Category: General

Downtime

Ah, one thing I’m thankful for is a moment’s rest this weekend. It feels like we’ve been on the go since the beginning of September. Now we have a much needed long weekend off from work. Lizzy came home from college earlier in the week. We had an excellent Thanksgiving with family. Jeannie made a turkey and everything, and was an excellent time.

Today we did what was likely the major raking of the year: four cans and four more bags full of leaves. Now the branches are mostly bare. It seems a little late this year.

I’ve been spending alot of time this weekend playing and listening to music. We saw the Queen movie last week, which inspired me to go back and listen to some of the early Queen albums I haven’t heard in years. My college roommate Rich was really into them, particularly Brian May’s guitar playing. So I put on Queen II and Sheer Heart Attack. Such great stuff, a unique combination of heavy metal, vocal harmonies, and wonderful weirdness. I’d say I appreciate it more now than back in the day, especially knowing they did it all with analog circuitry and a 16-track tape deck.

I went thru and listened to the entire setlist for my rock band, about three hours of music, just to get it fresh in my head for next week’s gigs, plus a bunch of new songs we’re considering adding to the set. I’m at the point where I know all the songs well enough, and I know about half of them really well. But every time I listen I pick up nuances in the arrangement that we can use to make our version sound better.

I’ve also been listening to more jazz. The guys in my band have been raving about new stuff from Christian McBride, Brian Blade and Joshua Redman among others. I found Joshua’s new record and it was great. Now Spotify is walking me backward thru his entire discography. Each record is more enjoyable than the last. Lots of great ideas in there.

I’ve been writing new music for the jazz group too. For our last gig we had four new originals – Closing the Distance (Gary), Fever Dream (Jay), A Fat Cat (a.k.a. El Gato Gordo, by Rich), and Lift Off (mine), which is roughly enough for half an album. We have a bunch of other songs we’ve been developing. One of mine, Mobility, is coming along nicely. It’s been around for a while but as of late it’s taken on a sort of Raymond-Scott-meets-gypsy-jazz quality. So I reharmonized it to be in the Hungarian minor mode and to emphasize the diminished quality. Also add a heterophonic ensemble jam toward the end.

Another song of mine, Son of the Sun has been slower going. It’s a pretty intricate number that switches meter alot, mainly between 5/8 and 7/8. We started it way back when, but then we didn’t have a regular drummer for a while and it didn’t seem worth it to try and teach every drummer who sat in. When Erik joined full time we were focused mainly on the last gig. Now it’s back to developing new material. Some of the band seem to think it’s a bit to outside of “our sound”. I find this kind of thinking really limiting and frustrating, but it didn’t help that the demo recording I had was from my heavy-metal fusion band from the 90’s. So I think I’ll put together a new demo with a sound closer to what I have in mind for this group.

Meanwhile I have two new jazz numbers I’m writing. One is based on the idea of a four-bar loop, and has a working title of Heavy Water. The other one, which is further along, I’m thinking of as a “melody” song, a midtempo number with the general feel of something like A Foggy Day or Dolphin Dance. The song explores major seventh chords, and has a bright, spacious sound, and a fair amount of modulation. It kinda started with me exploring the middle section of Sun of the Son, trying to make is sound less heavy. But then it quickly developed in an unexpected direction and became something new. It’s almost there, but not quite; I’m still kind of experimenting and exploring. I want to get the turnarounds really working tight. A great melody has a feeling of inevitability about it, like once you hear it you can’t imagine it going any other way.

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The big news on the music front is I had to buy a new computer last week. Down in my recording studio I have a Mac workstation that’s a few years old. It’s connected to a MBox Pro III and runs a particular version of ProTools. I should also mention that since the release of the third Buzzy Tonic album, Elixr, I went back have been remixing the previous Buzzy Tonic record, Face the Heat, originally released in 2011. I was never fully happy with the sound of that record, and since then I’ve become much better at mixing so I figured it was worth it. And it’s is been coming along here and there late nights and weekends. I was almost done, seven of nine songs in the can.

A couple of months ago the screen on the computer started flickering and then it froze, and I had to reboot. The problem went away and didn’t come back until last week when it started happening repeatedly, until finally wouldn’t come back at all after rebooting. Luckily I have everything backed up on time machine and only lost about an hour’s work from my last session.

So I was all set to buy a brand new IMac Pro, but then I got to thinking about how it would integrate with the current rig. There’s no obvious upgrade path from my current version of ProTools to one that would run on a new OS. And that’s to say nothing of my numerous plugin, some of which have licenses tied tot the machine I’m pretty sure. It just seemed like a potentially bottomless hassle and expense.

So Jeannie stepped in and helped me out. She found a used/refurb computer of the exact same model as mine on Ebay for like five hundred bucks, about ten percent of the cost of a new one. It arrived just two days after we placed the order. And all we had to do was plug in my Time Machine drive and restore the last backup and Viola! Back in business! The computer was able to launch ProTools and talk to the MBox and I was able to continue with my mixing right where I left off. All the plugins I needed were still valid. It looks like I may have some issues with SampleTank, a software synth/sampler which I’ll need when I get back to tracking. But I’ll cross that bridge later.

For now, I’ve finished my penultimate mixes for all nine tracks. This is basically the final mix before mastering. My workflow nowadays doesn’t really include a mastering phase. I’ll sequence the CD and make sure all the levels match, but all the tracks have a dynamic compressor on the main out, so if I need to make any adjustments I’ll just go back to the track. So I have to listen them all together, and A/B them against the old mixes, and against the newer album. I may end up tweaking the level of a compressor, or raising or lowering something by a dB or so, but that’s about it. I was hoping to get this project done by end of Thanksgiving break, but now the goal is by the end of the year. Then in 2019 I’ll start in on BZIV.

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Just a couple random things during my downtime. Michelle and I finished Avatar: The Last Airbender a few weeks ago, and now we’re watching Firefly. She’s hooked. Shiny! And I’ve been reading Robert Lang’s newest magnum opus Origami Twists, Tilings and Tessellations. I’m well over a hundred pages in and only midway thru chapter two.

Peak Fall

Driving to work the last few days it’s been peak time for the leaves turning color around here. The local parkways run thru hills of oak and maple forest. Combined with leaden grey clouds and heavy skies the whole landscape was one of striking, eerie beauty. Totally surreal.

Sunday it was a mild a sunny day with bright blue skies, so Jeannie and I went for a hike along the Palisades near the Tappan Zee Bridge (a.k.a. The Mario). Great views of the river, the trees and the surrounding countryside, and we saw lots of hawks and even a family of giant Turkey Vultures hanging out on the cliffs. Way cool.

Last weekend was the first (and last) weekend in a while where we didn’t have a gig with the jazz or rock band, a show to see, or travel plans. But there’s plenty of other stuff going on.

For one thing, over the last several weekends Michelle and I watched Avatar: The Last Airbender. I saw this show out of the corner of my eye with the sound down when it was originally on the air, cuz I worked at Nickelodeon at the time. But watching it for real, well it was just excellent. So much going on, such great characters and conflicts, and such an imaginative story world. I’m still blown away that, like Doctor Markoh from Full Metal Alchemist, the Dragon of the West Iroh has a silent “h” at the end of his name.

For another we finally got the contract signed to get solar power on our roof. This was a big research project and it took a long time to work out all the details. Hopefully we can get the installation finished before the snow comes, but right now we’re waiting on permits from the city.

I’ve been busy with origami. A couple weeks back I made a pair of Cuttlefish for the Origami USA Holiday Tree at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. This project came and went so fast I didn’t even take pictures! But had a similar pair already folded, shown here. The twist is that the cuttlefish is an animal (not really fish, BTW) that changes it’s body color to blend in with its surroundings, to express it’s emotions and to imitidate other life forms with vibrant displays of color and pattern. To simulate the different moods I folded on out a plain beige sheet, as if blending in on a sandy seafloor. The other I made out of the loudest psychedelic fractal paisley pattern I could find, and posed the tentacles spread as if ready for attack. Way cool!

My other recent origami project was to diagram my Dirigible. I’ll be teaching this at the upcoming OrigaMIT convention, and wanted to submit it for the convention collection. It turned out to be a bit longer than I expected. I had estimated about 30 or 40 steps, but it ended up at 51. Still it’s a great model and well worth getting down. I plan on using it in an upcoming book.

What Keeps the Planet Spinning

Been busy. A week ago we went upstate to visit my parents, and also Lizzy at college. It was a fun trip, and Lizzy is doing well and having a good semester. While we were up there we took a trip to my uncle Ron in Welland and celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving along with that side of the family, including my cousin Tom, whom I haven’t seen in years.

We all caught Lizzy’s cold on the trip and been trying to shake it off ever since. Meanwhile back home Gina caught cold too, so we had to cancel our gig last weekend. We also had to kick out our guitarist, so now we’re looking for a new guitar player again. We don’t have any gigs for about six weeks, then it’s a run of four gigs in a row in late November thru mid December. Hopefully we’ll find someone.

The weather is turning cooler and it’s dark in the morning when we get up and in the evening by suppertime. We finally took out the air conditioners and had to start running the heat in the morning. And there’s been a ton or rain. At least Sunday was nice and clear. I took the Mustang out and Jeannie and went for a hike, first up around Kensico Dam and then a woods nearby called Cranberry Preserve, which has a stone quarry that looks to be where they got the stones to make the dam.

OrigamMIT is fast approaching. I’ve been diagramming my new Blimp, which I’m going to teach there and contribute to their collection, and is going to go in a future book.

Summer Is Here

Lots going on these days. Michelle is done with school now and on summer vacation. Lizzy is back to work at the pool.

Last weekend Michelle participated in a production of Oklahoma! with her local theater group YAA. Lizzy, as an alumna came back to help out as assistant stage manager. The show was really good. Oklahoma! was one of the records in my Mum’s record collection we used to listen to in heavy rotation as kids, and I remember seeing the movie too. Although I haven’t thought of it in years, and alot of the humor went over my head at the time, I know the music inside and out. It was a really good production, and it’s great to see this kids I’ve been watching for years now in high school and capable of performing lead roles.

We put up a new version of The Global Jukebox (theglobaljukebox.org), mainly with navigation, UI and usability enhancements, plus better map zooming. We have another coming soon with some new content, and another lined up after that with new and deeper analytics features.

At long last I’ve finally mastered my new solo album, the third Buzzy Tonic cd Elixr. I was pretty close last week but after listening in my car a few times I decided it still needed a few tweaks to the levels and balance, and the time between tracks. I listened to the new master on my drive into work this morning and side one is perfect. Gonna listen to side two in the ride home. Next it’s on to the album artwork.

Yesterday was Father’s day, and Jeannie and the kids and I went to the beach. We usually go to Jones Beach, but this year we decided to try the beach on Robert Moses State Park, near the Fire Island lighthouse. It’s just a few miles further up the road, but feels nicer, a little cleaner and a little less crowded. Plus the walk from the parking lot to the ocean is much shorter. It was a perfect day for it, hot and sunny but still breezy. When we were done on the beach we did the nature hike over the dunes the the lighthouse. A most excellent day.

I must say the weather has been really nice lately. I can’t remember a nicer June. It’s been warm to hot in the daytime, with lots of sunshine, but not super hot, and generally cool at night. Really enjoyable to be outside, especially in the long evenings. My energy level has been really good too. I’ve been getting lots done and enjoying myself, and looking forward to doing lot more fun stuff this summer.

My only disappointment right now is that the origami convention is coming up next weekend and I haven’t put in the time I’d like to develop many new models. To be fair I spent most of my origami time last fall and winter finishing my book, doing the photography, and then haggling with the publisher about proofs and revisions. That’s all done now and I’m just waiting for the finished books to show up. And I did come up with a few new models: a Monoplane, Flying Fish and Platypus. This last one is brand-new; more on it in a future post. And I still have a few days left; maybe I can come up with something this week.

Spring Loaded

Okay lots of topics today. First of the weather has finally gotten nice and spring is indeed here! Trees and flowers are starting to bud up and bloom, even a little sunshine. I spent a good part of the weekend outdoors, going for walks and working on the yard. I filled in some low spots in my yard and covered with grass seed. The last vestiges of stumpy are finally covered over. Next up, pulling out and re-laying some of the driveway stones where the tree used to be. Also both of our outdoor faucets are leaky, so I have to see if I can fix ‘em or else call a plumber.

I got the Mustang out on the highway too. It felt good. Last year at this time I was starting in on research to get it restored, but that fell by the wayside after I got sick/hurt. I guess it’s back in the realm of possibility again, but I have other projects I want to tackle this year, like getting some solar panels on my roof and expanding my patio. These also involve alot of upfront research. I’ll probably settle for getting an oil change on the Mustang for now.

At long last our bug fixing marathon at work has come to end, and I can let go of a huge amount of buggy code I’ve been holding in my head. At first it was a month, then six weeks, and kept getting extended and extended again. It’s pretty much all every engineer in the company has been doing for three months. By the end it seemed like every second bug was caused by some other bug fix. That’s a helluva way to run a company. I can understand that we have to deliver features to our customers, but we pay a very high price in code quality and technical debt rushing to do everything as fast as possible. We especially waste time doing things over rather than thinking it thru and getting it right the first time. It’s actually a known problem with our executives, and they keep saying they’ll address it next time around. Maybe this time they really mean it. We’re at the top end of a reorganization of the engineering department, moving to more flexible, cross-functional teams. Sounds good on paper but has a good chance of making things even more chaotic. We’ll see how it goes.

Wintry Mix

Been busy recently.

The days are getting longer and the weather getting milder, even some sunshine. I think the end of winter is in sight. I’ve been working out in the mornings, but now it’s daylight. Been focusing on the legs, building strength. We might go even skiing next weekend.

Last weekend was Jeannie’s birthday. We saw a great concert in the city. There’s a little nightclub inside the Apollo. The show was Matthew Whitaker, a blind, sixteen-year-old piano prodigy. Jeannie actually saw him a few years ago because he’s the son a friend from her old job, and she’s been telling me ever since to check him out.

The kid is amazing. Matthew’s main influences are Chick Corea and Stevie Wonder, but there’s flashes of Herbie Hancock, Ray Charles, Oscar Peterson and lots of other stuff in there. He also plays a mean Hammond organ, including some bass solos on the pedals, and some tasty Moog. He has his rig set up kinda like Keith Emerson, with the piano and organ back to back, and the synth on top of the piano. The thing that amazes me the most is how he’s able to draw straight line thru 100 years of jazz and R&B, from Art Tatum to Gnarls Barkley, and make it all sound unified while treating each style faithfully and making it his own.

Its crunch time at my day job. We’re in the bug-fix Olympics and our CEO has offered a bonus to whoever fixes the most bugs in the next two weeks, like a pirate captain nailing a gold, silver and bronze coin to the mast. Too bad cuz last week I fixed 11 bugs, by far the most in the company, but they don’t count toward this goal.

Jay and I have been continuing on with mixing Buzzy Tonic. We have four songs in the can, five to go. I’ve decided to re-track the bass for Rocket to the Moon because the existing take is not very well recorded. This is because it’s a very hard part to play. So I’ve been practicing and trying a take every day. Getting closer but still some rough spots. Jay was over the other day and and I showed him the riffs and he could just play ‘em like that. Basterd.

We’ve also begun work on the jazz record. When we left the studio not everyone was really satisfied with their playing, but I knew we had enough coverage to put together a killer take of every song. I don’t think Jay really believed it until we started cutting together the songs. This is more my area of expertise but he added an invaluable pair of ears. One thing I’ll say is that our tempos were really consistent. At one point I dropped in a whole ‘nuther solo, something like a minute and a half of music, and at the end had to adjust the timing by only a few milliseconds. We got thru half the songs and hope to do the rest this weekend, then move on to the actual mixing.

On the downside, it looks like our rock band may finally be dead. Been trying to get everyone together but it’s just not happening. More on that in a future post.

Meanwhile right now the Olympics are on, which is cool and fun, but I never watch TV anymore so the ads are all really weird.

Happy Hallowe’en

Hard to believe we’re halfway to the holidays already. This year Michelle provided the design for our pumpkin, and I did the carving. Michelle has been doing alot of drawing lately, particularly working on anime-style faces.

This year I did a Star Wars-Serenity mashup Wookie Jayne. A few weeks ago it was freezing in my office one day. They were still running the AC when they should have turned on the heat. I wanted something warm to wear sitting at my desk, and I chanced upon the wookie hoodie on sale on the internet.

Space Gallery

I’ve been super busy recently, but in a good way. We’re doing a major release for the Global Jukebox in the next few days. Tons of effort went into it. Martin did an amazing job with the Choreometrics data and views. Had a meeting today with Anaa and Gideon to discuss the future scope of work. Lots of big ideas in the offing.

Meanwhile I’ve also been hustling to complete the manuscript of my book Origami from Space. With the photos done the remaining tasks are to review the final diagrams and accompanying text. I decided to re-render the diagrams at a slightly higher resolution, since they were originally designed for a larger format then the ultimate size for the book. I want them to be as legible as possible at the correct size. This task is mostly done, but then I still need to proofread everything and write the introduction. Ah well, we’ll get there soon.

Meanwhile here’s a gallery of some of the pictures I shot a few weeks ago. Enjoy!

And Then There Were Three

Just got back from another road trip upstate, this time to drop Lizzy off at college. Major life milestone, hurray! The whole thing went pretty smoothly, and all of Lizzy’s planning paid off moving in. She’s off to a good start in the dorms, making friends and learning her way around. Jeannie and I went out with Larry and Jackie and Nick and Lisa after the move-in, so they finally got to meet. Amazingly, they both independently went down south to see the eclipse last week. Both said it was a fantastic experience but the drive home, eleven hours long, sucked. While we were up there we got a visit from my cousin Tom and his family, who were on their way home from New York City. On the way back we stopped by Martin’s. He and Kathleen just ran a 5K race. This is a pretty big deal for Kathleen, who just a year ago broke her leg pretty badly. Their kids are all into Greek mythology these days so we spent some time drawing mythical monsters. I came up with a beast that head seven heads, including those of a bear, antelope, Komodo dragon, giraffe, and two snakes and a chicken as tails!

Overall a relaxing trip and nice weather for driving. Now we’re home again and the house feels large.

Summer Fun Part Duex

Since I’ve been feeling better the last few weeks I’ve been trying to enjoy what’s left of the summer. Last weekend I took Michelle to the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island. This was the first airplane museum we’ve visited since our trip to Ohio. It’s a pretty cool place, featuring mainly locally built planes from the World War I era and the space race. Not as big as the Smithsonian or Wright-Patterson, but first rate. We met Mary and the cousins there and it was a good time. Michelle still really into seeing and learning about airplanes (and still wants to grow up to design airplanes and spaceships, or videogames).

By coincidence there was a videogame convention going there that day too. At first this seemed a little nerdy even for me, but it turned out to be a really fun bonus. There was a ton of classic videogames, vendors, even cosplay babes. Michelle was excited to see an original Atari condole and play the classic E.T. game. They had an amazing band, called Con-Soul, with a six piece horn section (two trumpets, two trombones, alto and bari sax), a synth mallet player, drums and fender bass. They played all video game music, with the format of doing a horn arrangement of the main themes and going into a funk/jazz jam. Very cool.

Then one night last week Mary’s came up and went with Jeannie and the girls to Rye Playland. I joined them after work mainly for a walk around the park.

I’ve been working really hard the last month or so to meet a deadline at work. Going back to work in the evenings and weekends, and all the while trying to focus on my health. It’s not easy keeping a huge amount of code in your mind and tends to take over your imagination a little bit. Kinda stressful but I try to be zen about it. Two days ago I finished and made probably the largest single commit since I’ve been writing software, at least 60 files in four different languages, into both the trunk and the release branch. So that’s a huge load off my mind and I can relax a little.

Last night I went to sit in with my friend Charlie’s band. It’s a happy hour gig at a little cafe right on the waterfront in downtown Yonkers where there’s a little park and everything. Great spot to watch the sun go down over river and sip your drink and listen to some jazz. We did some standards like Impressions, Footprints, There Will Never Be Another You, and All of Me. Felt great just to let go and be in the moment.