FUTURE BLINDNESS

Well it was about two years ago that I got to kiss Harlo outside a bar in Manhattan. I think the bar was called the Pink Cake, or the Cake Repair Shop, or something unmemorable. Certainly, I remember being there for a fraction of a second and then leaving, unimpressed.
Since then, everything has gone right, mostly because Harlo is at my side. Leaving the Finance Industry, leaving New York (we will return, though!), leaving the Customer Service Industry, leaving all my operational and strategic doubt behind has been easy because I know Harlo will support and indulge every move I believe is Right. I can only hope that I am doing the same, at the same level, for her.
I shot Harlo in the woods and she has a circular scar. We have spat at each other with mouths full of summer water. We have compared puppies and stickers and arrived at a consensus for each. We are winning the strangest game. We are growing together—head, hair, teeth all stronger and sharper. Our sound is fierce and focused. We are in lockstep, loving competition and I can’t get enough of it.

Well, I really fucked up the Constraints I laid out for March. My good friend Sasha knows me well enough to profit from these bouts of optimism, so he bet me a reasonable sum that I wouldn’t make four out of the six Constraints. Even if you accept a couple of my excuses (and you know you shouldn’t), I made two. If you follow the letter and not the spirit of the law, I succeeded at zero of these tasks.
Let’s go through them:

I will eat out only three times this month, and not spend over $100 total on this. When at home, I will eat inexpensively and I will try to consume all my leftovers.

NOPE.

I will drink one beer per day, perhaps two on the weekend. This does not count a beer that someone might purchase for me.

SORT OF.

I will visit the gym every other day, with the option to skip a weekend visit if I exercise at home. (This will ensure I get value from my gym membership).

NOPE.

I will sell my two ham radios at a reasonable price.

NOPE.

I will make and sell at least two t-shirts…getting them in a store on consignment is okay for this.

NOPE.

I will find freelance work and execute it at a rate more than $20/hr.

SORT OF.

Sasha, thank you for your support—let me know where to send my finest Liar’s Poker bills.

Well, they let me into the Media Lab—hooray! I am very excited to join the talented and interesting people there, and you can expect me to be a lot more smug than usual for awhile.

Because of some recent financial blunders and a lack of roommates in my residence, I find myself with far less cash than I usually have available. Coupled with the recent computer troubles necessitating a new laptop, this prompts me to take drastic steps to increase my liquidity.

I will therefore live the month of March with some elective constraints, listed below:

I am interested in the degree to which you think I will be successful here. I have listed more constraints than I intend to follow, and I’d love to hear in the comments which ones you think I will be able to meet.

If I had a lot of time on my hands, in fact, I’d love to take odds on these and make this an ongoing market—I think it would be interesting and motivational if a community helped itself improve by posting resolutions and paying out when they’re broken (and vice versa - if you bet me I won’t make it to the gym and I do, you lose the bet). This encourages people to push their limits and propose something that gets better odds, and discourages them from lowballing and going the comfortable route. Sasha would probably have a better system to implement this, so if you read this, Sasha, chime in!

In other news, I have snuck some fun into my workday by assigning myself the task of designing better visualizations for the tech support staff’s telephone data. Right now, I’m adapting Ben Fry’s excellent zipdecode applet to accept timestamped call data.

After three txt-msg blogposts, I need to break the streak and provide a proper update. Please do not think I will be txt-blogging less, though, as it makes an excellent threat when Company is around.

My second run of T-shirts went very well - I will be posting photos soon to flickr. The design was an AKA logo called Twin Eurofighters, and most of the shirts from the first run of 9 have been given away. Let me know if you’d like one, and I’m sure we can work something out. Screenprinting is great fun but a bit costly—so far I’m about $300 in the hole from supplies, the sink I had to buy and install, and shirts to print on. Clearly, this is a pursuit that must eventually be monetized.

I’m preparing a very small (but possibly noteworthy) presentation for the Dorkbot “Presidents Day” showing; it is called PissPoll and I’ll have more details soon. You may or may not like this idea. I am concerned that you might not like it.

I was in Harlem from this past Thursday to Monday working on Thenji’s film, which is coming along well. We were supposed to have finished by Monday but the deadline was extended and we’re finishing up next weekend. I hope. My most pressing concern is that I will finish the score and not have a chance to mix it on proper monitors, which neither of us own. Also, the diagetic mix is not yet final, which may affect some scoring stuff. It certainly will be exciting to see it screened, though! (no idea when that may occur).

Harlo was down in New York over the weekend as well; she was filming an interview with DJ/rupture for the premiere episode of share.tv, which airs on Feb 17th on CCTV. I haven’t seen the footage yet, but I’m sure it will come out very well. We went to Raggs of Harlem, a fine old bar, and had a nice evening talking with drunken locals who won money on the Superbowl.

In the last month I’ve gotten quite a bit done, and I have more on the horizon. It is a relief to have my time spoken for these days, and a delight that such exciting projects are on the roster. I will attempt to be brief.

The application
The application is in, and all necessary evaluators have responded. Hopefully, my application is as good as anyone else’s at this point. I am satisfied with my submission, and glad that it is out of my hands.

The Cameroon project
Delightfully, I met Andrew Sempere again recently and he has offered some insight on the chip problem I am having—the one I’m working with is proving difficult to debug. I’ve been working with Harlo on using this power source and looking at other chips that more easily facilitate pitchshifting. I’m considering just gutting this helmet and using it for a cheap pitchshift effect (I assume it can be hacked to change pitches).

The Syncwalk Digital Composition Interface
I’m chomping at the bit to get to the hardware/software part of this but I have committed to do the Cameroon project first. It’s nice, though, to continue to try to refine the operational flow as a background task while walking. I have a pretty complete model in mind now, and it can be implemented in several stages, which will help focus development work along the way.

South Africa Documentary
I’m heading down to New York to finalize the scored parts of Thenji Nkosi’s documentary at the end of the month—there’s also a new song called “Primary Loyalty” that you can hear here:
Primary Loyalty

Screen printing
Harlo and started screen printing this past weekend and had some modest successes.

A Bell
I received a very lovely bell for Christmas and it makes a wonderful sound. I will link to it soon.

I finally, finally found the VHS of an old performance I did with Teresa Marrin Nakra last week, and have now safely converted it to a .mov.

The music itself isn’t the most awesome thing in the world, but I certainly am glad that proof of this exists…I really need something from this to put in my portfolio! As I try to write more thoughtfully about this project, it becomes clearer how much this served as an introduction to the world of physical computing and, in a sense, the process involved in working with emerging technology.

The carpet itself was very cool but a bit buggy. Factors like heat and prior use would seriously impact the consistency of the output, and it led to some frustrating but now-familiar debugging issues. Other things, like Teresa’s imminent pregnancy and my own unfamiliarity with the medium made this a frustrating project at the time. Thankfully, Tim Ledlie was around to handle the software side of the debugging and help me retain a sense of perspective.

We only had a week from start to finish to make our performances, and the title of mine (DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME, I’LL BE FINE) comes from the sampleset I was using at the time. Snips from Disney’s version of “Peter and the Wolf” and R+H’s “South Pacific” combined with pretty abstract (and, upon later reflection, boring) drum and toneloops to make an endless, atmospheric performance that did not go very many places.

I think the best thing about this project was finally getting to just play the damn carpet. I spent many, many hypercaffeinated hours before that night pressing on the thing and listening for trouble, and even watching it reminds me of what fun it was to make sounds with something so malleable and strange.

Friend, I have been absent due to a disgusting illness.

Nowdays I’m working on the following:

Buddy, last night I fulfilled a commitment I made to a bar in my area. I am not bragging, but I thought you should know.

I have some updates on other projects as well:

I’ll be making more progress on the Cameroon project once I’ve got the dorkbot commitments. Fortuitously, Chelly will be in the States this Christmas, allowing me to push the deliverable deadline back to late December. Shit is going to be bananas at work and getting a grad school app ready, so it is nice to have the extra time (although admittedly, this project has been very slow to gain momentum).

The flower project is going well but will require some real work this weekend making a final decision about the actuators. Either they’re going to be embedded in each petal, which may diminish mobility, or they’re going to be somewhere else and I’ll use monofilament to transfer motion. Using monofilament would be a bit of a defeat, though, since it really obviates the need for muscle wire - I could do it with servos.

Excitingly, there’s a new (and hopefully easy) project that might prove more immediately rewarding—there was a call at the last Dorkbot meeting for an interactive audio exhibit for the kids to enjoy during the opening reception. I’m going to make a small patch of flowers that react to presence and produce (hopefully spooky) sounds. More on that soon.

My very good friend’s first feature-length movie, King Corn, has opened to great acclaim in New York. This weekend (October 19th), it’ll open in Boston at the historic Coolidge Corner Theater. I’ll definitely be there, possibly in costume. Join me!

Hit up the King Corn blog