Minty Boost USB charger

I found some time at last to solder and assemble my MintyBoost !

MintyBoost Kit

It's small handy USB charger powered by 2 AA Batteries. I've been using a 4AA battery USB charger for years, but after saw this neat smaller and lighter 2AA charger kit that fits neatly inside an Altoids Gum Tin, I knew that I wanted one. The kit is well thought out. The printed circuit board is designed to fit the contours of the Tin container. The circuit board is etched with handy part numbers and markings that make it easy to correctly place the electronic components for soldering in to place. The electronics are necessary to boost the ~3 Volts from the pair of batteries in series up to the required ~5 Volts that USB works with.

Very very nice solution. Much easier to carry around than my old 4 battery charger (plus it looks cute to boot (or is that 'boost' ?))

Ballet Class

My favorite Jazz dance classes ended after Zafra left town.

farewell Zafra

Happily, I've found a new set of classes to fill the gaping void that was left behind:

Beginning Ballet classes taught by Kathy Mata @SF Dance Center.

The classes are great and despite being called 'Beginning', there are more advanced dancers that also attend the class (a very good sign !). Kathy is a teacher very mindful of everyone in her class at all times, offering helpful corrections and advice for the duration of each class. I can feel that I'm making technical progress since starting the class (a very good feeling). A happy start to a new chapter !

Jazz Drums Instructional DVD

Peter Magadini is a great drummer and instructor. Part of his lifetime of experience playing the Drumset in a Standard and Latin Jazz setting is passed along in his DVD 'Jazz Drums'. If you're a drummer, Jazz enthusiast or even just Jazz curious, this DVD will demonstrate how and why Jazz drumming sounds the distinct way that it does. You know that it doesn't feel the same as Funk/HipHop and it's not the same as most Rock/Pop, but what makes it what it is ? Knowing these things can greatly enhance the Jazz listening experience. (Peter, being a pro, *can* play all those other styles, of course, but this DVD is about Jazz).

In the DVD intro Peter demonstrates something with a concept that I've not heard anyone else do:
To show the roots and evolution of Jazz Drumming, he starts off playing a Traditional West African Rhythm 'Angbeko'. Without missing a beat, this gets morphed into 'Standard' Jazz timekeeping. From there he morphs into one of his specialities: Polyrhythms, that is, different time signatures being played simultaneously. Polyrhythms on the drumset give a nice tension and break from the normal 'thunka thunka pop' pulse. Dennis Chambers, one of my favorite (living) drummers is heavily into Polyrhythms.. It's great stuff, a 'spicy cuisine' that makes life more interesting..

Here (available at the time of writing this post) is a link to Opening Solo portion of the DVD, starting off with West African 'Angbeko' rhythm and morphing:

http://www.petermagadini.com/opening_solo.mov


Fascinating !

2 Wheels Good

Someone asked me about this recently, so here goes.

I like vehicles with 2 wheels. With a motor or human powered, doesn't matter. The sensation of getting around on 2 wheels is a gift to us from the laws of angular momentum (the spinning wheels wanting to keep us consistently oriented.. (that'd be rubber side down) ). The nice part of riding on 2 wheels (the exposure) is also the most risky part of riding on 2 wheels (the exposure). Because of the risks I no longer depend on them for getting around in all conditions, specifically I try to avoid riding at night in the rain. Motorcycle OR Bicycle the chance of being flattened by something on the road with 4 wheels is increased due to decreased visibility in the rain. (Riding in a city on a Friday or Saturday night is another time to be really cautious).
Sometimes when going out to a nice place on a nice day for a recreational bicycle ride, it seemed like a waste of a nice day to be sitting boxed up in a car.. So the obvious thing was to rig up a motorcycle to carry a bicycle and have a nice day out on both a bicycle and motorcycle ride. I've seen various solutions to this problem implemented by other like minded souls. This one is the final version 2.0 for me. Does the job and works fine. I've taken it to lots of places, up and down the western states, out to visit my sister in Minnesota (to do a bicycle club ride with her in Minneapolis, what else ?). This picture was taken on a highway heading towards Tucson during a Christmas Vacation trip out to Arizona (December temps were in the 70's mmmmmm.....)

LP Conversions Underway

I recently got a digital sound recorder to convert some of my old vinyl LPs to mp3. I had re-acquired a good portion of my LP collection in CD form. Now those CDs sit idle just as the LPs do because it's too convenient to listen to them in mp3 form. I can no longer see paying out to re-buy music I already bought in LP form. Of course some of the collection isn't readily available in CD or mp3 form anyway, so a digital recorder is a good way to go. Case in point is a favorite LP from my youth: "Tarik" by Saxophonist Dewey Redman (see photo above). This LP has been issued in CD form, but a check of prices shows that it's going for about $50 new or $25 used.. yipes, that much for some music I already have in my collection ? Try searching the 'ITunes store' for one of my favorite cuts on the LP: "Lop-O-Lop" by "Dewey Redman".. The Apple ITunes store turns up zilch. Hmmm.. "Think Different", but not TOO different it seems, or you'll be disappointed !

Amazingly, my old turntable started right up and played the vinyl disks like it was yesterday (times about 10,000). Long forgotten rituals were performed: blowing off the LP, periodically brushing the accumulated dust off of the needle (um, that's the thing that follows the physical track on the LP fer you youngstas). Some of my favorite LPs were in pretty bad shape. Being favorites, they were played a lot so there were lots of pops, fading and the occasional skip. The 'Stack Overflow' guys Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood recently noted amusingly that Vinyl LPs are coming back into fashion in some younger crowds who claim that there's something special about hearing the music on vinyl. J & J then made some joke about writing a program to layer in some pops and scratches on top of clean mp3 sound.. I say 'yeah, how about some skips too to make it really authentic !'

It'll be fun converting the collection. Some of that stuff I haven't heard in decades. It'll be a kind of closure to know that I'm playing each LP for the very last time...

Obama Day, Hawaiian Style

One viewpoint out of the Millions of views of Obama Inauguration Day...

My nephew attends the Punahou school in Honolulu which is the school that Obama went to. (BTW, it's nice having a relative that lives in Hawaii :-) ). There was a big celebration at the school in honor of their now famous former student. My sister watched the Inaugural parade on TV and noted that the Punahou School Band was the first band at the head of the line up. She said that Obama gave them the Shaka sign in greeting.. Gotta love it, he's probably the first US President for whom this is a natural gesture. A google image search of 'Obama shaka' will yield up a bunch of pictures of Obama giving the Shaka !

One More from Berlin And Beyond

Today I went to another screening at the "Berlin And Beyond" film festival. I had not planned on posting about it since I already mentioned the movie that I saw there yesterday, but today's movie "Evet, I do !" ("Evet, Ich Will !") was so outstanding that I have to mention it ! The movie makes comedy out of 'forbidden marriages'. Each of the protagonist-couples has to deal with parents and relatives who disapprove of their choices of partner along cultural lines: Turk + Kurd, Turk + German, Turk + African-American, Gay Turk + Gay German. Though the particulars of each situation are different, human nature is what it is and it's not hard to recognize the absurdities and laugh out loud at them.
There was a Q & A session after the movie with the directory/writer Sinan Akkus (he's the person on the left in the photo). It was astounding to learn that this was his FIRST feature length movie and that today's screening was only the 2nd time that this movie has been seen in public. I truly hope that he can get some distribution for this gem, it's a very entertaining hour and a half that shouldn't sit on a shelf unviewed except by a just few hundred people.