Going to the Mall

I’m on winter break now. Woo-hoo!

There’s a big new mall in Yonkers that Jeannie and the kids have been to a bunch of times already but I’ve been avoiding because they make you pay to park. But Lizzy needed a new winter jacket, and we all wanted to see The Hobbit, and the Michelle wanted to do so xmas shopping for Jeannie, so we all went last weekend. Figured we’d get dinner as long as we’re there too.

The mall has a Guitar Center, and I’ve been toying with the idea of buying a new guitar for a while now. I’ve kinda narrowed it down to some kind of semi-hollow-body or a Les Paul. But since I don’t know really and new guitars are expensive, I’ve taken to checking whatever they have used for sale whenever I go into a music store to see if anything calls out to me.

So that night I found a used bass made famous by Geddy Lee back in the day: the Hentor Barbarian. No, just kidding, it’s a Steinberger! It’s not an 80’s vintage, but 21st century, and in like-new condition. It has that famous headless, minimal body design. It feels and sounds great. My p-bass is like a truck in comparison. The Steinberger has a much cleaner sound, and is faster, with lower action, a flatter neck, and flatter frets. Plus it has a second pickup near the bridge, so there’s alot more control over the tone. And cheap too, a real bargain. So I picked it up. I’m really happy with it.

I played it for a while the next day. Alot of things I’ve been working hard to articulate came easy. It took me a while to realize I should play with a much lighter touch than the p-bass. I don’t know if it can really replace the p-bass for everything, but it adds a whole new area to my bass sound. I’m thinking down the line somewhere I should trade in my p-bass for a fender jazz, and that might be the one bass.

The Hobbit was for the most part amazing. The acting was great, esp. Martin Freeman as Bilbo, and it has the Peter Jackson lush locations and over-the-top helicopter shots and all that you’d expect after LotR. It feels great to be back in Middle Earth with a new movie. Riddles in the Dark absolutely stole the show.

We saw the 48 fps version and I thought it looked great. I can’t understand the controversy. You raise the sample rate it’s gonna look better. There was one shot in particular where I thought the 48fps really shined. It was a made-for-3d shot, with the camera looking straight down on the Company of Thorin as they made they way down thru a cleft of rocks to the hidden valley of Imladris. It was a dolly shot, and looked absolutely virtuosic. However, the film did actually skip and pause unexpectedly a couple times, like there was a buffering problem. That was pretty bad.

My only criticism with the movie itself is that where they deviated from the book to add new material, alot of it was focused on pumping up the action with bluescreen/CG set pieces that came off as increasingly improbable toward the end. They also altered a few important plot details. Everyone I’ve talked to who doesn’t really know the book doesn’t seem to mind, but to me it was unnecessary. If it were up to me I’d have hewed closer to the book, and started with a simpler-and-more-innocent-times vibe, and brought the party to the foot of the Lonely Mountain by the end of the picture. Then I’d have closed by following up on the where-has-Gandalf-gone question, circling back to meeting with Saruman and Galadriel and dropping the bomb that there’s something much bigger and scarier going on here!

They did have two musical numbers, both by the Dwarves, none by the Elves.

Armadillos and Spiders

Last week one day I took the girls and one of their friends to the Museum of Natural History. It was a fun day.

We checked out the Origami Holiday Tree. The theme this year was collective nouns. I had fold a group of armadillos, called a fez of armadillos. There were lots of others: a murder of crows, a barrel of monkeys, a fold of sheep, a galaxy of stars. You get the idea. I think my favorite was the lemurs.

We got to see the dinosaurs and all that, but the for us this time was the Spiders Alive! Well, my daughter Michelle and I were fascinated, by my daughter was repulsed. Ah well. Lots of giant spiders, scorpions, and vinegaroons. I’d never heard of vinegaroons. Plus a great live demo. Did you know scorpions glow blue under black light? Neither did I. Now I’m trying again to design some origami arachnids. I tried for my book but ended up designing a giant squid instead.

Catching Up

Busy these days with work and lots of stuff. So here’s catching up on a few random things. Work has been busy and problematic, and I’ve putting in extra evenings and fixing other people’s bugs to keep things on track. I think we turned a corner mid-week last week. We have a release coming up this week, and now we’re in good shape.

My book has been done for a couple of weeks, but now I’m waiting on the publisher to get back to me.

We got our xmas tree up today. A nice wide bushy one. Lots room for ornaments. Went out to pick one up in the rain. Always a nice feeling to have the tree up.

I’ve been starting to get back into the music recording thing, picking up my half-finished third Buzzy Tonic album. So far the focus is on playing. I have a backlog of half-written songs, so I think I’m gonna work them up to play and sing live before I get back into tracking. Ought to go faster with the arrangements worked out and under my fingers.

The other day I was showing Michelle how to hammer-on on the bass. I’m kind of a lazy bass player and will often hammer-on or pull-off when I’m doing a fast chromatic riff, just so I don’t have to articulate the note with my right hand. I use my thumb on the right hand alot, especially on the bottom two strings. I generally switch to fingers-only as a tonal effect, from rounder to punchier. So my hammer-ons and pull-offs on the bass are really quite solid, which is weird since I’ve never really consciously worked at it.

One of the most amazing musicians I’ve ever played with was this cat Jim Wynne, who was a master of the two-hand tap technique on the bass. I little two-handed-tap blues improvisation for Michelle to demonstrate his style, playing the bass line in the bottom two strings with my left hand and tapping the 3rd and 7th on the offbeats on top two strings with my right. To my surprise it came out sounding really good! I guess it’s not that different than piano. I’m gonna have to work a part like that into one of my songs.

The girls are having a good fall. Yesterday they had the holiday show at the performing arts group they belong to, Young at Arts. Michelle has been working out Do a Deer from The Sound of Music by ear on the piano. Talented girl. Meanwhile Lizzy is enjoying being in 8th grade and her grades are up, and that comes at a good time. She’s finally getting algebra. She was cast as one of the leads in her school play this winter. The theme of the play is New York, and the songs are all taken from classic shows, with an original story to string them together. She has six songs. Her character is British, so she’s been having fun practicing her accent. I’m going to be playing in the band again this year. I got the list of songs and put together a playlist. It’s a fun set. We listened to it as we put up the tree today. It has two different songs called New York New York.

By The Book

Last weekend I finished the intro text for my book, and the stuff for the symbols and basic folds. Now that my origami book is done I’m looking to start in on some new projects.

I was at the music store last week to buy some clarinet books for Michelle, and bought a couple really good music books for myself too. One is Bach for the Electric Bass. This is great fun to play so far. The first two pieces in the book are the two parts of a two part invention. The first has regular notation and tab, and the second only notation. It’s really good for practicing reading in the bass clef, and also works really well as a source for riffs for walking bass lines. The lines lay really well.

The other book is called Metaphors for the Musician by Randy Halberstadt, and its a jazz piano theory and practice. I already know lots of theory, and while in theory there’s no difference between theory and practice, in practice that’s not always the case. This will be a good book to help me get it together playing-wise and take it to the next level as a performer. Just what I’ve been looking for. The need was inspired by my desire to take a solo at the end of Checker Cab, while still holding down the bass part. I have to come up with a melodic right hand approach that works with the in-the-pocket bottom, sounds good, and is possible to play.

Right now I’m reading thru the book, but it’s designed to be used at the piano, so once I’m done I’ll start over at the keyboard. It will take a few months. Lots of deep harmony theory, very well laid out, and more general stuff about how to approach comping and improvising that transfers into playing in general. One thing he stressed early on is the importance of playing slow and keeping good time. I know I tend to rush, and I don’t play with a drummer that often, so I’ve started practicing with the metronome again, and in general just taking everything down a few BPM to work on a more relaxed feel. That alone is already making a difference. Especially on a song like Heat Wave or Steppin’ Out.

I also got a book of arrangements of songs from the various Mario video games. Some of them are pretty hard. And a Soundgarden songbook. They were my favorite of all the grunge bands of the ‘90’s and I recently got turned on to them again. Chris Cornell is a genius with his singing and his use of melody and out meters. Unfortunately the book is in guitar tab, so it’ll take a pretty good amount of work to make piano adaptations. Still, it’s faster then doing it by ear.

Martin came over last weekend with the family, and we had a little time to jam. Matrin always has a knack for picking interesting covers, and so now I’m working up Breaking Us in Two, which I knew once a long time ago but forget. Perfect song for me to sing on.

Wild and Scary

We usually put our Halloween pumpkin out on the front stoop. The local critters nibble at if for a while, and then sooner or later there’s rain and it starts to turn mushy and we have to get rid of it. This year we haven’t had any rain, and the squirrels have really be having a feast, so it’s looking, uh, really interesting.

In other news, Lizzy turned 13 recently. Yes I am now the parent of a teenager. She’s also now 5’7”, having really shot up the last few months. That’s a few inches taller than her mother. Wow. We had a party for her at our favorite local restaurant, the Oriental Palace. It was in the post-hurricane period and feels like a blur to me. After her birthday party Lizzy went on a shopping date with her friend Ella, who shares the same birthday, and bought lots of clothes. They were very excited.

Meanwhile, Erik and I resumed jamming. At this point we’re a little rusty, but it feels good to get back in it. Like I said, now that my book is done, getting back into playing music is a major goal for the winter. This includes doing a few more live gigs.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at Jeanne’s parents house. Not thinking about work for a few days. Mary and Lou were there. They’re in the middle of putting a second story on their house. Looks like they’re off to a good start. It only took a week get the walls, roof and windows up. Lou wants to record and EP of some more of his songs and asked my to produce it It sounds like a fun project.

Michelle is all excited about a new Nintendo thing she wants to get.

Diagramming is Done!

I’ve hit a major milestone on my book. Make that *the* major milestone. All the diagrams are done. Twenty-two models, almost 900 drawings. That’s 123 page without the intro or the photos. Wow and woo-hoo. If I weren’t so tired I’d be all in the mood to party.

It was alot of work and it seemed to take a long time to finish. My publisher was very patient. The last model turned out to require more diagrams than I’d estimated. The American Turkey ended up at almost 100 steps, by far the longest model in the book. I’d figured on 70 or so. But it’s totally worth it. It’s a very popular model; I’ve taught and exhibited it before and it always gets a great response.

And I must say, I’ve gotten alot better and faster at diagramming over the course of working on this book, especially in the last few months.

All that remains now is to write the intro. That should be an easy task by comparison. Soon I’ll be able to get back to working on music, upgrading my we site and a bunch of other origami ideas I have that aren’t part of this book.

M.I.T. Origami Convention

It already seems like ages ago, but just this last weekend I went up to Boston for MIT Origami Convention, a.k.a. OrigaMIT. The conventions was put on by the MIT Origami Club under the leadership of Jason Ku. It was smaller than the OUSA convention in New York, but certainly big enough to be a lot of fun. MIT and the Boston area have some pretty heavy folders, and MIT is a really fun place to hang out.

I drove up Friday night with my friend Marcio. We both work in the city and live in Westchester, so we met a Grand Central and took the train back to my place. We took Jeannie’s car cuz it’s a Prius and gets amazing gas mileage. I actually got 52 mpg on the ride home! The trip up was smooth, except navigating around Boston once we arrived was a bit dicey. We stayed in a hotel not too far from Cambridge.

The convention was held at the MIT Student Union. It was easy to get to and find parking. I was teaching and exhibiting, so I brought diagrams and models. About half of models were brand new, including the Cuttlefish and Giant Squid; some were new-ish including the Armadillo, Turkey and some Tessellations. A few were classics, including my UFO, Rocketship, and War Elephant. The diagrams were the last few from my book that have yet to be test-folded: the Cuttlefish, Giant Squid, and Turkey.

As with most conventions it was organized into sessions that were either classes or seminars. The first session I went to was Erik Demaine, an expert in origami mathematics. He basically showed us slides and talked about his course (http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.849/fall12/). I was familiar with some of the material cuz I’ve read his book, but it was all really fascinating stuff. Afterwards I had a good discussion with him about origami polyhedra design.

At lunchtime I went for a walk along the Charles River by the MIT and Harvard campuses. It was a beautiful fall day, and the riverside walk was full of people strolling, biking and jogging. I hadn’t been to Boston for a few years, although it seems like every time I’m here in end up in Cambridge. Anyway, I’d forgotten how nice it is down by the river and the park. Very Not New York.

After lunch I taught my course. It was cephalopods, the Cuttlefish and the Giant Squid. The class proved to be very popular. I had diagrams for both models, which I passed around at the start. Then I folded both models for anyone who wanted to follow along, which was most of the class. These are both pretty advanced models, somewhat more than I’d expected, but the class did a really good job. I folded the Cuttlefish first. That took close to an hour, and it was a two hour class. A lot of people were not fast in developing the tentacles. That comes near the end but is fairly repetitive. Then we started the Squid but ran out of time, again cuz there’s lots of repetition in developing the tentacles. The good news was everyone was so into it that when class ended, we all went down to the hospitality area to finish. I got good feedback for the diagrams and the models along the way. Mostly they were both very foldable and people really liked the models. As usual there were some minor errors and steps that could do with a bit of clarification.

After that I sat in on Michael Lafosse’s class. This was the perfect compliment to Erik’s class. Michael is a master folder and designer and has some beautiful complex models, and quite a few books too. He also runs a paper making studio for making high-end origami paper. One more thing he’s known for is his butterflies. He’s got lots and lots of butterfly variations, and this class was about that. These are intermediate level models, so the focus was much more on the artistic side than the technical side. Most complex models have a sculpting/finishing phase at the end, and this class was all about exploring that for butterflies. Toward the end I remembered a butterfly design I was working on, and dusted it off and began to get back into refining it. For me the major challenge was developing the points for the legs. I realized if I changed the geometry at step 3 it’s open up more paper.

After classes was dinner and hanging out folding. Some there asked me about the tessellations in my exhibit, so I ended up teach a group how to fold one. These seemed like such a simple idea to me at the time, that you could work out how to fold it jut my looking at it. But people seem to really like it, and it turns out (since it doesn’t use a square grid) there’s a bit of mystery involved. People keep asking me about the tessellations. I’ll keep them in mind for the next book.

I also had my Turkey diagrams test folded by a fellow folder named Mark. Even though the diagrams are not complete, we got thru to the end, and I showed him how to finish. This is definitely the most complex model in the book. We were hanging out and talking the whole time, bit it took three hours to fold. Still, I’m happy Mark got thru it. It’s a worthy model and I got good feedback.

As Saturday turned into Saturday Night lots of students were meeting at the student center dressed up for Halloween going out hit the bars. Rule 63 Guy Fawkes. Ah college life.

Sunday Marcio and drove home, trying to beat the storm. The wind was picking up already, and we passed several convoys of utility trucks heading east. Jason was supposed to fly back to Japan Sunday. I hope he got out okay.

The big goal for this weekend is to finish my book, which basically means finishing the Turkey diagrams. Oh, and cleaning up my yard. I’m really looking forward to being done with diagramming and getting back working on other things like music.

Late Halloween

Jeannie went into the city today and said the trains weren’t bad, but buses and bridges are still a mess. I bought gas; long line. We’ve heard back from enough of our friends now to know that a few of them in Brooklyn and on Long Island have suffered serious damage to their homes from the flooding. Trying to see if there’s anything we can do to help. Either way our hearts are with them. And again our home was full of neighbors and kids today looking to warm up and recharge.

Everyone has cancelled Halloween because of the storm, and rescheduled it for the weekend. We finally got around to carving our pumpkin tonight. It was a big’un, too: thirty-five pounds. The theme this year is mustache. Ask Lizzy. Hope this lightens your mood.

Riders on the Storm, Part II

When our power came back on last night, it was a bit of a surprise. We were only without juice for a little over a day. They’d been saying on the news it could be a week or more, so we were preparing for the long haul. One by one the neighborhoods around here are coming back online, and we were lucky to be on the early side. A lot of our friends are still without power, so Jeannie invited them all over today to warm up, recharge their electronics, and hop on our internet for a while. It’s exactly what we were wishing for last night so, you know, spread some good karma. The kids were still off school today, and mostly it was parents of their friends. It made for a pleasant day. They had a little Halloween party. Jeannie made some pies. I mostly stayed down in my office and tried to get work done. My boss said we’re all telecommuting until the mass transit situation improves.

I was able to patch up our roof today too, by enlisting a roofer who’d come by to work on our neighbor’s house. That turned out to be a lucky break. He replaced some shingles and patched a leak, and the roof is good enough now to last until we get around to redoing the whole thing. Jeannie and I spent some quality time crawling around in the attic, seeing what exactly got wet, which was very little.

These extreme weather events are getting more frequent, so it’s best to think thru the backup power question for the long term. Our two main liabilities are heat and communications. Third I suppose is the fridge, but even without power it’s like a giant cooler. As long as we can get ice we’ll be okay. We had hot water, since that’s gas powered and has a pilot. Our heat is gas powered, too, but has an electric pilot and regulator. If we loose power in the winter it’d be a major problem. For now we were able to just put on sweaters and wool socks. I wonder what it would take to have that run on battery backup or from external power. I’m sure the power draw is minimal, and it’s mainly a matter of hooking up the right components. We’re going to get our hot water heater replaced sometime soon, so when that happens I’ll see about if there’s some kind of retrofit available. Otherwise we’re looking at some kind of homegrown hack, but I can’t imagine it’d be that hard.

Another possibility is to put in a fireplace or wood stove. Then we’d have no worries and be all cozy on winter nights to boot. If only we could get Hockey Night in Canada down here, eh? This is something we’ve talked about since we got our house, but have never gotten around to. Maybe it’s time to dust off that idea and push ahead. My current thinking is to install a woodstove down in our family room in the corner near the furnace room. Or maybe a full-on fireplace. I guess this is a pretty big project with lots of issues to work out, but not bigger than say building a patio, which is something I’ve done in the past.

The other liability is telecommunications. In the old days, when our phone was connected to the world with copper wires, it would never go out. When we got fiber optic a few years ago, they pulled out the copper before the truck even left our driveway. Now we have phone and internet on one glass thread, but it requires power. There’s a battery backup that lasts only about eight hours. Suk.

We hooked up the Prius last night to house via a power inverter. We’d considered buying a generator in case of a power outage, but the Prius makes an admirable generator, plus has a huge battery of built-in batteries to boot. The engine wasn’t even running most of the time. Unfortunately our old power inverter went Kaput some time ago and we only discovered it yesterday, so we had to go out and get a new one. As you might imagine, selection is limited in times of crisis, so the one we got was fairly wimpy, just ten amps. This was enough to power our phone and recharge its battery until the morrow morn. We were also able to recharge our laptops and cel phones one by one, and to get on the internet. We plugged my laptop directly into the Ethernet and bypassed the router and wifi. This created problems down the line when the power came back on and Verizon wouldn’t release our IP address to get the router back on again. Ah progress.

Of course, a heftier power inverter would be a decent upgrade. It’d be nice to be able to power the fridge, at least part time. Still, it was looking like we’d be able to get by pretty much indefinitely under that system, which is good news. We had candles for light, and could cook on the stove but not the oven (again that pesky electric regulator/ignition), and we had hot water. As long as we could go out and gas up the Prius from time to time we could run it as needed to power the essentials.

Tomorrow the kids are back to school, but I’m working at home again since they have only a half day. Jeannie’s going into the city to work, since they’ve announced limiter service on Metro North. Wish us luck!

Ridin’ The Storm Out

Our power just came back on. It went out yesterday afternoon, right after I’d googled the chords to Roger Hodgson’s “Eye Of the Storm”. The kids thought The Doors’ “Riders On The Storm” was too creepy and asked for something more upbeat.

We’re watching the news right now, and feel incredibly grateful and fortunate after seeing everything that’s gone down in Sandy’s wake of destruction. Everyone we know, family and friends, are safe and okay. At least so far. Here we hunkered down and played DIe Settler by candlelight last night and listened to the wind howl. Ate mushy ice cream for breakfast. Worked out how to power our house off Princess Pria with a power inverter this afternoon. We’ll need some repair on our roof, but that’s about it. I don’t know how we can get to work tomorrow, or until whenever the trains start running again. I guess we’ll see.