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Sunday, January 9th, 2005
Jammed with Bob today while a sick Janis moaned in the next room. My fiddle is still in the shop but I was playing Bob's violin on a lot of songs, and switching off with him between violin and guitar, a lot of fun -- I'm definitely picking it back up very quickly, I was getting how to do double-stops and open string drones, even very haltingly up in second position on the E string. This is going to be a great thing. I ordered Alan Kaufman's Beginning Old-Time Fiddle from ALibris for book-learning, and John Salyers' "Home Recordings 1941-42" from The Appalachian Center, for ear training.
posted evening of January 9th, 2005: Respond
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Friday, January 7th, 2005
John finished repairing the bows and I picked them up from him at lunchtime. Very nice -- but unfortunately the man he works for, Yung Chin, took one look at the crack in the violin's body and said I should not be playing it -- that tension from being in tune will destroy the instrument. So... I gave a call to Richard Gagliardi to find out how much it would cost to fix such a crack. His low-end estimate was $2000, which is not going to happen. A bit dejected, I surfed over to E-Bay to find out how much entry-level violins are running -- turns out they are quite cheap. So, I bought a new instrument for $51. This should keep me happy for a while.
posted afternoon of January 7th, 2005: Respond
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Wednesday, January 5th, 2005
First post from my new laptop -- yay! I finally have a computer I can listen to music on! I was reading Dylan's Chronicles yesterday, the section where he is recording "Oh Mercy" in New Orleans and he talked about how New Orleans has the best radio stations in the world, specifically WWOZ. And I had the thought, why not see if they broadcast over the web these days? Lo and behold, they do! So now I'm sitting here listening to New Orleans radio and writing a blog post... Update: D'oh! that's a Z, not an R. All fixed.
posted evening of January 5th, 2005: Respond
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I am taking up the violin again, after about 20 years of not playing at all. I had been thinking about it for a while; while we were in California at Thanksgiving I asked my mother how much she thought a lower-end playable violin would cost. Turns out, free! Mom replied that my sister Blythe had my grandfather's violin (the one I played as a kid) but was not playing it; and Blythe agreed to pass it on to me. A few months gone by, and now I have it! (Miriam brought it with her when she came back from visiting the family for Christmas.) The bows need new hair -- I am giving them tonight to John Aniano (friend from CJWA and from the Woodcentral message boards) to be repaired. But even in the current state, I played it some last night and the tone was very nice indeed -- and my fingers seem to remember their positions pretty well, 20 years later. (By a funny coincidence, Bob got loaned a violin a few weeks ago and he is trying to learn to play too. This should open up some nice new territory for jamming.)
posted afternoon of January 5th, 2005: 1 response
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Thursday, December 30th, 2004
This evening I glued up the frame for a section of the wall unit I am building -- I described cutting the dovetails in my previous post. The end result is pretty good (if slightly off square); but the glueing-up process can only be described as a failure. The plan was as follows: - Lay the right-hand side board on the bench top, outer face down.
- Put (Elmer's white) glue on the right-hand pins of the top and bottom boards, and join them to the side board.
- Slide the backing boards into the grooves cut in the top and bottom boards.
- Put glue on the left-hand pins of the top and bottom boards, and join the left-hand side board to them.
Straightforward enough -- what I didn't realize was I needed something to hold the top and bottom boards close to each other as I was sliding in the backing boards... I see now that what I should have done, after about the first three backing boards were in place, was fix a clamp to hold everything in place. (I think but am not sure, that my longest bar clamp would be just about long enough to do the job.) Instead, when the backing boards started falling out, I ran upstairs and started screaming bloody murder for Ellen to come help me hold boards in place. And she did, and everything came out all right in the end, except I wish I could keep my head on straight when a problem comes up.
posted evening of December 30th, 2004: Respond
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Wednesday, December 29th, 2004
I've been working for a while now on a wall unit/desk for Sylvia's room; making pretty good progress. I'd say I'm a little ways past the halfway point which means delivery around February. Right now I am framing the upper level of shelf units (the piece is made up of 2 lower units, 2 upper units, the desk, and some smaller "cubby" pieces), and using dovetails to join the frames together. This is about the 4th time I have cut dovetails, and the first I am using them somewhere they will not be visible. (Which is actually probably the better thing to do first -- but it did not work out that way.) I cut all the pins yesterday and the day before, and last night did my first set of tails, second set this morning. It is going pretty quick and the results are noticeably better than any I have previously done (with one possible exception -- the cherry dovetails I did for a jewelry box came out pretty nice but those don't count because (a) they took me a really long time and (b) I never finished building the jewelry box). They fit, quite tight, with very little adjustment. ("Adjustment" = "messing around with a chisel, trying to make the dovetails fit even though the cuts were not in the proper place".) I'm a little surprised because the cuts are visibly not exactly straight nor square, and the marking imprecise; my conclusion is that dovetails (at least in softwood) are a forgiving joint. Update: Finished the 3rd and 4th sets of tails, an hour and a half from marking to fitting. And very little messing around with a chisel.
posted morning of December 29th, 2004: Respond
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Tuesday, December 28th, 2004
Stepping boldly into the late '90's, Ellen and I are making the switch to broadband. I ordered an ADSL connection from Speakeasy and Ellen tells me the setup kit arrived today, so I will be setting it up this evening. Also in the mail today are our new computers! Two ThinkPad notebooks are what we will be using from here on out -- this is the first computer I have bought since the Sharp notebook I bought in 1993 and used until it died -- for the past 5 years or so we have been using a desktop which Xyris threw out when they upgraded their computer systems. I am taking a brief vacation for the rest of the week -- do some work around the house, get our new network set up, get a new driver's license... We are spending this weekend at a bed & breakfast in Lancaster, PA, with Michelle and Kaydi.
posted afternoon of December 28th, 2004: Respond
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Saturday, December 25th, 2004
Sylvia has gotten interested in singing along, it seems to me like all of a sudden though probably in reality, it is something that has happened gradually. Some stuff she is singing lately -- "I've been lighting all the candles" (scroll down), a Hanukkah ditty sung to the tune of "I've been working on the railroad" which she learned at school; "Little Birdie" and "Weary day", both learned from a folk music CD that we play in the car a lot; "Happy Birthday", she sings a lot regardless of whether there is a party currently in progress. While she was taking a bath this morning with Ellen, I heard her singing "Jackamo fee-no ai nané, Jackamo fee nané" -- the chorus of "Iko Iko", which I've been playing a lot on guitar since I got interested in it recently.
posted evening of December 25th, 2004: Respond
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Thursday, December 23rd, 2004
These lyrics (from The Kinks' "Father Christmas") keep on occurring to me the last few days: Have yourself a merry merry Christmas
Have yourself a good time
But remember the kids who got nothing
While you're drinking down your wine So Merry Christmas everybody! And here is a cartoon for the season.
posted afternoon of December 23rd, 2004: Respond
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Wednesday, December 22nd, 2004
In the course of remodeling our bathroom, which will happen next month, I will be installing an on-demand hot water recirculation pump I bought from Advanced Conservation Technology of Costa Mesa, CA. I am just speaking on supposition right now as I have not used the pump yet; but it just seems like a really good thing to do without any downside -- you get your hot water without standing around waiting; and you avoid wasting ~10,000 gallons of water/year that would otherwise run down the drain while you're waiting. So I'm encouraging anyone who owns their own home to do this. It's not very expensive (~$350) or difficult to install. ACT is not the only company that sells these pumps. BuildingGreen.com has an article about them.
posted afternoon of December 22nd, 2004: Respond
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