Played with Leslie Mink at Jessie's Last Night

 

Photo from 2008

'Twas fun. We worked on our tunes, which we've accumulated over the years. My favorite from last night was probably Cricket On The Hearth into Sadie At The Backdoor.

Playing Solo at Jessie's Joint Thursday Nights

 

I just started playing at JJ in E. Quincy.  Solo (so far), 6:30ish Background music. Vocals. Experimental.

Postscript To A Funny Thing Happened: Farewell, Lucky

 Some months later, Lucky found a new home.

A nearby ranch had what I was told—quite delicately—was a “hen-heavy situation.” Dozens of ladies. No rooster. The kind of imbalance that called for… let’s just say, some poultry-level testosterone.

Enter Lucky D. Clucky.

He was dropped off like a traveling bard with a story to tell and a mission to fulfill. I wished him well. Gave him a quiet goodbye. Told him to mind his manners but enjoy himself.

He’d earned it.

After all, he’d lived in my living room. Jumped through windows. Napped with rabbits. Survived fires and predators and the existential oddness of being a rooster raised in the company of mammals and music and hardwood floors.

I hope he’s out there somewhere—strutting a little, crowing a lot, surrounded by hens who listen. Or don’t. Either way, I hope he feels like he landed in the right place.

Some animals pass through your life like background noise.

Others leave claw marks in the woodwork and take a piece of your heart with them.

Lucky was the second kind.

Hiking After The Fire

 The Dixie Fire has devastated us. It will be forever until we bounce back. I was worried that my favorite local hiking trails had burnt, but most of them didn't!

An Old Project Continued, Part 2

I finally finished this electrical rebuild in the Beaver.  I ordered all the parts I thought I needed, did more research, and started cutting, splicing, and crossing my fingers.

As it is now, there are 3 batteries that are interconnected with cable and switches. There is the starting battery that everyone needs because it gets the whole show on the road. It is connected to a second battery as a backup if needed. I can switch it on if necessary to assist the starting battery and it can get juice from the alternator to keep it topped off. The third battery is a deep cell version that fuels the interior lights, etc.

I bought a half-dozen 12-volt lights, wire, cabling, switches, a high-end charger/conditioner, and other miscellaneous devices like cell phone charger plugs.

I have some solar panels but have no plans to integrate them into this project.

I have yet to put this all into practice by going on a trip. Hopefully, that will change soon.

It feels good to have completed this. I know it's not a professional job, but it seems to be working and I learned a ton about 12-volt electronics. 👍

(Actually, there is a little more to do, but I'm calling it good.)

An Old Project Continued, part 1

 It's been much longer than I expected but I have finally gotten around to working on the electrical rebuild of the Beaver, my ancient RV.  It was back in December of 2017 I started implementing a plan to upgrade the electrical system. I bought books, I studied, I ordered parts, I jumped in.  Then it got too cold and other projects seemed more important so I let it go. I figured it was a good enough start.

But after the evacuation I realized that I need to get this done so that I throw things in the the Beaver and leave it I needed to.

I started reacquainting myself with what I had done. Jesus, I've forgotten so much of it that it scares me! Early onset dementia?

I needed to make some changes but I'm moving forward with the idea of separating the chassis (starter) batteries and the house batteries. At this point I have two chassis batteries separated by a switch using starter type batteries - not deep-cell. I have one deep-cell battery for the house load but will probably add another at some point.

I need to hack into the existing system, keep the parts that work and remove the parts that don't. The main access point is in the kitchen area above the sink (above) and consists of the 120VAC entry and the 120 to 12V converter with a switch that toggles the battery and the converter to the 12V loads consisting of lights, water pump, etc.

I'm taking it slow but steady, adding parts daily.

A Funny Thing Happened

It crowed.

That was the beginning.

Lucky D. Clucky was supposed to be a she. Soft-spoken. Egg-laying. Hen-like in all the traditional ways.

But Lucky crowed. And kept crowing.

So. Not a hen.

Ah well. It was never really about the eggs. And definitely not about the meat—I’m not the killing type. No, this was always about communion. About sharing space with the endlessly strange and varied citizens of the animal kingdom.

But Lucky has had a rough go of it lately.

I started with four chickens, raised from chicks right there in my living room. A tight little crew. I gave one away—contractual obligation—and the remaining three seemed to be getting along just fine.

Then the fire came.

We were evacuated. The neighborhoods turned ghost-quiet. And in that stillness, the predators emerged. With no one home to lock the chickens in at night, two of them didn’t make it.

Sacrificed to the hunger of the wild.

That part still stings.

Somehow, Lucky survived. Shaken, but alive. I heard him one night a few weeks back—distressed, clearly not okay—and I brought him inside. Just like that, he was back in the living room.

He now enters through the window, like some eccentric boarder in a folktale. At first I had to train him. Now there are stairs.

In at dusk. Out in the morning. Rinse, repeat.

He seems okay. I don’t know if he gets lonely. Hard to say with chickens. But he seems content enough. He gets along with the dog, the cat, the rabbit. Especially the rabbit. They nap near each other sometimes, which feels like some small quiet victory.

Another book down. The Quants.

 I just finished this one.

Really fascinating story well written.

Boxed In: a look at recursion

"To understand recursion, you must understand recursion."

(How I love this.)

I made one of my little generative art animations with the idea of seeing what kind of effect I could get from recursively drawing some simple shape or shapes over and over again with small changes. 

I used just a box and a circle and came up with this:

While coding, this happens when a function being defined is applied within it's own definition, like this:

function makeBox(x,y,s)
  {
    translate(x,y);
    rotate(s/10+(col/2)%360);
    blah, blah, blah
      {
         makeBox(x+s/4, y, s/2);
         makeBox(x-s/4, y, s/2);
         makeBox(x, y+s/4, s/2);
      }
  }

In this case the function makeBox calls itself within it's own definition. This can be very powerful. And so much fun!

I hope you enjoy.

Latest Images

This:

and this:

based on this:

I started with the above image I generated as a part of my first foray into mandalas. The top image takes the lower one as a reference and generates random points of various sizes, sampling the reference image's color. Same for the middle image, except it paints with short strokes instead of points.