New Recording: Angel or Alien

Well it’s not all been home improvement projects of late, so shifting gears here: My new song, Angel or Alien, is getting close to done. It’s a quasi-autobiographical number, a sort of sci-fi reverie based on contemplating the wonder of the night sky, combined with some speculation about things that can be seen but not readily explained.

As mentioned before, it features an analog-style synthesizer solo in the middle section. Now in the old days I would have played this on a real synthesizer and twiddled the knobs live. I’m particularly keen on sweeping some lowpass filters and adding some big FLO here as an effect here and there. But my setup has gone all digital and fully computerized, so I ended up using a software synthesizer inside proTools for the patch, and the keyboard I played has only the basic pitch wheel and modulation control. So I’m hoping I can map some continuous controllers to the software synth model and either perform these moves as essential an overdub, or just pencil them in.

More importantly, I finalized the lyrics in the last week and laid down a vocal track just the other night. I normally do several takes on my vocals and edit them together to form a master lead vocal track. As soon as this is done, I’ll post a rough mix. Still to do is possible backing vocals and sweetening instruments (backing synths, etc.), and the aforementioned lead synth knob twiddling. But I want to listen to the song a few times before I get to that, so it won’t stop me from posting the first rough mix.

Meanwhile, you can meditate on the lyrics.

…

Angel or Alien
by John Szinger

Walking home alone the other night
When looking up the sky ahead I saw a light
I quickly identified it at as a UFO
But what it really was I don’t know
Was it an angel or an alien ?
Or was it something else again ?

Hover above the world we weave with our machines
One giant step or small leap it’s of our means
For what could be more human than to
Make a thing to do the thing you do?
But is it a demon or is it a dinosaur ?
Is it something more?

Walk on said the man in the moon
Why do the stars in the sky ?
Walk on said the man in the moon
Moonchild teach me to fly
They know you’ve walked miles alone
All that has shone upon soon will be shown
Walk on said the man in the moon
Go home, go home yeah

Twelve thousand years that they’ve been gone
An outer orbit on that big wheel one time ’round
But they’re on their way now, yeah they’re coming home
The stars are aligned man in the moon will leave his light on
All night long

And do they come to enlighten and set us free ?
Or to blind us with bling and enslave us with TV ?
And will they bring death to the world of illusions
Ideas categories ambitions confusions
A shooting star is a sign in the sky calling
So is it a meteor or just a metaphor falling?

Look up said the man in the moon
How can the stars in their turn?
Look up said the man in the moon
Moonchild teach me to learn
They know you’ve walked dark years in dreams
Look deeper and see that it’s not what it seems
Look up said the man in the moon
Go home, go home yeah

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.

Dirty Work

So this weekend I finished off my fixing-up-the-side-yard project by re-grading the area where the foundation had cracked to avoid water from pooling there again. I made a trip to home depot one evening last week (can’t stand that store, but they’re the only place around open after 6 for that kind of stuff) to get supplies. I got as much dirt as I thought I’d need, which also turned out to be about as much as I could haul, 18 cu. ft., which was 720 pounds, plus some stones and grass seed. Once I started it was clear I’d need more dirt, so Jeannie went to our local Ace Hardware (a much nicer store: smaller, well stocked, helpful and great service), for another load. She called ahead and they loaded up her car for her. In the end I used about 36 cubic feet (1.33 cubic yards) of dirt.

While I was at it I added some stepping stones for a little footpath, and re-seeded the area for new grass. I used a product we call “the blue stuff”:  it’s a combination of grass seed mulch and fertilizer, and it works great. We ought to have new grass in just a couple of weeks.

Here are some pics of how it turned out. Thank goodness that job is done. We want to move on to tiling our bathroom this fall, but another fixit project has emerged that will have to come first, and it promises to be even less fun than this one: The other day we noticed a damp spot on the ceiling of our laundry room, directly beneath our bathroom. Oy!

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.”

Life’s a Beach

Today is the first day of school again for the kids, but we ended the summer on a high note. We spent the better part of last week in Ocean City, MD. It was a great trip: fun and relaxing and action-packed and low-key all at once. The town of OC is very nice, and family friendly. Not so crazy and built-up as say Virginia Beach or Daytona, but nicer than places I’ve been to on the Jersey Shore. We went swimming in the ocean every day right outside our front door, visited the wild horses on Assateague Island, spent a whole day at a great water park, checked out the amusement pier, went out to some breakfasts and nice seafood dinners, ate funnel cake and lemonade on the board walk, and even had a shot of having a shot of Tequila with Jeannie to celebrate our twennyversary. I’ll be putting up a full photo album sometime, but for now here are some of the pics:

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.

Foundation’s Edge

Ah the joys of home ownership. Having things means having to fix things. Is maintenance a creative act? I suppose in the sense that it opposes destructiveness it is, and also that you may make something new along the way to fixing something old and broken.

Earlier this spring I noticed some cracks in the concrete along the foundation of the north side of my house. The concrete is below the siding, a protective/decorative layer that covers the actual foundation of the house. It’s a generally damp and mossy area, and in the spring sometimes puddles can form there. I suspect the cracks were initially caused by water freezing.

Meanwhile just outside out front door one rainy day, there was a mushroom growing from the bottom of the door frame! It turned out the wood down there was rotting cuz the weather seal had worn out and was leaky, so the end of this piece of wood was sitting in a puddle in the door jamb every time it rained.

A couple weeks ago I finally got around to tackling these projects. For the door, I cut away the old rotting wood, the bottom few inches of a piece that runs vertically on either side of the door frame. Then I cut a couple pieces of new wood to fit the void, glued ’em in to place and filled in the gaps and cracks with wood putty. Later that day I sanded of the excess putty and gave it a coat of paint. More paint and new caulk would have to wait for another day.

As for the foundation, I thought I could just put a little fresh cement over the cracks to seal it. But no. When I started to clean the moss and dirt out from the cracks, it became apparent the facing cement had separated from the layer underneath as big slabs of the stuff fell away. Some moisture had gotten up between the layers, and tree roots followed. So I ended up digging a trench along the side of my house to get to the bottom of the damaged area, and pulled of quite a bit of the facing cement. This took the better part of a day and I had only exposed the damage, not even begun to fix anything. What I though would be a quick fix turned into a major project!

From here things turned slow because I only have a little bit of daylight left in the evenings when I get home from work, and we were away the intervening weekend, so I had to break things down into bite-size tasks and do a bit each day. This worked OK for the front door. I ended up having to give it a few coats of paint for adequate coverage. It only took couple minutes to do the paint, and then wait a day for it to dry. Finally I was able to put down new caulk and the job was done.

An interesting consequence of this was that there is a population of ants who make their home under my front steps. When I sealed up the repaired area I must have blocked of the way in and out of their home, because that night I opened my front door and there were dozens of ants in the space between the front door and the screen door, and some were making their way into the house! We sprayed the area and put down ant traps, and that was pretty much the end of the ant party. They have found a new way out, because yesterday I saw a bunch of ants climbing around the side of the steps near my rose bush.

With the foundation it took better part of a week to clean the area and apply a layer of patching cement just to cover the crakes that were left when all the bad concrete was removed. So two weeks after I started I put down a whole new layer of facing cement, a job that took the better part of a day and was not really a whole lot of fun. Finally last night I put down the patching cement to seal the joint between the old and new cement. So we’re in the home stretch now. The only thing left is to refill the trench with dirt.

Of course this leads me straight on to the next project. I want to get some dirt to fill in the low spot so rain water will flow away from my house rather than form a puddle. While I’m at it, there a few paving stones around the area that were left over from when I built my patio. >I want to buy a few more and make a proper little foot path. I hope to get this done this fall.

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.