One year ago today: January 11, 2015, whatever turns your gears.
Five years ago today: January 11, 2011, is January airship month?
Nine years ago today: January 11, 2007, an argument for ubertaxi?
Random years ago today: January 11, 2010, why do I bother?
Today, you get more editorial. It’s a cool spell, down to 57°F. That’s sub-arctic for south Florida. It also brings rain sprinkles, so it is a chicken soup day for me. Besides, you like reading or why be here? And I’ll work on some projects, which at any given time I have six or so on the go. The “steam engine”, my camera battery pack, improvements on my finger splint (which works remarkably well), and the air tank transfer dilemma, lots of things await attention. And I need that rear hatch on the camper.
Have you ever been to a hacker’s meetup? Remember, there are two types of hackers, the good and the bad. So I mean a good hacker’s meetup. I quit over the atmosphere at these occasions. You won’t learn anything or make any worthwhile contacts. So, do I go to the Miami LAB event this evening? Good question, and I’m not even going to attempt an answer until I get back from morning coffee.
My aversion to the meetings is the prevalent “Zuckerberg” attitude. I show up hoping to meet others with shareable knowledge and collaboration skills, but instead the room is invariably full of sit-theres thinking they will be the next one to steal and perfect a billion-dollar idea. I’ve previously mentioned this because it is a very real and dominating factor in these meet-ups.
It’s a Millennial thing. I understand that to get ahead, you have to invent something. Or put another way, all the easy things are already done. This, of course, is nonsense, because every generation thinks the same. The difference is, my generation really did come up with a few winners. I’d say computers and the space program would qualify as examples. This generation seems to have the cell-phone sales attitude, where their goal is not to improve a thing, but to slice up the existing pie more in their favor.
In the end, I didn't bother going.
As for real estate, nothing is moving. I can sweep the entire state and souther Georgia in less than 40 minutes now. If I miss something, it is obscurely advertised. The market is the same as a month ago, tons of derelict properties being sold in the high-crime fringes of even worse areas. And it sucks, because those neighborhoods demand more police protection and scream harassment if they do.
There’s not much else for sale until you get into the high-end subdivisions. Over in those territories they have not heard there is a financial crisis going on. Be leery of published stats, for it appears the majority of sales are between the after-mortgage crowd. They have $250k+ equity each so they are essentially trading places to live. For every three people who move to Florida, two move back out.
The menu lacks the prices, what was the thing most people wanted to know. Count on about $12 for each person, although you can get away with $8, but the drinks are always extra. The place was packed, we sat at the counter. JZ and I spend $30 in a wink, plus a $5 tip. Now you know.
The telegraph is a great start for the beginning thinker. I’ve designed (but not built) a model with a separate key and sounder, I used to call the sounder the “clicker”. Interesting, how I find the click easier to hear than the beep, so much so that I consider the Morse units that beep to be the cheap cousin. The best blueprint I can come up with causes both the local and remote sounders to activate when either key is pressed. Anything fancier gets hairy and in this instance, not worth the extra effort.
I have chosen for this sounder the most durable non-exotic wood known to mankind. I don’t yet have a solenoid and I’m only sure about the theory of those things. I know from my old Ford if you leave a solenoid on, it will zap itself. Or at least get very hot.
Without regular practice, the speed at which I can receive Morse code is where I began, 5 wpm. But that is with 100% accuracy (except for call codes, the newer “computer” signs, and things I’ve never heard before). So I tuned in to see what was transmitting, and it was the word “PARIS” over and over. The purpose of my newest sounder is to get away from listening to beeps and learn to listen to clicks. Not so easy as it sounds.
If you’d like to hear Morse code at the impossibly high speed of 60 wpm, it’s here. But I question whether this is real, or a computer generated high-speed “squirt” transmission. Um, one of the reasons I want to learn to read clicks is because the beep style transmissions have a knob which allows the sender to vary the frequency (tone) of the signal. Unfortunately, there are too many turkeys out there that use it.
Today, I’m making fried chicken and it’s about time. Face it, one can only get the kitchen unbearably hot in a cool spell. And I’m using home-made batter with no secret herbs or spices. Screw that, I want to know exactly what I’m eating, see? That, and home-made means I’ll finally find a use for that Carona beer the shoe store guy beside the bakery keeps giving me on Fridays. Otherwise, that is beer that sits here until JZ shows up. Never did care for it. Tastes “wheatie”, and lime, lime is for tea.
For those who dispute that, recent studies have shown one of the most unsanitary things you can eat is the lime slices at a bar. Look it up. They are cut on a splash counter by unskilled labor, marinated in bar splash, and spiced by second-hand tobacco from skid-road lungs. By then, it’s more garnish than I’d touch. For those who still dispute, I won’t go on. I know when I encounter the hopeless.
Now a sad bit, doing the backups for 2015, I played back the rather random videos of Ray-B and I jamming. These are ordinary recordings with an open mic and two instruments, no backing track, recorded live. What an incredible sound, easily recordable and marketable, but sad that it will go nowhere. And you know why?
Like most guitarists, he doesn’t “hear” the subconcious shift in his guitar playing when he’s around a good duo bassist free to play a good strum without being concerned about breaking musical stride. These video clips make that plain as day, but as usual, a guitarist will just surmise he did a greater than usual job and the bass line helped a bit. No picx, as the videos are for review and only show uninspiring views of the guitar necks.
I know three guitarists that would actually get somewhere in this world if they would just put some effort into working with me. But, as usual, each of them has those aspirations of making it solo or fronting the next headline band—none of which will ever happen. And I remain stuck because these people would rather get old than give up the big dream. It’s kind of like watching otherwise nice women stick on with a lousy marriage. And once you get too old to start over, well, grab your guitar and go stand over with the millions of other guitar players.
I’m not saying the music is world-class or a breakthrough. But I am saying with myself and a good rhythm guitarist, we can wax the solo guitar scene. And that needs to happen because no guitarist I’ve ever seen in Florida is anywhere near good enough to compete with the sheer novelty of the show I can slap together. I didn’t say it was original, although it may be, how would I know? The guitar is self-limiting as a solo instrument. It needs an extra layer to remain “listenable” night after night. And do we know any bassists who can manage Mozart and Beethoven lines?
Now don’t get too far ahead of yourself, at least until you try to pick out a little tune that is deceptively simple. The “Think” music from Jeopardy. It’s been around a while, but it has the exact notes that give a bass player the heebie-jeebies. Like a guitarist avoids thirds, this tune creates unnatural finger patterns that cause, I’ll wager, every bassist will get it wrong on the first try. It is, mathematically, a difficult piece of music. I never did get it exact because my ear keeps telling me it is “cross-harp” like on a harmonica. Every time I go back to the keyboard to re-learn it, I hear it differently.
Anyway, the finished movie was intended to be a lighthearted capture of our antics. The 15-pound breakfast, the gorgeous twin sisters at the museum, the galavanting around the trains, and winding up for coffee at the English bookstore in Coral Gables. Here is a typical out-of-focus picture taken by other than myself. The sign says “colored” and can be reversed to say “white”.
The reality is, the video shows us getting old. All videos are kept in the same directory on my computer, and I regularly see older clips when I am looking for filler material. So I regularly see us 15 years ago and a split second later, there we are today, the old guys. I was lucky in not really aging until quite late, but when it hit, it was both barrels. I can accurately state the year I grew old was 2003.
There are so few pictures of myself simply because I cannot find anyone who can take them. And being a civilized human being, I’m not keen on selfies.
ADDENDUM
JZ asked how the old band was doing. The same, I guess, because nobody ever heard of them. Which is rather strange for a band that has supposedly played in this town for years. I see they finally edited out all trace of my pictures and replaced them with pointedly similar poses of the only two venues we ever played. A tired old club at the airport and a Cooper City veteran’s hall. You know, the places where after 9:30, no matter how good you are, you play to the bartender.
There is no evidence they ever got out of that rut. Some of the pictures on their site are the gigs I played, but now with me cropped out. Plus, the tune I essentially quit over (Strawberry Fields Forever) is less than subtly placed near the top of their demo list. Unlike my info, which they insisted on, the new bass player (if he is still there) has given them no background. Yes, I know, did he just get out of jail?
That band was all work and no play. Clinging to a formula that has never worked for anyone and unwilling to change a thing, they cannot learn any music the guitar player cannot already play. He cannot learn anything new himself, but he’s deadly with what he does. Well, at least as deadly as you would expect from anyone who has been playing the same set of songs for over 30 years. He’s a nice guy, but set in his ways. I wonder if he ever got the singer to crash overnight? He certainly made the offer often enough.
And the singer, wow, has she aged in a year. I liked her, but this was her first band so she probably by now thinks wasting that amount of time is the way it’s done. They won’t be the last group I meet that is mentally addicted to their own belief that they know which music is the best. Maybe it isn’t all said and done, but that band has said and done everything they ever will. Repeatedly. For God knows how long already.
By comparison, 60% of my song list is music I learned to play in the past three years. But all they would say is “bass is easy”. None of them can play bass like I do no matter how hard they try, but that is not the point they are making, don’t you get it?
Last Laugh
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