Category: People

It’s All Part of My Rock’n’Roll Fantasy

Lots going on these days. I finally had a long weekend to relax and catch up on some stuff. Went up up to see Martin, Kath and the kids. That was very nice. Martin is in his mountain man phase now, working on a ZZ Top beard. Also got himself some ducks and chickens and honeybees, and is thinking of getting a cow. Wow. Abbie is now old enough that she’s walking and starting to talk and is a full-on little person. Charlie and Match are happy and energetic and sweet and curious.

My scala class remains really cool but is also a huge time sink. I’ve talked to a few people including my friend Nick, and no one I know who’s taken this course has completed it on the first try. I’m now more than halfway thru – up to week 5 of 7 on the lectures and homework. My last homework was the first on where I got less than a perfect score cuz I ran out of time. Couldn’t do it during the workweek due to deadlines, nor over the weekend due to visiting Martin. Ah well, this week’s lecture seemed pretty easy, but the homework is to implement Huffman encoding. On the plus side my team at work completed our second perfect sprint in a row.

Unfortunately the lowest thing on my todo list is working on origami. The convention is coming up in just a month and I want to have some cool new stuff. Since I gave my one-and-only Stellated Dodecahedron to Uwen for the Copper Union exhibition, I undertook to fold another one. It’s been sitting ninety percent done on my table for three weeks now. On the way I came up with another idea in the Dodecahedron series. I’m calling it the Dimpled Dodecahedron and it closely resembles the Archemedean Icosidodecahedon. It’s sitting there ninety-five percent done. Ah soon.

Speaking of origami, my publisher is trying to arrange an event at Kinokiyuma bookstore during the OUSA convention, and also drop-shipping a shipment of my book to them and to OUSA in time for the convention. I’d be great if that works out.

But the main monkey business this days is with music. First off, my jazz combo invited me to join them as the main tenor man. Of course I accepted and am looking forward to attempting to channel John Coltrane and working on my soloing skills. Also thinking of dusting off some of my originals from Event Horizon and seeing how they go over.

Also, after weeks of just practicing, I’ve gotten back to recording. Worked on Your Dancing Shoes last night, got down a solid take of the piano part, which forms the backbone of the song.

But, you must be asking, what about the Relix? Last we heard the group was on a positive upswing. Well, all human organizations are fragile, and the Relix is entering a, um, transitional phase. First our guitarist Lee gave notice. Lee was the 12-string and hollowbody guy and added a perfect complement to Frank’s straight-ahead rock sound. The good news Lee agreed to lay down a guitar track on Your Dancing Shoes, which is right in his zone.

Immediately after Lee our singer Paul gave notice. Paul is going thru a tough time right now, but it still came as a shocker since it seemed that music was the main source of joy in his life. Of course not having a lead singer is a bit larger problem than losing a second guitar, plus Paul is also a great harmonica player and guitarist too. So we’ll see where it goes from here. We’ve got some replacement singers lined up to audition, but even they’re good, chemistry is important too. The guys in the rhythm section have both mentioned the idea of starting something new and have independently asked me to join them. I think if I start something new I think it’s gonna be Buzzy Tonic live, doing a mixture of my originals covers that showcase my singing and piano playing and reinforce the style I’m going for. Kinda getting back to what I was trying to do with Erik, but not so unplugged. Not sure if I’ll be able to fit the sax in, but that’s a secondary concern. The minimum viable product would a be a power trio – me with bass and drums, but I’d prefer a guitarist as well as a co-lead singer (Mike and Gus both sing backup) and preferably someone who writes. Even so, I have 20 or more songs ready to go, including 6 or 8 of my originals. Like I say, we’ll see how it goes.

Expanded Penrose Tessellations with Robots

Believe it or not we had two more snow days this week! On Thursday I broke my snowblower clearing out 15” or wet, heavy stuff. Thursday night was had more snow and Friday it turned to rain, and then more snow for a slushy and mess. Oy! Well the weekend came and some sunshine, and a chance to get caught up on my rest. And the Olympics are on. I never really get into the summer games very much, but I do enjoy the winter games. In any event, I’m sure everyone is looking forward to spring.

My origami friends Brian and Beth are going to be getting together at a maker event next week, where they will have access to a large cutting machine. Brian asked me if I could provide a cutter-ready file of the crease pattern for one of my Penrose tessellations. When I worked on this before, folding by hand, I did the first three expansions, creation patterns with 10, 35 and 70 cells. With the prospect of the machine doing the scoring, larger tessellations become feasible. I created CP’s for the next two expansions, which come out to 105 and 175 tiles. These numbers are really interesting, because they are all multiples of 5 and 7. 2 x 5 =10, 5 x 7 =35, 2 x 5 x 7 =70, 3 x 5 x 7 =105, and 5 x 5 x 7 =175. You’d expect five, but it’s very strange how seven figures prominently as well.

As for the CPs, I was able to dispense with all the landmarks and only include creases that appear in the final model. This ought to make the folding go much faster as well as providing a cleaner appearance. In addition, I shortened all the line segments so that the intersections don’t get scored, to avoid weakening the paper. Lastly, I color coded the creases so that the facets are blue, the ridges between the are red, and the creases for collapsing the intersections are grey. This was fairly time consuming, an unexpected but fun little project. Good for waiting for the snow to melt and watching the Olympics. Having worked the CP out to 175 I think I’m done with this for a while. If you’re an origami person with access to a cutting machine and are interested in trying one of the patterns, please feel free to contact me. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to seeing how Brian and Beth’s experiment comes out.

We’re Back Again

Rewinding a couple weeks, we spent a weekend camping in the Catskills with friends, cooking over fires, swimming in the lake, paddling around in canoes and playing acoustic guitars. After the heavy rain the first night of our trip in July we bought a new, larger shelter that sets up quicker but is bulkier and heavier to transport. Turns out the weather was beautiful and we didn’t need it. The highlight of the trip was a bald eagle circling around the lake one day. Jeannie and I managed to get close to it in the canoe. We drifted right up under the tree where he was perched and watched him spread his wings and take off across the lake. Amazing.

We were back home for a couple of days and the big news is that I got a full proof of the first draft of my book from my editor. For the most part the look is great, the choice of photos and all. One quibble is them doing goofy things with CaPiTaLiZaTioN of the chapters. The bigger issue is they condensed the diagrams to make it all fit into 128 pages. Some of the layouts are too crowded, and the drawings shrunk too much, and the layouts no longer flowing correctly. I’m working thru what to do about all that. I’ve been providing revised layouts that flow better and maximize the size of the drawings while still fitting in the available space. This is a pretty big time suck, taking me away from other projects, but I suppose it had to happen sometime. Now I’m up the most complex models in the back half of the book, and it’s clear they’ll have to come up a few pages. So either we’ll have to take some pages out elsewhere or make the book longer. We’ll see how it goes.

Then we took a long weekend road trip over Labor Day. The first stop was Washington, D.C. We visited the Udvar-Hazy annex to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. This is out by Dulles airport and has a huge collection of huge planes and spacecraft. Among them is B-29 Enola Gay, the Space Shuttle Discovery, a Concorde, a Blackbird, a DC-10, and lots of commercial and military planes and helicopters from small to huge. Also a really cool cutaway of a nine-cylinder rotary engine that really helped me explain to the kids how motors work.

Next day the main thing was the Native American Museum and National Art Gallery in The Mall. The highlight there was a light sculpture installed in the passageway between the east and west galleries. As we moved thru it, I recognized Conway’s Life being played out on the array of LEDs. This reminded me of my friend Leo, an artist how does installations of this kind. Way back in the day I helped him program some controls so he could run Life on a grid of LEDs. Shaw’nuff when we got the end of the passageway the sign said it was Leo’s work. It’s amazing to see his stuff in the same gallery as Rembrandt as Picasso.

The last part of the trip was to the beach in Ocean City. The big downer this year is that our hotel closed its hot tub. We’ll probably have to look for a new hotel next time we go back. Other than that it was great fun and very relaxing. After the first day the weather was hot enough we didn’t even miss the hot tub. We swam in the ocean, went to the water park, went out to dinner and down to the boardwalk, and visited the ponies at Assateague.

Now we’re back home and back to work. Michelle had her first kung fu lesson yesterday. Lizzy had her first day of high school today. Michelle starts school Monday. It’ll be a whole new set of routines this fall.

Red Burns

Red Burns, a prominent multimedia pioneer and educator, recently passed away. Red was the founder and director of my grad school program at NYU, the Interactive Telecommunications Program. I haven’t seen her in many years, but her legacy looms large, both on me personally, and on the NYC tech and creative industries and communities. Here’s one of many articles going around about her:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/nyregion/red-burns-godmother-of-silicon-alley-dies-at-88.html

Camp Rock

Just got back from a great weekend camping in the Catskills. The kids have been really excited about this for weeks. They brought along a couple friends, so it was six of us in the car plus all our food and kit. Packing went better than unusual this time, mainly cuz we did the bulk of it the night before. Also we only brought one cooler and planned on buying more beer for the second night.

Perhaps the highlight of the trip was one night Jeannie and I went for a midnight walk under a clear, starry sky. There was no moon, and you could see the milky way and everything, all shining very bright in the woods. We walked out to the lake where the view of the sky was the best. The mountains were silhouetted between the sky and a lake so smooth you could see every star in the whole starfield reflected in the water. Just then a shooting star appeared. Magical.

Another highlight was teaching Nick and his cousin Andy a little bit of guitar. Nick’s son Geo has been taking guitar lessons for a couple of year and has gotten quite good. Nick and Andy are raw beginners. I was able to teach them A Horse With No Name, the simplest song I know and probably the first song I learned. Rock on!

We’re Back

We heard you missed us. Just got back from a pair of trips upstate. It was very relaxing and enjoyable. The first trip was to Buffalo and Rochester to see family and friends. It was really hot up there the whole time, with tropical-style rain every day too. After all these years my parents bought an air conditioner for their guest room, which was quite nice. We spent the 4th of July with my folks and saw the parade and fireworks show in their neighborhood. It’s good to be up there for the 4th cuz the fireworks are better than anyplace around here.

I brought up my skates, put on new wheels while I was there, and enjoyed skating around the smooth streets of their flat neighborhood. We visited Denis and his family and spent a day in the pool. Larry and Jackie had a graduation party for their oldest son Timothy, who just finished high school and is going to UB in the fall as an honors scholar. I saw Larry’s mom and sisters for the first time in years. Each of them in turn commented on how Larry took over their living room with his drums when we were in high school. His house was where our band rehearsed. I guess we didn’t sound as good as we thought we did back then.

Jeannie and I went back home for a few days to catch up on work and things. We had a nice night out with Nick and Lisa, walking the High Line down to a brew pub in Chelsea. I also worked on origami stuff. I did the design and prefolding for a Great Dodecahedron in origami for the upcoming Origami Heaven exhibit. And I finally got sample chapter of page layouts back from my publisher. It looks great except for a few minor issues with fonts. And I took some more photos to fill in missing bits for the cover, etc.

Then we were on the road again for a tour upstate. We started in Albany, where we met up with Martin and his family. It was good to see them all, although I never got a chance to sit down with Martin and go over my version of his song. Lots of yummy fresh eggs.

We went into town to see the state capitol complex one day. The tour of the capitol building was pretty fascinating. The building is great reflection of the political process, overly ornate and massively over budget, with conflicting and competing grand visions from a succession of architects who were fired and replaced mid-project. Apparently Teddy Roosevelt kicked out all the stone cutters when he took office, leaving the Senate chamber unfinished with rows of carvings abandoned half done. Also learned how the Statue of Liberty is really a giant robot that stands guard in the harbor to protect the eastern seaboard against an invasion of Godzilla monsters.

The next day we lit out for historic Fort Ticonderoga. Michelle had asked to visit after studying it an history class and having been impressed at our visit to Fort Niagara a couple summers ago. Ticonderoga was really interesting too, with a re-enactor giving a vivid account of the history of the place and various battles. There was also some pretty cool exhibits of period weapons and other artifacts. The fort itself was largely a re-creation, with the French having blown up a large part of it before abandoning their position in the 1760’s. It was another really hot day.

After that it was on to Lake George. I’d never been there before, but it was very relaxing and charming, a classic old-school resort town. We were there mid-week, so nothing was very crowded. After Florida last year it was a welcome relief. We stayed at a place called the Georgian, which we picked mainly because it was right on the lake and had a pool bar. This turned out to be just the thing, as it was in the 90’s the whole time we were there. We hit the pool as soon as we got in, and spent most of the next day there lounging around, and a good part of the third day too. Just a beautiful scene, and the hotel people were really great. We also walked around town, went out to dinner, went swimming in the lake, went on a cruise on an historic steamboat, and rented a powerboat one morning to explore on our own. Lots of fun. Lots of folk music and twelve-string guitars around.

The third destination was Saranac Lake to visit our friends Mark and Kelly. Mark is one of my oldest friends so its always great to see him and catch up. We went hiking, swimming at a local lake, played some cards and just hung out. Learned that jade comes from Godzilla teeth just ivory comes from elephant tusks. Went to the Wild Center, a cool museum about the biology and geology of the forest, where we learned about mutant wolf-hybrid coyotes who hunt in packs. Kelly had some cool art books, and while I was up there I worked out a crease pattern for my origami Penrose Tessellation. Lots of heat and rain up there too. Mark’s band had a memorable gig that was interrupted by a cloudburst and windstorm so intense it threw around boats and party tents.

It was a great trip, but its good to be home. Today it’s yardwork and laundry and back to normal tomorrow. We just found out or local grocery store is closing. This is too bad; I really like the place. They’re walking distance from our house and are nice and small, so you can get in and out quickly. They also have great meat and produce. Also, it looks like the elm tree in our front yard is turning sick. A couple of the branches have wilted and the leaves turned brown. This is really too bad cuz it’s a champion elm, over a hundred years old and one of the tallest trees in the neighborhood. It’ll be sad if it doesn’t make it.

I’d hoped to hop on music projects as soon as I got back, but first I need a couple more days to finish my exhibit for Origami Heaven. More on that soon.

It’s All About Lizzy

June has come and gone in a blur. Yesterday we had a party for Lizzy’s 8th grade graduation. It was a bit low key with no one staying really late, partly cuz I’d been sick the night before. But still it was lots of fun and I’m glad so many people could make it. A good time was had by all. Finally today is a day to hang around a relax and catch up with stuff.

Way back at the beginning of June, we had the carnival at the kid’s school. Lots of fun that. I helped out at the Father’s Club tent, making burgers and dogs for the concession stand, and also running some of the carnival games. This year I played three games and won three prizes. One was a dart toss, another was dropping golf balls down a ramp to try and get a high or low number. I explained to Michelle the secret of winning that one and she played a perfect game with a score of six, the lowest possible.

Then it was the kids’ show of the Wizard of Oz, in which Lizzy played Glinda and rocked the house. Here’s picture of her from the local paper. Also Jeannie took a picture of Lizzy on her last day of school, in the same spot as her first day of pre-k all those years ago. How the time flies.

Then it was the graduation dance, and then the graduation itself, all fun if somewhat poignant occasions. Lizzy graduated with first honors and is in the honors track in her new high school. She placed out of ninth grade math, but she’ll have to take Latin. She doesn’t mind so much since that’s the language they use to cast spells in Harry Potter (the school doesn’t offer Elvish). Michelle will be at the grammar/middle school for a few more years, so it wasn’t really such a big goodbye for us, although some families that have become good friends are moving on. Hopefully we’ll be able to stay in touch. Earlier this week Lizzy had her orientation at her new high school, so it’s really moving forward into a new phase of life. So congratulations Lizzy!

Lastly we had the origami convention. This year was a really good one. I had lots of new stuff. In the middle of, Jeannie and bopped out to Long Island for her cousin’s wedding on Saturday night, and another good time. More on the origami stuff in a future post.

New Song: Is It Safe?

Ah, so back to talking about making music and art and stuff. You probably thought I’d forgotten about that. But no, I’ve been making steady progress the whole time.

First, an aside. Tonight was the spring band concert at the Kids’ school. Lizzy is in 8th grade, so this may be her last one. Certainly then end with this school. Her band director, Mr. A., is a really great guy and excellent teacher. He was Lizzy’s band director at the old school too, so we’ve known him quite a few years and under his guidance Lizzy has grown to be one of the star performers. He gave a special call out to all the graduating kids in the band, and invited Lizzy to come back for Honor Band next year and thru high school. They’re trying to get a band program going at Lizzy’s new high school, so you never know, this may not be the end. And of course, not to be overlooked, Michelle is coming along nicely on clarinet.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on Black Swan, the eight-minute epic for my next album. The bass, drums, piano and vocals are tracked and sounding really smokin’. Now it’s up to the solos and the finishing instruments. I jammed out a sax part for the rest of the song, but decided I want to work out a real horn arrangement. Probably tenor and bari. I’m also gonna add either a clav or rhythm guitar, or maybe both. This’ll give me a chance to finally plug in some of those effects boxes Martin left me and try and get a sound. Might also motivate me to go out guitar shopping.

I find it’s best to work on songs in pairs, so the other song I’ve been working on is Is It Safe to Go Outside? This was written by Martin, and I found it in a pile of demos a few weeks back. It’s not a horror story, but an ode to that feeling you get that first day of spring when the weather finally turns mild. It’s really a great song, and at first I just wanted to learn it to play on piano, but it’s really worthy of a full production recording. Martin’s demo features a click track and rhythm guitar, and then the vocals, bass, and sax form three interlocking melodies, almost like a fugue. On top of that, he has this really clever way of turning the time around every few bars.

First I learned the bass and sax parts. My piano part will feature ideas from both of these as well as the guitar. Next I added a drum part. This was fun, to create a beat that grooves and yet follows all the intricacies of the arrangement. The kick drum cleaves pretty close to the bass, while the hihat holds down the backbeat. Everything else takes off from there.

The sax part needs to be retracked because it’s out of tune. When I went to learn the part I could see why: Martin plays it on tenor and it’s really high in the range. Those high E’s and F#’s are tough. If I can’t get a good take on tenor I’ll try it on alto to see how that sounds. I may also put in a bari line for some extra bottom.

Neither song has a ready rough mix yet, but soon, soon. Meanwhile, Is It Safe has great lyrics too. Here they are.

…

Is It Safe to Go Outside?
by Martin Szinger

Is it safe to go outside?
Is it time to count up all the flowers growing?
Is it safe to feel the sunshine
Like a long-lost friend returning?
Is it OK to roll the windows down?
Take a ride, I want to feel the wind in my face
Blood flowing in my veins

Is it safe to go outside, you know I try to be strong
But the winter’s been too long
Is it safe to go outside, I hope the forecast isn’t wrong
You know this has to be the day

Is it safe to take myself to the park?
Blame it on my alter-ego
It’s a game of bocce for my soul
Knock ’em down and keep them rolling
What a shame it would have been
To pass you by and not to see the smile on your
Face… shine… wait…
There’s blood flowing in my veins

Is it safe to go outside, you know I try to be strong
But the winter’s been too long
Is it safe to go outside, I hope the forecast isn’t wrong
You know this has to be the day
There’s blood flowing in my veins
There’s blood flowing in my veins
There’s blood flowing in my veins

Mister Blue Sky

Sun is shining in the sky, there ain’t a cloud in sight. Don’t you know it’s a beautiful day, hey-ey-ey?

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous the last week or so. I’ve been trying to spend as much time outside as possible. Trying to work from home more and take a long break in the middle of the day to do stuff and then come back an sit in front of the computer in the evening. It feels like just a few weeks ago it was still winter and now it’s no jacket required.

Last weekend we went to a fancy party for the parents of the kids’ school. It was a fun time, more than last year, mainly because we know more other parents now. Jeannie really rocked a new pair of really-high-heels she bought to stay ahead of Lizzy, combined with a new little-black-dress. Woo-hoo!

Also last weekend we went upstate to visit Martin and meet my new niece Abbie. She’s a very mellow baby. They’re doing great. My folks were over too. We all had alot of fun. Martin’s been making great progress on making improvements to his new house.

We’ve been making progress here too. Last week I tuned up the kids’ bikes and washed and waxed Jeannie’s car. It rained that night and the next morning the water was all beaded up on the paintjob. Michelle said “Ooh, that looks like a computer background.” I didn’t know exactly what she meant, but Lizzy snapped a picture of it an shaw’nuff if was her desktop background that night.

I also took the Mustang to a couple of local body shops. Neither of them wanted to touch the car because they specialize mainly in collisions, although they all agreed its a great car in great shape. It’s true you really don’t see may of them here in the northeast, although there’s a guy in my neighborhood who has a Model-A Ford, and another guy who has a banana colored Ferrari. Anyway, they say I want to go restoration not just a paintjob, that I want to “do it right”. I was a bit surprised; mainly the paint is dead on the roof and trunk, and there are a couple of minor dings and a tiny rust spot on one fender. I figured they could take care of that. They made the point that you don’t know if there’s more hidden rust, plus they’d want to re-align the doors and all, and in any event they’d want to take off all the chrome etc., and start with new primer on the whole car. Of course this won’t be cheap, but I’ll end up with a show-quality car and the money I put in will increase the car’s value by even more. This was never my ambition, but I guess it’s all or nothing, so I’m considering it. But I’m also considering just letting it be. If I go all-in, then if the engine every goes I’m already committed to fixing that.

The thing is, neither one knows a guy who does restorations. They both recommend I look away from the NYC area where the cost of labor ought to be cheaper. So this is back to being a research project. We’ll see if I get anywhere.

Oh, and Michelle spilled water on my computer and we had to take it apart and dry it out. Now the wifi doesn’t work and the fan sounds like the world’s tiniest jet engine.

Next up: the patio project!!!

Lizzy Confirmation

Lots of good stuff going on these days. The weather continues to be nice, even if it’s a bit on the cool side. The yard is coming along. Everything is growing now, and it looks like I’ll have to mow this weekend. I’ve been going rollerblading every second day or so, weather permitting. Work is good these days. The VP of the platform group singled out my project for praise at a meeting last week. Sure is better than layoffs, political battles or insane deadlines.

Martin and Kathleen had their baby, a girl they named Abbie. Congratulations and looking forward to meeting my newest niece.

Last weekend was a big one for Lizzy too. She’s a teenager now, suddenly wearing contacts and standing six feet tall in high heels, towering over everyone except me. Wow. Saturday was her Honor Band concert, with kids from all over the lower Hudson valley. She played flute and piccolo. The kids sounded really good this year, and had a great selection of songs. Sunday was her Confirmation.

My parents came into town for the weekend, which was really nice. We got to spend alot of good time together talking and catching up. For the ceremony Jeannie’s folks and Mary’s all came up too. Afterwards we had dinner at a great local Italian restaurant and a party back here. Late in the evening my Dad started telling stories about growing up in Hungary and his experiences surviving the war and its aftermath. I’ve been hearing these stories my whole life, but I still find them endlessly fascinating. Every time there are new things I’ve never heard about before.