It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Our band had our gig at the Green Growler a week ago Saturday. It went great! The band is playing at a really high level, together and free at the same time. We debuted two new originals. One was What You Bring to the Table by Rick, which has undergone considerable evolution since he brought it to the group. The other was mine, Son of the Sun, replete with meter and key changes, and borrowing from the prog idiom. I’m impressed the group wanted to learn it, and stuck with it until we got it together. Of course it evolved alot too as this group made it our own. We rounded out the set with a mixture of originals, jazz standards, and funk and rock covers. We had a good crowd, including Michelle who was home for spring break, and Nick and Giovanni came up from Long Island. Giovanni was fascinated by playing mainly improvised music and how it works, asking me what I had written down on my charts and that sort of thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And hey everybody – we have another show coming up two days at Jazz on Main in Mt. Kisco. This one features special guest Robyn Ferracane on vocals, so we’ve been learning a whole ‘nuther repertoire for that one. The band songs are mainly our originals since we have alot of them now, while the vocal songs lean heavily into standards and vocalese. Lots arrangements with dramatic beginnings and endings. Should be an excellent show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And right on the heels of that my team at work had an onsite in the Manhattan the better part of the week. Lots of people came in from out of town. I took the train in to Grand Central, and each day walked one way down to or back from Union Square. It was an excellent week to be in the city, with the beginnings of spring stirring. We had a few meetings in the park or just waking around the neighborhood. I the middle of that I met Jeannie after work on evening to see Kurt Elling at Birdland, doing a tribute to Weather Report. Kurt remains one of my favorite jazz singers, and has such a great voice and phrasing and a unique take on things, and rock-star level cha-rasma. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Innovation Lab as grown to twelve people, and we have alot more confidence to think big this year.\u00a0 We also have a new CEO, who met with us for an extended roundtable discussion and asked us what resources we need, and what new ideas we have cooking.\u00a0 Nobody really knew what he’d be like until he arrived; it turns out he’s friendly and bright and sees his charter as turn-this-ship-around, and signaled he’s willing to to put some resources into it.\u00a0 My VP used the phrase tip of the spear to describe our role this coming year.\u00a0 I’m in sort of transitional phase right now because the two main projects I’ve been working on the last three years have successfully transitioned from R&D to production, and the challenges with them are to make them scale up and be cost effective.\u00a0 Indeed three of our new hires this year are involved in that endeavor.\u00a0 So I successfully lobbied to be a sort or researcher-at-large for a while.\u00a0 My boss said I should look around and think about what I want to work on next.\u00a0 I haven’t had that luxury since the 1990’s.\u00a0 And, on the train ride home the last day, I thought of an idea that looks promising.\u00a0 It cut across several things we have going on, and would move our agent AI work forward to enable productization at a multi-dimensional level.\u00a0 But first, to understand some critical technical systems.\u00a0 So this week I’m starting to talk to the other engineers and managers about what it would take to pull it off.\u00a0 Wish me luck!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then this last Saturday, spring arrived in earnest, if only for a half day. It got up to seventy-five degrees. Jeannie and took our bikes out in the morning to the local trail. I’ve been biking most of the winter when the weather permits, but mostly short rides (five miles or so) on the streets near my house. This is the first time I’ve gone a long distance straight and flat. I did sixteen miles in a little over an hour. Not bad for the first real outing of the season. Last year it took me until May or June to reach that distance. Last year my longest ride was thirty miles. This year I hope to reach forty or even fifty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also over the last two weekends I started the spring yardwork cycle, clearing out nine cans and bags worth of leaves and trimmings and other debris, plus a big bundle of sticks and branches. And, I took the Mustang out for the fist time of the season. It started right up and ran just fine. Woo-hoo! Of course by the time we were on the way home I was anxious to beat the gathering rainclouds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next up: the D&D adventure comes to the final boss!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Our band had our gig at the Green Growler a week ago Saturday. It went great! The band is playing at a really high level, together and free at the same time. We debuted two new originals. One was What You Bring to the Table by Rick, which … Continue reading “Windin’ Up the Main Spring”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7,12,14,18,19],"tags":[50,45],"class_list":["post-6470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-auto-motif","category-fitness","category-home-improvement","category-music","category-software","category-travel","tag-innovation-lab","tag-spacecats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6470"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6476,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6470\/revisions\/6476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}