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What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?

Olaf — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:20:06 +0000

Frequency is probably a term more commonly associated with 80′s synth-pop artists and electrical sound engineers. However, it’s not to be underestimated or underutilized as a viable word in other situations.

I worked with one of the more difficult teaching challenges in my experience yesterday at my drum circle. A gentleman joined us with a peculiar short-coming – he had no current musical interest and an unclear memory of the interests from 30+ years ago when he called it (music) quits. I see many people that claim to have “no rhythm.” At face value, it’s true. However, everyone has rhythm whether they recognize it or not. Your heart beat has kept a rhythm for your entire life; surely one can learn to keep one externally for a few minutes. As it turns out, there are some people that this may seem even less possible for. This guy that I worked with seemed to have a real mental block to rhythm, or to something even more fundamental – frequency. In his words, he had trouble with numbers in that they held no relevance. I believe the problem was actually that he assigned no frequency to numbers. In order for counting to assist you in musical timing, one must use a consistent spacing between the numbers. Without it, counting does us no good. I attempted to teach this concept in many styles; visual, tactile, and aural. Each of them seemed to provide a glimpse of what he was missing, but none of them resonated completely. Having thought about it more sense the drum circle, I have some additional ideas of how to get this message across.

For one, utilizing the old method of counting seconds may be helpful (e.g. one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, etc.). Forcing yourself to say one thousand between every second counted manages to keep many of us attuned to a consistent frequency. There is also the issue of matching patterns, which I think people can more easily grasp than timing. My five-year-old is learning about patterns in kindergarten as an introduction to math. Following this course, I may be able to explain frequency in terms that a potential drummer can understand. In the end, I want this guy to grasp the concept of the wave. Hear the noise of each crest. Feel the silence at each trough. Of course, the goal is anticipation. Without that – and this is something that he struggles with – one can never ride the wave!

Sorscha Valkyrie

Olaf — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 03:43:48 +0000

The latest member of our family made her gooey entrance around noon today. She cleans up well, however. Balthazar is so happy to be a big brother, and Sorscha’s mother and I are, of course, completely in love with the new girl. She’s such a beautiful, healthy girl; I couldn’t ask for anything more. Mommy is doing very well after her surgery too. She’ll be getting up tomorrow to begin her walking recovery and we should be heading home in a few days.

Sorscha Valkyrie Gradin weighed in at 6lbs. 11oz. and measured 20.5″ in length. She’s capable of thawing icebergs with a look, but has used her powers for good to warm the heart of every soul she meets.

“Seaside” On Sale Now

Olaf — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:35:34 +0000

Well, Seaside didn’t win the Threadless contest, but it won the hearts of some. I really thought I was in it with the good comments, but alas, it scored slightly lower than my previous entry. That’s okay; Threadless losers beccome Zazzle winners! Hop on over to my Zazzle store to buy this new design…(click on the picture)

Seaside
by

gradinDotCom

Lennart Green Magic Amazes TEDrs

Olaf — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:55:10 +0000

Lennart Green, the foremost close-up card magician of the world, dazzled the audience of TED 2005. I caught the video today on my Zune and was thrilled. His show is very entertaining, quick witted, and his foreignness is close to my heart (Green is from Gothenburg, Sweden). The TED video is around 30 minutes of goodness. Green had me laughing often, and his hand work is second to none. If you ever wanted to be a magician, watch this video and give up on your dreams. You’ll never amount to anything!

The First Day at School

Olaf — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:58:12 +0000

Yesterday was Balthazar’s first day of school. It started early that morning and the whole family was up for the affair. We drove him in and walked him to his class. It’s one of those “big steps” in a child’s life. I am excited about the idea of him becoming independent and beginning his formal education. He’s growing up and I look forward to all the things we’ll do together in the years to come. Amy, on the other hand, has a distinctly different take on her little baby’s first steps in the big world. Her experience was miserable as a child, and didn’t apparently get much better in later years. She hated school, and she doesn’t want Balthazar to have a hard time either. Balthazar began his journey into the world with a brave heart. I was proud of him for being so courageous in the face of the unknown – I had very few worries.

After school, Balthazar was to take a bus over to his after-school care with some friends – apparently more like 20. We knew it was a lot to manage in one day, so we agreed to pick him up early from there. He barely managed to get out some vague details about his day before he passed out completely in his car seat. The guy was worn flat-out by his adventures. It turns out his day was a mixture of fear and fun. We weren’t able to convey the amount of time he’d spend at school, though technically it was less than what he spent in pre-K and after-school before. He got scared and cried a little bit early in the day. After some lunch and recess time, it sounded like he came to better terms with it.

As parents, we hate to know that our child was upset and afraid. You’re completely helpless when they’re away and having these feelings. I guess that’s what it is that parents really get upset over when their child gains some independence. You really feel the need to continue helping them and holding their hands when obstacles arrive, but you just have to let them make a go at it themselves. You do everything you can to ensure that they’re going to do good in the world and that they’ll have every manner of protection at their disposal, then you send them out the door to see how you did. It surprised me a lot that he had an emotional break-down at school. Not that that’s unordinary by any means, I just thought that he would have such a great time.

Today is Friday and he’s off on his second day at school. As a testament to his courage, he said yesterday that he wanted to go again. Even though there were some rough spots to contend with, Balthazar has stood back up to give it another try. I believe that he’ll have done much better this time, and he may even begin doing the things that we all loved at school; making friends.

The Year is 2035…

Olaf — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:25:02 +0000

Perhaps some of you are aware of Charles Lindbergh’s other work. Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1927, but a few years later he was able to get some time with the surgeon, Dr. Alexis Carrel to discuss some common interests. It turns out that Lindbergh believed it to be possible to build a heart valve replacement synthetically. Carrel was already in the process of studying organs outside of the human body in his own designs, but infection inevitably set in and destroyed the parts. With Carrel’s help, Lindbergh was able to build the perfusion pump by which organs could be maintained “indefintely.”

There’s a more sinister element to this story when you tie Carrel to this story. Carrel was influenced by the times leading up to World War II in Europe and believed he was working towards a common ideal of eugenics. While he might have used the word eugenics at the time, put in perspective with World War II most of us think Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany, and genocide. There were some debates in the late 1990′s that give rise to the question of whether or not Carrel was involved in any inhumane practices to harvest the organs on which his experiements relied. In Carrel’s book; L’Homme, cet inconnu (Man, The Unknown), published in 1935, he advocated the use of gas chambers to rid humanity of “inferior stock.”

It’s 2035 c.e. now and the 100th anniversary is upon us to commemorate Lindbergh’s and Carrel’s fantastic inventions based on the perfusion pump. Young adults, classrooms, and spoiled children everywhere are keen on one thing this Christmas – the Centennial Man!

In 1935 Charles Lindbergh and Alexis Carrel unveiled the perfusion pump; a thing of science fiction creativity and unimaginable medical repercussions. In its early years, the perfusion pump could maintain whole organs outside of the living anatomical system. Soon after, these pumps were perfected to maintain more complex systems for extended periods of time. Now, it seems, organic cellular metabolism has no mortality given the proper, sterile conditions of its vascular system. What was once termed “a twist of vitrified bowel oozing out of a clear glass bottle” becomes the concept for Rockefeller University’s “Centennial Man.” The Centennial Man will last 100 years with no maintenance at all and fully encapsulates the human anatomy for the entertainment and education of its controller. The Centennial Man is operated on a simple wireless controller which takes standard programmable function logic from a computer system running the Centennial Man SDK. Provided with over 140 pre-built routines, you can control Centennial Man to behave as though it were alive! Centennial Man is made entirely from natural organs encased within a cadaver for life-like simulations. While not exactly the perfusion pump of 1935, Centennial Man is based entirely* on a microscalar version of this premise – systematically reintroduced inline with the organs and vascular system of the anatomy to maintain the organic cellular functions as if it were a living body. Only this body will last 100 years through the genius of a fluid regenerative micro perfusion pump system!

Educators will enthrall their students with a complete functioning anatomical system to dissect. Impress your friends with your very own animated cadaver – program it scratch your back, rub your feet, or fold your clothes. The possibilities are endless!

* Centennial Man does not have a functioning nervous system. To replicate this function and provide programmability, the nervous system (including the brain) has been replaced with advanced micro circuitry and an AI logic core function processor. Carbon nano tubes are necessary to interface this system with the various micro perfusion pump systems and vascular control valves to maintain their viability within the system.

Centennial Man requires special food, available from most major retailers, to maintain its growth nutrient and blood supply to organs. Centennial Man also discharges an excrement approximately weekly that should be disposed of properly.

Zune 2.x

Olaf — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:43:18 +0000

You may recall that I had written up the Zune Wish List a couple of months after I received mine in December of 2006. I took the time to assess my needs and what the Zune hardware and software could do to meet those needs. It has now been nearly a year since that list and it’s time to update it.Microsoft released their 2.0 Zune Marketplace software with the newer Zune hardware made available for Christmas of 2007. The new software addressed some issues with the older software, but more than anything I think the new version was an aesthetic shift for the product team. Maybe they’ve completely replaced the creative group in favor of a sexier image. At any rate, with a good number of users and a year or more on their belt as Zune users, there were clearly going to be some polarized debates about the change.Refresher: Here is the old and new iteration of the Zune (Marketplace) Software, respectively…
Here are my original ‘wants’ for the hardware and software after 2 months of use:

Zune Hardware:
- Alphabet ToC Navigation in addition to click-wheel
- Ratings categories (so I can play 4-star or 5-star music only, for instance)
- The ability to remove songs from my “quicklist”
- Setting EQ attributes to a song or album uniquely
- Inline normalization
- New category…or put a recently added link at the top of each category
- Make playlists of video files
Zune Software:
- Faster *My software has long periods of unavailability, though I realize I have an over-sized library
- Automatic playlist creation
- Support for OGG
- Insight into the folder monitoring – some sort of progress or status on this
- Better album art application – album art isn’t always displayed immediately after you add it
- Without knowing any better, I wish the album art was embedded within the ID3 tag of the file rather than being added as a hidden file in the directory
- Perhaps support for a real database back-end – I feel the need for enterprise class media management

There were also some real problems that needed attention:

Crashing…the software crashes, the hardware crashes. Sometimes it’s solid, but then it goes into a fit and crashes consecutively all to often. **UPDATE – I found out that the hardware is most likely crashing due to an electrical protection feature. Static electricity is not the Zune’s friend.
Renaming/hiding MP3’s. This could be related to crashing – I’m guessing that MP3’s were being indexed and something went wrong. Then, the Zune software went and renamed a *lot* of MP3’s to their cataloged GUID and hid them. The files won’t play until I rename them back to a .mp3 extension. It will annoy me when it comes up – so far only a few of these songs have come up in my shuffle list.

In the hardware category, Microsoft did exactly zero to fulfill my wishes. The closest they came was to introduce sorting by “date added” to the software. That’s actually very helpful, but it doesn’t help me find new music on my device after I’ve left the computer. The Alphabetical ToC thing would still be cool, but I will say that the click wheel seems to be spinning songs by faster than it used to. It hasn’t bothered me as much that I can’t jump to a letter in the alphabet quickly, though it would probably make me a safer driver if this feature were added. Depending on your attitude towards the “Ratings” debate, the new software either decimated your organization, or has drug you from Ratings procrastination. I’m somewhat in the middle on this. I’m adapting quickly enough, though I had finally figured out a decent way of rating my music along the 5-star basis that helped me managing my music. The new Zune uses only a “Heart” to signify the emotion a given song lends. You love, hate it, or are indifferent. Despite the change, there is still no way to play music on the device that you’ve “Hearted” unless you create a playlist first (static). Microsoft took away the “Flag” option in the Zune hardware. I was using it a little bit, but it was so unnecessarily slow and useless that I had stopped altogether. I had hoped that the new firmware would add much needed functionality to the flagging option, but now we find it missing in action. No love lost for the old function, but I would like to see the ability to flag a song for my review back at the software. I would primarily use it as a reminder to do something with that song (e.g. add to playlist, look up artist, etc.).

The Zune software; that is, the part installed on a Windows machine for interaction with media and the device itself, is a piece of work. I mean that in two very polarized ways. Piece of Work: 1) Quality craftsmanship, exemplary; 2) opp. The worst, poorly demonstrated – syn. Piece of Shit. I may sound a little harsh, but this new software encourages me to use Microsoft’s new “Heart” ratings to express my emotions. This brings me to my earlier comment regarding the product’s shift in direction. I really get the feeling they threw the old software out and started fresh. On the love side of things, I really like the new look. While I prefer the technical features of an app to let me do all matter of evil to it (i.e. preferences, customizations, tweaks, etc.), I really do like the slimmed-down simplicity of the new Zune software. The previous software left me feeling like I should see more options, but didn’t. This software, on the other hand, gives me the impression that what I see is what I get. It took a little while to get used to – I’m still a little unfamiliar in its kid-gloves aesthetics – but I’m gaining proficiency. I also like the fact that this software appears to be running faster with fewer crashes. I haven’t had any MP3′s get renamed (and hidden) to GUID replacements. While file monitoring still doesn’t lend any insight as to the percentage complete, it does seem to run faster and more consistently.

On the negative, the functionality of the software has been grossly gimped. I am no longer able to do something as simple as edit my own ID3 tags in a simple form-based interface like before. I can’t seem to update an album against a web lookup – it happens automatically, but I don’t have finite control over the process as was given in the previous software. While I love the addition of the podcast category, I don’t much care for the level of experienced interaction given to users here. I prefer the more technical feel when it comes to podcasts. They tend to vary wildly in format and compatibility, so it seems best that I have the option of modifying URL’s, identifying what URL’s are being used, and possibly see the actual error message for a given RSS URL when the Zune software rejects it.

Ultimately, the Zune software direction has the potential of being good. I feel more like I’m using an Alpha product than something released for public consumption, but the good stuff is really good. With the negatives going against my my expectations of software for this type of work, I would actually rather use a third-party application to synch to the Zune. As I’ve stated before, MediaMonkey is my favorite (in case their developers are reading).

The Guerrilla Tipster

Olaf — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:21:36 +0000

The Guerrilla Tipster invokes his mighty right, passed down by the hands of the gods, to assert wisdom upon the unwitting.

Today I find the signature of the Guerrilla Tipster upon the windshield of a car in the Barnes and Noble parking lot of Duluth:

LEARN HOW TO PARK DUMB SHIT!!

The words are poignant. I only wish I could have been present when the recipient benefited from this sharing of wisdom. I’ll bet it was truly inspirational.

I’m considering having some custom stock made up with these choice words to continue the work of this Guerrilla Tipster. Perhaps with only slight grammatical adjustment:

Learn how to park, dumb shit!

…I don’t know, does a fully capitalized sentence give a sense of urgency? It certainly emotes well.

And to take the words of Ben Harper to heart, “What good is a cynic with no better plan,” some reeducation is in order. I’ve got some really brilliant ideas around this, but I should brainstorm on this to fully realize the genius. I’ll bring you more as this materializes.

Oo-Lah-Lah, Spring’s Guffaw

Olaf — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 14:05:08 +0000

Winter really didn’t have much of an icy grip this year. It is not unheard of to see a hearty snow in the middle of March, but I think the danger of that is over. Spring appears to be here to stay, if the Cherry trees, Flowering Pear, and Daffodils are to be believed. Per the old days, this is the time of Ostara – a custom modern day subscribers call Easter. From my own ancestral brethren, only Sumarmál (summer time) followed winter. Presumably because the frigid climate of Scandinavia had little in the way of transition between Jól (mid-January) and some warmer, sunny weather in April. If things continue the way they have been for the last few years in the Southeastern United States, we may drop winter in favor of a spring – summer – fall cycle.

Frank Miller’s “300″ Departs from the Original, but it’s a Story no Stylizing can Diminish

Olaf — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 19:14:58 +0000

The word “patriotism” was defined around 480 B.C. when a small but mighty force met overwhelming numbers head-on in a battle with no odds of winning. I originally read the book “Gates of Fire” by Steven Pressfield some years ago and have been in love with the story ever since. I was unfamiliar with Frank Miller’s graphic novel, “300″ until now. The film was based upon the graphic novel – more so, perhaps, for its imagery and Frank Miller’s reputation rather than purely its story. The “300″ blew away both me and my wife. I’ve ordered the Frank Miller graphic novel as a token of my respect and appreciation for such a well-made movie from such a well-told story. A more historically accurate version of this tale could be told, but in a way it deserves a near mythical telling. Despite the surreal spin the movie takes, it is an appreciable tangent with fantastic notions to better acquaint a modern audience to its alien premises. If you’re familiar with the original stories, it’s plain enough to see the deviations. The meaning however, is something that can’t be lost in any retelling of the Battle at Thermopylae – an ideal I believe Zack Snyder, the director of “300,” kept in his heart.