Travel – Page 5 – Zing Blog 2

Los Endos

We ended the summer on a chill note for the long weekend. We’ve been doing alot of traveling the last few weeks, including our recent tour of Cape Cod and Boston, followed by a trip up to Buffalo a week ago to take Michelle to school.

This was our third trip up to Buffalo this summer (Jeannie’s fourth). We got a car for Michelle this semester, so she and Jeannie drove her car and I followed in mine. The move-in went smoothly and Michelle’s new dorm is quite nice. She’s in a suite with three friends from last year. Very much echoing the pattern of Lizzy four years ago.

Lizzy met us on campus and gave us all a ride in her new car, and took us thru the Delta Sonic car wash. I’d forgotten how much of a thing Delta Sonic is up there. It’s a fun ride but maybe could use an animatronic Johnny Depp in a pirate outfit at the end. Afterwards we went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant that used to be a Denny’s where I worked as a dishwasher for a couple weeks as a teenager.

I also spent a bunch of time talking with parents, which is nice. One day I went for a walk around the lake with my dad, and he told me a bunch of stories about how his first few years living in Canada, how he decided to go to college at age 25, and what it took to apply and what happened when he got in. It turned out him and a German fellow named Siegfried got the two highest scores in English on the entrance exam, despite both of them being non-native speakers (English is actually my dad’s third language). When the professor asked him how could this be, my dad said, “Well, I studied.” Also something about the French being salty about the Concorde many years later.

Back home, we caught a show at the Blue Note last week, with Jeff Tain Watts on the drums and Daryl Jones on bass with members of the Rolling Stones touring band doing a tribute to Charlie Watts, mainly jazz and blues interpretations of Stones songs. Many were more enjoyable than the actual Rolling Stones versions to me. The great Randy Brecker was the special guest on trumpet. I haven’t seen him play in many years, probably since the Return of the Brecker Brothers in the 1990’s. He’s looking old and rotund and when he came up on stage maybe even not sure what he was doing there. But when he put the horn to his lips, he’s one of those guys who just lifted the whole band to another level. It’s like have Kate Blanchett in your movie playing and elf queen.

So after all that running around we decided to mainly stay at home over Labor Day and catch up on random tasks. We went on one day trip, out to Fire Island, condensing a whole beach weekend into a single day. It was cool in the morning, so we parked near the beach and went on a nature trail swamp walk up to an historic light house and climbed up to the top, which gave us an excellent view of Long Island and the ocean. The next leg of the walk took us to a quaint little town called Kismet, which feels like a real-life Hobbiton. It’s full of little beach cottages but has no roads, only sidewalks, because it’s only accessible by foot, bicycle or ferry. We had an excellent lunch of seafood and frozen drinks and lingered a while. When we got back the beach the weather had warmed up so we hung out and went for a swim in the ocean. The threat of sharks was gone, but there were some dead jellyfish floating around. I got stung by one, just a little on my arm. After that it was time to go.

For some reason I’ve been listening recently to alot early 90’s alternative metal and ska bands like Fishbone, No Doubt, Mr. Bungle, De La Soul, Soul Coughing, Cibbo Matto, and Soundgarden. Not all the same genre I know, but there does seem to be some kind of center of gravity there.

Week in New England

Just got back from a lovely family vacation in Cape Cod and the surrounding area. This was the first full-week vacation we’ve taken in years, since before the pandemic. Lizzy drove up from Buffalo at met us at Martin’s house outside of Albany, and left her car there. She was all excited because she just bought a new car a few weeks ago. We all took my car from there to make things easier. It was great to be together with both kids for a week and hang out and have fun.

First day we took the ferry out to Martha’s Vineyard. We mostly walked around town and ended up a restaurant having lobster rolls and cold drinks. Then we stayed on Cape Cod for a few days in a sort of resort hotel suite on the beach with a loft and a balcony looking out over the ocean. Went swimming in Nantucket Sound, where the sea there was surprisingly warm and gentle, although the beach was a bit stony after you got in a little ways. Enjoyed the sea and sunshine, went out for breakfast, ice cream, and more seafood dinners, played games in the evening.

One day we drove out to the end of cape, to Provincetown. It was a cute fun town, alot like Martha’s Vineyard. We took a whale watching tour and saw several groups of different kinds of whales. Spent most of our time with a pair of humpbacks who lifted their tails out high out of the water before they dove down.

Another afternoon we went to the National Seashore on the Atlantic side. Saw some lighthouses and the landing for the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable, as well as the Marconi station where they sent the first trans-Atlantic wireless communication over a hundred years ago. There was also a hiking trail thru the marsh which was pretty cool. I took a swim in the ocean on one of the beaches there. The water was much colder than on the south side.

We spent a couple of days in Boston. We stayed in a hotel right near downtown, and spent a good deal of time walking around the city. The first day we went to the aquarium, which was pretty cool, and ended up at a pub that’s been there since the 1700’s for dinner. Next day we went to the science museum, which included the planetarium and an electricity demonstration with Van de Graaff generators and Tesla coils that could play music. I found these pretty fascinating, but when I asked after the show the presenter didn’t really have a strong idea of how the Tesla coils were made to play in pitch. So I looked it up, and it turns the lighting actually can be made to fire off at a controlled frequency by modulating the voltage. This creates a tone and basically makes the Tesla coil a speaker. The voltage controller can be driven by a midi interface and suddenly, music! Now I’m thinking of getting one for Spacecats. I wonder if it’s safe in a bar or nightclub.

That evening we went to see the Red Sox play at Fenway Park. We’d been trying to get to a Mets game all summer but the timing didn’t work out, so we did this instead. It’s been years since I went to a baseball game, and it was alot of fun.

The last day we headed out northward. Spent the morning at Salem, and went to the witch museum, which was strangely fascinating. Spent the afternoon at a beach in New Hampshire, which had the same vibe as Cape Cod but a bit more low key. The beach itself was nicer, more sandy and less stony, plus has some big rocks. After that it was back to Martin’s where we hung out most of the following day, and finally Lizzy took off and we went back home too.

Pour Me a Fourth

Just got back from an excellent trip upstate for the fourth of July. Just wonderful to see family and friends, and feel like life is getting closer to back to normal. We drove up on Saturday the second, and it was a beautiful day for a drive. Listened to Kamasi Washington, plus a few of my own records on the trip. The first evening we hung out with Larry and Jackie at their house. Lizzy and Larry’s daughter Caroline joined us. Somehow between us we polished off a whole bottle of whiskey. Larry was the drummer in my first band in high school, one of the best drummers I know. Back in the day we were very into prog rock, bands like Rush and Genesis. The song YYZ happened to come up on a playlist, and Larry knew it was in 5/4 time and the title of the song refers to the airport code for Pearson airport in Toronto. I blew his mind when I showed him the rhythm of the song comes from Y-Y-Z in morse code: – . – – – . – – – – . .

We stayed with parents and Sunday morning we just sort of hung around and talked. Jeannie and I went for a walk down to the park and the lake. After lunch I went rollerblading around their neighborhood. The streets are much flatter and smoother than around here, and with less traffic. Mid afternoon my brother Martin arrived. His kids are all getting bigger, so Jeannie and were off to a hotel the next couple days. That evening we went out to dinner with Lizzy at Canalside, which is down at the waterfront where the naval museum used to be (and still is). They’ve expanded it with some restaurants, shops, museums about the Erie Canal, and a waterfront walk. Very nice. Lizzy recently got a big promotion at work, so we were celebrating that. We went to a seafood restaurant right on the waterfront, very nice. Afterwards we went back to her apartment and played Trivial Pursuit. Jeannie won, probably because there were so many baseball questions, despite Lizzy and I teaming up against her at the end.

Our hotel had a pool and a hot tub, so we started the morning of the fourth enjoying that. We had the place to ourselves, so I swam a bunch of laps, something I haven’t done in years. Then it was on to Wegman’s for beer and ice and party supplies. We spent most of the day on my parent’s back porch chillin’ and grillin’. Dogs, burgers and steak! Lizzy made a pasta salad. Classic rock on the radio, which I don’t always listen to, but still love. At one point Martin got out his rollerblades and his kids all had scooters, so we rolled around the neighborhood together. Later we played Azul, a Eurogame based around collecting tiles. We have this game at home, but Martin and Kathleen play it a higher level than Jeannie and I, and kicked our butts.

In the evening we went out to the park and laid our blankets on the lawn to watch the fireworks show. I hadn’t done this in a few years and it was pretty spectacular. I think the must have saved up the fireworks from the last few years’ cancelled shows. Afterwards Martin and I stayed up late into the night talking.

The right home was nice too. More classic rock until we got tired of it. We found a roadside barbecue place about halfway home, which was perfect for lunch.

Now it’s back to work and projects for a spell, but there’ll be more road trips and vacations later in the summer.

Stepping Out

It feels like just a few short weeks ago that spring arrived, and now it feels like full-on summertime. It was hot over the weekend, up in the 90’s, and we put in our air conditioners.

We just got back from a road trip to pick Michelle up from college, and Jeannie and I took a mini-vacation along the way. On the way up to Buffalo, we stopped in Ithaca. The motivation was to see Joe Jackson, playing with his band at a theater there in town. The show was great. Joe’s songs are always great and the band was really hot. Joe did a solo spot of four or five songs with him just singing and playing piano. The theater was this really cool old art-deco venue, very ornate, good sound.

The next day we spent pretty much the whole day hiking around lake Cayuga and some waterfalls. Very relaxing, beautiful scenery and a beautiful day for it. Went out to dinner that night at a Mexican place across the street from the place we went the night before. Ithaca is a cute little college town with a downtown district maybe four five blocks long. Our hotel was on the outskirts of town, with a trial to a waterfall right out the door.

Next day we spent to morning at the Corning Museum of Glass. We must have driven past it a hundred times over the years, but the kids were never interested. When I told them we were going to check it out, at first they thought I was joking. In any event, it’s vary cool, with a whole big gallery space, in which the pieces range from pretty cool to totally amazing. Another section is all about glass technology, including things like modern forming and shaping techniques, and applications such as telescope mirrors, space shuttle windows, car windshields and computer touchscreens. A third section is about the history of glass, with artifacts from all over the world, going back to the time of ancient Egypt. There was also an interactive area where you could watch live demos of blowing glass, other sculptural techniques, and breaking glass too. There was even a thing where you could blow your own glass bowl or ornament, but we found out about that too late. Now we’ll have to come back another time.

We arrived in Buffalo in the afternoon and went to visit Lizzy. Unfortunately, on the way there she texted us that she’d just tested positive for covid. I had brought up her bicycle because she wanted to ride it this summer. So we handed it off in her driveway, keeping a safe distance. Her hanging out with us was right out, so that was that. Next day she said she’s feeling better, so that’s good news.

Then we went up to the UB campus to pack a carload of Michelle’s stuff to store at my parent’s house. Next morning we came back to get the rest of her things, then back to my parents for a barbecue. We hit the road home later that afternoon. Now we’re back to three in the house again.

In other news, my blog here has been having repeated outages, and the tech support has been just useless and miserable, so I’m in the process of dropping my web host and moving to a new service provider. You can preview it at:

https://www.zingmanstudios.com/blog/

Right now it’s just a few test posts, and I’m working on customizing the visual theme. Hopefully that won’t take too long, and then I can go ahead and do the migration. So watch this space.

I Know What I Like

There’s been lots and lots of rain the last couple weeks. I finished part two of project dirt on Saturday. Too wet to do much else. I’m up to 12 wheelbarrow loads. Looks like maybe three or four to finish off.

Jeannie and went upstate on Sunday to visit Martin and the family. Once we got there the weather turned unusually cold and there was even a snow flurry.

Martin’s boys Charlie and Matthew are now playing sax, mainly an alto which they share. It turns out they’re pretty good, particularly Charlie, who is a couple years older and has been playing longer. Martin has been giving them lesson and plays a (very nice Selmer Mark VI) tenor. There’s alot of duets with a Bb and Eb horn. So I gave them my old (cheap Chinese, but still decent and playable) soprano sax so the boys could play together. I brought up my (ancient classic Conn) bari sax, which used to belong to Martin, so we could play as a quartet and have some fun. I wrote out a couple John Coltrane blues charts, Blue Trane and Equinox, as double duets so we could all jam together.

That night Martin, Jeannie and I went to see a concert in The Egg, a strange theater in the downtown Albany capital complex. It was Steve Hackett, the guitarist from the classic lineup of Genesis in the 1970’s. I had heard that Genesis was touring this year and was thinking of going to see them. Genesis of course was one of the great prog rock bands of all time, and I was a big fan as a teenager. But their last really good album was Abacab in 1981 or so. So I didn’t really want to see them play songs like Invisible Touch, and figured there’s no way they’d do something like Supper’s Ready, so I passed on it.

Then Martin told me Steve Hackett is touring this year and the tour is called Genesis Revisited. I think Genesis was Martin’s favorite prog band of that era and he got particularly into the 12-string guitar and Hackett’s whole bag, just as mine was Emerson Lake and Palmer and I got heavy into synthesizers and Keith Emerson’s thing.

And it turned out the be a great show. The Egg is a unique venue, all modernist curved concrete and vertical hardwoods, very sci-fi, with outstanding acoustics. The fist set was drawn from Hacket’s solo work, and reminded me of guys like Alan Holdsworth and Jeff Beck. His sound is actually very diverse and often quite subtle. The second set he basically recreated the classic Genesis live album Seconds Out, which was all their best stuff from that era. The musicianship was outstanding and the band knew every part. They augmented the usual five-piece lineup with a sax player, who was excellent.

I’d always wondered how they got their sound live, so some things were a revelation. One is the bass player had a doubleneck combo bass and 12-string guitar. I’d seen Geddy play one on Xanadu, but the Genesis sound leaned on it pretty heavily. The other was Taurus pedals. This was a funny little foot-operated analog bass synthesizer by Moog in the 1970’s, played like the pedals of an organ. They appeared to be the genuine article (the Mellotrons were all recreated using samplers) and it must have been hooked up some very powerful subwoofers. The tone was huge and so low as to be on the edge of subsonic. Sometimes it didn’t even sound like tones in the chord, just massive low frequency energy. Definitely something you can’t get from listening to a record.

Today it finally got of to seventy degrees in the afternoon, once the rain stopped.

It’s the Time of the Season

So last weekend we went skiing for the third weekend in a row, back up at Catamount in the Berkshires. We were able to catch up with our friends Seth and Cathy, whom we haven’t seen much since before the pandemic started. The conditions were good, and I’m getting more comfortable with my new skis every outing. And once again it was really cold.

Then we had a few warm and mild days, to the point where Saturday it was close to sixty degrees and full of sunshine, and most of the snow had melted. I took the Mustang out for a rare February ride, and after that got on my bike and cruised around the neighborhood. Then Saturday night it turned cold and snowy, and Sunday there was a fresh layer of snow over everything.

I recently read a biography of tenor sax legend Michael Brecker, who used to live one town over in Hastings, and passed away fifteen years ago. He was of course one of my biggest influences in the 80’s and 90’s, with his great big sound, killer chops and boundless imagination, depth and soul in his playing. Among many other things, Mike provided an example of how to apply John Coltrane’s ideas in a contemporary setting and in a rock and funk idiom and then go beyond. His first solo album from 1987 remains one of my all-time favorites. Unlike most biographies of famous musicians, this one gets pretty deep into his actual music, his approach to practicing, improvising and writing, and insights into how he achieved his monstrous technique and applied it in all kinds of different musical situations.

Meanwhile, in my home studio I’m in the middle of tracking three short, singer-songwriter style songs written on guitar. I’ve been be practicing to get my guitar chops up, and experimenting with sounds, phrasing, tone and effects. I think I have two of the three guitar parts in the can. I hope to have full arrangements sometime this spring.

And now that Bluezebub is finished, I’ve been bringing new material into my jazz group. I’ve been listening alot to jazz-adjacent jam bands like Snarky Puppy, Galactic, and Butcher Brown, and hoping to bring some of that kind of thing into our group. We’ve been experimenting with free-from open jams, which is promising and alot of fun, but not very efficient in terms of greeting material. One thing we did was to learn an old song of mine called (I Miss My) Baby in Bb, which has a sort of open funk jam in the beginning and end, framing a funky blues as the main part of the tune. Then Ken listened to Bluezebub, and told me really likes it and would like to play Sun of the Sun off that record. Like Baby in Bb, I wrote Son of the Sun for my 80’s fusion band Event Horizon. It’s a much more advanced song, largely in 5/8 and 7/8, with a long sinuous solo section in the middle.

So now we have this old-school fusion energy in the group. I guess to be fair it was there from the beginning, as one facet of our set is songs by The Brecker Brothers, Weather Report, Grover Washington Jr., and that kind of thing, as well as jazz interpretations of rock song by groups like Steely Dan, Joe Jackson and The Police. And a good chunk of it is pre-fusion modern jazz. About half the songs are originals, mostly of mine, but they come from songs I’ve written for my last few groups and have adapted to this group.

But now I’ve written my first song specifically for this group. It’s called Dr. Pluto, and is a loping funk jam with some Monk-inspired changes and rhythm motifs. The lead on the head is designed for Ken to play on the bass with this auto-wah pedal he’s been fooling around with. It sounds pretty cool and deservers a showcase. Meanwhile I can explore a sort of contrapuntal role on the sax, something I rarely get to do. The arrangement is kept loose on purpose, to give the band a chance to stretch out on it and let it evolve and go somewhere. I’ll bring it to rehearsal this week, and we’ll see how it goes.

Winter Wonderland

It’s been a fun few weeks. A week ago we went skiing, me Jeannie and Michelle, at Catamount up in the Berkshires. It was a great time and we got in ten runs, most of them on Walther’s Way, a nice curvy blue trail with a long, strait run out at the bottom. Last year we hadn’t been skiing in seven years or so, and it was great to get back into it. We went once and it was amazing. Definitely a blessing to still be skiing in our 50’s.

Last season I bought new boots and demoed new skis. This year Jeannie got new boots too, and we both did a full-season demo/rental, where we can keep our skis if we like them instead of getting back our deposit. Skis have changed since we got our last generation of gear, getting on twenty years ago. The fashion now is for shorter, wider skis with a narrow waist. They’re better for carving, and better with some powder on the mountain, but don’t seem to hold a strait line as well, and don’t have much control on ice or scraped-off slope. I got used to mine and like them pretty well, although I can’t seem to go as fast. This fits okay with my current skiing style, which is more about cruising than hot-dogging. Jeannie isn’t digging her new slats. I’m still not sure if I’m gonna keep mine or try something else. I like the ones I demoed last year better than the ones I have now.

We went for the late session, starting in the afternoon and going into the night. On the was home we stopped by a restaurant called Four Brothers Pizza. They actually have four locations between our home and the ski slope, this was the third one. I must say it was great, better than I expected. The food was great, hot cappuccino and soup most welcome. Deep-dish Chicago style pizza; I guess we’re far enough out of the New York City Area. The decor was murals of ancient Greek and Roman temples, landmarks, seascapes and scenes out of mythology, very well done, over-the-top but nevertheless appropriate to the ambience.

During the week we went to Hades Town, a Broadway show. It was the first Broadway show for me in many years, although Lizzy and Michelle have been to a few the last several years. We met Jeannie at her office, a major book publisher, and they had some of their all-time best books on display in the lobby, including The Call of Cthulhu, and D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths. We went to dinner and went to Yum Yum, a Thai food place in Hell’s Kitchen, one of our favorite lunch places back in the day when Jeannie and I both used to work in midtown. Good to know they’re still there and the food is as good as ever.

One thing that struck me about walking around midtown is how empty the place was. I’ve been in that neighborhood when it was wall-to-wall pedestrians and you had to practically elbow your way thru the crowd to move at all. This night you could move around with ease. Maybe five percent or less of the usual level of foot traffic.

The show itself was great. Hades Town is a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, set to the music of old time Appalachian folk, blues, country and jazz. The songs were great, clever and moving, and the performers were fantastic too, especially the actor who played Hades, but the trombone player stole the show.

Then this last weekend we went up to Buffalo to take Michelle back to school for her next semester, and we brought our skis with us. In the past we’ve been up there around Xmastime and brought our skis, but it’s early in the season and there’s a good chance it’ll be too warm or there won’t be enough show. I haven’t been to Buffalo at the end of January for many years, and I gotta tell you, neither of those things were a problem. There were two feet of snow on the ground all around, and the temperature was below 20 degrees the whole time. I grew up in Buffalo, but I’ve almost forgotten what a real winter feels like. Nevertheless, I was quick to adapt.

We went to Holiday Valley, which is the mountain where I learned to ski. Lizzy joined us as well as Michelle. It’s not particularly high compared to the Catskills, let alone Vermont or the Sierras, but it’s enough to be fun. I haven’t been there in thirty years. They’ve made some improvements with more and faster lifts and more lodges. The day we went the high was 12 degrees, so we were hoping the cold would keep people away, but no such luck. We had to circle the parking lot three times to find a spot, and when we got to the base lodge the lift lines were pretty long. But once we got up on the mountain it was fine. Our friend Larry joined us, and he’s been skiing there alot and knew his way around. We went to the back side, to a lift called Tamarack or Tannenbaum. The trails there were beautiful, winding and woodsy with lots of good powder. Perfect soul skiing. We did run after run and went in for hot cocoa after a couple hours. Then we did one more session, up and down the Mardi Gras lift and trail, which was long and strait, mainly going for all-out speed. I think we did twelve or thrirteen runs in all. By the time we got off the mountain it was twelve degrees below zero.

Afterwards we went out to dinner at Ellicotville Brew Club, one of a growing number of craft beer places in the Buffalo area. While we were gone, there was a major snowstorm back at home. Jeannie set up a a little web cam so we could watch our yard fill up with snow. To our surprise, our neighbor Kevin across the street came over and cleared our driveway. He has a giant snowblower and I guess he doesn’t have a chance to use it that often. He’s done a bunch other kind things for us (remember project dirt last year), and the bar happened to be selling variety packs of their beers, so we picked one up for him as a thank-you.

New Year State of Mind

It’s been a little while since I last posted. Took some time off for the Christmas holidays. Both kids came home the week before Christmas for a whole week, which very nice. Lots of baking and gaming and listening to music and watching movies, and of course visiting with family. Lizzy’s boyfriend Tim came down too and spent a couple days with us. Mary’s came over on Christmas day and we had a great big feast. On boxing day we went up to Buffalo and visited with my parents and Martin for a few days. It’s been a while since I’ve seen them, and Martin’s kids are getting big fast. Charlie is thirteen now. Martin and I stayed up late talking, alot about music and software and things, but there’s never enough time to get into everything there is to say. We saw our friends Steve and Scott up there. Haven’t seen Steve in some time, so it was good to catch up. Both have been going thru difficult times. We did not see my friend John due to the the threat of heavy weather, nor Larry and Jackie due to the threat of covid. Nor did we see any of the extended family from Canada. Ah well, we’ll be back in a month, hopefully with our skis.

Over the break I read C. S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet and the rest of his planet trilogy, regarded as one of the groundbreaking classics of science fiction. (Earlier in the pandemic I tried to read Jack Vance’s Dying Earth saga, but I had to put it down because, you know, dying Earth and all that.) The planet trilogy is fascinating and very well written, but not what I expected. The first book is about a journey to Mars, in which the protagonist meets some wise aliens, including ones made of energy. The second takes place on Venus, and goes deeper into similar themes. The third book takes a sharp left turn and is set on Earth, in postwar England, and involves sinister research institutes, strange conspiracies, Arthurian legends, the Numinor, reanimated talking heads, and a pet bear, among other things. A surprisingly well executed combination of science, mysticism, philosophy, mythology, action and adventure and even terror. Still mulling it over.

Before the kids came home I wound down and wrapped up the year’s work. The last half of November into the first half of December was super busy. There was a big push of new work for the Global Jukebox, to support a talk Anna gave at a conference. Improved playlist and lots of other stuff.

I’ve also been looking for other consulting and software gigs, with an eye toward getting into web 3D, three.js, and Unity, with the long term goal of developing my own independent games. I’ve been working on my own but there’s alot to learn, so I’d like someone to pay me to get deeper into it while leveraging my existing skill set.

A while back I applied to a place that makes casual card and board games, looking to get into the online gaming space via Steam and Jackbox. It seemed like a perfect gig for me. However, between the time I made first contact and the time they set up the main interview, the job morphed from full stack engineer to Unity dev. The company wanted me to do an all-day Unity coding challenge. Normally I’d tell them to get lost, but this looked like a good opportunity to get up the learning curve faster than I otherwise would. In the end they didn’t want me for the Unity role, but the full stack role is still in the offing.

Meanwhile I’ve been working on my own little game, called Rock-Tac-Toe, so I plan to finish that up, both as a Unity application and as a web/mobile app, so I can compare the pros and cons of each approach.

Another area I’ve been trying to get deeper into is music software. Out of the blue I got a call from these guys from Switzerland. They’re academic researchers in computational musicology, and fans of the Global Jukebox. They have a database of 20,000 classical music compositions as midi files, and some kind of software tool to do statistical analysis on the corpus, and they’re looking to build a web application to publicly showcase their work. They seemed really eager to work together. I submitted a scope of work proposal, but unfortunately they were not clear about their budget, so it came in high. I submitted another, scaled back proposal, and am waiting to hear back.

In music, I finished my fourth Buzzy Tonic studio album. Unlike previous records, this one is all jazz instrumentals. I titled the record Bluezebub [Pandimensional Jazz Tesseract], after the song Bluezebub, the Devil You Don’t Know. It should be on Spotify, iTunes and Amazon any day now. I even got a small batch of CD’s printed up.

Now it’s on to the new rock record. More on that soon. For the moment I’ll remind you that I had three songs in the can before I switched my focus to the Jazz Tesseract, and several more in various stages of writing and recording. I started by dusting off the completed songs, and decided to add some new overdubs to two of them.

One of my goals for 2021 was to increase the amount of weight I lift when I work out. For bench press I went up 15 lbs., and am back up above 200 lbs. for the first time since six years ago, when I suffered a rather severe injury to my left shoulder and pec. For curls and most everything else that uses dumbbells I went up a similar amount, from 100 lbs. to 115, and from 50 lbs. to 90 for the light weight exercises. For 2022 I aim to add another ten pounds to every set.

The global pandemic looks to be entering its third year, with still no end in sight. We keep making and cancelling plans. We were supposed to go out to California last fall, then were thinking of going to Arizona this winter break. Now we’re thinking of going on a ski trip instead, somewhere more local were we can drive instead of fly, and spend most of our time outdoors.

And lastly, Go Bills!

And as We Wind On Down the Road

Been doing some traveling lately. This was the week we were supposed to go to San Francisco for the Pacific Coast Origami Convention, but that got cancelled due to the pandemic, and so we took some local trips instead.

A week ago Jeannie and I went out to Pennsylvania for a wedding. It was Wiccan/Halloween themed, and alot of fun. Good to catch up with that side of the family. We stayed overnight and had planned on doing some hiking around the Delaware Water Gap the next day, but it was pouring rain, so we had to punt.

One day last week went to visit the Bronx Zoo. We hadn’t been to in a while and of course it’s a world famous zoo. It was a perfect fall day, good for walking around, and the zoo wasn’t crowded at all, so we got to see everything and linger at attractions like the tigers, gorillas, and rhinos. Lots of birds and reptiles too, and of course the elephant (it seems they’re down to just one now) out standing in its field, viewable from the monorail ride.

Then this last weekend we went up to Buffalo to visit the kids as well as my parents. That was a good time. We went out to celebrate Lizzy birthday on Friday, and the next day my mum had everyone over for a big family dinner, with wine and storytelling. Sunday we out to bar in Lizzy’s neighborhood (remember Buffalo is trendy again) to catch the Bills game and try and get some of that energy now that the Bills are hot again too. It was a good time, but unfortunately the Bills weren’t really on their game and lost narrowly in the 4th quarter.

Funny thing, most of the music playing at the places we went was from the 1980’s, even some from the 70’s. My kids seem to know and like alot of that stuff. Lizzy says she listens to 97 Rock alot these days. It’s kinda strange to me that they don’t think of it as oldies. I mean when I was a teenager I wasn’t listening to music from the 1940’s. Well okay I listened to Charlie Parker and Dexter Gordon, and maybe some Duke and Ella, but none of my friends did, and I didn’t listen to pop from that era like Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby.

While I was up there, my dad gave me a young peach tree which sprouted from a seed in his garden after a peach fell from the main tree. I planted in the back yard this morning. Hopefully it will take root and prosper.

At home I’ve been busy with the Global Jukebox, adding routes and SEO. Also diving into web and mobile 3-D, with three.js and unity. And my song Bluezebub is almost done, down to mixing, which means soon it’ll be on to finishing off the album, mastering, sequencing the tracks, doing the cover art, and publishing it.

Fun fact: Led Zeppelin’s famous fourth album, a.k.a. Zoso, is 50 years old today.

Got a Drink in my Hand, Got my Toes in the Sand

We finished out our summer vacay this year with a trip to Ocean City, MD. We used to go there pretty much every year when the kids were little, but there’s been lots of other stuff to do the last few years, so it’s been a while. This is first time Jeannie and I went by ourselves. It was fun and relaxing, very mellow. We know the place pretty well and have a few favorites, also explored some new stuff. The weather was great the whole time and we were able to eat outdoors.

We drove up Friday afternoon. The drive was pretty relaxing, even though there was a good deal of traffic. We walked around Friday evening, dipped our toes in the ocean, and went to dinner at Mackie’s on the bay, one of our perennial favorites. Yummy frozen drinks and seafood dishes. Stopped by Anthony’s deli on the way back to the hotel. Saturday was a beautiful day and we lounged on the balcony taking in the ocean view over our morning coffee, then went swimming in the ocean for a good long while. In the late afternoon we walked down the boardwalk toward the amusement pier, stopping at Shenanigans, another favorite hangout, for drinks and snacks. The evening we went on a cruise around the harbor and out into the ocean along the beach and back, giving us wonderful views of the sunset. Afterwards was ate at Anglers place on the bay right downtown, very nice. Sunday we went out to Assateague Island and did a bunch of hikes, including the swamp walk and a dunes walk. We wanted to rent a canoe but it was too windy. We came back in the afternoon and went for a swim in the ocean, but it was too rough to stay out a long time. Ate dinner on the boardwalk at a place called the Taphouse, that had many kinds of beer. I had a huge burger with the works and an egg on top. Drove home Monday after breakfast at the Marlin Moon, in our old favorite hotel, just a couple blocks from our new hotel.

Now it’s back to school time, but there’s no kids to go back to school, so it’s more like getting our heads in gear to get stuff in the fall and to the end of the year. I’m looking forward to working more on music and origami, finishing my current computer jazz record and my third origami book, and possibly some new music and origami software development, in addition to the Global Jukebox and other consulting gigs. Also doing more hiking as the weather gets cool.