jcm's blog

Photo: Sandcastles at sunset, Nantasket Beach.

So, for various reasons, I felt inclined to build some sandcastles randomly, at sunset tonight. I went down to my favorite local beach and quickly realized that this is harder than it seems.

My main mistake was that I didn’t take sufficient equipment for the task. It’s clear that my leet sand-forming constructive skillz would be improved with the addition of a bucket and spade, and various other implements also. But this can come in time…and anyway, it’s fun to do something random each and every day. Back to random coding and writing…

Jon.

So I’ve been recovering from a cold for the past couple of days – a sure sign of the transition from summer into fall- which means I’ve wasted most of the weekend doing nothing in particular. Behind on my writing, but on the plus side, I’ve been doing some random reading.

Yesterday, I wanted to go surfing with the New England Surfing dude, but the weather wasn’t up to it – and, truthfully, I probably wasn’t up to doing that either. So instead, I spent most of the day doing nothing in particular. I read some of “The Book Of Useless Information”, watched too much on my DVR, and wound up reading a biography, too.

Today, I had a violin lesson, made random calls planning my family’s trip over here to visit me, had way too much coffee, bought some more books, went for a random drive, and caught up on some email. I still need to get a bunch of work finished from last week, a new release of module-init-tools out the virtual “door”, book review work, and build some random sandcastles. The latter is extremely important.

You know I’m odd. This is a given. But do you know what makes me actually really quite weird? What makes me really weird is that I don’t just listen to my iPod playing music. I think about exactly how it’s playing music. Once again today, I was walking down the street, all the while picturing data blitting from pages of NAND into block of RAM (via a DMA engine that reads from a single port on the NAND controller), variously varied data decoding operations, all stringently clocked. I don’t just see computers around me – I think about how they’re working. And this doesn’t just go for computers. I *need* to know how *everything* (anything you can think of) works, and I need to understand how everything I see is working, too. I’m weird.

Jon.

Photo: Jon Masters, Fedora wearer extraordinaire.

So myself and some colleagues happened to be in the parking lot earlier, and took some silly photos. Random haberdashery fun.

Yes, I keep a fedora in the trunk, for such purposes

Jon.

So, I’m in Ikea over the weekend, buying a large mirror to assist with my violin practice, when one of the employees recommends I go to Walmart instead. There’s just one problem – the Walmart rule.

I have never been into, much less purchased anything from a Walmart store. And I won’t ever be purchasing anything from a Walmart store either – not while they seemingly care only about the lowest possible price, and not about employee healthcare benefits, fair wages, worker’s union rights, and other fundamental, basic issues. My personal code of ethics precludes me from going near to a Walmart store – I like to call it my “Walmart Rule”. Only if there’s no alternative for 100 miles, I’m stranded, and need something essential will I ever even remotely consider actually buying anything there. And even then, I would be very disappointed in myself.

I was saddened to think that someone would recommend that I go there – and even more saddened they worked in retail at the time of making such a recommendation. This isn’t the first time such a thing has happened in this country – it’s filled with people who just don’t see such glaring problems (how else does a company get away with having over 1.3 million employees, with such a basic level of benefit provided?), people who probably also think Big Pharma is doing them a favor in sponsoring prescription assistance programmes (because, big pharma wants to avoid universal healthcare, and other healthcare reforms, medicare/medicaid pricing, etc. At All Costs).

Meh. I managed to get myself worked up even thinking about Walmart.

Jon.

Photo: My MX-5 transcontinental roadtrip enabler.

So I’m planning a little roadtrip…from the East Coast to the West Coast, and back again. My journey will literally commence on the beach, here in MA, and finish on another beach, over in California.

I’ve been meaning to do this trip for quite some time, and seriously intending to do it ever since I bought a vehicle suited to the task. For many, this is some kind of post-highschool young adult right of passage, a quintessential US roadtrip, and one that I never had the chance to fully experience when I was younger. And it’s something I must do.

Currently, I’m in the planning stages. I will take a northern routing across on my outbound trip (passing through Chicago, and continuing straight until I hit California…detouring for some climbing/hiking), and a southern routing on my return (ending up in an office in Raleigh, NC, for a few days before driving back up the East Coast). And although it’s not quite a problem suited to optimal routing analysis types (no offense intended, especially you, Matthew…sorry!), I need some little planning this time around, mostly in order to ensure:

* The trip must be bounded by a maximum time.
* The trip must include coffee with as many friends, in as many cities, in as many States, as is possible.

The latter is the main reason that I’m mentioning this now, and starting to talk about it some more – I need your help as a reader of my blog. If I’m likely to pass through your town on such a trip, please send me an email, or otherwise drop me a line soon. We should make that happen.

Right now, I am considering doing this over Christmas – one of the worst possible times to engage in such an activity, but also one of the times when I have at least one week off, with nothing planned yet. I estimate (based on imperical data from another who recently completed such a trip) that I can complete this frivolity in under 2 weeks all in. If I do decide to do it over the Christmas period, I will likely time activities going into the New Year, seeing in January 1 from a Californian beach.

Jon.

So I was at the NEC (New England Conservatory) earlier, buying some violin studies, and noticed that the Boston Pops were being conducted by John Williams in Tanglewood this evening – I just drove more than 250 miles.

Heck, I like being spontaneous sometimes, and I had burned a collection of Guns N’ Roses greatest hits that needed playing as I drove down the highway, on a mission. I got to Lenox (Tanglewood) in time for the intermission, and the front gate staff decided that my 2 hour driving quest didn’t warrant me still paying for a ticket…so they let me in. I watched the “Harry Potter” themed second half…and the “ET” encore.

John Williams is a great composer and conductor. To a point. The only real problem I have with his stuff is that it all sounds the “same” – there’s always that “Williams” signature to it that tells you “it’s another one” and tells Hollywood execs that they’re onto yet another sure bet. It would be nice to see a little creativeness, or so I thought, as I heard Home Alone coming through in the performance of several Harry Potter pieces.

Tanglewood was good. I did nearly 5 hours of driving tonight, to see the Boston Pops perform for under an hour, but I enjoyed it anyway. I will definitely have to go back next summer to see the BSO (I can’t wait for the fall season to finally begin so I can have my fix). I would love to hear from people interested in going to BSO concerts, or who know about any other performances, recitals, or other events happen in Boston. I especially would like to see a performance of Messiah sometime this year…it’s just something I like to see from time to time. You don’t have to be religious to appreciate great works of choral art.

The only negative thing I’m going to say here is that I wish more people would appreciate good classical music, and I wish that those who choose to partake of performances such as that from this evening, would learn how to behave using some kind of civilized notion of behavior. We live in a very shockingly disturbing MTV generation, but even more shocking than that is when you see the older generation unable to figure out how to keep quiet, not stand in the way, and generally just learn how to not yell out “down in front”. Yes, we both want those people to sit down, and no, shouting is not the answer.

Did you know that the US doesn’t have any kind of national music grading system for theory either? The guy in the store (who sells AB books – I bought the pink one, and no Hannah, you can’t have this one! ) tells me that there are some dudes in Chinatown who run AB exams, and that some British person comes over to invigilate them. I might actually finally get my grade 5 properly sorted out at some point.

Jon.

So I placed an advertisement for a violin teacher on facebook a little over a week ago, and promptly assumed that little would come of it…until I got a reply from a local music student, who teaches violin.

I had my first real lesson in 10 years on Wednesday afternoon, and boy did I demonstrate that my technique sucks something terrible. But that’s why I wanted lessons – so it was actually very constructive. I immediately got some very helpful tips about my bowing, and I made an improvement within the first hour alone. Not that I’m surprised – without a teacher to remind me of what I should be doing, and constructive criticism, I had become quite accustomed to a more “baroque” style of bow hold.

The bowing wasn’t the only thing that needed work, and it was just the first lesson, but I really enjoyed it, so I am going to try to make this a regular thing for the time being – I really would like to get to a point where I can play in a small ensemble and not feel terribly out of place. I’ll start by practicing the musical studies that were recommended, but I also need to quickly brush up on my music theory. Which reminds me, in the US, they don’t have an equivalent of the “Associated Board of the Royal School of Music” (ABRSM) and so there are no grades 1-8. So far, I haven’t found any such testing standard to exist here whatsoever. Not that it really matters, because the true judge of this will be myself – success will be measured in terms of personal satisfaction.

Jon.