1655 Trip Miles, Part 3: It’s a Beauty Way To Go

Next day we took off bright and early for our main destination in Canada: the Thousand Islands. Stopped for lunch at a Canadian rest stop on 401. Nicer than the ones on the NY State Thruway. Pizza with Canadian bacon. Yum. BTW, Canadian bacon in Canada is just called “bacon”.

We’d been there once before for my cousin’s wedding and have been meaning to go back for years. The name (of the islands not the meat) doesn’t do it justice: there are actually over 1800 islands in the Thousand Islands, where Lake Ontario flows into the St. Lawrence River. The whole area is just amazing scenic beauty of water, islands rocks and forests.

We got pretty lucky because we threw this trip together at the last minute, and were able to rent a cottage right on the water. We found the place on the internet while we were looking to rent a boat. Indeed the place is called Spencer’s Boat Rentals and Cottages. The woman who runs it, Lynn, was really nice, friendly and helpful. They normally rent for a week but were willing to rent to us for just a few nights. Must’ve had a cancellation. Lucky indeed.

The cottage itself was small, but big enough for us, and like I said, right on the water. The setting was beautiful and peaceful with a gentle breeze off the river cooling of the otherwise unseasonably hot weather (for up there at least, but no one really has air conditioning cuz it almost never gets up into the 90’s). We spent the afternoon swimming at a nearby beach and the evening barbecuing and fishing off the dock.

Next day we were all set to rent a boat but the wind was strong and the water was choppy, so our hostess demurred. So instead we went into town and took a tour on a much larger boat. It took us all around, under the big international bridge, past castles, mansions, and random rocks. It was so hot, even out on the water, we had to get into the shade fairly often. It was just as well we didn’t get our boat that day; we would have fried. I now have a paper model of the boat on Hoban’s dashboard.

We had a seafood lunch at some nice waterfront restaurant (sensing a theme here?) and then it was onto another park for the afternoon. The place had a nature center with live snakes and turtles, which the kids really enjoyed. Then it was more swimming on another beach. This one looked to be a favorite spot for windsurfers and parasailors to put in, so it was fun to watch that. That evening we were all really wiped out from the heat, so we let the kids watch Phineas and Furb while we barbecued. BTW, did I mention the Metro grocery stores up there are fantastic?

On the third day the weather broke. It was back to the mid-eight’s and low wind, so we finally got our boat. It was a little bass boat with a 30hp engine, but big enough to have fun. Our neighbor in a nearby cottage had a boat with a 225hp motor. Totally outrageous! We spent the morning touring around the islands, having a ball. Parks Canada has lots of islands where you can just pull your boat up and dock it, and then picnic, hike and swim. So around midday we did exactly that. Found a great spot on a place called Mermaid Island. Deep blue water, but calm and with a good way in and out on shallow, smooth rocks. I’m amazed at how clean the water is up there. The whole experience was just so awesome.

One last thing: I’ve spent a lot of time out west, including our last two summer vacations, and I’m amazed at how green everything is in the summer in the part of the continent.

1655 Trip Miles, Part 2: The Great White North

Our first stop was Toronto. On the trip up I realized it’s been three years since I last visited Canada, and many more since TO. The downtown area is all built up with apartments now. But it’s good to know that Q107 is still rockin’ the airwaves from the top of the CN Tower. Emotional feedback on timeless wavelengths.

We visited the Ontario Science Center. I’d been there once as a kid and again in college and remembered it as a very cool place that the kids might enjoy. Of course back then it was just about the only hands-on museum of its kind. Now there’s the Exploratorium in San Francisco and the New York Hall of Science in Queens. Still the Ontario Science Center stacked up well, with exhibits on space and physics and other cool stuff. And a great live exhibit about reptiles, which Lizzy especially loved. We also saw the Imax movie Under the Sea. This was a big, old-fashioned Imax with the nine-storey tall 180 degree screen, and it was pretty impressive. Lots of weird fish, squid, cuttlefish, nautilus, sharks and even some seals. I’d been interested in folding origami cephalopods (squid, cuttlefish, and nautilus) and feel I now have a good sense of how they look and move. And, I got a cool wind-up dancing robot in the gift shop.

We spent the evening downtown on the waterfront, walking around after a fantastic seafood dinner. Touched the base of the CN Tower and looked up, seein’ tower. Briefly snuck into the 12th inning of a Blue Jays game.

1655 Trip Miles, Part 1: Shufflin’ Off

Just got back from a major road trip family vacation. Great to change your mode of living every once in a while. The last couple of years we’d taken flights to faraway lands, but this year, between having a new car and a desire to avoid any Imperial entanglements at airports, we opted for a car trip.

We started with a drive up to Buffalo a few ago Friday. The kids were already up there with my Mum, having all kinds of adventures of their own. Meanwhile Jeannie and I had a week to catch up on our work and our rest. So it was just the two of us for the drive up. Got an early start; it was smooth and mellow. Made great time and explored the satellite radio stations.

We spent a few days in Buffalo. It was a very chill scene. The kids went swimming at the local lake. I put new wheels on my rollerblades. Jeannie and the girls did some shopping. Went out to see the new Harry Potter movie one night. It was probably the best of the bunch. We hooked up with Larry and Jackie at a beach bar on the Lake Erie waterfront; it was a good time and good to catch up. Larry had the good fortune to see the circus elephant walk last time he was in NYC. Sunday we went out to Rochester for my niece’s birthday and swam in Denis and Sara’s pool. Sara made me a Jayne hat for my birthday. Awesome thanks!

Monday we went up to Old Fort Niagara, which is now a very cool living museum. It was established by the French in pre-revolutionary times, and subsequently captured by the British in the 1751, handed over to the Americans in 1783, re-captured by the British in 1813, and returned to the Americans a year later. Lots of history, old stone buildings and wooden furniture, cannons, muskets and bayonets. Re-enactors really brought the experience to life, garbed as colonial soldiers in layers of hot wool on sweltering summer day. They put on demos and answered questions about weapons, food, and lifestyle from back in the day, and were knowledgeable and friendly. The high point was the drum and fife exhibition by two lovely ladies in colonial military drag, followed by firing a cannon into Lake Ontario by a group of more veridical soldiers.

After that we headed down to the falls. Hadn’t been there in a few years and it was great to walk around and take in the views. We took the tour of the Cave of the Winds. It takes you down an elevator carved into the rock of the falls. At the bottom you can walk around on some boardwalks and get the view from the bottom. They give you sandals and ponchos because it’s really wet down there. The kids got completely soaked. It was an awesome experience.

Tuesday we lit out for part 2 of our trip, a tour that included several destinations in Ontario and upstate New York.

Two New Songs on CDBaby and iTunes

I’m happy to announce I have two new songs for sale on CDBaby and iTunes.

Rocket To The Moon
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/rocket-to-the-moon-single/id449723308
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/buzzytonic2

Sea of Tranquility
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/sea-of-tranquility-single/id449720581
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/buzzytonic3

The concept here was to have a single and a b-side, but nobody knows what b-sides are anymore, so it’s a double single, like, uh, Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever.

I did this a bit out of order, in that I usually put a page on my site for my next record as a work-in-progress and updates about the tunes along the way. But for these I decided to release them as mp3’s so I don’t have to wait for an album’s worth of songs to be done.

You may recall from previous posts that the songs have been basically finished for a while. Since I decided to release them as singles I had to do my own mastering. My stereo upstairs died on me, so I had to get a replacement receiver and power amp just so I could listen back to my mixes in a known listening environment. Once I took care of that I could hear the mixes sound great. So here they are, go ahead and enjoy!

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I have a whole bunch of half-written songs, and I have to decide which ones to work on next. But sometimes it can take a while to really sharpen up a song, and I’ve had enough of the studio for a while. It’s time to come out and play. For the rest of the summer I’m going to focus on getting together a live set to play out. More on that soon.

Crackin’ Foxy at the Jalopy

Last weekend I saw a show at the Jalopy bar and theatre in Red Hook, Brooklyn, featuring a bunch of old-time country and folk bands as part of the Brooklyn County Fair. This isn’t my usual genre of music, but in this day of electronic hypercompression it was refreshing to hear acoustic music done well by good musicians. All of the bands were excellent, and two of them featured a really amazing fiddle player named Jason. The first act was him and a bass fiddle player doing standards from the nineteenth century. Later he appeared in a four piece combo with male and female co-lead singers and an awesome pedal steel player.

One of the bands on the bill was Crackin’ Foxy from Saranac Lake, NY, led by my friend Mark H. The Foxies diverged from the format a bit by doing old-timey jazz and pop, things like Cole Porter and The Triplets of Bellevue.

They feature a lineup of three female vocalists, resplendent in black polka dot dresses and white opera gloves (for that show at least). Mark played ukulele, and there was an acoustic guitar, standup bass and a clarinetist who doubled on tenor sax. They group was really good, with great energy, style and musicianship. They had pretty complicated arrangements, with lots of vocal harmonies and instrumental sections, which they pulled of really well. Great group sound as well as lots of individual feature moments. The singers were all great individually and in harmony. After the set Mark told me they missed a few cues, but I never noticed. Crackin’ Foxy has been around about a year and are picking up momentum. They’re gigging out more and more, mostly in the Adirondack mountain region. If you ever get a chance to see them, go for it!

Also, the Jalopy is a great place to see live music!

OUSA ’11 Recap

With the 4th of July weekend right on the heels of the origami convention, it’s been a busy few weeks. So here’s a bit of catching up. I had a good time at the convention, and caught up a bunch of friends. I also to a very positive response to the release of my new eBook. I taught my Walrus, which turned out to be a big hit, as well as my Narwhal. I also taught my Stellated Octahedron with Color Change, which turned out to be very challenging to fold. I came up with several new models including my two interlocking cubes (I’ve been working out how to do it with a color change from a single sheet), and some new tessellations including a Quadrose tiling and a Penrose tiling. I bought some nice paper from a vendor from Ohio, Origamido-style but thicker. The plan is to fold a few of my complex models out them, including the Zeppelin, Dragon and War Elephant. I also got an idea to extend my origami-from-space series to include a Space Shuttle. Photos of all this coming whenever I get around to it.

Every few years it seems someone new arrives on the scene folding amazing stuff. In the last few years it was T.J. Norville and then Dinh Giang. This year it was teh charming Beth Johnson, who has lots of curvy, dimensions models such as a pinecone and sheep that make use of tessellations as a design element. You can see some of her work at http://bethorigami.wordpress.com

My publisher Brian gave a Monday talk about eBook publishing for origami. One topic he covered is the diff between eBooks and apps. After we got to talking, and I realized my Foldinator is almost ready to be an origami app engine (notwithstanding the issue of running a Flash application on iOS). I haven’t worked on it in a while, and when I left off I was getting deep into the heart of the computational problem of mathematically representing and manipulating a folded piece of paper. The whole thing can be greatly simplified by just using pre-rendered graphics for each step. This may be a bit of a cheat, but it’s a good hack, since I’ve had to create images for all the models in me eBook anyway. So soon I’ll be putting together a prototype. Meanwhile, Brain has been dusting off my OrigamiXML spec with an eye toward expanding it for use in ebooks and apps.

Also, now that my ebook is done I’m working on putting together a print book. I’ve been going thru and making page layouts. This well be a superset of the ebook, with 20 – 24 models compared tot eh ebook’s 12. Hopefully when that’s done I can move straight on to a second ebook.

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For the long weekend of the 4th we had out of town guests, a 70th birthday celebration for my father-in-law, a big ol’ barbecue the next day, plus trying to fit music and origami stuff and work around the house and yard. More on that soon. Back to the office today, which almost feels like a break. Lots more excitement coming in the next few weeks, with travel and adventure, so stay tuned.

Fire On The Mountain

In other news, my brother Jim and his family live in the mountains of New Mexico, where they’ve been experiencing the worst forest fires in the history of the state. About a week ago, the fire was threatening their town and everyone had to evacuate. After almost a week firefighters were able to contain the blaze at a road at the edge of town. Yesterday people were able to return home. Luckily their home was intact, if a bit smoky, and the threat to the town has been averted.

See Ya in the Funny Papers

It’s been a while since I wrote, because I’ve been busy folding for the origami conference. Now that it’s come and gone I’ll be writing a full update soon. Bottom line it was a great time and I got a bunch of new ideas. Meanwhile, the paper of record, the venerable New York Times, sent a reporter and photographer around to see if they could locate some human interest. They interviewed my family and me among others. The article was mostly good but a bit weird, implying (unfairly) that we’re a nerdy and scruffy bunch. Ah well, any publicity is good publicity I suppose.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/at-this-gathering-everyone-knows-how-to-fold-them/?ref=nyregion

Master Blaster

I’m currently mastering Rocket To The Moon and Sea of Tranquility, and it’s informative because the two songs sound very different and what works for one doesn’t work for the other. So it’s a good exercise to learn this set of plugins and what to do with them. One thing I can tell you is my studio monitors don’t have enough low-end power and precision, so it’s hard to get a strong and balanced bass. So it’s alot of listening on different systems.

My good stereo upstairs has great speakers and lets me listen to a bunch of discs in shuffle mode, which is great to compare tracks, but right now the left channel seems to be on the fritz. Hope it’s just a wire but I haven’t had the chance to investigate. The downstairs stereo is almost as good – not quite as clear but good mid and bottom – but only has a single CD deck. Hoban (the Pilot) has a pretty good stereo, but the bottom is a bit muddy and I’ve been fiddling with that since I got the car and am not really satisfied yet. It supposedly has a subwoofer but I don’t even know where the speaker is. Probably somewhere stupid like under the back seat. I wonder if the phase is reversed. Or maybe it’s a virtual subwoofer with bad bass management software. The ipod with the cheap earbud headphones on a noisy train is the lowest common denominator. My train reading these days, BTW is the Mastering Engineer’s Handbook, the third in the series along with tracking and mixing.

I’ve done three shots at masters of both the songs. The second RTTM was pretty good. On my first attempt I thought the cymbals were a bit clanky and bass a bit muddy, and I ended up going back to the mix to clean that up. My signal chain includes a dynamic eq/compressor and then a compressor/limiter. I find the limiter is the single most important thing in a song with drums, since most of the peaks are on drum hits. It’s pretty easy to get an extra 3dB, but past that it’s hard. I’m realizing my mixes are already pretty hot, and the compressors start to change the sound if you put them on too thick. Two moderate compressors in series seems to work better than a single strong one.

SOT, on the other hand, was completely destroyed by the same setup. All my carefully nuanced blends of instruments, reverbs and synths were smeared into an undifferentiated gob of sonic goo while the percussion suddenly jumped out in front. I did another set of mixes last night, and I’m hoping they’ll be the ones. But I need to listen back to them.

Also, I invented a new origami model last night: two intersecting cubes from a single sheet. Awesome model, but I stayed up way too late folding.

Hot and Cold

It’s been a week of extremes here. Last week we had a heat wave that was in the upper 90’s three or four days in a row. Last Thursday the forecast high was 100. Then in the late afternoon, it got really windy like a giant Totoro just flew past. The sky got dark and branches were flying around and it cooled down 30 degrees in a matter of minutes. Overhead dark clouds were roiling and churning, and few minutes later it was pouring sheets of rain. The rain turned to hail with hailstones the size of grapes coming down until it looked like someone had spilled their drink all over the outside. Very dramatic.

We were supposed to go camping over the weekend with Martin up in the Catskills. They went up the night before, but our kids had the school spring band concert and talent show Friday night. Lizzy did a flute solo and Michelle sang and played the ukulele. Saturday morning as we were getting ready to go, Martin called to say it was raining up there and supposed to rain all day. Everything had turned to mud. So he came down to visit us and we had a rather chilly but fun BBQ. We spread out his tent to try and dry it out, but the sun never really came out.