A new variation on the classic Internet-cat-pictures site is the Mr. Lee CatCam: someone has attached a timer-triggered camera to his cat’s collar and recorded scenes from his trips around the neighborhood.

Interesting band practice tonight: our bassist is out of town, so I filled in, playing an additional keyboard part on some songs and just playing bass on others. It was a lot of fun – the extra pressure concentrated my attention, and I think I actually played a little better than usual. We also ended up with a simpler, more open sound, which was really nice: we’re not normally very good at laying back and giving each other space. Definitely something to work on. It’s also just plain fun to rock out on a bass.

I went back over to the Rocket Factory after work today and finished the cleanup project. All the tools are now on shelves, in bins, or at least sitting on tables, the sawhorses are neatly stacked against the wall, and the floor is clear. I spent at least twenty minutes just sweeping up sawdust. Then I finished up the electrical projects. There are a dozen new outlets, and a pair of fluorescent worklights illuminating the area under the loft. It looks great. I feel happy.

The electrical system turned out to be a bit weird. We have a breaker box with two circuits, but all of the outlets save one are on a single circuit, and the big halogen lights on the ceiling are wired into the main feed, not on any breaker! I put the new worklights onto the totally underutilized second circuit, and I think one of these days I will have to redo the primary lighting system so you can actually shut it off at the box…

Beautiful sunny day today. I went over to Kira’s brunch in the morning; she was full of energy, producing a constant stream of quiches, muffins, and biscuits. Eric S. showed off the acrylic parts he’s found for his Burning Man project; we have both come up with variations on the “tree of light” idea, and it’ll be fun to see both trees glowing next to each other.

After brunch I did a little gardening. I’ve been slowly ripping out weeds in the front yard, and that left a bare patch around the side which I decided to fill with some sword ferns. There are already a couple of big bushy ferns in that part of the yard, so the young’uns will fit right in.

Next I went down to the Rocket Factory with an eye to getting it ready for the laserfingers workshop. It’s been in a chaotic state since we moved in, with bins and sawhorses and random tools and wood scraps everywhere, so I spent a while cleaning up and sorting out. Next I used some of the leftover scrap lumber to build a set of shelves for all my Burning Man gear, up in the loft. That done, I started in on some electrical work. It’s too dark to work under the loft, so I added a new switched circuit and mounted the first of a pair of fluorescent fixtures. I didn’t quite get that job done, and I barely even got started on my plans to add a whole strip of new outlets along the wall under the loft, but the place looks a lot better. Another six hours of hard labor ought to finish it…

Home, quick shower, new clothes, and over to Geoff & Laura’s for the end of their sangria party/barbecue. Good conversations, had fun talking to Amy S. about fourteen-year-olds. Lots of people are interested in the laserfingers workshop: *lots*. I am going to have to limit attendance.

Home: Mez had just gotten back from Rainier, and both Lesley and Alexis were in, so all four of us were actually in one place at one time, which happens with hilarious infrequency.

I want to have a make-your-own-laserfingers workshop later this month, in time for the Shpongle show on the 16th. It was great fun loaning out my laserfingers at the BT/JunkieXL show back in April; everybody plays with them differently. I’d love to see what would happen if a whole bunch of my friends all went to a big party wearing laserfingers.

If you are interested in participating, I’d like to hear from you. You would not need to know anything about sewing, electronics, or optics, or possess any of the relevant tools. Cost of materials would be about $50, and the workshop should run about three hours. I am thinking about the evenings of June 12th or June 15th.

Microbattery has a page listing dozens of styles of coin cell holders.

Here’s a retail source for simple linear laser scanners. 817 Hz!

What a great night! Leah P. and Kerry H. threw a cozy little party over at Kitty Galore which was all kinds of fun. Good people, warm happy vibe.

I’d been excited about the Renegade Soundwave party tonight – psytrance til dawn, out in the woods somewhere near North Bend – but even lazing around in bed all day has not cured my exhaustion. I’m going to laze around in bed some more, and maybe spend the day tomorrow working on some creative project or other.

Infected Mushroom makes me very happy. Ohhh, yes, life is good.

I did a little exploratory dabbling last night with the tree of light. Instead of fiberglass, which looks to be prohibitively expensive, Leah P. suggested bamboo. I bought a bundle of 6′ garden stakes and wired them together in triplets to get long, flexible 18′ poles. They flex nicely, and I like the organic, random character of the bamboo, but I’ll have to streamline the wire-wrapping procedure if I want to make scores of them. I’ll also need to devise some kind of stress test which will simulate a good strong Black Rock windstorm; I’m afraid the bamboo would snap and send bits of wood and electronics flying.

1/2 pound ahi steak, the redder the better
bunch of spinach leaves
one smallish tomato
two mushrooms
olive oil
sea salt
black pepper
French bread
butter

Splash a little olive oil into a shallow pan and place on high heat. Wash and dry a handful of spinach, tear into big chunks, and scatter onto a plate. Slice two large mushrooms and one smallish tomato; place atop spinach. Pour a couple tablespoons of olive oil into a bowl. Mix in at least a tablespoon of freshly cracked pepper and a couple teaspoons of coarse sea salt. Dredge the ahi in the oil mixture. The pan should be hot by now, so toss in the ahi. Wait about two minutes; this would be a good time to add a little sea salt and some more of the cracked pepper to the salad plate, plus a splash each of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Then flip the ahi over and let the other side cook for another two minutes. Cut two or three slices of French bread and smear on a little butter. Crack open a bottle of wine. Pull the fish off the heat, put it on the plate, take your wine glass and some utensils and go sit in the sun.

I’m sitting in bed on a lazy Sunday morning. I decided, with some reluctance, to skip the big Polarity party last night; the conference was four days straight of demanding days and loud late-night outings, and I needed a break. Oh well – there are always more parties. Instead I dropped by Kitty V.’s going-away party, then found Adam and Janet in Fremont and spent a couple of hours catching up.

I’m starting to get more serious about this tree-of-light project, though part of the appeal is in how little seriousness the concept demands. So far this year I’ve managed to not get myself committed to any big art projects, and I’d like to keep it that way. If I can find a reasonably cheap source for long flexible fiberglass poles, preferably set up with ferrules and elastic cord so I can break them down for packing into bins, I should be pretty much set.

It is 4:14 AM, Seattle time. The conference is over and my plane will leave Austin in about two hours. Time to pack up the laptop and check out of the Omni… it’s been a good week.

I started working for Real Software six years ago today. I don’t think I would have expected the job to last this long when I took it. The last year has been mostly full of work on the incremental compilation system and the new module-namespace feature. It feels good to focus on large scale projects like that, and I’m glad there are a couple more on the horizon.

I’m in shockingly humid Austin, Texas, getting ready for the Real World conference. Since my part in the conference consists of one presentation on Thursday and a second on Friday, I’ve spent the day chatting with coworkers, checking my email, and tinkering with a couple of new, experimental features. Tomorrow ought to be even more relaxed.

I somehow got the day of the Circus Contraption show wrong, and thought I was going to spend a nice quiet evening at home last night. Er, no. Out late, crazy carnies singing and performing, an audience full of familiar faces, much drinking. Ah, what terrific fun.

I think I’ll spend this afternoon puttering around the house. There are books to organize, boxes to pack away into storage, and an unlimited number of plants to buy, pot, and arrange on the porch…

After five hours of work, I have all the remaining Burning Man supplies and music gear out of my basement storage units and (except the last half-truckload) transferred to the Rocket Factory. That’s it; I’m out of the apartment. I’ll swing by tomorrow and drop off the keys. Whew. Time to take a shower, mix up a martini, and read a book.

It’s a beautiful grey rainy day here. I am sitting cross-legged on my bed, leaning up against a big heap of pillows, looking out the window at a hill full of trees and houses all glistening in the wet.

There was almost no water pressure this morning. Apparently a water main broke near the University Bridge.

It was a wild weekend here at Heden. Saturday night was the Spring Fling party, and we spent all day getting ready. I finished setting up my room about an hour before guests were due to start arriving – just enough time to grab some dinner and take a quick shower. Then it was non-stop go until dawn; I finally shut the door to my room at around 7 AM.

The room was even more of a success than I had hoped. People were crowded in here all night, talking and laughing and drinking and having fun. There were rarely fewer than five people sprawled out on my bed. Total strangers leaned against my bookshelves and held hour-long conversations. It was great. I spent less time dancing than I usually do at parties like this, but I had more fun than ever; there’s nothing like having all your best friends pack into your room and rock the place out for hours on end.

I bought a pair of Rokit RP5 monitors a few weeks ago but had not had a chance to plug them in until now. What a big, crisp, clear sound! You can hear everything, and it sounds great. I wish I’d made this upgrade years ago.

Sunday we spent laying around talking, relaxing, and basically doing nothing. I left the house once, at about 4 PM, to pick up a big pile of sushi for breakfast.

I had an accident with a razor knife yesterday. The double-sided tape I used on the rope light project proved to be inadequately strong, so I took down the parts that hadn’t already fallen down, reinforced the channel strips with screw-in C-clips, and hung it all back up again. A few feet from the end, while trimming back some of the plastic, I slipped and cut a gash into the side of my arm, which quickly became a bloody mess. Uh oh. Ran downstairs, enlisted Alexis’ help, and then spent three and a half hours sitting in the emergency room doing a whole lot of waiting, which eventually resulted in five stitches, a tetanus shot, and some vicodin. No serious damage, it seems, but this will make the remainder of my move more complicated.

Speaking of the move: the piano guys did their thing today. My piano is down in the garage for the next week or two, so we don’t have to deal with rearranging the living room to accomodate it right before this weekend.

Lesley and I are starting to fit out our shared balcony/porch area. She cleared off all the accumulated moss, pine needles, and the like, and I set up a table & chair, some candlesticks, and a pair of lawn torches. We’re still making plans, but there will be many plants and possibly a fountain out there.

I got a second cell phone yesterday, to replace my business line. Now my office is completely portable.

My brother Michael called; he is apparently moving from Georgia to Ft. Lewis, down near Tacoma. I don’t know how much time he will get away from his duties, but perhaps we’ll have chances to see each other this summer.

I’m sitting outside on the porch in front of my new bedroom window, in the shade of a big evergreen, watching the flowers and the dog-walkers and the cars and the bicycles. It’s a lovely blue spring afternoon, sunny but still cool. The birds are out and the trees are blooming and I feel good.

I brought a big load of stuff over today: a couple of Mucha prints, another bookshelf, my bass, my sax, skis, and so on. Fitting everything in here is a challenge, but at least there is a lot of storage space in the garage.

We tried something new at band practice this week: we collected all of our amps and stacked them up into a tower o’ noise in one corner of the room, capped off by the vocal monitor, all pointed at us standing around the drum kit. Suddenly – wonder of wonders – we can all hear each other play! No more mud; all the parts are clear. Why didn’t we think of this months ago?

Yesterday I spent the afternoon getting started on my presentations for the Real World conference next month.

The room at Heden is almost ready. I painted the inside of the closet yesterday, then built a set of shelves (with a couple of sliding basket-drawers, even). I’ll go back later today to install the hanger bars – then all it needs is a bit of cleaning and I can start moving in.

I painted the ceiling of my new room last night, before going over to the Garage, using some “pearlescent” faux-finish stuff. Looking at it today, it’s subtler than I’d intended, but I actually like it better than the silvery finish I thought I was going to get. It’s more of a glow than a shine; you probably wouldn’t even notice it if you didn’t know it was there, but it brings the light up and makes the room feel open.

This afternoon I’m going to paint the remaining walls. I’m worried that the cream color I picked may turn out to be too pale, but I guess that’s easy enough to fix.

Here’s a very cool lamp made of copper pipe and tube bulbs. Great stylish design.

Right then, a quick weekend update before bed.

Yesterday morning, met Adam over at the Rocket Factory and helped pack a vanload of playa gear and other storables into our storage loft. John M. came over with his completely adorable daughter Isabella, who spent a lot of time standing on the ladder (and repeating, in a voice of surprised accomplishment, “Standing on the ladder!”). After we arranged all the plastic bins into nice pretty rows, we went back to Home Depot and bought some lumber for the remaining loft floor section.

Once cleaned up I drove north to my aunt Melinda’s place in Lynnwood for Grandma’s 80th birthday party. She was in good spirits and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. It’s always fun to spend time with my cousins. Why don’t I visit them more often? We drank wine, played cards, caught up on each other’s lives.

Evening: down to Columbia City for Jay & Lena’s housewarming, now that they’re no longer living downstairs. They have a funky new basement place with exposed ductwork, concrete floors, a prominent fusebox on the living room wall – it’s great. And now they have a whole room for music.

By the time I got to Kevin & Erica + Nathan & Miller’s housewarming, it was all I could do to greet everyone before I felt like I was falling asleep and had to start making the goodbye rounds. It’s a huge house, and all very new, so it was good to see all of our mutual friends there making it feel homey.

Today I started off with pancakes and then went straight over to Heden to work on the room. The drywall contractor came back and finished up the patches, so I put a coat of primer on two walls and spent a long, long time cleaning up not quite all of the layer of fine white dust covering the room. It’ll take a second and possibly a third mopping. Meanwhile I installed curtains and put the fourth coat of red paint on the accent wall. Maybe four will be enough? Red paint is transparent stuff.

Tonight, over to Peter & Jacqueline’s place for a sushi party, which also turned out to be Jacqueline’s birthday party. Conversation topics included microcontrollers, video games, the uses of various flammable gases and extremely cold liquids, and home renovation plans.

Now I am going to curl up in bed with a book.

Life is good.

The drywall contractors came by Heden around noon and worked for three hours. The holes are all covered up now, with big creamy panels of drywall mud. They’ll be back on Sunday for some finish work.

I did what felt like a lot of coding today. I’m changing the way the incremental compiler system tracks changes. Timestamps have turned out to be hard to get right when we can’t assume that each compilation unit is backed by one file on disk; the compiler ends up breaking any time there’s a bug in the timestamp code anywhere in the IDE. This is not so much fun to fix. Instead I’m having the compiler save the source hash in the object file; then the recompile algorithm can simply hash the current source and compare it against the old state to see if anything has changed.

Tonight is the DJ Eva / JunkieXL / BT show down in Pioneer Square. I’m about to head over to the Frodis Lounge for a pre-func, then we’re all going to take over the VIP room at Heavens. It’s rumored that BT won’t be coming on until 2 AM, so it may be a late night… It’s dance music, so I have to dress up, but it’s Pioneer Square, so I don’t really want to get too crazy. I’m going to wear some stylish jeans, a silver T-shirt, and my laserfingers… should be plenty.

Busy day today. I took Shane (the MacBook) over to Heden and spent the morning there working. At elevenish the drywall contractors came over and spent a few minutes looking over the room. They made an estimate, I liked it, and they’ll be back tomorrow to start work. Lunchtime, afternoon, more coding, fixed some bugs, remained stuck on the one bug I was really trying to fix. Done with work, I put a third and hopefully final coat of red paint on the wall of my new room.

Once done and cleaned up, I met Adam H. over at Home Depot and picked up some parts for the next stage of our Rocket Factory project. We’d planned to build a stairway up to the storage loft, but Adam noticed some neat already-assembled folding attic-stairs kits, and after some hemming and hawing we decided prefab was the way to go. We cut a hole in the floor, repositioned a joist, cut and fit some more 2x4s, and mounted the stair gizmo. It works well: folds up and out of the way when it’s not in use, fits flush against the ceiling, and comes down easily with a little pull-cord. We felt happy.

After dinner with Janet L. at Jules Maes we went back and tidied the floor up a bit: reinforced the outer edge of the floor, added some extra corner braces, and hung up our clock and whiteboard. (We’re engineers: whiteboards are an essential thinking tool.)

Okay, time for bed. More bugs to fix tomorrow.

It’s slowly dawning on me, as I have begun to think about my apartment in terms of fitting it into the new room at Heden, just how much stuff I’m going to be able to leave behind. Books, clothes, furniture, even music gear – it’s time to strip it all down. It feels good to separate my things according to what I actually care about and what I’m willing to let go. There’s a little lift every time I detach myself from something.

I made a little bookshelf, about five years ago, out of three big slabs of wood and two ornamental grilles scavenged from a craft store’s going-out-of-business sale. It’s elaborate, interesting, took a lot of work to make, and looks unique… but I think it’s time to be done with it. I don’t have to carry it around with me forever just because I made it.