This page renders best in Firefox (or Safari, or Chrome)
READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Today I drove a bunch of tile over from Barry's house to my own (long, non-interesting story) and carried it inside. I was washing my hands afterwards and had the thought, Frequently, washing my hands seems like a useless bit of ritual, but right now, it is having a clearly visible effect. Which led directly to the thought, maybe the proportion of head work that I'm doing to hand work has grown too high.
Fortunately I had a handy project just waiting to be done, namely fixing the pocket doors between our dining room and music room -- these are sliding wooden doors which it would be nice to use, but they don't slide very well in their tracks. We haven't really done much with them since we moved in, until the other day when I closed them -- the one on the left moved along smoothly but the one on the right had to be sort of wrestled out; and when I had pulled it out all the way I heard something falling down in the cavity it lives in, and then it would not shut.
This evening I took down the stop which is on the ceiling in the middle of the door track, so I could pull the right-hand door all the way out and see what was blocking it. Turns out the cavity was full of debris, fallen bits of plaster, lengths of 2X4 (one of which was blocking the door's return), chips of brick, and a huge amount of plaster dust. I was able to pull most of it out with a long stick, and the door slides much better now. And I had another chance to wash my dirty hands.
posted evening of January 8th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Carpentry
Every time I see this Saramago quote: "The gate is wide open, the madmen escape." at the top of my blog, I hear it sung to the tune of "Away in the Manger". Not that useful but there you have it.
It is starting to sound to me like an actual song. (See a couple of posts down for the fiddle part.) -- like just now I was mulling over what the lyrics to it might sound like, if they were written and I were singing them. I think the genre is probably rock or rockabilly.
...A song about memory, I think -- with lots of references to Modesto and to the Central Valley if I can swing it. Mostly because those Valley city and town names have got the exact right cadence for this melody -- Sacra-ment-o, e.g. -- the line in my head is "Driving up the high-way, north to Sacra-ment-o," possibly followed by "Don't know what I'll do there" or "Haven't seen my ba-by" or, not sure. Memory and being bored -- these two are tangled together pretty inextricably in my world view.
posted morning of January 8th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Songs
I think I am not going to do any more Songs posts until I buy a microphone and an audio processor. I have been planning to do this sometime soon -- I think I will feel much better about the music I am posting if the audio quality is a little better. What I have been doing up till now counts as a sort of a proof of concept -- the concept is pretty well proven.
If any of you have got advice about what sort of mics and audio converter I ought to buy, please leave them in comments, or e-mail me if you prefer. I will be most grateful.
This afternoon I thought of a short tune. Played around with it on my violin and I came to realize that it integrates really well with "After Midnight".
I came up with guitar chords to accompany "Creepy Charlie" -- I am looking forward to recording the piece with viola and guitar, and maybe to writing a "b" part as well. (In the recording I posted the other day, there is something that sounds like it might be a "b" part but I think it is actually just a second voice on the "a" part. This is something I don't know how to figure out.)
Update: bullet two is no longer operative; I have ordered an Edirol E-MU EM8740 audio interface (which I will call "emu") and a pair of Behringer C2 microphones.
posted evening of January 7th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Guitar
Don't believe the lack of hype: Shanghai Love Motel is going straight to the top (of?). Listen to some great music for free at their MySpace page, go listen to them on Saturday in Brooklyn (Jalopy, 315 Columbia St. between Hamilton Ave. and Woodhull St., 10 pm), anticipate their forthcoming first record. Anticipate!
So who remembered that at the beginning of Peter Pan, before Peter ever comes and takes the children to visit Never-Never Land, he existed as a story that Wendy told to her brothers? That part of the story had totally vanished from my memory and from Ellen's. (Other things I did not remember include the in-your-face racism and sexism, pretty hard to miss -- I guess it's been a long time since I watched this.)
Some miscellaneous stuff for you tonight, with annotations.
The first two tracks are "Weary Day" and "The Louisville Burglar", from my and Jerry's set at the open mic last week. Still haven't got the video sorted out. Track 3 is my arrangement of "K.C. Moan" by the Memphis Jug Band (and famously covered by the Dead, a-and I know this song first and best in its performance by Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band) -- this is a song we are working on, Jerry sings it much better than I do so just think of the vocals as a placeholder.
Track 4 I would like to know what you think about: It is the next iteration of the song I posted the other day calling it "a variation on Dvorák's 'Humoresque'" -- that description was not a very apt one then and it is works even less well with the current version. The song is definitely a different one from the source. I am calling it "Creepy Charlie" and I just have no idea what kind of music it is. So if it makes you think of anything could you leave a comment? Thanks.
Hmm... and looking at them side by side now, I notice that my "K.C. Moan" part is almost note for note the same as my "Bed on Your Floor" part in a different key and with two extra bars inserted. Which, well, they are pretty similar songs I guess.
posted evening of January 4th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
I worked out a fiddle part to "Bed on Your Floor" -- here is ABC format, here is PDF. I try to write out as close as possible to what I'm playing on my fiddle; it puzzles me that so few of the notes actually start on a downbeat. (Well this has been true of the songs I have transcribed in 2/4 and 4/4 time; the songs in 3/8 and 12/8 seem to be more dominated by downbeats.) Nearly every note of this song that is not the first note of a measure starts on an upbeat or a quarter-beat. -- Well maybe that is an exaggeration. But still, there is a lot of syncopation. I don't think I've ever seen the rhythm pattern in the first, 3rd and 4th measures written out.
