Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking against the Vietnam War, St. Paul Campus, University of Minnesota
Monday morning, Stevie Wonder’s Can’t Put it in the Hands of Fate was the first song that played when I hit shuffle on my playlist. A serendipitous tune for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Especially given the other events set to occur on this particular day. Keep fighting people.
I wrapped up the Asterisk Home PBX project this week. Wrapped up for now anyway. It’s working, but there are many fun and exciting things that can be done with it in the future.
A friend and former roommate was in town this week. We hadn’t seen each other for something like 27 years. A long time indeed. Our nostalgia was probably a bore for everyone else in attendance, especially those not even born when we were last in a room together. I hope circumstances allow for more frequent visits in the future.
In my highly unscientific polling of friends that have visited Japan, “Amazing” is the number one term used to describe trip. “Really amazing” is a close second. I see no reason to be a contrarian: Our trip was “amazing”.
People have asked about my favorites, be it food, places or experiences. I’m not always so good at picking favorites, and I don’t want to bore you with a recounting of the entire trip (for that see the photos in this section). So, here are a couple things that immediately come to mind.
Screen capture from a Streetfilms montage celebrating NYC Congestion Pricing.
At the stroke of midnight on an icy Sunday, New York City congestion pricing began. I never thought I’d see the day. Let’s hope it sticks!
I finished posting photos from our trip to Japan. Looking at them makes me want to go back.
This Switchable Desktop Power Outlet project is one I’ve been wanting to do for a while. It was simple enough that I wasn’t sure if it warranted a write-up. However, I learned a few lessons–why not.
We recorded the Friday jam this week, very exciting. In comparing a couple of the songs from the last recording, I did notice some improvement. Not bad for a bunch of guys that don’t practice enough. Here’s a select track from that session.
Rock n Roll Ruby (Warren Smith cover) recorded from a Jamulus session on 15 Nov, 2024.
In spite of our effort to separate the instrument and vocal tracks by running multiple Jamulus clients, we ended up with vocals on one of the guitar tracks. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice until working on the mix. It was just a setting in Jamulus we’d missed. Lesson learned: Take a minute at the beginning of the session to ensure you’re recording what you think you are.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with the recording. There are a spots with garbling and noise from somewhere in the network, which is to be expected. There isn’t much audio engineering here aside the volume levels and some panning. There is some compression and reverb added the vocals. And, I tried to highlight the guitar solos. Early reviews are that there wasn’t enough bass in the mix. I didn’t want it to sound like the bass guy mixed it, perhaps I overcompensated.
How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it) (video) As usual, Not Just Bikes hits the nail on the head here. In my opinion, autonomous vehicles shouldn’t be allowed on city streets at all. Cities need fewer cars, period. It doesn’t matter whether they have drivers or not.
Why Arguing With Your Kids Is Completely Missing the Point This was written by the chef/owner of a great restaurant in our neighborhood. Despite the challenges, he manages to create a welcoming place to eat and drink in this city–it sounds like he’s a pretty good dad too.
While the sale of the boat is fresh in my memory, I wanted put a few thoughts down on my experience as a boat owner over the last four years. There’s a lot about the experience I enjoyed, and a couple things I didn’t. These notes are here to help guide me in the future if and when I decide to look at buying another boat. Perhaps, they will help someone else too.
What I really liked
Sailing! Obvious, perhaps, but must be mentioned. Lots of good times on this sailboat. We won some races, and lost some quite spectacularly. We anchored out and watched fireworks. We explored Jamaica Bay. There were more champagne sails than I can count. You don’t always know beforehand when you’re going to have a truly great sail, but you can feel it when you’re out there.
Flexibility/single handing With your own boat, you can do pretty much whatever you want. I spent several years at sailing clubs, which were wonderful. But, one usually needs to give up a little flexibly to have a smooth running club. Generally, you won’t be able to take a boat out at odd times or for a whole day. Single-handing is also verboten at the clubs I know.
Making it my own Don’t like the way something is rigged? Change it! Don’t like how that ding in the fiberglass looks? Patch it! Setting things up your way, perhaps with some trial and error, is one of the best parts of owning anything. Learning how to do things like eye splices and soft-shackles are not only useful skills, but very satisfying. I also didn’t mind doing small maintenance or repair projects, so long as they were within, or a bit of a stretch away from my skill level.
What I didn’t like
Hauling Out Hauling the boat (and putting it back in) bothered me more rather than less over the years. To the point that it became one of the reasons for selling the boat. Most people seem just fine with this activity, so I’m not sure why it caused me so much anxiety. Perhaps it was because I couldn’t do it on my own and I needed to ask for help. Next time, I’ll plan and budget for putting it at a yard and have them deal with it.
Sanding the bottom Sanding is terrible, nobody likes it. Some hate it more than others. The boat came to me with many, many layers of bottom paint, much of which I sought to remove. This meant a lot of time under the boat, at weird angles, getting covered with toxic paint dust despite my efforts to contain the mess with a shop-vac. Even with help, it took me a few sessions to get reasonably smooth. Painting was a joy compared to the sanding. In the end, sanding and painting a few times taught me a valuable lesson: Pay someone else to do it. The cost was worth every penny.
One thing I didn’t mention above was the cost. While I didn’t love spending money on maintenance and operating expenses, I understand that things do cost money. Advice to my future self on costs: Set a realistic budget that you’re comfortable with, then try to stay within that budget, roughly. Don’t track every penny–spend the time and energy you’d devote to expense tracking on sailing instead.