Wide Niche Forest, trees, and balance within. I guess.

Singing Out

Rachelle's been going through her music library identifying various snippets to be used as potential ringtones, and one of her recent favorites is "Annie's Song" by John Denver.

Most of the versions of this out there are strangely quiet, and while it would be possible to go through the various exercises to transcode it into something I could manipulate and boost the volume, I decided to go a different route and just make a new recording.

By simplifying the song to a single instrument from its component layers it should be much more clearly audible, effectually increasing the volume beyond the literal increase it also received.  We'll be testing it out on her phone (since resonant frequencies with the speaker will also matter), but for now I offer it up for public review:

The recording was made on my iPad sitting on a chair next to me, using the built in microphone.  It definitely flattened the sound a bit, but the quality is surprisingly clean given the ad hoc setup.  If you listen closely you can hear kids playing in the background, but they weren't disruptive enough to necessitate re-recording.  Nor did my stool squeak this time, or the bow scratch (I haven't raised the A string at the nut yet, so this still happens sometimes), or the pitch get too far from target.  All of those other things led to this being the dozenth take or something along those lines, and while it's still not perfect (next time I'm using headphones to give myself a click track) it should serve its purpose as a ringtone just fine.

Oh, and it was transposed to G Maj just to make it easier to get the tonic on a fingered position so I could put in better vibrato.

Cheers!

Kicked Out of the Loop

It can be a difficult thing, balancing perspectives between short and long. Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned from photography - the only way to have foreground and background in focus at the same time is to stop down the aperture, and that only works if you lengthen the exposure time; so to extrapolate, the way to have a clear focus with that kind of perspective is by narrowing your view and taking a good, long look.

Recently I had a pretty nasty McArdle episode. It shut me down hard for a couple of days, not really making it out bed for more than the essentials, and struggling through the motions for the next week. It's getting easier, but will still be another week before I can get back into a considerably reduced exercise regimen (which is the recommendation for McArdle people, and also the cause of the problem at hand - apparently my VO2 max is a lagging indicator of exertion and does not work well for gauging level of muscular effort, leading to a dangerously disconnected feedback loop - the whole mess will have to be completely refigured).

The experience pushed me out of the home/career/self perspective I'd been maintaining, and forced me to face the immediate situation and condition. My entire focus necessarily changed to deal with it, and as a result my point of view kept coming back to questions of value - "is it worth it?" and "what's the point?"

Not in any kind of depressed fatalistic resignation, but more of an introspective examination overshadowed by the very strong impression that today, I would be much happier on a park bench than in the office; more fulfilled quietly soaking up the grandeur of the world than perpetuating other institutions, objectives, and deadlines. This may not sound like a very profound epiphany, and I can't think of many people who wouldn't rather go fishing or just be outdoors than sweat and labor (even intellectually). What was/is striking about it is the intensity and immediacy with which it impressed me.

Of course the bills still need to be paid, and the family is rather fond of food, so even though that impression fits well with my long term objectives of retirement (or my really ambitious medium term objectives of retirement) I still have to connect that to the reality of where I am today, and what I have to work with. This is where the more profound considerations are happening, though I openly admit it may still be the afterglow from the episode (and thus not looking as long or as objectively as I think).

A sick day here or there I can handle, but with the prospect of potentially needing more time and/or an entirely different pace (what? not aggravating things to the point of illness in the first place?  What a novel idea!), which is a very real possibility given the nature of the disorder, what level of engagement and personal investment can I realistically commit to? And this, balanced against the needs of the family: how do I tend to them at an appropriate standard of living without killing myself? Or put differently, without committing to a standard of performance I doubt my ability to maintain, or which can be undermined by unpredictable factors?

Nearly everyone faces that same question to some degree, employed by others (even the self employed are really just employed by their clients and the economic climate in which they operate) and trading application of self for remuneration that has a non-zero probability of drying up at any time.  It's possible if not probable that I'm just being skittish because I'm psychologically so close to the idea of that non-zero number right now that it makes it look much bigger, and may be clouding my judgement.

But would it be a bad thing to wish to be independently wealthy? Or that there could exist somewhere in the universe a configuration of work so ideally suited to my talents that I can work half the time and make twice as much (against those rainy days, and accelerating savings toward fiscal independence)?

More than anything else, the experience is forcing me to acknowledge the mortality of my limitations. I'm used to operating under the assumption that while things may be difficult for me, they're still possible using some magical compensatory practice (increasingly "take more naps, dummy!") and may just take a little more work. Now I have to admit the very real upper bounds of my own performance, and put those other ideas up on a shelf I can't reach - rather predictably this is making me anxiously uncomfortable, and nothing is resolved yet.

Salvaging a Cheap Cello

I have always adored the sound of the cello (remember this? Even though it's more clarinet like, I use it to play a cello). The rich, sonorous tones fill the air with a commanding and moving presence capable of evoking profound emotion. Last Christmas I picked up a cheap one to start learning myself (no sense in investing in a Ferrari if I'm going to slap training wheels on it and putter around the neighborhood). The internet obliged, and in a couple of weeks it arrived on my doorstep (not pictured here is the soft case and abominable pitch pipes that came with it):

Click for rear view (decal of my own making)

Full size ("4/4" in string instrument parlance), slightly sparkly (they called it "metallic" in the listing) glossy sheen, and only some assembly required (bridge setup - and apparently I'm fond of parentheses today).

I brought it up to tune and spent a few weeks conditioning the strings - tuning, playing, cleaning, repeating, etc. - until they came into temper and can hold their pitch. Only, as I was going through my scales and exercises I noticed there were a couple of notes that for whatever reason, I could not get to come out without a horrible sound. It would be either a scratchy rattle, a dry reedy sound, or in one case a harmonic (meaning, at an offset from the base expressed note - not "in harmony" in a melodic sense) squeak. Careful study and experimentation determined that, while I was still definitely amateur, these horrible sounds were not actually my fault.

The fingerboard (area beneath the strings used for altering pitch) is supposed to fall away from the fingered position of the string rapidly, having a uniform (though subtle) concave curvature along its entire length. Only, for this one, that's only true for about the last 2/3 of it. The first 1/3 is inconsistent and almost convex in a couple places - I tried taking a few shots looking down the board from the perspective of the nut (where the strings enter the peg box) but they just didn't turn out; apparently a longer depth of field and stereoscopy are required to appreciate the dimensionality.

Anyway, this meant that the string was staying in contact with the fingerboard for a couple inches in some cases, and it was that flush positioning that was causing the rattle and most of the pitch effects. To compound that, the C string (lowest of the bunch) was almost 2x the height from the board that it should have been. Taking measurements across the length I determined 2 major corrections were in order:

First, file down the nut under the C string to bring it closer to the fingerboard (making it possible to play a C#). I did this with a jeweler's saw (since I didn't have any rounded files), and as evident from the picture didn't bother to re-stain the wood after my handy work - I wasn't sure if more changes would be necessary. This changed it from almost 4mm down to about 2mm, making the fingering a little easier and the sound much better.

The second problem was the string height relative to the fingerboard for almost the entire length. In fact, at the end of the fingerboard where the strings are supposed to be considerably higher (usually about 2x their starting height as measured at the nut, as I understand it), they were all basically level and in the case of the A string, which had given me the most trouble, was actually closer. I wasn't about to replace the fingerboard (and/or neck), and I have neither the tools nor the expertise to sand it to shape and re-finish it, so I had to change the relative height a different way.

The answer this time was to raise the bridge itself - which meant carefully dropping the tension on all the strings again, ensuring the sound post stayed positioned, and finding a good way to increase the height of the bridge while still keeping good contact with the face matching curvature and transmitting sound effectively).

I used some chipboard salvaged from the backing of a pad a parchment Rachelle was using for some projects. It was 2mm thick, had a consistency similar to wood, and was able to conform to the surface and footing. I took my measurements and cut several thicknesses which I layered under each foot of the bridge, raising the C side 6mm and the A side 4mm (although I'm still thinking about upping that to a full 6mm, but it hasn't needed it yet).

Brought the strings back up to pitch and restored the temper (much faster this time), and the timbre has been much approved across the entire range. Fingered C string notes still don't have as much resonance as those played on other strings, but at least they sound clearly. Dramatic improvements could also be made by putting decent strings on it instead of those it shipped with, but I'm not about to drop $240-$300 in strings onto a $190 cello.

It's still a student grade instrument, but decently playable now and I've been having lots of fun with it the last few months. I'm getting more comfortable moving beyond first position, and will be picking up some instruction books with progressive exercises to hone those basics into something presentable (one may notice the lack of audio evidence presented along with this post). For now I can play along with Rachelle and Ashley on their violins, and make OK work of a hymnal, and most importantly enjoy myself.

Merry Christmas, y’all!

It's a day late because I've been celebrating Christmas instead of visiting the blog (and didn't stage a post in advance because I was making ready for celebrations).  Rachelle posted this year's Christmas Card on her blog, so I'll just add a musical flourish to round it out (simple 4-part hymn, "The First Noel", played as a chamber quartet piece):

Sorry it's synth-ish.  I played each layer individually on my Akai EWI USB, but the Garriton sound fonts it comes with leave something to be desired.  I'll try to fix this with real performances when my cello arrives in a week or so (so it's a Merry Christmas to me, too!).

Thanks to everyone for an awesome year!

Adventures in Telescopic Photography

A while ago I lucked into some telescopes that were being discarded as trash - the weren't being kept up, and the owner had moved on to what he termed "professional grade" equipment.  His trash was something hopelessly beyond my budget to pick up as a first order product, so I was more than happy to piece them back together, clean them up, and generally invest some sweat equity bringing them back on line.

The result?  Moby Dick & Ol' Blue, pictured here (please forgive the mess, lots of the home organization is in remodeling flux):

Moby Dick - 10" Newtonian Reflector Telescope

Ol' Blue - 8" Newtonian Reflector Telescope

Cat included for size reference (she was a good sport about it too, especially considering I had to wake her from a nap; please note that she is a large cat, too).

The barrel on Ol' Blue is 48" end to end, housing an 8" diameter primary mirror.  Moby Dick is a hair shorter at 44.5" in length, with a 10" primary mirror, but on account of its equatorial mount with counterweight is WAY heavier and thus harder to cart about for simple experimentation.

They did take some work to get functional again, and there were no objective lenses (eyepieces) with them, so I've borrowed some Plössl type lenses (25mm & 10mm) from a friend to practice with and give me a good baseline for shopping around. All told it's been a good experience, I've learned a ton about Newtonian telescopes, and have thoroughly enjoyed the views they afford.

Enough so that I want to share those views.  My eventual goal is to get a good camera mounting kit for Rachelle's EOS 5D Mark II, and haul Moby Dick out to the west dessert to do some awesome astrophotography.  Before making that kind of investment (especially regarding time) I figure I should practice a little bit and get used to the variables involved.  This morning marks my first attempts, which I will generously label "encouraging."

My setup was about as handicapped as it could possibly be.  It was a cool gray (rather than sunny) morning, and my home and yard are poorly situated to see anything at a distance - and I felt like staying indoors, which compounded things by constraining what I could shoot even further: would need to be a distant object through windows that have not been maintained on a particular cleaning schedule.  In order to get the telescope positioned correctly to see some mountains (and be pointed far enough away from the sun so as not to risk damage to self or equipment if it happened to come from behind its clouds) I had to mount it on a stool, and then put the camera on its tripod on top of a card table to position it for my first attempts at afocal telescopic photography.

The Manic Pessimism of a Small Sample Set

I don't know if it's because of junk journalism, junk science, or small-minded scientists being the vocal minority in every article pertaining to the subject (probably while all the real scientists are off science-ing), but the most commonly reported views on the probability/frequency of extraterrestrial life are absurd.

I'm not talking in terms of intelligent life per se, and especially not with regard to interplanetary civilizations - most certainly not the bug-eyed probe happy "grays" that are the contemporary lore - but regarding life of any kind in its spontaneous origination on any celestial body distinct from Earth as we know it.  Microbes on Mars, or under the ice on Europa, or on one of the dozens of exoplanets now being discovered, or anything of the like.

The views and notions bandied about most often in anything approaching mainstream are something along the lines of, "if there are signs of life there, then it must be incredibly abundant throughout the universe!"  Balanced with a similar illogical assumption that, "if there are no signs of life there, then it must be tremendously precious and we are so very alone."

This is like rolling a billion-sided die and looking for it to come up with the same number twice.  In sequence.  And giving up if it doesn't happen after 2 tries.

In all truth we have so few places to look (in terms of gross numbers of bodies), and so few means to examine those (due to proximity, risk, and simple logistics), that we're not even making consistent assessments of those resources which are available to us humans.  Projecting from this immensely small set of incomplete samples into some trend line or tangent as a predictor of the universe at large is ludicrously bad science all around.  And they - documentary producers, journalists, scientists (in context or otherwise, who knows) - keep repeatedly taking the same view of immediate doom or glory without really examining the numbers.

The reality?  It's closer to that billion-sided die, with a not-insignificant portion of it harboring a probability for life-sustaining conditions, and opportunities to roll it millions or even hundreds of millions of times.  We're not even up to half a dozen, yet.  Heck, I only spot us 2 tries because we're OK at making it to our biggest natural satellite, and we had some pretty cool probes make it to Mars (and then rounding up generously from those slivers of experience).

Let's take a decent and level view, mkay?  Life?  It's probably rare, but there are so many opportunities for it in the universe it's bound to be out there somewhere (scales of distance just making it hard to assess that).  We should get a statistically relevant sampling before plotting conclusions.

Or attach some dynamometers to Carl Sagan's final resting ground and use that to power major metropolitan areas every time someone re-publishes the same ignorant coin-flip perspective.

Enjoying the Perseids

Growing up I always marked August 12th on my calendar as the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower ever since I read about it in a magazine (I believe it was National Geographic, but I don't remember with great certainty).  Only once though did I really manage to immerse myself in it, pulling an all-nighter with my brother and a couple of our friends in their backyard (I think I was about 10; this was also the night when I stepped in dog poop in my socks, so it was memorable all around).

I remember speculating (repeatedly and I'm sure very annoying to the others who were all older than myself) about how fast the meteor fragments must have been going, and what it would mean if you saw one that just grew into a larger point instead of streaking, and OH WOW DID YOU SEE THAT ONE IT MUST HAVE BEEN THE SIZE OF A HOUSE because something was exceptionally bright, etc.  We had a single pair of binoculars amongst us and enjoyed some stargazing along with the spectacular show.

As years passed I made fleeting attempts but usually had something else going on or not a good opportunity to observe (bad lighting conditions, full moon, poor location, etc.).  This year being a moonless night I decided to give it a go again, and combine it with some fun star gazing using my recently inherited 8" Newtonion telescope.

My location was still terrible, with streetlights within 150' of where I was standing.  I positioned myself in an empty field behind the house simply for a better vantage of the sky despite all the light pollution surrounding me (and drifting up in the northern sky from the nearby semi-urban metropolises).  That telescope just drinks in light though, especially with a good eyepiece that takes advantage of the field of view.  Whereas I could only dimly perceive the band of the Milky Way unaided, I pointed the scope at any random patch of sky and was astonished and delighted with the awesome proliferation of stellar pinprick.

I refamiliarized myself with the constellations for navigation (handy iPod app for that) and generally played around for a few hours outside (and also learned that with a 10mm objective lens I can read billboards from over 4 miles away, wavering heat currents notwithstanding).  I managed to see four or five really good shooting stars, picked out some Messier objects, and bided my time until Jupiter made it above the eastern mountains (which took an awful long time, on account of I live part way up the slope of those mountains).  I've been able to do some meager planetary spotting with the new scope so far, with Venus, Mars, and Saturn making wonderful early-evening appearances throughout the summer, but I really wanted to see what kind of detail I could get out of Jupiter.

Turns out, an awful lot.  I should have waited for it to get higher in the sky so as to minimize the atmospheric distortion, but as it was I could still make out a prominent equatorial band on the gas giant and 4 of its moons: Callisto, Ganymede, Io, and Europa.  The sheer brightness of Jupiter made it difficult to see enough contrast to really appreciate the detail (that, and the aforementioned distortion) but it was an awesome experience all the same.

I'm hoping to take the 10" scope out one of these days soon and put it through its paces - I'm getting some weird refraction artifacts with it right now, but that's shooting through a window (a double pane window with decorative metal band squares throughout) in the master bedroom where I've been servicing it; hopefully it's just the window, but I want to make sure (and yes, it's been properly columnated insofar as I can determine).

My goal is also to eventually get a more complete set of eyepieces, ranging from 25mm to 4mm, and a good Canon lens adapter so I can borrow Rachelle's EOS 5D Mark II and get into some serious (well, as serious as an amateur can expect to be) astrophotography under way.

Geeking out, rockin' the blog at 1:30 in the morning.

Inception

Christopher Nolan is probably the greatest living filmmaker.

Was it perfect? No.  But it was a masterpiece.

That is all.

What I’ve Been Up To Lately

I've always been able to sculpt - I've just never done it.  It's been a strange sensation, having that realization sitting around untested, occasionally surfacing and teasing me with possibility.  The very few times I've done anything along these lines it's blossomed easily under my hands - but it's never really been tested, because I didn't have the time or resources (mostly time though) to invest in refining it.

I came close while I was in Seattle working for Amazon - while I was still naive enough to think that I'd have more time on my hands (this is a fallacy for Amazon employees - it's a great company, but when you work for Amazon that's pretty much ALL you do), I contemplated getting some materials together and trying it out.  I did some research, started sketching out some sculpture ideas, and made some plans - but then changed to a much smaller studio apartment with hardwood floors; working with polymer clay in that environment with 3 cats seemed a losing proposition to start with, so I bought an EWI instead.

While making those plans though, I was more sure than ever that the talent was there - with one sculpture concept I couldn't get the sketches of the beastie to turn out right, so I grabbed a sheet of aluminum foil and made the face out of that: and then proceeded to sketch it off of that reference. For my most recent birthday, Rachelle bought me all the stuff I would need to really try it out, putting money where my mouth was much the same way we did in setting up her photo studio eight-plus years ago.

Organic shapes came as easy as I'd expected:

A rough draft of organic elements in unlikely juxtaposition of species

I would need armature wire to start building anything with substance though (such as I'd sketched previously), so I had to work on smaller scale projects.  I figured I'd book some flight time in a simulator first - doing simple projects, tearing them down, and then set my mind on committing to a small project I could do without the wire (which I subsequently acquired, but I'm still finishing this one out first) that would use a minimal amount of the clay and familiarize me with its characteristics and my tools for working with it.  The project in question is a 17th-ish century tower-top observatory, with absolutely no concern for period accuracy (or even scale, really) - off the cuff, just for fun.

Tower floor beginnings

Head-mounted stereoscopic magnification is a must for long sessions

Amanda wanted me to make her a lamb, which hung around and supervised construction.

Post stone, pre wood

Mandy's Lamb

Completed floor

A grain of rice makes its first appearance to provide scale reference:

Stone and wood texture detail

Rough desk form

Lock detail

Desk ornamentation and surface objects

Candle detail

That dark bar in the middle of the quill is the wire out of a twisty tie in order to hold it up - this sheet of clay is thin enough it shows through as white, and won't possibly stand up under its own weight.  The large hole in the inkwell underneath it is where I stabbed it through with a straightpin to help it adhere to the desktop and haven't filled in yet.

Quill detail

If you look closely you can see the bookmark ribbon is forked at the end, and that the loose-leaf paper on the right contains stellar observations (Ursa Major's indication of Polaris).

Book and paper detail

The chair is still very much in progress, with only the chairback and cushion completed in this photo.

Chair detail

Still has a way to go, including the storage chest next to the desk and the telescope, and lots of polishing and refinement after that: I'll need to go through and smooth out tooling marks, and then set the whole thing in the oven.  I don't plan on painting it since my skills definitely do NOT as present tend that way - maybe I can get some of the gaming mini painters in the area to swap me work, where I customize minis for them in exchange for getting a nice paintjob (hint hint, all ye readers).