JavaScript is an underappreciated language far more interesting than its Java-style syntax or browser-scripting context would suggest. It is a fully object-oriented language despite the fact that it has no classes; it is a “prototype-based” language, like Self.

I have no idea what “MooTools” is, but its parent company has a page with a nicely laid out series of steps for learning this language. Another good resource is Eloquent JavaScript, a well-written and comprehensive guide to the language.

I’ve just finished the new blue/silver dancing pants. While they have their share of imperfections, I am very happy with the result. Each of my projects has been a little more ambitious than the last, and the sense of improving skill is definitely part of what makes this satisfying. My last pair of pants was a modified version of a commercial pattern; this time I continued with the same general design but made my own pattern from scratch. I also did a lot more with the quilted brocade design elements – more pieces and more complex curves.

I haven’t been as successful with the serger as I’d expected. I don’t know whether it’s just my inexperience, or some limit of the machine, but the seam-trimmer often seems to slip off track, and then the serger produces big thick folded-over seams. Come to think of it, this mostly seemed to happen when I’d try to stitch through the big seams with four layers of fabric and two layers of batting, so maybe I was just overloading the cutter. In any case I had to do a lot of restitching. I also can’t seem to find any adjustment that will give me a shorter stitch length. Oh, well, it’ll come in time.

Leftover fabric scraps are becoming a problem. It feels wasteful to throw them away and cluttery to keep them. I’d stash them all in bins at the Rocket Factory, but now that we have to clear the place out that hardly seems like a solution…

I just finished setting up a new webcam, and I’ve turned my spy page back on.

I spent a couple of hours today making a zipper fly and a waistband for the silver-and-blue pants. All that remain now are the button, the hems, and possibly belt loops. The serger hasn’t actually saved me any time yet, but it is a powerful tool and I expect great things once I can keep up with it. This is the fourth zipper fly I have made, and I finally feel like I understand how they work.

This afternoon Ali and Rose had a barbecue over at Kismet to celebrate Rose’s birthday, though a steady Seattle drizzle kept everything but the grill inside. Having failed to plan ahead, I picked up pancetta, brie, tomatoes, and some French bread on the way over; after turning these into bruschetta, everyone thought I had done it on purpose. Yay for improvisation. Dana and Carina’s daughter Eowyn made up a complicated game involving brain-hungry zombies that amounted to having me chase her around and growl. Adam and Janet brought an astonishing cake made of raw cookie dough and frosting, which was apparently just the sort of thing Rose was hoping for. And it was basically just a happy few hours with friends.

Went to St. Mark’s for the compline service. Now I’m going to read about a boat trip down the Ganges and sleep.

This serger is fun. I played with different scrap materials last night and ended up with a sort of peaky hat/giant pocket thing and a blue furry raver sweater for someone’s pet snake. It is definitely going to take some more practice before I can get the seams as straight as they need to be, and I have no idea how to re-thread the machine, but I can already tell that it is going to save a lot of time.

Here’s a 2004 paper on the history, cultural context, and stylistic features of psytrance music, with a structural analysis of four representative tracks.

Music music music. I took my keyboard over to Dawn’s place last night and we played some songs. Trying to cover a rock song as a duet is hard work, and all your mistakes show up clearly, but it was fun. She played drums, I played bass with one hand and accompaniment with the other, and we traded off singing; with that kind of stripped-down arrangement it’s really all about the song itself.

I have been listening to goa trance all morning and I can’t stop breaking down the song structure as I listen: tracking the parts coming in and out, the 8-bar slow-mo knob twists, the percussion shifts, the bass-line dropouts… I want to do this.

I spent half an hour reintroducing myself to my piano today. Scales, thirds, major, minor, left, right. Metronome.

Hello, piano.

How to build your own MP3 player. I am not going to do this, but it sure is fun to think about it.

Amy S.’ brother owns a winemaking shop up in Bellingham, and a dozen of us spent the weekend up there making wine and lounging around a lake house. There’s something really satisfying about spending time with a small group like that; it’s enough people to keep a lot of energy in the air but few enough that you can spend time with everyone individually.

I’ve been feeling a more quiet, introspective mood coming on lately. This is part of the usual end-of-summer, post-Burning Man change of seasons / change of direction / reëvaluation experience, but it’s intensified by the recent change in my job.

Yay for redevelopment: Adam and I got word last night that we are being evicted from the Rainier Cold Storage building. Sabey Inc. is apparently kicking everyone out as their leases expire, and the guy we’re subletting our space from just got his notice. We have until the end of November.

I suppose that means it’s time to find a new home for the Rocket Factory. We’d like a 1000 square foot shop with 220 power, concrete floors, and vehicle access, in a non-residential area right in the middle of Capitol Hill, for about $400 a month. That’d be totally great. I’m going to start looking at craigslist ads now.

More seriously, I’d love to take the Rocket Factory concept a step further: bring in more partners, obtain more tools, schedule more workshops. I’d like to set up regular “shop hours” and rent out bins or lockers where people can store the pieces of their projects-in-progress. Getting evicted so quickly sucks, especially after all the work we’ve done getting the place set up the way we want it, but maybe it’ll lead to something even more interesting.

Rover is in the shop. Time for a regular tune-up, and to figure out what’s up with that odd ticky noise in the front wheels.

Thoughts about music are becoming more prominent. I’d like to include some kind of regular technical piano practice into my routine: twenty minutes of scales and exercises every other day, or something like that.

I’m going to shuffle around the pieces in my loop-machine system but I have talked myself out of buying any new hardware. Of course it would be fun to expand my sonic palette with a couple extra channels or sweepable mids or a multiband compressor or a tempo-synced delay unit or whatever, but I really just need to spend some good solid hours composing.

My bike has a matching pair of actual, working mirrors now, and its rear fender is once again equipped with turn signals.

But it still won’t start.

Work is going well. The dev team is pounding through a list of bugs, and our users are going to be a little surprised when the next alpha release comes out. I’m feeling increasingly comfortable in this new management role; my leadership skills are better developed than I had realized. This is going to work.

I made my first job offer today. It was kind of fun to see what it looks like on the other side of the table. I hope the candidate accepts; I have a Plan, and it needs some talented people, and I can’t wait to get things moving.

Infinite Connections just announced another Magnetic party at the Pacific Science Center, on November 10th. This is, most unfortunately, the same night as Seacompression, which will be over at Sand Point again. How on earth am I going to manage this?

I suspect that lasers will be involved.

I missed a digit when I looked at my flight time yesterday – I was supposed to fly out at 11:05 today, not 1:05… so of course I’ve missed that flight and have now booked myself on a 3:40 departure with a completely different airline. It will still end up being fewer than 24 hours at home before departing again, but at least this way I have enough time to do some laundry.