music realm, I’ve been working on a song called Frozen Ocean for the Spellbound project. This was one written by Martin shortly after we did the original Spellbound EP, and I chose it for inclusion to bring the record up to full album length, as I did with my own Flock of Fools. Frozen Ocean was probably the first really great song Martin wrote, great lyrics, melody, chords, and dynamics, with a haunting and evocative sounds. The song opens with the guitar playing an arpeggiated pattern shifting among open and fretted strings, a little like Closer to the Heart. Martin was such a good guitarist, even early on, that I didn’t realize how subtle and complicated the part was. The basic pattern was clearly composed, but the variations, well he was probably just riffing off the top of his head. I wanted to do it justice and make it sparkle, so I spent a few weeks practicing and tracking the part and listening back and practicing some more. I finally got it together and it sounds great. Next up is lead guitar part, sure to be another major challenge.

The other big music accomplishment over the break was with the drums. Last Christmas I bought a microphone kit for the drums: mics, stands, clips and cables, with the mics being purpose-matched to the kick drum, snare, toms and overheads/cymbals. I few months later I bought an 8-channel audio interface. The whole project got delayed by the necessity of cleaning out and reorganizing my studio space, particularly my stockpiles of origami paper and supplies. The end result of all that was I had a flat surface to set up my audio interface and plug in the mics, which I did earlier this fall.

Over the weekend I was able plug in the audio DAC box into my laptop and spend an evening setting up the software so it could accept input from the box. Finally the magic moment when I hit record. It worked great! The sound was clear, the levels hot but not clipping, eight tracks of whacks, woo-hoo! I spent a few minutes adjusting the mic placement and levels and pretty quickly got a balanced and good sounding kit. It was actually quite revealing they way the different mics capture different POVS on the sound and all interact. You really could do fine with just the overheads, kick and snare mics. But I guess since I have the eight-channel version I might as well use it all (the others being for the toms and to close-mic the hi-hat). I spent a little more time tuning my low drums, to give the floor tom a bit more tone and resonance, and the kick a little less. My only remaining complaint is when you hit the kick drum in isolation it tends to make the snare rattle. Don’t know what to do about this, but also it doesn’t matter when you’re playing the whole kit.

Turn Turn Turn

Another season of cold and darkness arrives. Days growing shorter, nights growing colder. Hallowe’en has come and gone, but at least I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving and the holidays. Been trying to make the best of playing outside while there’s time. Sunday was sunny and at least warm-ish, and we got up early since they changed the clocks. I went for a 26 mile bike ride, the longest of the season so far, in two hours even. Still hoping to get a 30 mile ride in this fall. But I think ought to bring something to eat. By the end of the ride I was starting to slow down but noticed I was also getting pretty hungry.

Last weekend Jeannie and I went for a quick mini-vacation getaway up to the Catskill mountains. We rented a ski lodge cabin condo type place with a fireplace and a hot tub. On Monday we went for a big hike up Mt. Windham. 1700 feet vertical and eight-mile round trip, in about five and a half hours. Peaceful woody trail with fall colors on the trees. Nice view at the top of the Mohawk River valley. Ended up watching PBS travel channel at the end of the night. Lots of shows on the Alps and Italy. Now we want to go back. Also visited Kathleen and the kids, hung out and played a bunch of games.

Last Saturday, the night before we left, Spacecats played another gig at the Green Growler. This was our best on yet. The band continues to get tighter and more spontaneous. Good crowd too, everyone enjoyed it. We played sixteen originals and eight covers or standards. Highlights include two new songs from Rick, Underutilized and Where Has the Sun Gone?, as well as Son of the Sun continues to rise to new epic heights. Some of the new covers include Lithium, which has a really interesting quirky chord progression, and our closer Giant Steps played as a samba.

Now we’re bringing a bunch more new tunes. We’re planning to do a record this winter, and I have three or four partially written songs I’m trying to finish. I brought in the first of these last week. It’s working title is Cream of Confusion, which might or might not be better than it’s original title Downward Thing over Pedal.

Almost a year ago, last Thanksgiving, I needed to clear the dining room table of work-in-progress origami because we needed to use the dining room to have dinner. I brought a bunch of stuff downstairs to my studio, but it turned out I had run out of space to put things away. This lead to a huge project of turning out my closer and desk drawers and all the other storage space and throwing away alot of old useless things and organizing what was left. I ended up getting a set of slide-out shelves to put into my Ikea storage closet so I could inventory and organize all my origami paper. Well I finally got the project done, clearing the way for upgrading my recoding studio and plugging in the DAC for my drum mics so I can finally start recording with them. Woo-hoo!

Been making lots of great progress on the Spellbound songs too, but that’s a whole ‘nuther post.

Meanwhile at work I completed my first major project since joining the experimental engineering group in the springtime. I integrate cars brands knowledge base into AskCR, our AI chatbot for product recommendations and all things Consumer Reports. Along the way I learned the whole technology stack, which, despite so many huge and obvious problems with the whole LLM AI thing, is pretty fascinating. Up next I have several more integrations teed up including car videos and advocacy stuff.

And as for the Global Jukebox, the style refresh is nearing completion and looking really sharp. Along the way I cleaned up and refactored alot of the css and UI code, clarifying and simplifying things. This next release is going to be a big one, and we still have alot to do with new data sets and visualizations. Nick has been working to integrate new taxonomies for languages and people in addition to the current geography ones. He’s out having hip surgery right now, but hopefully he’ll be back in action soon.

AI Goals

It’s goal setting time at my day job again. Upper management at my company is all a-tizzy about the AI hype going ’round these days, so this year they asked everyone in the organization to submit an “AI Goal”. I thought I’d have some fun with it and have an AI help me write it. Here’s what we came up with:

Everyone is worried about losing their job to an AI. So the first goal obviously is to not get replaced by an AI. Failing this, a reasonable backup goal would be to get laid off with an adequate severance so I can retire in comfort and style. Of course it’s not just software developers who should worry, it’s everyone who makes their living using words. As a bonus goal, maybe it would be fun to see whoever thought up that everyone should have an AI goal get replaced by an AI.

Second, vibe coding is all the rage these day, but why stop there? Let’s start doing vibe configs, vibe deploys, vibe QA, vibe PRDs, vibe project management and vibe roadmapping. Maybe even vibe goal setting!!!

But seriously, I work in AI every day; using AI tools to build AI products is central to my job for the coming year. What could go wrong? Well, even as AI (in the present day usage of the term to mean conversational chatbots driven by LLMs) presents opportunities, it has its problems too. It is massively overhyped right now, widely misunderstood in terms of its capabilities, and replete with fundamental flaws including unavoidable inaccurate and false information, massive theft of other people’s intellectual properties, and vast wastefulness of electricity and other resources, to name a few. Better to approach these things with a sense of calm and rationality. Also try to be less snarky and sarcastic.

AI represents a potential existential threat not just to [our company] but to everybody who values thoughtfulness and truth. I’m starting to suspect that [our vice president’s] secret genius plan is to get over the hype bubble and “poisoning the well” problem as quickly as possible by leaning into AI, and then other side [our company] will emerge as source of true, accurate and reliable information, which will be valued at a premium as never before.

My manager liked it and signed off. Hey, at least we weren’t asked to come up with crypto/blockchain goals.

New Song: Flock of Fools, Part I

Here’s a rough mix of the last song from the first batch of tunes for the upcoming Spellbound record. This brings us up to twelve minutes of recorded music in six months, a blazing pace for me. That’s less than a third of the total running time of the record, but more than half in terms of the number of songs. Two of the remaining three songs are about another twelve minutes combined, and the last one is most of an album side. This one did not appear on the original recording, but I added a couple of songs to bring up to the length of a full-length LP record. I wrote it around the same time the Spellbound songs, and fits in thematically.

Flock of Fools was a song idea I had for my prog rock band Infinigon, which was active from 1986 to 1988. We mostly played covers of bands like Yes, King Crimson, Rush, ELP, Pink Floyd, Genesis and others. We also had aspirations to write our own material, but little experience at it, so it was slow going and took up lots of rehearsal time. Flock of Fools was long and complicated song with a lyric and all, but we never worked it up to be able to play it out. I continued to work on it after the band split up, and at one point in the early 90’s must have made a midi demo, which is the basis of this track. This is only part 1, a heavy drum and organ instrumental to serve as an extended intro to the main song. I’ve subsequently taken pieces from some of the other sections and reworked them into other tunes including Angel or Alien, and King’s Hex. I don’t think I’ve ever done the main section of the song, but may someday.

This is the shortest tune on the record, under two minutes. I’m thinking of using it as an intro into another song now, possibly to the eighteen-minute epic that comprises most of side two. It’s about the misfortunes of a sailor who goes off the sea the world and look for adventure, and is itself a continuation of the two-part suite that opens the record. If I do this, I may rename the track Tempest Fugitive.

Like the other songs so far, this track uses patches from my venerable Roland Alpha-Juno, most notably the Rock Organ 42, layered in with sounds from my onboard SampleTank software synth. There’s also a swoopy bloopy synth intro/outro that utilizes layered patches from the Roland as well as my rarely-usedMoog Phatty. This was knob jam that cannot be created in midi.

I added a lead guitar part that was not in original track in the spirit of “what would Martin do?” Inspired by his solo on Sandcastles, it turned to be fairly Frippy, with lots of compression and sustain for a heavy overdrive sound, mainly on long high notes. It was good to be able to explore this kind of thing without having to cop a specific part.

I was hoping to one more mixdown after listening back, but unfortunately, my MBox, the heart and soul of my recording studio, bit the dust sometime last week. (Maybe coincidentally, my garage door opener started glitching right around the same time.) The lights light up and it communicates with the computer, but it doesn’t output any sound from my DAW. Oh tragedy! The thing is about fifteen years old, and connected to an equally old computer, running an equally old version of ProTools. I’m hoping I can find a replacement MBox and be able to plug it in and it all just works, but if not the whole system may be kaput. Too bad, I had it set up in a way that really works for me, with effects plugins and synthesizer sounds that I’ve gotten to know very well, and I think of as part of my sound, to say nothing of being able to pull up twenty years worth of recorded songs if I want to remix them or anything like that. Ah well, all things must pass.

Indeed, I’ve been planning a replacement and major upgrade to my studio for some time now. I have modern-era computer that has Logic Pro and Reaper installed on it, and I have a new 8-channel audio interface I bought in the wintertime, along with a set of mics and stands to mic up my drum kit. Only problem is I haven’t had the time to get it all wired up and configured.

Last summer I was planning on producing an album of Martin’s songs, and I was going to use Reaper, since that’s his DAW software package of choice. And he was gonna help me get to know his favorite effects and sounds and all that as part of the process. Obviously that did not come to pass. When I finally regrouped and decided the next record would be the Spellbound project, I decided to use my old rig one last time, at least to start with, just to get making music as fast as possible. The plan to record live drums requires using the new rig, so that will get me a pathway there. I’d figured I could compare the two ways of working and find comparable sounds in the new system.

The other thing holding me back was after last July’s origami convention, my studio, which a combination origami and music studio with a finite amount of space, was just plain full up. There was no place to put away new paper or any more folded models. There were no clear work surfaces. It was upstairs all over the dining room too. Around Thanksgiving I had to clear the dining room table, and the situation became clearly unsustainable. Around Xmastime I started reorganizing my studio, throwing things out to make more space, and all that. It was a much bigger job than I anticipated, and I’m still not done yet. Mostly there though. And we have a long weekend coming up. Soon, soon.

Anyway, after all that rambling, here is the track Flock of Fools, Part I. Enjoy!

https://zingman.com/music/mp3/spellbound25/FlockOFools16a.mp3

Bungle in the Jungle

Been busy. The rain continues. I went for another long bike ride last weekend despite the rain. This time I did 16 miles in an hour and 8 minutes, which is two minutes better than last week, and an average speed of 14 mph. Also got around to trimming the neighbor’s willow tree that hangs over into our yard. I swear that thing gets bigger every year.

Saturday I taught an Origami Connect event. I taught my model Gladys the Platypus, which uses my hex base. It went well and was alot of fun. Also helping me get my head in gear for the upcoming OUSA convention in July, thinking about what to teach, what to exhibit, and try to get some new stuff finished. On a related note, I’m down to my last two boxes of old origami to consolidate.

Got my performance review at work: “Exceeds expectations”. Man, I really overshot the mark. I was hoping to get laid off with a nice fat severance package so I can get an early start on retirement (just kidding!). In a way I’m a bit surprised because last fall when I was deep in my grief, it felt like there were lots of days when it was pretty hard to focus and function at all, let alone be all creative and innovative and super sharp and tech leadership-y. On the other hand, I did kinda lean into work as something to do to keep me going. Anyway, I guess that’s mostly behind me now. And on the plus side, Data Rights Protocol 1.0 has shipped, and that was my main project since I started this job. Then I successfully transitioned over to a new project on the Experimental Engineering group, and that’s going well so far. Using AI software to write AI software, such irony!

Our D&D campaign has been very entertaining lately. We’re playing The Isle of Dread, which an Expert D&D module from the 80’s that I’m running using 5th edition rules. There’s alot of trekking thru the jungle on the way to central plateau, where there’s an ancient evil temple on an island in a lake in a crater of a dormant volcano. Along the way the party befriend a tribe of flying monkeys and fought a next of evil, magic-using spiders, where they gained a cache or strange magic items.

More recently the party had to cross a river to get to the plateau, and chose a shallow swampy location. Safy and Bart decided to hop across on a chain of small grassy patches sticking up out of the water. Nyx flew across with Skrill on her broomstick as a passenger, left him on the northern shore, and returned to ferry the others. I rolled a Hydra as the wandering monster encounter. I didn’t realize it, but the 5th Edition Hydra is alot more powerful than the old version, and I feared the party might have met its match. Midway on her way back, Nyx was attacked by a five-headed hydra, but she was able to fly away in the nick of time. Combat ensued. Skrill, alone on the far shore, was attacked and almost immediately incapacitated. The Hydra lost two of its heads but regenerated them next round. The party rallied and cut off several more of its heads, although still more grew back. In the end, Aliana the sorceress found a Fireball spell on a scroll and used it to inflict massive damage and finish the beast off.

The party decided to try and ascend to the central plateau by crossing a rope bridge high over the gorge, when they were approached by three pteranodons, a kind of flying relative of the dinosaurs. Bart charmed and befriended one, while Skrill attacked another. The friendly one landed on the bridge, causing Luna, Aliana and Safy to loose their balance and get thrown over the side. Ali and Safy hung on, but Luna plummeted. Nyx threw her broomstick to Luna, who caught it and was able to fly away safely and avoid getting smashed up on the rocks far below. Safy climbed back onto the bridge but Aliana remained hanging. Two pteranodons attacked Skrill, while the 3rd one let Bart and the rabbit climb on its back. Next round, one of the pteranodons attacked Ali, and she fell, but was saved by Luna, after casting magic missile. Safy finished off one of the flying dinosaurs with some holy damage spell. Now we’re at the bottom of the round, with one pteranadon flying away with Bart on its back and Nxy in its claws. Luna and Ali are flying around on a broomstick. Skrill has hooked the last remaining winged beast with his fishing rod and is attempting to reel it in. Safy is hanging out on the rope bridge, looking cool for the moment. I wonder how this will all end.

Windin’ Up the Main Spring

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Our band had our gig at the Green Growler a week ago Saturday. It went great! The band is playing at a really high level, together and free at the same time. We debuted two new originals. One was What You Bring to the Table by Rick, which has undergone considerable evolution since he brought it to the group. The other was mine, Son of the Sun, replete with meter and key changes, and borrowing from the prog idiom. I’m impressed the group wanted to learn it, and stuck with it until we got it together. Of course it evolved alot too as this group made it our own. We rounded out the set with a mixture of originals, jazz standards, and funk and rock covers. We had a good crowd, including Michelle who was home for spring break, and Nick and Giovanni came up from Long Island. Giovanni was fascinated by playing mainly improvised music and how it works, asking me what I had written down on my charts and that sort of thing.

And hey everybody – we have another show coming up two days at Jazz on Main in Mt. Kisco. This one features special guest Robyn Ferracane on vocals, so we’ve been learning a whole ‘nuther repertoire for that one. The band songs are mainly our originals since we have alot of them now, while the vocal songs lean heavily into standards and vocalese. Lots arrangements with dramatic beginnings and endings. Should be an excellent show.

And right on the heels of that my team at work had an onsite in the Manhattan the better part of the week. Lots of people came in from out of town. I took the train in to Grand Central, and each day walked one way down to or back from Union Square. It was an excellent week to be in the city, with the beginnings of spring stirring. We had a few meetings in the park or just waking around the neighborhood. I the middle of that I met Jeannie after work on evening to see Kurt Elling at Birdland, doing a tribute to Weather Report. Kurt remains one of my favorite jazz singers, and has such a great voice and phrasing and a unique take on things, and rock-star level cha-rasma.

The Innovation Lab as grown to twelve people, and we have alot more confidence to think big this year. We also have a new CEO, who met with us for an extended roundtable discussion and asked us what resources we need, and what new ideas we have cooking. Nobody really knew what he’d be like until he arrived; it turns out he’s friendly and bright and sees his charter as turn-this-ship-around, and signaled he’s willing to to put some resources into it. My VP used the phrase tip of the spear to describe our role this coming year. I’m in sort of transitional phase right now because the two main projects I’ve been working on the last three years have successfully transitioned from R&D to production, and the challenges with them are to make them scale up and be cost effective. Indeed three of our new hires this year are involved in that endeavor. So I successfully lobbied to be a sort or researcher-at-large for a while. My boss said I should look around and think about what I want to work on next. I haven’t had that luxury since the 1990’s. And, on the train ride home the last day, I thought of an idea that looks promising. It cut across several things we have going on, and would move our agent AI work forward to enable productization at a multi-dimensional level. But first, to understand some critical technical systems. So this week I’m starting to talk to the other engineers and managers about what it would take to pull it off. Wish me luck!

And then this last Saturday, spring arrived in earnest, if only for a half day. It got up to seventy-five degrees. Jeannie and took our bikes out in the morning to the local trail. I’ve been biking most of the winter when the weather permits, but mostly short rides (five miles or so) on the streets near my house. This is the first time I’ve gone a long distance straight and flat. I did sixteen miles in a little over an hour. Not bad for the first real outing of the season. Last year it took me until May or June to reach that distance. Last year my longest ride was thirty miles. This year I hope to reach forty or even fifty.

Also over the last two weekends I started the spring yardwork cycle, clearing out nine cans and bags worth of leaves and trimmings and other debris, plus a big bundle of sticks and branches. And, I took the Mustang out for the fist time of the season. It started right up and ran just fine. Woo-hoo! Of course by the time we were on the way home I was anxious to beat the gathering rainclouds.

Next up: the D&D adventure comes to the final boss!