November 2009 Archives

I was going through some old CD ROM backups from hard drives on various older computers, earlier today, and I discovered this cool little graphic file. Many years ago (ca. 1994), when I put up a very basic, hand-coded, static web site, I got an email from someone in Italy, saying that I was the recipient of the Krell 'Hot Site' Award. I was thrilled. I seem to recall emailing the person who sent it, and visiting their site, and seeing that it was an award given to web sites that had a lot of science and/or science fiction related content. At the time I had an entire page dedicated to space related stuff, called my Space Geek Super Page, and apparently this was enough to be the recipient of this very prestigious award. Sadly, a web search today revealed few references to the award, or from whence it came. I did find one or two other sites that had won it over the years, but little else.

I would be curious to know if this award was something that the person gave to any and every science related site that he visited, or if it was something he took seriously, and truly gave to sites that impressed him, and that he enjoyed.

Those of you who are Sci-Fi fans will recognize the image and Krell reference as being from the classic film Forbidden Planet.

I like the graphic, and am proud of having won it, even though I have little recollection of the hows and whys. I just thought I'd post it again and blow my own horn a little. I need to find a way to incorporate it into the site again.  Any ideas?

When I was young, my dad always told me that you were not allowed to play Christmas music before the Friday after Thanksgiving. He did make it clear that it was an unwritten rule, not carved in stone, but one that he would not break, nonetheless. I thought that the rule was reasonable, and made sense. In more recent years, however, it seems as though that rule is being broken earlier, and earlier. If my memory isn't failing me, I believe that one local shopping center started playing Christmas music, immediately after Halloween, this year. So much for unwritten rules.

Do these business owners and decision makers really believe that people will spend more money if they start hearing Christmas music a month earlier than normal? If that is the case, why not just play it all year? Heck, they should have started blasting it 24/7 over every radio station and public address system in the country, two summers ago, when the economy crashed. Maybe that would have helped!

I am also intrigued by the name that has been given to today: Black Friday. I think that it is appropriately named, since I am not a fan of the crass commercialism and consumption that this day has come to represent. Wall Street seems to have co-opted everything, and yet despite that, surprisingly, they haven't been able to re-brand the name Black Friday into something less ominous sounding. Something like Friendly Friday, or Fantastic Friday, or Frolicking Friday. Perhaps I shouldn't have written that, because now they're likely to attempt to try.

It is my belief that there is little that you can do to cause people to spend more money around the holidays. They either have it, or they don't, and this season, I expect that they don't.

At the end of the day, perhaps this is a good thing. Just like I have had to learn to live with less due to my unemployment, perhaps not having as much money will teach people that the holidays are not about belongings, but are instead about belonging.


* Note to all business owners and decision makers: Playing Christmas music ridiculously early causes me, and people like me, NOT to shop at your businesses.

Hi folks. I guess it's been kind-of a slow month around here at rw-dot-com. I normally try to write around ten quality entries, but I have been feeling a bit down this month, so that's not going to happen. I have been feeling a bit better, of late, so hopefully I will feel like writing more, in December.

The good news is that I started my WIELGISM category, which helps with those really quick and short ideas that I get throughout the day. I know I've written a lot of them this month, but my goal is to have a nice balance between those, and my regular posts.

I hope that everyone had a good Thanksgiving Day. My plans changed at the last minute, but I ended up going over to a friend's house, and had a great meal. This particular friend is also a Vegetarian, so I knew that there would lots of food for me to eat. I had an invitation to go to the home of a family friend that I do not know very well (or at all, actually), but I declined because they probably don't know that I am a Vegetarian, and they certainly don't know about my food sensitivity. I thought it best to avoid them the potential embarrassment of ultimately having very little for me to eat, and me having to explain for the millionth time that I am not weird because I choose not to eat meat, and because I can not have gluten.

I did not end up making any pumpkin pies this holiday, because I could not find any pre-made gluten-free pie crusts, and I am too lazy to make my own. I was able to find a pre-made gluten-free pumpkin pie, however, and that was pretty good. Maybe I can try to find some crusts in the next few weeks and make some pumpkin pies for the Solstice Holiday.

It was an unseasonably warm November here in Central NY, which is fine by me because it keeps my heating bill down. From what I have heard, I believe we are already ten to fifteen inches behind in snowfall. I remember plenty of Thanksgivings with snow on the ground, and not only did we not have any on the ground this year, I have not even seen a snowflake falling from the sky, yet.

I am still undecided on whether or not I am going to purchase a Festivus Pole, or make one. Either way I need to have it here by the 23rd of December. Hopefully you'll have one as well, and we can all air our grievances, together!

Based on fairly recent experiences, I would say that incredibly dysfunctional families that have family businesses, lead to incredibly dysfunctional businesses.

(And you thought I was going to give thanks for something, or some other incredibly trite thing!)

What man would ever actually have dated Carrie once they found out she was a sex columnist, knowing that they might eventually become unflattering column fodder??

I am waiting for a reality show where behaving like a cut-throat-asshole, penalizes you. Bad behavior should not be encouraged.

I attended our discussion Salon last Thursday, and the topic this month was the holidays. A very timely topic indeed, with two big ones right around the corner, but we tried to add an interesting slant to the idea. The person running the Salon that night thought it would be interesting first to start discussing what we like, and what we dislike about the holidays. As you might imagine, most people had the same complaints about the holidays as we currently celebrate them. Over-commercialization, lost meaning, and forced gift-giving being the top issues.

The way we structure our Salon discussion is to have a first go-around where we talk about one specific question, we take a refreshment break, and then we have a second go around where the discussion is usually more free-form and open. This time, however, we had a specific question for the second go around as well. The question being: If you could create a holiday exactly the way you would like to see one, what would it be? This led to a tangent where we discussed whether or not there was a holiday that was unique to the U.S., that everyone could celebrate.  I thought that was a very interesting question. The first thing that popped into my head was the Fourth of July. That is obviously a holiday that is unique to the U.S., and does not require any particular religious affiliation to enjoy, but like most holidays in this country, most people enjoy the day (or the long weekend) by having a cookout and not thinking about its meaning. Most people are probably not thinking of it as our Independence Day in any real sense, just as most think of Labor Day as the end of Summer/beginning of Fall, instead of a day to celebrate and bring unity to the workers of our country.

One Salon participant suggested the idea of demoting all religious holidays to Minor Holidays, and instead celebrating secular events; I found myself in agreement. When I was asked what my holiday would look like, I didn't think of one in particular, but of several. For centuries early humans celebrated things like The Harvest, the Earth, and celestial events like the Solstices. It is no coincidence, after all, that so many of our holidays fall around the Winter Solstice.

I would very much enjoy bringing back these practices. I think of myself as a citizen of the world, and we all share this planet, partake of its bounty, and live under the same celestial heavens. I think that if we are ever going to move toward a more peaceful and accepting existence, we need to celebrate things that we have in common, and not things that segregate us and seek to keep us more isolated from one another.

They just don't make things like they used to. I think my grandfather was right when he used to say that about so many things.

OK. The new handle assembly is installed and is working fine. However, the problem with the foot-rest collapsing down was not fixed with the installation of the new handle. We searched and could only find one area where there looked to be bent metal of any kind, so we might try to straighten that out in the hopes that it solves the problem. I am not entirely convinced that the problems lies there, however. More investigation is required.

At least now I no longer have to straddle the chair to sit in it, since I no longer have to keep it in the upright position.

The fine folks who develop the Ardour Digital Audio Workstation for linux have released version 2.8.4. This will be the final release of the  2.x series unless there is a catastrophic bug or something similarly problematic that needs to be addressed. This is largely a bug-fix release, with a few new features, and should be very stable.

Next up on the Ardour to-do list is continuing development of the 3.0 code-base, for eventual release. Version 3.0 is greatly anticipated since it will incorporate MIDI support, which is something that Ardour users have been looking forward to for some time.

As I said in a previous post, Ardour is an amazing tool that rivals the big commercial DAW programs. If any of you do digital audio work, and have been thinking of switching to linux, now would be a great time because of the robustness and availability of great tools like this.


Ardour DAW 2.8.4 Released

TV's used to warm up, now they have to boot up. It takes nearly as much time. Whatever happened to the promise of instant on?

If these mythical free-market forces really worked, or existed at all, then every cell carrier would have an Unlimited Everything plan for $100.00.

If you drive so timidly that you're afraid to merge onto the highway when the nearest car is a half mile away, then you're a danger to yourself, and others.

One day last last week, my one-year-old easy chair started to do funny things. The foot rest that you extend with the handle on the side of the chair, collapsed down a few inches into a lower position. You could pop it back up, but the moment you put any weight on it again, it would collapse back down into that less-that-ideal position. I also noticed that the handle seemed to be stuck. It would no longer raise and lower the foot rest. When I attempted to turn the handle, I felt movement, but didn't realize that I was actually bending metal. I put the chair on its side and noticed the twisted metal shaft that connects the handle to the chair mechanism, but after a quick visual inspection, everything else seemed fine. Wow. I had no idea I was so strong. I often joke that I have the strength of ten men, but I guess in this case it was true. Either that or the chair manufacturer used a really weak piece of hollow square tube stock out of which to make the shaft. As much as it pains me to have to admit this, I think it was the crappy shaft, and not my manliness.

A few days later I had dad come over to take a look, and we removed the handle-assembly and he took it with him to fabricate a new shaft to go between the handle and chair mechanism. This time it's going to be made out of solid steel, the way it should have been made the first time.

He called me last night and told me that the part would be ready today, and when he came over, NO JOY. The part that he made was just a tad too big to fit into the chair mechanism, but he promised to grind it down and have it ready to go, tomorrow.

I am looking forward to seeing if the new handle-assembly fixes all of the problems, or whether the collapsing footrest is a separate problem that just happened to crop up the moment the handle failed. I guess I have to wait twenty four more hours! I will update you the moment that I know.

(Pictured is the chair, with the handle missing, and below that is the freshly fabricated handle-assembly right before we discovered that it was just a tad too large.)

noun

1: A reactionary political ideologue who instantly and completely abandons their core principles the moment their house is burning down.

2: A delusional free-market fundamentalist.

For a few weeks now, I've been searching for a word to describe these silly definitions that I sometimes come up with in my imagination. You know, a word like 'daffynitions' but something that I could call my own. I publicly asked my friends on Facebook and Twitter for help, and I think at the end of the day, I am going to have to settle on Wielgisms. Thanks to my friend Dan for suggesting that.

Wielgisms can be many things, including crazy definitions, things that I think should be common sense/conventional wisdom, or practically anything else of my choosing. Some will be funny, some will be sarcastic, and some will be... who knows what. Let's see what happens.

Even though I have decided to call the blog entries themselves, Daily Wielgisms, I might post more than one a day, or only one a week. I guess you'll just have to deal.   :-)

Doing things for yourself can be a wonderful thing. The idea of saving money, and learning a new skill is very empowering. But, I also think it's important to recognize one's limitations and respect them.

I have no idea when the do-it-yourself trend started, but it probably coincided with the popularity of shows like This Old House, and perhaps even some of the earliest cooking shows that showed us how to prepare gourmet-style meals at home.

The idea for this blog post came about when I was chatting with some musician friends on IRC, and someone suggested writing a piece of software to help guitarists adjust their instruments the way a proper luthier/guitar technician would. Don't get me wrong, I think being independent and self sufficient are very important things, and are to be admired, but some things require years of training and practice. Most guitarists, myself included, have a little bit of cash tied up in their instruments, and want them taken care of properly. While I know that in time, I could learn the skills necessary to adjust my guitars properly, I think there is tremendous value in letting my guy with thirty five or forty years of experience, do it for me. I'm happy to pay him money to do it because I know every time, they will be perfect.

Self confidence is a great thing, and sometimes it's fun to dive head first into a project, completely unaware of the challenges that you might face, but unfortunately, that can have its negative side as well. For example, I'm sure you all have one or two of those big home centers in your area. Those gigantic stores where you can purchase everything from 2x4's, to lamp-shades, with everything in between. Those stores probably could not exist without do-it-yourselfers. The epic fail however, happens when utterly unqualified people attempt to do something that for decades previously had been done by a tradesman. For example, somewhere near to where I live, there is a house that has a kind-of tumor on the front of it. The homeowners obviously went to their local home center and purchased a bunch of landscaping materials, and ended up building this thing on to the front of their house. They must love it, but for me, not so much. It's kludgy, obtrusive, inharmonious, and just plain ugly.

I don't know... sometimes things are best left to professionals.

I've been a little down-in-the-mouth for the past few days, and haven't felt like writing, but I thought that I'd share this quick story with you.

I am a part of this little group of talented, interesting, and cool musicians (I don't count myself among them) who frequent the same IRC Channel, talk a lot online, and also sometimes collaborate over the internet. Another thing that we sometimes do is broadcast concerts to the other people in this little clique, using an Icecast Server. Two of the guys in our group set up dedicated Icecast servers, and if I want to broadcast myself playing guitar from my home, I send my broadcast to one of the Icecast servers using a tool called BUTT (Broadcast Using This Tool), and the other people in our group hit a particular URL at the Icecast server, and they can listen. Don't worry, this is relevant.

So, tonight, my friend Mike and his girlfriend Valorie played a few gigs, and their second gig was at some sort of dive bar in the sticks of North Carolina. After their set, he fired up his netbook and started chatting with us on IRC. Then he fired up BUTT, and let us listen to the band that played after them. The band was called Cattle Truck, and they sounded exactly like you would imagine.   :-)

So there I was, sitting on my sofa with my earbuds in, listening to Cattle Truck, drinking a brewski, and eating vegetarian chili (that's as Redneck as I get). It's almost as if I went out to get rowdy, without having to leave my living room, and it was fun!

I couldn't help but be transported back in time to the original Blues Brothers movie, however, when I heard bottles breaking in the background. I am wondering if the stage in this bar had chicken wire in front of it, like the stage in Bob's Country Bunker, in the movie. I'd like to think it did.

As I mentioned in an earlier Steve Morse Band live concert review, I have been a Steve Morse fan since the early 80's. I always loved the depth and complexity of his writing, and his gargantuan guitar chops. He is a formidable player who studied jazz, and classical, and plays rock and country as well as anyone. He won the 'Best Overall Guitarist' poll in Guitar Player magazine so many times, that they banned him from the contest.

As I also mentioned in that review, some of the songs that he played live, from his new record, gave me hope that he was going back to his more layered, textural style with strong counterpoint, and eschewing the warmed-over Led Zepp riffs that he's been busting out on his last two or three Steve Morse Band albums, but sadly, I was mostly wrong. Songs like 'Here And Now And Then' and 'Unnamed Sources' bring me back to the Southern Steel era of his writing, and others bring me back to the Stressfest and Structural Damage eras, but none have the strength of his earlier records like The Introduction, Stand Up, and High Tension Wires. Many of the riffs on the record sound like things that belong more on a Jerry Cantrell record, than a Steve Morse Band record. They're pretty good riffs, as far as rock riffs go, but Steve is, and always has been capable of so much more. I want to hear music that guys like Jerry Cantrell simply are not capable of writing. Did Steve forget that there are fans who still remember, and appreciate the Dixie Dregs days, and his earlier Steve Morse Band records?

On this record, and like on most of his records, he has a kind-of formula for the styles and types of songs that are on them. In other words, his records (both Steve Morse Band and The Dregs) have lots of compositions written for the entire ensemble, but there is always one country-style song, and one duet for either nylon-string guitar, and bass guitar, or nylon-string, and violin. The nylon-string compositions are always strong, and tend to be very influenced by baroque music, and the piece on this record is good, but I will always prefer the nylon-string/violin duets from the Dregs records. In my opinion those compositions were a bit stronger, and I think the combination of nylon-string and violin is more classic. The country-style songs never disappoint, and the offering on this record entitled 'John Deere Letter' is no exception. They are always filled with lots of blazing flat-picking, and sound diabolically difficult to play.

It pains me to have to say this, but my favorite record that Steve produced over the last ten years, is not really a traditional Steve Morse Band record, at all, but instead, the first one of his Major Impacts releases.  That record is filled with strong compositions, in the flavor and style of many of the artists that influenced him growing up. Many of Steve's fans, like me, are musicians, and I often call the kind of music that he plays, Players Music, but the great thing about the first Major Impacts release, is that I think he transcended that, and released a record that any music fan would enjoy, musician or not.

As an audio engineer, I am disappointed by the limp quality of the drum sounds on this record. The snare has no crack, and the kick drum doesn't crush my ribcage, like a good rock-and-roll kick drum, should. I think the drums need to be louder in the overall mix, as well. For the most part, the guitars are pointy and searing, as they should be, and the bass guitar has meat and definition. A few of the guitar-tone choices don't appeal to me, but that's the art of it. Those tones apparently did appeal to them on the day they recorded them, and that's fine.

I think on the whole, this is a pretty good rock-and-roll record, and if you aren't that familiar with Steve Morse, and haven't already been spoiled by his monstrous talents as a songwriter, you will probably be happy. But for those like me, who crave the more complex stuff, this record is a bit of a disappointment.