December 18, 2013

Read today's addendum for an explanation of why I believe in flying saucers.
You may be surprised.           This is the rewired solar panel controller for the battery charger. These may not be exciting days, but they are productive days. This should emphasize the importance of not connecting a solar panel directly to a battery. You can buy controllers, such as the box shown here, but they lack switches and gauges. Here are the parts I added. Surprisingly, they do not make any weather-proof accessories for solar panels, so what you see is destined for a waterproof casing.

           Today, more long-winded typing. It is a near perfect day outside, I’ve got all the doors and windows open and sitting in my favorite chair out of the sunlight. I’m still broke from the trip and losing that fifty bucks. Let me say that I doubt I outright lost such a round figure. Many times in my life, the cash shows up later in the pocket of some fresh laundry or in a jacket I haven’t worn since the war.
           Reviewing the rehearsal “tapes” (actually digital videos) shows that Jag and I have not forgotten a thing, but that we are definitely more natural at presenting this music. It does grow on you and I see we are ready to embellish the act. This involves showmanship, not musicianship, for I believe in giving the audience the best possible bang for the buck. And sitting there playing “at” them doesn’t cut it, nor does technical virtuosity. They are stopping for a beer, not to attend a grand opening at the performing arts centre.
           Yes, I’m aware this is an instance where a video would benefit the blog, but progress toward new and better features such as making the video posting a convenient task ceased when Google gobbled up Blogspot. Google introduces new features—often without even being asked—but cannot seem to make them handy to use and always containing spyware. Did someone say “MicroSoft”?
           So you’ll have to imagine what I mean about stage work. It can be little things on stage, like tapping toes in unison. On really simple tunes (Don Gibson music) I often use unnecessary motions that bring attention to what I’m up to. Like the way I wag my elbow playing “Jambalaya”. The plainest things work as long as they haven’t seen it before. I consider it a musician’s failure when more than half the audience turns back to their conversation more than half the time. (Yes, I’ve had complete sets where the crowd does nothing but watch me play, wondering what I’ll come up with next.)
           The same cannot be said for the floor show at Dunkin, where you wonder if it will ever stop. A load of laundry found me there the standard hour and forty minutes, enduring the noisy old bugger crowd. They’ve got a new one, and he looks the part I’m about to relate. He sits in the corner like a Buddha and get this, he’s constantly but not forcefully trying to bait that fossilized group of drunks and losers into a religious discussion. (Didn’t win the lottery? Have you tried praying?) Observably a late-in-life convert, he comes across like he found God in prison.

           Dunkin has lately been serving weak-ish coffee. And they have diluted their pastry formulas to the point they are nothing but fluff. This has not diminished the appeal of same to the working class. Compare that to a treat at the bakery. Sorry if this photo is a repeat, but I found it in my “not used” bin. The bakery, where the food looks so good you almost don’t want to eat it.
           Is another trip out of town already in the works? Yes, but another jaunt to the Gulf or something for a couple of days. JZ called around midnight last to say he may actually have some Xmas money left over, oh rarest of events. He’s recalling the last time only cost us $350 which in itself was a novelty for him. Budget travel, what a concept. He didn’t believe it existed until I dragged him out of his condo, kicking and screaming. But what did I tell you? Now he’s calling in the middle of the night talking Ft. Meyers Beach.
           Billie-Bill has sent his song list. Not a problem to learn it, mostly rockabilly. It reveals our different answers to the same question. Where is the money? Wait, dammit, that was not an invitation for every musician in the room to start howling about how much money they made in the good old days. Firstly, I don’t believe a fraction of you lying guitar players ever made that much consistent money at all. Now quiet down and let me make my point.
           As I look at Billie-Bill’s ten-item list, I only recognize two of the tunes. The rest I had to look up. Carl Perkins? Albert Lee? My own list repeats several artists, but the distinction is my music was chosen for audience appeal, not because the artist was so-and-so. Put another way, I can see people traveling across town to hear county music in general but I can’t see them doing the same thing to hear Carl Perkins music. To make another point, at least I’m willing to give it a whirl. But I’ve got a sneaking suspicion he wants me to sing some of it. Um, if you possess the tiniest hint of an ego, you do not want to get into a band where I sing and play. Not. Ever.
           I’ve contacted Miguelito over the red scooter. He’s convinced me it is worth saving. Fine. He’s maintained it and should know these things. The only place I have to go this week is the clinic tomorrow which I carefully timed to coincide arriving just before the staff Xmas party begins. There is something about women in uniform. Am I allowed to point that out? Yes. Just checking.
           Speaking of staff, the trailer court office does it again. What surprises me is that there is nobody over there with the brains to do it on purpose, but the Internet connection again went south a few minutes after they closed for the day. That link drops three or four times a year and has never done so while the office is open. And it usually happens on the Friday before a long weekend. Conspiracy? Not unless you consider sheer mass stupidity to be an organized plot.
           Internet advertising. I would regulate the practice, but only to the extent that “free” offers must be entirely free, including from obligation. But the matter comes to a head with on-line videos. All I can tell you boys if you need money, go get a job. I ignore videos with leading ads or credits (which belong at the END) that last longer than eight seconds. If I want to buy anything, I’ll go to a shopping site. There are numerous other reasons a video gets ignored, but advertising has reached top of the list. The second placeholder is Hindu rap music. That’s an automatic reject.

           Most common errors in on-line videos? Wrong sound level. Trying to wing unrehearsed script. Monotone voice. And please, you dickheads who do it, draw your diagrams in advance on your own time. You waste peoples time drawing and erasing lines while you stand there going, “Um”.
           Hero of the day? Ronnie Biggs, mastermind of the Great Train Robbery (1963 version) has died. Hero? Yes, he kept a step ahead of the authorities for forty years, but did so without gunfights and court battles. That has merit because it lays transparent the awful waste of public money to bring “justice” to high profile “celebrity” arrests while countless petty crime gets filed away. He outlived the cops that made his pursuit into a crusade. In the end, he turned himself in because he was old and dying. Smooth.

ADDENDUM
           Here’s an item stemming from my Roswell, New Mexico, visit. No, I did not see the crash site and did not find anyone who even knew the location. So, do I think that a UFO crashed there? Yes, a crash, but not necessarily any aliens. Why? If you read your history, you will find that a rash of new concepts appeared in US laboratories shortly after the incident, a rate of innovation around 15 times greater than average.

           Virtually overnight we have microcircuits, lasers, and supersonic flight suddenly published in scientific journals. These were unheard of technologies that, unlike most other scientific advances, were not mirrored elsewhere in a world known for parallel discoveries. I agree the developments were militarily useful but that doesn’t explain how or why they were also vital to the US winning the space race. Yet that race did not even begin until ten years after Roswell.
           You know what tipped me off? These technologies were not related to German wartime research. There was no precedent, yet suddenly items like night vision goggles and woven bulletproof vests are invented simultaneously. All these new products were related in some way. The Soviets had captured even more scientists than we did (because the German research teams had been moved progressively east due to Allied bombing). So how, then, did America suddenly vault ahead? I find it academically easier to believe in little green men than accept that a bunch of Americans suddenly became scientific geniuses in July, 1947.