reboot

With the home purchase and wedding planning going on, there’s been little time left for anything else. I’ve been doing my best to keep up with my reading projects and making sure I hit the gym 3x a week, but anything else has pretty much been ignored.

As things have settled down and with the year half-over, it’s time to reboot and replan. I have a hard time feeling like I’m making any progress without some structure. So this week has been spent with pile of books, a yellow legal pad and things.app. I have a pretty good idea of how the rest of the year should work out in terms of goals.

I’m also happy to get a big project started at work, something I’ve been working towards for the past few years. This will be a good opportunity to show off my ideas and prove that they work.

July 30, 2011 | Filed Under geek, personal | Comments Off 

My Aircraft

“My aircraft.”

I just finished rereading “The Checklist Manifesto” which seems to have become one of my “give it the once-over every year” books. The last section is an overview of the US Airways Flight 1549 which landed in the Hudson River. The phrase “my aircraft” really hit me in a good way.

When things went south and Captain Sullenberger realized that both engines had lost power he look over the flight from the co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles. The book details several of the reasons why he took over (for example, the amount of flight time with that particular aircraft) but reading that single phrase encapsulates an enormous amount of discipline and ownership. The ability for someone to rely on their training without panic and to take on responsibility in the moment is tremendously impressive to me.

I work in a pretty low-discipline field, (TMTOWTDI being one of the more well-known responses to fixing issues or getting things done) but the idea of rigor and discipline for problem solving always interests me. I envy the focus and need to concentrate on narrowing down issues to their core and finding universal ways to communicate about the problem along with determining a solution.

March 5, 2011 | Filed Under personal | Comments Off 

Lyle Lovett vs Dwight Yoakam

I spent the summer of 1999 working sound for the Interlochen Center for the arts. It was a great opportunity to see how professional artists tour. I was amazed by how quick a touring staff is able to set up and tear down within a day. Two of the artist that made the most impression (for very different reasons) were Lyle Lovett and Dwight Yoakam.

I’ve been a fan of Mr. Lovett for a number of years. His album “Joshua Judges Ruth” is still one of my favorites. Tremendous song writing and an amazing group of musicians. This staff and group were exactly what I expected, totally professional and ready to go. They set up full lights, sound and instruments like navy seals. When the show was ready, Lyle stepped off the bus, hot lady on his arm, both dressed like they were going to an opera.

The show was great and tear down was exactly like the setup. Everyone knew what they were going and it felt almost effortless. The staff and musicians were cool and confident and worked well together. The experience with Mr. Yoakam was the complete opposite.

Once Dwight’s stage was set, they began the sound check. Apparently they had just released a new project, but no one could remember the the single. They had to scrape up a copy of the CD to play over the PA in order to relearn the tune. The poor front-of-house tech had to play the track at least a dozen times in order for the band to memorize the chord changes. Mr. Yoakam had the safety of a teleprompter for the lyrics, but even he was struggling with the music.

The show that night went equally as bad. There was nearly constant feedback from the monitors, and I’m positive that was the last night the monitor guy was employed by the Yoakum organization. The band was adequate and Dwight was a decent showman, but there was nothing professional about it. The musicians were agitated and the roadies looked beat up and worn down.

I learned a lot that summer about how I want to work. I want to have the experience and confidence that I know my job and will execute as expected, even when things don’t go as expected.

February 6, 2011 | Filed Under music, personal | Comments Off 

Thinking about Sonny

When I was a music student, I read biographies of pretty much any musician I could grab from the library: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Pablo Casals, etc. The story of Sonny Rollins and The Bridge is one of the few that has stuck with me.

In 1959, Sonny Rollins took a break from music. Although he was one of the finest sax players at the time, he felt pressure from other musicians such as John Coltrane (who emerged from working with Thelonius Monk and a second stint with Miles Davis a reinvented musician) and Ornette Colman who were changing jazz in significant ways.

For three years, Sonny Rollins walked to the Williamsburg Bridge to practice. He was living in a small apartment with neighbors surrounding him so he took to the bridge to rehearse. The traffic noise forced him to develop his breathing strength to be heard and he spent hours there, occasionally working with Jackie McLean. He emerged with a new command of his instrument and formed a new quartet that recorded ‘The Bridge’.

The only thing I miss about being a grad student, was having the time (and not being able to afford any distractions) to focus. One of my favorite times in school was the summer I spent living my myself on ~$450/month. I paid rent, utilities, gas and put $20-40/wk aside for food. The rest went into the bank. I spent all my time at the library or the studio and ramped up my work for nearly three months.

January 22, 2011 | Filed Under music, personal | Comments Off 

2011 Kickoff

After finishing the last music project, I was starting off the year wallowing with a lack of plans. From all the time spent in school, I seem to work better with a plan that involves projects ramping up and down. Without it, it just feels like one endless stream of days and I end up like David Byrne, “My god, how did I get here?”. I need the list of tasks checked off and projects complete to assure myself that I’m not wasting time.

Getting my crap together generally involves one very long text file of all the books I want to read and projects I want to do. These get pared down into reasonable tasks that go into whatever I’m using to track work (so for ‘Things.app’ has held that place for two years, but I’m positive I’ll just go back to a todo.txt).

It was good to have a bit of break over the holidays and spend time with Jen. I feel like I got a nice bit of inertia going with the last music project and I to take advantage of that and work on some projects that I need a lot more motivation to get myself to do.

January 15, 2011 | Filed Under personal | Comments Off 

X-mas Vacation 2010

1. Trip to Indianapolis to hit bookstores and see downtown. Decent hotel right on the circle. We checked out the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library which had some great photos of Vonnegut. We also did a quick drive-by of the Fountain Square district which is probably much better nicer when it’s warm enough to actually walk around.

2. Trip to Louisville to visit the brother. We hit a few bookstores and ate very well as always.

3. Lots of cooking: rib-eye steaks, deep dish pizza, spaghetti sauce, shoulder roast, stroganoff. Lots of heavy, cold-weather comfort foods.

4. Checked out the Chicago Botanical Gardens to test out some camera stuff.

5. Got Jen to sit through Season One of The Wire. It’s easy to forget just how tremendous that show is.

6. Spent too many hours finishing up the last music project and zero hours thinking about work.

January 2, 2011 | Filed Under personal | Comments Off 

2010: review

Lifting
I didn’t reach my ‘Road to 400 Goals’ but I did end the year with a personal record for deadlift and weighted in 10 lbs lighter by the end of the year. Most of my lifts remained the same or went up, so I’m happy to have retained muscle mass while loosing a bit of extra weight.

Since I’ve been doing so much heavy work, I’m going to start off the year with a couple months of high-rep, low-weight work with an emphasis on getting my heart rate up.

Reading
51 books this year, not all of them winners, but as I get older I’m getting better at cutting out the garbage quicker. It’s easy to tell the time of year based on what I’m reading, more serious work during the start/end of the year and light stuff over the summer.

Top Ten Books:

  1. Everything Matters – Ron Currie, Jr.
  2. Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace – David Lipsky
  3. After the Workshop – John McNally
  4. Switch – Chip & Dan Heath
  5. Drive – Daniel Pink
  6. Listen to This – Alex Ross
  7. The Creative Writers Survival Guide – John McNally
  8. The Big Short – Michael Lewis
  9. Where Good Ideas Come From – Steven Johnson
  10. A Guide to the Good Life – William Irvin

Music: Listening

Music stuff that last.fm says that I listened to this year(mostly at work):

Artist Play Count
Autechre 657
The Beatles 547
The Rolling Stones 423
Aphex Twin 415
Peter Gabriel 376
Nine Inch Nails 313
Tom Waits 283
Amon Tobin 262
The Kleptones 256
Steely Dan 245
Neil Young 242
The Mountain Goats 218
Galactic 214
Frank Zappa 202
Andrew Bird 197
Uncle Tupelo 195
Son Volt 190
Lyle Lovett 190
Andy McKee 186
Max Richter 181

Other music stuff I remember listening to a whole bunch to in 2010:

Music: Written
I put out three EPs and one full project of music this year, (about 108 minutes of sound). I’m pretty happy with the output and I see a lot of change and progress.

Next Year:
I already have a reading list about 15 items deep. For music I want to get back into Max/MSP and build more interactive processing in Reaktor. I also have a pile of Abersold jazz books that I should spend more time with. The older I get the more I feel a need to dig deeper into harmony.

January 2, 2011 | Filed Under Books, music, personal, Uncategorized | Comments Off 

Reading progress

Updated my reading list for 2010. Pretty happy with the results so far, a decent mix of fiction/non-fiction (and biz stuff, which usually is more like voodoo than non-fiction).

I blew through Lipsky’s book on David Foster Wallace in two sittings. The times that Lipsky inserted himself or his thoughts was distracting, but it was great to dive into Wallace’s head for a nice chunk of time. I was happy with how ended, it would have been easy to be morose, but instead I was left with much happier memories. I like thinking about how much DFW was enjoying the process of writing and how he was looking forward to working for a good length of time.

I have six other books in progress right now, but I should knock out a couple of them this weekend. It’s slightly nutty, but I like the mix right now. I was planning to be working on more music this month, perhaps next week when Jen will be gone for a couple of days. Right now my evenings are nothing but a White Sox game on in the background and a book in hand. Things could be much, much worse.

Overall things seem pretty solid. Made some great progress at work and got rewarded for it, and today finished off a nice project that took longer than I hoped, but it was done the right way.

Yesterday someone at work asked how it is that I seem so happy all the time. I really didn’t know how to answer that. I feel like I’ve been pretty buried for awhile but it’s starting to burn off like fog. It comes and goes in waves, but right now things are well. It’s strange to be happy, but I never lose the feeling of other shoes dropping.

April 14, 2010 | Filed Under Books, personal | Comments Off 

Home Theatre

Not much time this week, all my time was taken up by the great home-theatre rebuild. New TV (our first flatscreen) plus the blue-ray (PS3) player. It took awhile, but everything is talking nicely to each other. My entertainment world is now in HD and surround sound. The bad news is, even that couldn’t make Batman:Dark Knight a watchable film.

December 19, 2009 | Filed Under digital life, geek, personal | Comments Off 

day off

Took the day off from the gym after staying up too late watching the Obama documentary on HBO. Felt good to get some rest, should be ready to go in the morning .. unless the World Series game goes too late.

Got myself involved in some sort of 100 pushup challenge at work. As a test run I dropped and did 30, I could probably push it to 35-40. Should be a fun little challenge and may help my bench along the way.

I gave in and bought myself a new audio toy, a Novation Launchpad. As much as I hated using Max/MSP in school the integration with Abelton Live looks interesting. The upgrade comes out in a few weeks, but I may be able to get in on the beta. I’ve been thinking about music again and nothing is more inspiring than trying out a new toy.

November 4, 2009 | Filed Under lifting, music, personal | Comments Off 

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