The Mandelbear's Musings

Strange week. No disasters, and some success -- mainly my short concert at FK-NO 3 (the third virtual FilKONtario) -- but also some computer weirdness, fighting with WordPress (I may need a bigger hammer), a completely flipped schedule, and an unexpectedly large amount of ?emotional? something-or-other.

I didn't practice nearly as much as I should have for my concert set, but it was (barely) enough. The set was 15 minutes, which I figured (correctly) would be about all I'd be capable of. I'm pretty sure most of the emotional weirdness came from the setlist:

1. Wheelin'
2. The River
3. Eyes Like the Morning

I mentioned in my introduction that "Eyes Like the Morning" probably doesn't need a trigger warning for anyone but me. (I could have been wrong about that. Feel free to correct me in the comments.) On top of that, I've had For Amy (CW: major character death) as my top earworm for the week, which doesn't help.

Oh, yeah -- some of the week's weirdness was due to the fact that in the process for setting up my lair for N's new fosterling, m's friend k, to quarantine in for the week, I somehow managed to leave my main laptop, Sable, behind on my desk. Oops! Fortunately I have spares, because I seem to be the household's default destination for unloved laptops. I hauled out Raven, which normally lives in the bedroom. After which I discovered that the passwords file hadn't been synced in at least a couple of months. (No, I have no idea how that came about. Distraction?) Fortunately one can set WordPress passwords from the command line, and I'd already set up SSH to the server.

Also around computers, one of my older Thinkpads, Sherman, has been acting strangely -- quite possibly either a corrupted hard drive. Bad memory is also a possibility, though it passed the test I ran on it. Meanwhile smartd on Raven has also been complaining, which implies that its rotating rust drive is dying, so I'm in the process of setting up a new SSD for it. Terabyte SSDs are cheap!

I've been making modest progress toward modernizing the markup in GoingSideways.blog so that I can take advantage of the recent editing improvements in WordPress editing. Because the WPBakery page builder is a miserable editing environment for me, and the way it does layout (with "shortcodes", and if you don't know what that implies be thankful) makes it difficult to switch to some more modern editing environment. I think I have everything updated except the home page at this point. I may need a bigger hammer for that.

And oh, right -- there was also the dentist appointment Thursday, getting a crown replaced. (I think it was a replacement, anyway.) The technology for that process has improved amazingly since the last century, but making the new crown on the spot means an extra 45 minutes or so sitting around reading my phone. (Beats driving an hour and a half each way to the follow-up appointment for getting the lab-made crown installed, so I'm not complaining at all.)

( Notes & links, as usual )

I don't think this was a good week. Right now I'm severely depressed and hopeless (mostly over politics, but also about how little I've been getting done for the last few {weeks, months, years}*, so that may be coloring my judgememt).

I have done some music, including setting up the RainbowCouch virtual filksing (although I only ran the first, frustrating part on Jitsi; it went went a lot better once it moved to Zoom). It's too bad, because I really wanted to like Jitsi. But it's not ready for prime time. It would probably work well for a small group, after everybody was already set up. Probably. Muting, in particular, works badly. (It's pretty confusing on Zoom too, only not quite as much.)

I did sing more than I have in a while, including "The Stuff That Dreams are Made Of" in the FK-No Dead Penguin circle.

The 10th anniversary of my DW account (first post here) passed without notice on Monday. I'd looked it up and intended to make a post, but... DW postedUpdates on the security changes (how to keep your client working!) on Monday. The fix was pretty trivial -- if you're using a client (as opposed to posting on a web page) and it isn't working, see that post on how to fix it.

That sent me off down a bit of a rabbit hole learning about the new REST API under development, and both of the old ones (XML-RPC and "flat"). I still mean to replace my current kludge with a real command-line client. I may wait until the REST API is ready, although the only difference at this point between it and flat appears to be punctuation. Annoyingly, none of the APIs allow you to post raw HTML: In XML you have to escape HTML markup, in the other two you use C-type escapes, including "\n" for all the newlines.

I got the jbackup utility going the week before last; it proved to be an excellent tutorial for the XML API, and some of the code could be ripped out and used as the basis for a client. It would be in Perl, though, if I did that. Not necessarily a bad thing -- I like Perl, though maybe not as much as I did a few years ago.

* those are set braces

( Notes & links, as usual )

I may have gone down a few too many rabbit holes this week. And not getting much else done, but at least it gives me a bit of a respite from way too much stress. This is actually not unusual -- it happens a lot these days. I'm not even counting the two I fell into this morning. Several of them started on #filkhaven. One of those was Apollo 13 in Real Time (see last week's s4s), which I kept coming back to and having to get back up to date with. Because real-time. (With a 50-year lag, of course. The commentary track was fascinating.)

The other was the song Gingerbread [YouTube] [bandcamp, with lyrics], by Nancy Kerr. I was listening to the Folk on Foot Festival on Monday, and was grabbed by the line "You are not your grieving". (It'll be an s4s post, either this evening (taking advantage of the ambiguous initial letter) or next week.)

Today's rabbit holes, in case I don't get around to making separate posts for them, started at Computer Scientist Donald Knuth Can’t Stop Telling Stories (which went on to take in his massive organ composition Fantasia Apocalyptica), and Landmark Computer Science Proof Cascades Through Physics and Math.

Thursday Colleen and I went out on the front deck and did some gardening. The weather was perfect for it. I'm not normally a garden person, but she'd been feeling down and I figured we could both use a little time in the sun.

( Notes & links, as usual )

She got the which of the what-she-did, Hid the bell with a blot, she did, But she fell in love with a hominid. Where is the which of the what-she-did? from The Ballad of Lost C'Mell.

I'm not quite sure how I managed to fall into the Cordwainer Smith rabbit hole this time, but all the evidence points to looking up something about light sails sometime on Tuesday. It might have been a chance reference to CD, carried on board Cosmos I: The First Solar Sail. In any case, it included a copy of Smith's story about light-sailing, "The Lady Who Sailed The Soul". It was the (somewhat loosely-coupled) inspiration for the first song I wrote after discovering filk: "The Shores of the Night". (If you're keeping score, that's where the "ships" part of this post's title comes from.)

And somehow from there I wound up on this radio play version of "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell", which starts with the song quoted at the top of this post. The "C'" in her name is a contraction of "Cat" (if you're still keeping score).

Cats appear in many of Smith's stories -- C'Mell herself appears in several of them. As far as I know, though, the only actual cats (as opposed to cat-derived underpeople) appear in the "The Game of Rat and Dragon" (audiobook version here). If you haven't fallen in love with The Lady May by the end of the story, you're obviously not a cat person and I'm very sorry for you.

Scattered through Smith's stories are dozens of little poems and scraps of song, like "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" (which, as far as I know, is the only one anyone has set to music -- that's what triggered this post). I've thought about it, but ...

And if you were still keeping score and wondering where the shoes from the title went, you'll find them in "Think Blue, Count Two" --

Lady if a man Tries to bother you, you can Think blue, Count two, And look for a red shoe.

As far as I can tell, only a small handful of filk songs have been written about Cordwainer Smith's stories. I've written two of them: "The Shores of the Night" and "A Talk With the Middle-Sized Bear" (from "" -- I wrote about it in Songs for Saturday, 2012-02-11. There is also "Scanners Live in Vain" by Zander Nyrond, and there are at least two versions of "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell", neither of which I can find lyrics to.

( lyrics: )

NaBloPoMo stats:
   1054 2019/11/#30--s4s-of-shoes-and-ships-and-cats.html#
     43 2019/11/01--rabbit-rabbit-rabbit.html
   1731 2019/11/02--s4s-memorials.html
   1465 2019/11/03--done-since-1027.html
    145 2019/11/04--i-ought-to-post-something.html
    436 2019/11/05--how-to-makestuff.html
    343 2019/11/06--yak-shaving.html
     42 2019/11/07--thankful-thursday.html
    438 2019/11/08--tempest-in-a-teacup.html
    253 2019/11/09--s4s-music-for-cats.html
   1844 2019/11/10--done-since-1103.html
    638 2019/11/11--data-mining-the-dog.html
    519 2019/11/12--shelves.html
     87 2019/11/13--filler.html
     55 2019/11/14--thankful-thursday.html
    462 2019/11/15--meta.html
    636 2019/11/16--s4s-river.html
   1363 2019/11/17--done-since-1110.html
    350 2019/11/18--modified-rapture.html
    251 2019/11/19--childrens-grief-awareness.html
    114 2019/11/20--wimpy-wednesday.html
     60 2019/11/21--thankful-thursday.html
    272 2019/11/22--farewell-to-rosie.html
    688 2019/11/23--s4s-rambling-silver-rose.html
   1289 2019/11/24--done-since-1117.html
    272 2019/11/25--singing-lesson-report.html
    180 2019/11/26--more-filler-i-guess.html
    242 2019/11/27--thanksgiving-eve.html
    259 2019/11/28--thankful-thursday.html
    518 2019/11/29--yesterdays-recipes.html
   1057 2019/11/30--s4s-of-shoes-and-ships-and-cats.html
-------
  17106 words in 31 posts this month (average 551/post)
   1057 words in 1 post today

There is sadness this week, as NASA's Opportunity Rover Mission on Mars Comes to End. Oppy's last transmission amounted to “My battery is low and it’s getting dark.”. Several songs have already been written; I'll almost certainly try to write one of my own. Probably from Oppy's POV; I seem to enjoy anthropomorphizing AIs and other inanimate objects.

Not a whole lot has been getting done this week. I did manage to run some errands Thursday and Friday, with the car on the street. Pulled back into the driveway Friday after things were done, anticipating that the predicted good weather would make it possible to get up again the next time I need to. Fingers crossed.

I started working on the potential writing (tutorials) gig -- we'll see whether $editor likes my proposal. Not many notes Friday and Saturday as a result. Not sure I'm working fast enough. That remains to be seen; it's going slower than I'd like but that may just be because I'm working on the outline.

If you're into music at all, you'll get a kick out of (Gimme Some of That) Ol' Atonal Music - YouTube and Twelve Tones - YouTube (via ysabetwordsmith).

And I was highly amused to find someone seriously advocating the use of RFC 1149, some 18 years after I wrote a song about it.

( Notes & links, as usual )

I was reading an interesting blog post a few days ago with the catchy title "How do we make remote meetings not suck?" by Chelsea Troy. The main point was that meetings need some form of moderation, otherwise people tend to talk over one another. This is especially bad in remote meetings because a lot of the visual cues are missing (even with video), and also because network delays make pauses in the conversation hard to distinguish from a series of dropped packets.

Naturally, because I'm a filker, I immediately thought of the many ways our musical community has for organizing song circles. For those who haven't taken part in such a thing, a song circle is a group of people sitting around in a rough circle to sing. Song circles present many of the same problems as meetings, and in the sixty-odd years that people have been singing at conventions they've come up with some interesting solutions. (I might add that similar solutions can be found in operating system schedulers and computer networks; I'll leave most of the details as an exercise for the reader.)

The simplest method is the Bardic Circle, which is more familiar in the OS literature as round-robin scheduling -- the turn simply gets passed around the circle, e.g. to the right (or left) of the person singing. (Without loss of generality I'll say "person singing" for the person whose turn it is at the moment, but they have other options, e.g. picking someone else to perform, asking the group for a song on a given topic, or simply passing. This is generally expressed with the phrase "pick, pass, or play".)

The more people you have in the circle, the longer it takes for somebody to get a second turn. In a large group it can take an hour or two, but it's probably the most effective way of managing such a large group. There's a kind of computer network, now largely obsolete, called "Token Ring" that works pretty much the same way.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Chaos Circle, which is pretty much what it sounds like. This works best when there are comparatively few people who want to perform, and when they're all from roughly the same (geographic) area. Different regions have different expectations about what constitutes a pause -- we ran into this recently in a conversation that included several people from New York and others from the West Coast. Ethernet, back when every computer was connected to the same piece of coax, was chaos with the convention of exponential backoff to resolve collisions.

Moderated Chaos usually works well in slightly larger groups -- a moderator can resolve collisions by saying "okay, you get the next turn" A good moderator will also keep track of who hasn't had a turn recently, and encourage them to sing. My guess is that this is probably closest to what a moderated meeting is like. The moderator can either be assigned ahead of time by the event organizers, or may simply volunteer if things are getting too chaotic.

In between, we have Token-Passing Chaos, and Poker Chip Bardic. In a token-passing circle each performer gets to pick the next by passing them the token. The token is often an inflatable beach ball -- this has the advantage of requiring the performer to pass it along before they take their turn, to get the thing out of the way. Another good token is a ball of yarn. The resulting web makes it easy to spot people who haven't had a turn yet; if everyone gets a turn it's topologically equivalent to a Bardic Circle, but more flexible and fun.

The Poker Chip Bardic is probably the most interesting, and I think it has some potential for meetings as well. In this format, everyone gets three poker chips when they enter the room, in three different colors, and there are three corresponding rounds, one for each color. It's almost exactly the inverse of a Token-Passing circle -- people toss in their poker chip when they want a turn. Requiring each round to be completed before the next one is, again, topologically equivalent to a simple Bardic.

It gets a little more interesting -- and fun -- when you end a round when no-one wants to throw in the next chip. That gives people who pass in the first round a higher priority in the next. Reasons for doing this vary, of course. It's very effective for changing the subject or bringing in a new song at exactly the right moment.

I don't think this counts as a curmudgeon post, even with the slight technical content. But it's a post.

Jordin Kare died yesterday, from complications of aortic valve replacement surgery. I am still somewhat in shock. He was younger than Colleen.

There is not much to be grateful for on this Thursday, but I am profoundly grateful for Jordin's music, which has been part of my life's soundtrack since at least the early 1980s. He was one of the founders of Off Centaur Publications, publishers of the Westerfilk songbooks and many fine filk tapes. (Jordin did the typesetting for Westerfilk I using troff, which led to a number of typos involving single quotes, which troff treats specially if they're the first character in a line.)

Last night Naomi and I sang a few of his songs -- "Fire In the Sky", "The Designer" and "The Engineer", "Waverider", and all I could remember of "Kantrowitz 1972". It wasn't until this morning that I found the lyrics for that and "Sail for Amber", Colleen's favorite.

I just ...

(Jordin Kare: Fire In The Sky (1991) | LyricWikia)

My right peroneus muscle is still painful. No idea what I did to it or am doing wrong, though one article suggested that it could be plantarflection due to sleeping under heavy blankets. So maybe I should go back to sleeping on my side instead of on my back. Sleeping on my back is fairly recent, so that may be fairly simple.

I've been doing a lot of puttering, and arguably a lot less practicing than I should, given that I have a concert in less than two weeks at Orycon. I've been practicing most days this week (see notes), and I think my calluses are back, so that's something. Need to print out my set and start doing more complete runthroughs.

Halloween was fun, going out with N and her kids. Gave the adults someone to talk to.

I've been taking care of the critters, since N, G, and g are away at OVFF. Cricket's been in the Great Room, mostly hiding in the Cubhouse -- at least, that's where I usually find her when I come in. Ticia's been pretty good about not trying to come in, though I still have to warn her away from the door.

Puttering. Yeah. G' did some major re-organizing and cleanup involving the downstairs closet and playroom, and the upstairs closets. Unfortunately, this was accomplished mainly by moving things into the garage and craft room. I've been gradually moving stuff to more sensible places. Some of the decisions have been good ones, though; I'm not complaining about the kitchen cabinet re-org.

Oh, yeah: the Cubs won the World Series. I'm not a sports fan at all, but that's pretty extraordinary. If it's a sign of the apocalypse, I'm hoping that it continues with the person the wingnuts are calling the Antichrist getting into the White House. And that's the last thing I'm going to say about politics until November 9th at the earliest.

( Notes & links, as usual )

I am actually breaking at Friday evening, one day over the month boundary, so as to group all the practicing together here, and the con and concert in the next entry.

So, yeah; this week's big surprise was finding out Thursday morning that I had a concert coming up Saturday evening. I hadn't asked for one, but apparently Colleen did. Um... thanks, I think. (Spoiler -- it actually went surprisingly well, though not quite as well as the run-throughs. Nervous.)

I hadn't asked for a concert or answered my participant questionaire because up until two weeks before the con I was still waffling about whether or not to go. I knew it would be stressful, and I knew it would be fairly expensive (though driving, skipping Friday, and coming back Monday instead of Tuesday helped a great deal). I also knew I'd regret it if I didn't go. On the whole I'm glad I went (especially since I got to meet alatefeline). But I'm exhausted. I must be more introverted than I was even a few years ago.

Made Boeuf Bourguignon on Sunday -- came out quite well, though I think not quite as well as the Stroganoff the night before. I made a stupid mistake with the pepper, but managed to skim off most of it and didn't get anyt complaints. I have not, unfortunately, been keeping up very well with the dishes.

While on the subject of food; Monday around 12:30 I noticed that my blood sugar was getting low. It didn't feel like what I usually label as hunger, i.e. wanting food. Something is definitely miswired there. If there's food around and I'm not deeply engrossed in something, I'll want to eat it. If I'm in a flow state, which I was a couple of times this week (Yay!), I won't notice food, and will eventually run out of energy. The situation is probably not helped by the amount of coffee I drink.

Friday some idiot came within inches of getting herself killed when she started ambling across the street against the light, with her nose in her phone, and in front of the bus I was riding to work in. (It's not exactly a street -- it's a bypass lane on the left-hand side of 4th Avenue. To get to the island where one can board the bus, one has to cross that lane. But, still...) That's one of the reasons I don't try to read -- or text -- while I'm walking.

Only a little writing -- just one day with over 500 words. But two solid practice sessions, so that's good. Put up shelves in N's closet -- that was good, too. I have to keep reminding myself to feel accomplished after that sort of thing. (Like last week, the only emotion I actually noticed while I was feeling it was despair. I'm altogether too good at that one.)

Close enough to 500 words -- I'm going to stick a fork in it.

RainbowCon 1 happened last weekend, and it was wonderful. The guests were Decadent Dave Clement from Canada, and Tim and Annie Walker from the Uk. Programming also included gaming -- I'll get to that -- organized by Naomi's friend Steven Schwartz. Con suite by Mama Colleen. Con chair and head of programming was Naomi Rivkis, and I was Con Bear (my badge read "Ursa Major").

I don't think people knew whether to expect a large house filk, or a small convention. We wanted a small convention, and I think we succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. Attendence was in the low to mid 30s; we were aiming for 30-40. Enough with the stats.

Naomi and I worked out most of the schedule the weekend before. We left it up to the guests which order they wanted to go in, and although we had suggestions for other programming we left the final decisions up to them too. They decided to put Dave's concert on Friday, a Stan Rogers sing-along Saturday with Dave and Tim, and Tim and Annie's concert Saturday night. We had three workshop slots scheduled. I'll get to that.

Dave (with his wife Liz, who had done the driving), Tim, and Annie arrived Monday. Tuesday they all went with Naomi to Dusty Strings, to rent Annie a harp. (The only instruments they came with were Tim's button accordion and some whistles.)

Naomi was jumped by a large djembe, which followed her home. Its name is Rebel.

Tim and Annie needed guitars; one each, plus one they could leave tuned to DADGAD. Fortunately this household has more guitars than cats. They seemed a little awestruck by Snuggles (the Martin O-15); the Applause that I brought out for DADGAD had apparently last been used by Talis.

OK, so that brings us to Friday. In addition to pulling guitars out of my hat I also got the maypole up, with Chaos's help. I'll get to that.

Friday got off to a somewhat late start, so the opening ceremonies sort of tailed off early into the introductory circle. We started, naturally, with "Bigger on the Inside" as an introduction to the house.

During the introductory circle, dinner break, and some of Dave's concert, people were voting for their favorite workshops. They did this by dropping poker chips (they're not just for bardics anymore) into paper bags, with a blue chip representing their pick for the 90-minute slot.

After the concert we finished tallying up the poker chips, and did a little last-minute negotiation with the attendees, which resulted in the 90-minute slot getting sea shanties and kitting out your home studio in parallel, and the vocal and harmony workshops getting combined into one.

The poker chips then re-emerged in the poker chip bardic. Our variant on it has people using their chips in blue-red-white order, but with no need to complete a round before moving on to the next color. Instead, an earlier color jumps to the head of the queue if mixed colors are on the floor. It worked very well -- people had time to think about what they wanted to do or hear in their own time, rather than holding up the next round while they struggled to come up with something.

Saturday we actually had two full tracks of programming during the afternoon. Three at one point, since the Cat game (Did I mention gaming? There was gaming.) overlapped the sea shanty and home studio workshops. The build-a-dragon game overlapped the "sensitive percussion" workshop earlier in the day. The afternoon ended with the Stan Rogers sing-along concert. (We skipped the scheduled critiqued one-shots due to lack of interest, and went for a longer dinner break.)

The evening had Tim and Annie's concert, which was wonderful, followed what was intended as a ball-of-yarn chaos, but after we noticed that there was never more than one person queued up we just passed the ball around.

Sunday started with the Ecumenifilk circle, moderated by Annie, followed by the drum circle, led by Dave. And featuring several of the household's assorted drums and my box of random small percussion instruments that had been left around from Saturday's workshop.

After that was the Maypole dance. Unlike last year (RainbowCon 0 was Naomi and Glenn's wedding) there were enough experienced dancers to keep things running smoothly.

After that was the vocal/harmony workshop, where I had surprisingly (to me) little trouble keeping to my assigned part. Then there was the jam, and closing ceremonies.

Then most of those who were left went out for dinner. The restaurant, 13 Coins, is right across the street from the airport, so even the people who had to catch planes could come along.

Rainbow Con II will be held next year, with guests Alexa Klettner from Germany, and Trickster and King (Ada Palmer and Lauren Schiller, the touring subset of Sassafras. We expect it to be as amazingly wonderful as RC1.

We'd originally thought that we'd move the con to a hotel after it got too big for the house. But we really liked the small size -- it gives people a chance to hang out, talk, and make music with the guests and each other. We may end up capping the membership if it threatens to get out of hand, but it will stay at Rainbow's End as long as we're there to run it.

Oh. Right. I started working on this an hour or so ago and got distracted when my Mom called. So.

Last Monday was our return from Consonance -- I'd booked the latest flight, which allowed us to do some visiting and talk with the realtor. It seems many people are sad about losing the Starport -- it has, after all, been a fannish landmark for over three decades. *sigh* Keeping two houses just isn't feasible. I just hope the proceeds are enough to cover the new construction.

Naomi's friend Rika flew up with her and spent the week; we had quite a lot of music at the house, and visitors most nights. No complaints from me! The week ended with Colleen's birthday party yesterday. We still haven't built up a good list for these things; we'll have to work on that. Also a household calendar and mailing list -- probably means I have an excuse to learn Wordpress, or something like it.

Yesterday, along with the party, I installed a pair of powerline ethernet dongles. Took me forever to do it, partly because the house has two breaker boxes (meaning there are outlets that can't talk to one another), and partly because I misunderstood how the "sync" button works. It really means "rotate keys", not "synchronize" :P. The extension router is now installed in the coffee niche.

The gadgets are advertised as "500MHz", but only have 100MHz ethernet; 500 must be the aggregate across all nodes in the network. We definitely need to install some cable. *sigh*

Kind of surprised nobody on my Dreamwidth reading list has posted this yet. It's been posted on LJ.

    Best Song:  Joan - Heather Dale/Ben Deschamps
    Best Classic Song:  Second Hand Songs - Jonathan Turner
    Best Performer:  Alexander James Adams
    Best Writer/Composer:  Talis Kimberley
    Best Fairytale Song: Dryad's Promise - Betsy Tinney
    Best Alien Song:  Little Fuzzy Animals - Frank Hayes

Rainbow's End, in West Seattle, is hosting its first housefilk today, with special guest Alexa Klettner, from Germany. Starts nominally around 2pm, but show up any time.

From the West Seattle Bridge turn right on Genesee (one block past the first traffic light, which is 35th Ave), take the second right onto 37th, and park. Look for the sign on the fence; you can't miss it. If you get lost, call me: 408-896-6133.

Not such a long week. But both productive and exhausting in its own way.

Sunday of Conflikt was pretty good, especially Jeff Bohnhoff's "Alternate Guitar Chords" workshop, and some great music. But around, what, 4pm? Colleen's scooter abruptly stopped working. Dead in its tracks, with the battery indicator happily stuck at the halfway point, where it's always been for the last several months. The YD, who was accompanying Colleen between buildings, proceeded to panic. I talked her through pushing the scooter back indoors and plugging in the charger.

As soon as I could, I got down there, to find that there was enough charge in the battery to move slowly, but not fast -- push too far and it would simply cut off. So charging helps. I had some difficulty persuading the YD to help me get Colleen all the way into the conference center and up to the Conflikt lobby, where she would be warm and have music and company while the battery charged.

At which point it developed that the YD needed to get home and finish her homework. Due Monday. Oooooookay then. I drove her home, which gave me the opportunity to drop off most of the luggage, swap vehicles, and snag a walker at Naomi's in case charging the battery didn't help.

But of course it did help -- the battery finished charging, and the scooter was just fine. I still don't trust it.

Monday was reasonably productive, plus the inevitable odds and ends of paperwork. Despite coming down with the con crud. The chills came on the way home; I went to bed early, under a pile of blankets.

I woke up feeling as though I was swimming in sweat, of course, and wisely decided to work from home. I got through two new API methods that had been scheduled for two days each.

Which was a good thing, since I wasn't quite as productive Wednesday, when I had a urology appointment in the morning and got to sit around while Colleen had an MRI in the afternoon. All afternoon, as it turned out. So much for going in and pushing my changes to the local github in mid-afternoon. I started writing functional tests.

... but all in all not that bad a week, considering.

Back in the early days of 2012 we decided to skip Baycon this year and go to Clockwork Alchemy. Best-laid plans? That was before we decided to move to Washington. So we day-tripped the 30th anniversary Baycon instead, to have a better opportunity to say goodbye to people.

Baycon doesn't seem to be in the best of shape. It's gotten noticably smaller over the last few years (we can perhaps blame the other cons in the area for some of that, but I don't think for all of it). I dropped Colleen off in the morning, did some shopping on the way home, worked at home for a while, then left for the con myself in late afternoon. Little to no daytime programming I was interested in; the few concerts didn't start until night-time. I stayed for the open filking on Saturday, but was thoroughly wiped out by the time I got back home.

So I only sang three songs over the weekend, and don't remember most of them. Bigger On the Inside was the last one. Tiny circle.

Some good conversations, though.

I mentioned shopping. REI is having a sale; I picked up an Agility Sling Bag and a Hood River hoodie. The Agility bag, whose name appears to be Angelique, is apparently a redesign of the Mini that I've been using since last year; it's a little shorter and more rectangular rather than tapered. This makes it much easier to get my netbook in and out -- it has a padded sleeve that it fits perfectly into. There's also a nice organizer panel. And it's almost exactly the same size as the Belkin computer bag, and fits perfectly inside Chami. And there are several different ways of attaching it on the outside, as well.

I toyed with the idea of getting a rolling duffle (Ross has 'em for cheap) for gigs, but realized that it would be too narrow to hold the music stand desks. I'll probably get a smaller duffle for use as a carry-on or secondary bag, because the Hartmann and Colleen's SwissGear are already allocated. I used the Hartmann on my last trip North, but could only get away with that because Colleen wasn't going.

Did I mention that I'm a luggage addict?

In other news, I set up phone interviews with Zillow and Tableau, and paid the security deposit on the new apartment.

A reasonably productive couple of days. I mostly spent Sunday puttering about, but I also got the Conflikt concert split up, and ready to post when I get permissions.

Next time I have to tell the sound crew that the guitar has a built-in preamp and wants a line in rather than an instrument input; it came out sounding rather fuzzy and overdriven. That also suggests that Lookingglass Folk can get away with only two mic preamps at gigs.

The phone picture has gotten more complicated; I hadn't realized that there are actually two different versions of the Samsung Galaxy II S. The newer one is more expensive, larger, and heavier, but talks LTE. There's also the upcoming Galaxy Note, which is more of a tiny tablet. You'll find a handy table below near the end of the notes. At the moment I'm leaning toward the HTC again.

I may have to consider smaller, older phones as well, because I like the fact that I can easily pull a slider phone out of my pocket and answer it one-handed. Or wait several months to see if any new ones turn up with ITC. Growf!

I skipped my walk on Sunday, but took a shorter one -- about a mile and a half -- yesterday. Very little hip pain, but I'm rather glad I decided not to push it. My weight has been edging up again, too. Growf!

Quite a few interesting links in the notes; mostly entertaining for once.

Yes, once again it's a winter party season at Grand Central Starport. We're having our annual "Somewhere Around New Year's" party on Saturday, December 31^st -- it's the usual noon-to-midnight potluck bash.

We're also having an "open house" from roughly noon to midnight on Christmas, mainly for friends who don't have family to be with, though of course everyone's welcome. Gifts, needless to say, are not expected. We'll be making Ukrainian borscht; bring something you can eat, especially if beef-and-cabbage soup isn't your thing.

Both days are likely to include filking.

Maps, directions, and contact information can be found on the household web page.

My former band, Tempered Glass, has fallen apart in a shower of jagged shards. Naomi and I intend to keep making music together, and we're pleased to announce that we are now a duo called Lookingglass Folk. We are hoping to pull off our first concert at Conflikt next year, taking advantage of the year's worth of planning and hard work we put into it as Tempered Glass.

The next two months are going to be a wild ride for the two of us, but the concert we're putting together is going to be worth it. I'm going up the weekend after next for a rehearsal; we'll know then whether we can pull it off. If we do, it will be something special.

We'll see you at Conflikt. Give us a listen.

There's a party today at Grand Central Starport, so the most obvious song to post for today is Bigger On The Inside, which I wrote 20 years ago (has it really been that long?) following a usenet post about a visit (waves at liralen) to our house.

No video (I suppose I ought to learn how to make those synchronized-image things), but you'll find the audio here.

Bigger On The Inside

© 1991 Stephen Savitzky. Some Rights Reserved.

Our house is bigger on the inside than it looks from on the street
There must be something odd about the way the corners meet.
We warn our friends about it, but they always seem surprised,
And I sometimes can't imagine how our stuff all fits inside.

    We have computers, toys, and magazines, and quiet cozy nooks;
    The bathroom's lined with cedar planks, and the living room with books.
    There's boxes full of God-knows-what in the attic up above,
    And we always keep good company and love.

There's a gallery of science-fiction pictures in the hall,
And something's taped or bolted on to each square foot of wall.
Our daughters' closets look just like a baby dragon's hoard;
It's true that we're disorganized, but at least we're seldom bored.

Colleen is halfway buried as she crochets up a quilt 
I'm getting in some songs before my voice begins to wilt.
Kids are shouting back in Emmy's room, the pizza's getting hot;
Folks come over every Wednesday whether we're at home or not.

There's a guest crashed on the futon couch who's too wiped out to leave,
And something in the fridge that's been there since last Christmas eve.
We're packed in five dimensions, and through the twilight zone,
It's all the friendly clutter here that makes it feel like home.

At the Younger Daughter's insistence, I have pluralized "daughters" in verse 2, and at the older's insistance changed the name in verse 3, both to reflect current reality.

The concert was divided into two sections: a journey through time and space; and myths, legends, and current events. I think it came off reasonably well modulo a couple of major flubs where I lost my concentration. Have to work on that.

on the web: Steve Savitzky at Westercon 2011

High-order bit -- I note with considerable pleasure that Vampire Mega-Byte is on the Pegasus brainstorming list under Best Classic Filksong. Along with "Ship of Stone", which would make it a difficult choice if they both came up on the ballot. I'd also like to congratulate pocketnaomi for her well-deserved mention under Best Songwriter. And mention that Quiet Victories is my Composer's Choice.

I never did get a walk in. But lots of puttering. And I finally found the missing wedding invitation -- on the floor near the door of the (home) office. The fact that the color is close to that of the flooring is no real excuse -- I must have stepped over it a hundred times. Bah!

After several days of floundering around at work, a Jira ticket was dropped into my lap (by my boss, who was just promoted into that position last week and needs to get rid of some of his), so I spent the afternoon happily hacking. (There's a song* parody in there somewhere, I fancy.)

The new Antler rolling backpack has a name: Chamois (pronounced "Shammy" in case it wasn't obvious). My sister the mountain goat was very insistent. (It's true that a goat has horns rather than antlers, but don't tell Chamois that -- she's still a little uncomfortable about being out as "A Doe in Velvet".)

Lots of links; the most noteworthy one being Motion to Vacate Prop 8 Ruling Over Judge Walker's Sexuality is Denied. The rest are mainly of interest to various kinds of geeks, with the puredyne "instant USB-bootable creative desktop" being kind of a crossover between the music/video geeks and the computer geeks.

(From today's email from Programming)
0527 Fr 
  o 2:30 PM - 4:00 PM in: Alameda 	 Filk 101
      What is Filk? And why you should be interested.
        Panelists: Kitty Crowe, Bob Kanefsky, Steve Savitzky.
  o 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM in: Winchester 	 Computers: What's Next?
      Fifty years ago, computers occupied large rooms, and they required air
      conditioning and water cooling.  One million instructions per second was
      a super computer.  Today's smartphones have more memory and computing
      power, by orders of magnitude, than those early machines.  What does the
      next 50 years look like? 
  o 8:00 PM - 9:00 PM in: Grand Ballroom Meet-the-Guests Reception

0528 Sa
  o 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM in: Lawrence 	 Making A CD 
      How to produce music to make your own CD.
        Panelists: Jeff Bohnhoff, Margaret Davis, Steve Savitzky, Kristoph Klover

0529 Su
  o 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM in: Cypress 	 Music Instrument Demonstration for Kids
      Moira Greyland will show the ins and outs of how a harp works.  Also
      Steve Savitzky will give the kids a demonstration of guitars.  
  o 2:30 PM - 4:00 PM in: Cypress 	 Music for Kids
      Music performances by a harpist and two guitarists for the children's
      enjoyment.  (Adults welcome, too, of course)
  o 7:00 PM - 7:30 PM in: Winchester 	 Concert
      Come listen to Steve sing songs about computers, space, fantasy,
      friendship, and love. 

I've had bits of Walk In the Day earworming all week. Not surprising. I knew I was going to muddle through it, exactly a week ago, but I had no idea how much fun it would be, and how big a high I'd get from getting through it. I guess I'm still processing that.

And in just a few minutes we'll be leaving for the Lamplighters' production of Yeomen Of the Guard, my all-time favorite G&S operetta. So..., well then.

It was an extremely productive, if tiring, week at work. I think I spent more time actually coding, in what I call "hackertrance", than in the whole previous month. All tricky stuff involving PDF and other graphics processing. My sleep was pretty thoroughly disrupted Wednesday night, thinking about it. But it's done. DONE!

I don't know which I feel better about: WItD, the stuff at work, or simply noticing that I felt good about them. Given my ongoing struggle to notice my emotions, I'd have to say the latter.

In other news, Debian 6.0.0, codename Squeeze, is out! Also, catsidhe | Auditory Processing Deficit, or, Why I Can't Hear You Even Though I'm Not Technically Deaf -- there's actually a name for it! Or maybe not. My filters aren't nonexistent; sometimes they're actually far too effective (e.g. when I'm reading). Just weird, I guess.

A pretty good day, but occasionally painful without even the compensation of a walk or bike ride. It started with the standing, bending and lifting involved in doing the dishes and putting away the groceries, and ended with overusing some arm muscles manhandling a gig bag made way too heavy with songbooks and a music stand.

In between I mostly hung out at the Ugglas' house, which they're moving out of next week, hanging out and helping pack, mostly by handing things to people. It was followed by one of their Rise Up Singing "songfests". A good day with friends, and worth the comparatively small price.

I came home to aspirin and a hot bath in the walk-in tub, which I can soak in up to my neck if I scrunch down into the footwell. The hot water triggered the same trembling that I get from a good backscratch or nestling down into Colleen's arms. So that's one more data point to triangulate from: simple physical pleasure. I'll figure it out one of these days.

The 2010 Pegasus Ballot is up online. I'm not on it, so I'll just be pushing for Ship of Stone in the classics category. That will make it even easier to trade my trip to OVFF for one or two trips to Seattle to rehearse for the Tempered Glass gig at Orycon. I'd like to do both, but there are these time and money things... (ETA: not to mention a friend's wedding that I really need to go to. So it will be good not to feel torn about it.)

A couple more links under the cut.

Steve Savitzky

    Friday
       1:30 PM - Stevens Creek - Opening Ceremonies
    Saturday
      12:00 PM - Grand Ballroom - Guest of Honor Interview: Colleen and
      	       	 Steve Savitzky (Michael Siladi will be doing your interview)
       2:00 PM - Bayshore - Panel: From Home Recording to MP3
       6:00 PM - Bayshore - Concert: Steve Savitzky
    Sunday
       4:00 PM - San Tomas - Panel: The Changing Nature of Fandom
    Monday
      10:00 AM - Lafayette - Panel: The Pros & Cons of DRM
       3:30 PM - Lafayette - Closing Ceremonies

Colleen Savitzky

    Friday
       1:30 PM - Stevens Creek - Opening Ceremonies
       6:00 PM - Stevens Creek - Panel: Con Etiquette
       8:00 PM - Grand Ballroom - MING the Guests
    Saturday
      12:00 PM - Grand Ballroom - Guest of Honor Interview: Colleen and
      	       	 Steve Savitzky (Michael Siladi will be doing your interview)
       2:00 PM - Lobby Bar - Tea With Mama Colleen (This is just what it
      	      	 sounds like: a chance for you to sit in the lobby and drink
    		 tea while having pleasant conversation with attendees.)
       6:00 PM - Lafayette - Panel: SMOFing Without Licenses
    Sunday
      12:00 PM - Cypress - Panel: Fannish Daycare
       2:00 PM - Bayshore - Panel: Filk History
    Monday
       3:30 PM - Lafayette - Closing Ceremonies