Big Trapeze

A year-and-a-half ago, I woke up Christmas morning to an acoustic guitar. This was my first guitar, meaning I’m only about twenty-years or more behind all the kids who received the same thing that year. I have a lot of catching up to do.

Since that time, I’ve bought the usual requisite of books any beginning guitarist would buy, including Guitars for Dummies, which I highly recommend. By now I know all the major chords, most of the minors, and even a few of the crazy Gadd9’s and F#m’s. My biggest problem is finding popular songs to play that are transcribed for newcomers like me.

There are many quality chord sites like Chordie.com (my previous favorite), Ulitmate-Guitar.com, and GuitarETab.com, but I finally found one suited just for me: PJ’s Guitar Chords. PJ has transcribed well over a thousand popular songs, and put them in chords that are easy for any beginning guitarist.

Just as an example, consider “The Scientist” by Coldplay. Most chord sites will have:

Dm           Bb                    F                        F9

Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry, you don't know how lovely you are

Where Dm, Bm, F, and F9 are fairly hard chords for beginning guitarists. PJ gives you another way to play it, and to my ear, it sounds just as great:

Em           C                     G                        G9

Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry, you don't know how lovely you are

Where Em, C, and G are three of the easiest chords on the guitar, even a non-guitarist could play the intro to “The Scientist” after 5 minutes study. My other favorite thing about this guitar chord site is that each song is formatted in plain-text, which means you can print out your favorites and not have to worry about chords jumping around the lyrics because HTML scrambled it on print (if you’ve tried to print from one of the other chord sites you know what I mean).

If you’re interested in more, check out PJ’s blog or jump straight to his chords at http://www.iol.ie/~murphypj.

For those of you having trouble knowing how to play certain chords, I always keep the guitar chords chart at 8notes.com handy.

“I don’t like the way it looks now.”

“It feels too bulky.”

These were the phrases I uttered when trying out different cases for my iPhone. Maybe it would’ve protected it from this:

On St. Patrick’s Day, my iPhone took a 4 foot tumble from a counter top to a concrete floor. To its credit–it still works perfectly. The touch screen itself has not been damaged, only the outer glass. It pinches, it slides, it texts, and otherwise works as new, but it has a deathly pall hiding its ingenious beauty. I’ve watched a YouTube disassembly video, ordered the requisite case-removal tool, and am waiting for a replacement glass from Hong Kong, hoping with everything that it fits.

I’ve dropped the iPhone a few times, I guess this was the last straw. I will definitely protect my next one (or repaired one) much better. Surgery video to come soon.

A few weeks back, eBay delivered a 1960’s typewriter to me. Finally, last night, I sat down to write.  I churned out 2 pages in about 2 hours, and am slowly realizing how long it will take to write a book. Normally, on a computer, I’m a very fast typer. But I’ve been on a computer for over 25 years. On this, it’s back to the old days–I have to punch the keys with more force than I would on a computer keyboard, so the two-finger peck is working best right now. The two hours weren’t all spent typing, it was a lot of contemplation, reading, and rereading as I tried to develop the story. There were a few moments where I whipped out a paragraph in a few minutes, but for the most part I’m being very deliberate with every word and every line.

There is something very beautiful about writing this way. For one, you’re forced to slow down.  I think of the words and the line, and by the time I punch a few letters, I’ve already thought of a better way to say something. When I finished a page, there was something very satisfying about actually removing the page and starting a new one. There are no power cords to trip over to erase your work–and its portable so I could work anywhere. There is no screen saver to flash or energy saver to dim the screen while you sit and think of what you want to say.

However, the two things I’ve found I miss the most are the red squiggly line for misspelled words, and of all things, global search. I found myself several times last night wanting to search for a word in the text to see if I had already used it. 

My first computer had a button (the “enter” button) that said “CR” for carriage-return. I now fully understand what a carriage return is, and I love getting to the end of a line and hearing it “ding!”  As for typos, I’m experimenting with corrective procedures now. The typewriter was sent to me with small rectangles of corrective tape, but I think I’ll use a fine-tip marker or the XXXXX method to cross-out words or lines I want to throw away.

It’s been a great start to a fun experiment,  I’ll post about it again later in the process, to see if I’m still having this much fun.

I know if you live someplace where it snows 3 months a year, you’re really sick of it. But being in Texas, we rarely see the stuff. That’s why I’m pretty pumped about this weeks’ gift of not one but TWO days of big, white, fluffy flakes. We probably had 12 inches of snow this week, and it wasn’t the usual Texas ice-snow pellets, it was the real deal.

I’ve only seen snow like this (here in Texas, anyway) one or two times in my life, so this is a very rare experience. Even rarer is the fact that our usually inept local weather team predicted AND nailed it both days. If this is global warming, I’m going out to look for my SUV today.

I’ve been going through a phase lately—a slump, you might call it. Maybe it’s a pre-midlife crisis. The resounding theme of this phase is that I’m really getting tired of modern technology. I love my Mac, I love being creative with programming and design, and I’m a gadget junkie—so this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me yet. But lately I’ve had a yearning to cut myself off from text-messages, IM’s, Facebook profiles, iPhone hacking, and all manner of voice- and e-mail, and just return to a few pieces of paper and pencil as my only outlet for creativity and communication.

Maybe this phase is happening because what I’m doing lately doesn’t fulfill me anymore. It got me thinking, what would fulfill me? What would make me happy? If you had unlimited money, unlimited time, and no other responsibilities, what would you do with your life and your time that would fulfill you and make you happy?

I’ve thought about this question for a few days now. Things like traveling the world or sailing sound great to me–they would be very fulfilling, but they don’t satisfy my need to be creative. And after many similar notions, I hit on one that really makes sense to me: writing. I can be as creative with a pen as I am with a program, and the very act of stringing words together in abnormal ways is very fulfilling to me. The funny thing is, I’m not a writer. I took one or two English courses in college, never a writing course, and I’m shamefully under-read. In the past few months I’ve begun reading some classic American authors like Thoreau (maybe Walden is where this whole anti-technology rant is coming from) and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. As for writing experience, I actually wrote a haiku that was published in USA Today a few years back, and have a notebook full of unfinished partials of others. For now, I think it best to continue with reading–because I do believe to be a good writer you must have the benefit of being a patient and well-read reader.

The unfortunate part is that most of us don’t have the unlimited money or time to chase the dreams that fulfill us best. I’ve got the responsibility of a family to raise, and writing poetry or short stories for my own satisfaction isn’t going to pay the bills anytime soon. I’ll have to rely on modern technology for that, so I won’t become the reclusive hermit just yet.

In the meantime, I’ll still read 37signals and turn out fun little web-apps, but if you know of an old school manual typewriter for sale, let me know.

Moo.com
I’ve only recently been introduced to the awesomeness of moo.com. If you need business cards, note cards, stickers, or just want to see a cool site, check out moo.com.

Stacks in Leopard
I realllly like Mac OS X Leopard’s Stacks. For the first time in my life, I’ve had an uncluttered desktop for more than a month straight. Normally, you could barely see the underlying wallpaper from all the folders, images icons, and downloads on my desktop. Stacks help me keep organized, and that’s tough to do.

Mike Huckabee
I’m not even voting Republican, but if I had to vote on that side of the fence, I’d vote for this guy. He’s a great speaker, seems earnest and sincere, and doesn’t quit. The “not quitting” thing is what I like the most–the dude knows he’s beat and he’s sticking it out. There’s just something cool about a never-say-die attitude.

Neil Diamond
He evokes fond memories of sitting in front of my dad’s big stereo speakers watching Love on the Rocks spin on his record player. And how can anyone (except Yankee fans) not love Sweet Caroline?

Subway Sandwich: Tuna
Tuna on wheat, no cheese, tomato, onion, parmesan, light mayo, and pepper.

America is abuzz with political noise, and it’s got me thinking about the candidates in terms of programming languages. In no particular order…

Hillary Clinton is Javascript.

Before I offend anyone that thinks I’m relegating her to such a small and insignificant language, think about Javascript. It’s loosely based off of a programming monster, Java (aka Bill Clinton). It’s the heart and soul of a lot of stuff you see on the web today, like AJAX or JQuery. A lot of those fancy things you love about sites like Flickr or Facebook are filled with Javascript. And, just like Javascript, she’s got the backing of a lot of big players and the pedigree of a respected and well-tested precursor.

Mitt Romney is C/C++.

Romney is one of the more well-funded candidates on the campaign trail. Like Romney, deep-pocketed Bell Labs’ C (and it’s compliment, C++), have features that are admired by many, but its colleagues seem to be growing tired of its rhetoric, and often team up against it much like the candidates at the New Hampshire debates teamed up against Romney. It’s losing ground to “web-based” languages like PHP and Ruby on Rails, but still holds a significance to many people.

John Edwards is ColdFusion.

Edwards has been around the block a couple of times, first as running mate with Al Gore, and now trending towards being a possible running mate again after trailing to bigger candidates in the last few primaries. ColdFusion is a very capable language, able to power even the largest of sites (hello, MySpace), but is typically seen as a runner-up to some of the bigger boys in the web-language field.

Mike Huckabee is PHP.

If only for the reason that Huckabee has Chuck Norris as his biggest “Hollywood” supporter, Huckabee is the tough and no-nonsense PHP. Like its conservative counterpart, PHP is known for providing a solid set of tools and having a vocal group of ardent supporters. It’s relatively extendable, easy to like, and performs well in public–just look at Facebook for PHP in action.

Fred Thompson is Flash.

If Flash had a counterpart in the political realm, it would be one-time senator and part-time actor Fred Thompson. Granted, Mr. Thompson himself isn’t all that flashy, but Hollywood is. And you can pair Flash’s ActionScript with Thompson’s turn in “action thrillers” like Die Hard 2 and The Hunt for Red October. Like Flash, Thompson has his niche but probably won’t provide much in terms of real relevance to the race, but he’s still useful and interesting nonetheless.

John McCain is Perl.

Perl is your dad’s pocket knife that’s been handed down for a few generations. It’s seen a lot, been in a few scrapes, and is always better for the wear. Perl as McCain is old, and slowly losing its effectiveness, but provides those who know how to use it a vast amount of influence and power. Aging well, it shows that no matter who or what steps forward as a new leader, Perl will always be around as a stalwart alternative.

Barak Obama is Ruby on Rails.

If you’ve been programming for anytime at all, you’ve heard about the Rails framework. And if you’ve payed any attention to politics lately, you’ve noticed Barak Obama as well. Obama’s splash came at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when the relative newcomer burst onto the scene as the keynote speaker, enamoring a section of voters that had become tired of the typical political monotony. Rails, too, was announced in 2004, and has quickly emerged as a leading contender because of its ease of use, youthful loyal following, and ability to combine old programing styles with newer streamlined methods. Who doesn’t like the apps from 37signals, which are done with RoR?

Rudy Giuliani is Visual Basic.

What is Giuliani–a conservative Democrat or liberal Republican? What is Visual Basic? A Windows-based application language or an internet VBScript language? I’ve always had a fondness for Basic, since it was my first programming language, and Visual Basic was always intriguing to me because I could easily build usable Windows apps. In a similar way, most of the nation developed a fondness for Giuliani during the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and he’s hoping that cozy fondness carries him all the way to the White House.

Dennis Kucinich is Smalltalk.

Look, I don’t know anything about Smalltalk, but this joke just writes itself.

I was about an hour outside of Dallas today on a relatively remote highway, when I passed this car. My apologies for the picture quality, it was taken with my iPhone while I was doing about 50 MPH. It’s a car fitted with a large antenna (possibly a camera, GPS, and more?) and a Google Maps logo. Inside, the driver was keeping one eye on the road, and one eye on a rather large and bulky laptop. I’m guessing Google is working on giving us even better map data (and going away from NAVTEQ?), and maybe even street level views. I’m not joking when I say that sounds like a fun job to me…

Update: Here’s an article from the Dallas Morning News talking about the appearance of these vehicles. This guy must’ve gotten lost

Five words: No Country For Old Men

I know there’s a lot of talk about global warming, environmentalism, and conservation. And I believe we, especially U.S. Americans, are doing a lot to make things worse. It’s particularly unsettling to watch chunks of ice the size of buildings melt away into the oceans, but I’ve noticed something that gives me a little hope: Earth is pretty resilient.

Three years ago we built a home on a half-acre in a wooded area. We cleared a few trees, but in those three years since, the forest is exacting its regvenge. We’ve lost several feet of property line along the edge of the forest due to underbrush, saplings, bushes, and general foliage that is regrowing in the same spots we cleared. It’s actually very amazing to see the rapid advancement of the forest as it grows back.

An even bigger example is shown below. For over 20 years, a mall stood on several acres in my hometown. Like a lot of its type, the mall eventually found itself outdated and useless, and was closed about 10 years ago. For years, the building stood vacant–and was finally razed a few years back. During those few years, the piles of rock and rubble have been slowly removed, and as I drove by yesterday I noticed that the place where the drab, ordinary buildings once stood now is becoming verdant patches of bushes and weeds. All this in 3 years, with none of our help in planting or reforestation. In a few more years, this could be a great location for a park.

This first picture is from Microsoft’s Terra Server, taken in 1995. You can make see cars parked outside the buildings. The second (from Google Maps) was taken in the fall of 2006. The twisted rubble of stone and metal have all been removed, only dirt and a few patches of green show. I took the final picture today, from ground level, to show the density of the foliage.

We’re becoming more and more aware of the damage we’re doing to our environment–and hopefully this awareness will help us curtail the destruction. But its good to know that while we’re all figuring out what to do to make things better, Earth just might be taking matters into its own hands.