Gradin.com » Hobbies

A Night of Drumming

Olaf — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 13:42:42 +0000

A friend of mine invited me out to drum at the Lake Claire Community Land Trust last night. Neither of us had been there in quite some time, so it was high time we attended! It’s usually just thunder drumming, though there were certainly times of coalescence in the rhythms. The weather was perfect for outdoor drumming around a bonfire and the energy was strong! Personally, I haven’t had an opportunity to play with that much gusto in some time. It was really good to just cut loose and play as hard as I could. I think I may have bruised my hands some, which I didn’t think possible at this stage in my playing. We’ll have to hit the Land Trust drum circle sooner next time rather than waiting a year first!

Visiting the Andalusian Music Festival

Olaf — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:32:50 +0000

Festival is, perhaps, a bit of an overstatement. However, there was a collection of artists who participated in the event held recently at the Rialto in Atlanta. My wife and I joined some acquaintances there to explore the culturally rich music of the Arabo-Andalusian. Representing the classical music were musicians from three cities; the Tunisian singer Lotfi Bouchnak, Wasla from Egypt, and the Orchestra of Tangier.

I knew very little of the meaning of this music. Fortunately, translations were provided in the program.

Any deer in the presence of lions
Will leap in flirtation
It was in the garden of eternity
For my suffering it remains in the open
Any shape that it has is slender
When it bends it leans
It drank the wine and the titmouse’s
Drool was flowing
His face was the full moon as it rises
In the darkness of the long night
Since he moistened the tall girls
With water coming from the fissure
Giving leaves in the darkness of decaying age
And sudden death from the black misery

Now I just need a translation into English.

The first to perform, the Sama’a, was Marouane Hajji with a short singing piece (less than 10 minutes). He was a 20-something Arab and a wonderful singer – apparently regarded as one of the best. Following Hajji’s bit, the Orchestra of Tangier performed an excerpt from the Nawbaat Hijaz al-Kabir.

There used to be twenty-four Nawbaat, each of which corresponded to an hour of the day (there may have been twenty-six Nawbaat). Only eleven Nawbaat have survived to date. Each Nawbaat consists of five movements (Mizans). Each movement is based on a certain rhythm.

It is interesting to note that a Nawbaat, made up of its Mizans, actually takes an hour to perform. I imagine that the entire collection has been performed in total at least once in history, but I cannot imagine staying awake through them. I barely made it through one. It’s also worth noting that, while brilliant musicians, the Orchestra of Tangier does not appear to be a “performance” group. They sat in chairs and played their music with little interest. Some actually looked bored. Perhaps it’s the style, but it does little to rouse the audience. Unfortunately, we had to leave on the fifth Mizan – Mizan al-Quddam – which picked up the pace and had the (Arab) audience clapping along. Some appeared to know the piece, while I was just trying to read along. It’s unfortunate that we left because following the intermission, the Lotfi Bouchnak Ensemble performed and was apparently more lively. They had people singing along, clapping, and included a much heavier repertoire of percussion. It was 9:30 when we finally left, so we couldn’t have stayed longer. We had children to collect from the mother-in-law!

CSS and XHTML: Cyber Arts and Crafts

Olaf — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:14:14 +0000

Not being the first to get into this argument, I’ve picked a less offensive title than one that might otherwise get a lot of attention:

Why CSS should not be used for layout

“I would rather spend my allotted time skiing or making love to my wife than worrying about whether or not I need to define a virtual destructor in my base class.”

That quote really sums up the argument pretty succinctly, but you may need additional persuasion depending on your circumstances. It also comes from his second post on the topic. A follow-up to the masses that commented on the original post with sundry opinions. Some simply stated that the author was an idiot while others took the time to tear him a new one proper-like. As the author states, many that would condemn have forgotten to add their own supporting cases; a common problem with these antagonistic debates.

For my part, I see the logic in the author’s comments. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I agree with him, but it at least gives me some ideas of how to defend his method. We all have to do things we don’t like to do, and sometimes we do things that compromise our abilities. Web development is no different – in fact, it’s probably one of the defining cases for compromise.

Being a casual web developer myself, I have the luxury to code for standards and play with some of the latest methods available in technology. Not everyone gets that luxury, and indeed at times, I don’t either. I have to analyze the amount I can make on a given job versus the time spent on it. As a hobby along side two children, a wife, and a few other hobbies, I’ve really got to make the most of my time. As such, if I’m not going to get paid the amount I want, then something else is going to suffer. At my day job, we’ve talked about Price, Quality, and Time as being the defining parts of a project. Together, they all make up a circle and have to adjust dynamically as the others get larger or smaller. If you sacrifice price, and there’s a time limit, then the only thing left that can slide is quality. It tears at my nonsensical work ethic, but it’s reality. On the otherhand, a lesser quality job doesn’t have to look like it. We web developers have the benefit over some other industries because we can hide most of architecture mess behind a beautiful presentation layer.

So back to the conversation at hand: CSS versus Tables. To bring this all together for you – and I trust you’ve either read the linked articles above or already know about the discussions surrounding the virtues of CSS and table design for XHTML layouts – let me settle the argument for myself.

I am an Arts and Crafts of Olde appreciatist. I love my work as a craftsman; that is to say, I love the process of reaching a goal through creative and oft eccentric means. I am learning to be a more pragmatic person in my work habits – at least when it’s necessary. It’s a slow process, but I’ve made headway in little ways throughout my life. It’s about compromise and keeping in mind the circle of Price, Time, and Quality.

It’s simple enough to imagine I could always remain vigilant on this circle of project specification goodness, but I wouldn’t. Sometimes you just want to do a project. So when either I have no boundaries per the specification, or I’m just personally driven to work at a project for my own reasons, I’m going to use CSS and standards-based coding practices. When time and/or money are the object with which I am to contend, then I might use tables, or worse yet, a WYSIWYG editor. The later approach ultimately saves me the most time and a customer’s money, but will ultimately take more time should the customer want some specific types of feature modifications to the code later. I tend to view cheap and/or quick projects as being throw-away because of this.

I hope this insight has helped you to shed some light on your own dilemna in whatever craft it is that you persue – ever-mindful of the art in your craft, while carefully weighing the cost to your lifestyle (whether monetary, socially, or time management).

A Drum Circle Arrangement of “Galang”

Olaf — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:00:54 +0000

I’m imagining some possible scenarios where I could lead a drum circle into a sort of performance. Most facilitated drum circles enter into spontaneous or random rhythms and are then led to compose the music. I would really like to lead people (sometimes naively) into known songs. There’s an extra sense of excitement when you realize you’re playing an actual song. Even if you don’t know the song, being led through a composed set of rhythms is very rewarding! I spent about 10 minutes this morning and worked out the basic rhythms within M.I.A.’s “Galang.” It’s a fun piece of music if you haven’t heard it (YouTube link provided below). My intention in recreating it for a drum circle is not to play the song succinctly, but rather to have all the parts present and accounted for. When and for how long each part plays is up to the facilitator. If the groove is held well, someone could play the voice part through a solo drum!

Drum Circle Arrangement, Galang: [See post to access streaming content!]

M.I.A., Galang (emebedding not allowed)

Monday Night Drumming

Olaf — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:07:01 +0000

Last night marks the first time I’ve been able to use the fancy new field recorder to do some real recording. Although there were only two of us to play, and I was certainly a bit out of sorts, we were able to pull off some interesting bits that rendered pretty well on the H2. The recording took place in a large area – similar to a mall.

Santa Maria: [See post to access streaming content!]
6′s: [See post to access streaming content!]

Smallest, and Newest Member of the Empire’s Finest

Olaf — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 04:21:19 +0000

Guess who has the coolest costume on the block? Balthazar does! His best (and only) Uncle-figure went all out and got together a suit of youth Storm Trooper gear for Balthazar this year. He’s been working on it for a while now and it’s finally finished. Sunday, he brought it over and we had an event of fitting it to him. It took all day of Jeff sitting on a partially constructed floor in our garage fitting, grinding, shaping, and gluing PVC armor components for a perfect fit. Balthazar was a real trooper and went back and forth for component fittings the whole time. He was so excited about it, I don’t think he even noticed the minor discomfort of ill-fitted plastic pieces. After hours of labor, the costume was finally ready for him and by dinner he was able to dance around the house in his new Storm Trooper costume. The whole thing is constructed exactly the same as the screen-accurate versions adults where. All the details are there, though he’ll need a smaller blaster to fit the scale issue a bit better. Jeff and I are going to try and throw together the remaining Star Wars costumes this Halloween to take him out on the town. I’ll be Chewbacca, Jeff might be C-3PO, and we’ll have the littlest Storm Trooper ever. It ought to be a hoot! We’ve got to hit every spot in town possible to get full use out this before he out grows it…in a week! Actually, there should be enough material for him to grow into it a year or two. After that, we’ll have to make a fancy display of it on a little mannequin.

Oh man, he’s going to have a real ball at Halloween this year!

Threadless Scoring

Olaf — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:16:18 +0000

So I learned today that my impression of the way Threadless submissions were scored was entirely by the public and finalized immediately after your time was up. Turns out, I’m way off. Like 83 days off. A submission can stay in the “choice” bucket forever, it seems. I was told by someone at Threadless that a submission was once pulled from a submission a year prior. The normal time to wait for the results is 90 days. It can take 90 days for the judges to finalize their decisions on what wins and what begins to collect dust in their archives. The higher scored designs typically win, but in some cases that doesn’t happen. The judges may choose won that they unanimously like, or more likely, disqualify a design that might have just edged you out of the competition. That said, I can’t offer up my designs for sale until after I’ve waited an appropriate amount of time. I do have one old submission that I can put up on Zazzle, but it didn’t even last 24 hours in the Threadless competition originally. It needs a little work to be worthy of anyone’s T-Shirt, I think.

Bottom line – I’m not out of the competition yet! This means my designs could still win. My scores weren’t the highest, to be sure, but I still have to hold out hope that they’re scored only marginally lower than the winners.

Threadless: “Seaside”

Olaf — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:04:52 +0000

‘Sup, land lubbers? This is a shout-out to my homeys from way-back. Notorious black beards, REPRESENT!

Anyway, I finished another Threadless submission – this one entitled “Seaside.” It went through several critiques and evolved to what you see here now. The original was classy. The finished version is less anatomical design, and more “killer t-shirt design.” The idea I’m conveying here is that pirates were the original gangsta’s. Bling, booty, and thugs; the seafaring cast had it all. If you want the oppressive land crab to hearken your love for the uneasy sea life, buck up and wear this old flag proud. Seaside forever!

Oh yeah, and you’re going to have to vote high to make this shirt a winner over at Threadless.com. There will probably be 1200 votes when the week’s over, so make sure you and your friends make up a big part of those in $5!

Vote on the Seaside Submission

The Family Portrait

Olaf — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 17:40:27 +0000

For Christmas this year, I commissioned Len Peralta of monsterbymail.com to do our family portraits. He did a wonderful job – a wonderfully gruesome job! I built a frame to finish it out and presented it to Amy Christmas morning. It was a fun present, certainly an unexpected one.

I detailed the frame over at Lumberjocks. Head over there if you’re interested in learning about the construction details.

I’m a Lumberjock and I’m Okay…

Olaf — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 04:39:07 +0000

I’ve recently joined the Lumberjocks community. Since I’m working on my first big project, I wanted to document the process somewhere. I could have done it here, but there’s a give and take to the Lumberjock community, and I’m giving so that I can have my take. At any rate, if the woodwork stuff is your bag, the community over there is great. They’re a very supportive bunch, and there are some fantastic articles abound!