The Mandelbear's Musings

Today was Colleen's birthday, so I arranged for N to meet me in her room at Prestige and do a little singing. So this was yet another unrecorded LgF concert, albeit a short one.

The set consisted of

• The Fox. This is our favorite way to start a non-themed concert. It's an actual traditional folksong; the idea being to surprise the audience with something completely off-the-wall for the next song. I have no idea where we learned it; it was long before we were a group.
• The October Country. This is the perfect follower for The Fox. It's one that the two of us co-wrote: N wrote the words, I wrote an initial melody (of which the first two verses and bridge survive almost intact), and then we woodshedded the heck out of it. It's always been one of Colleen's favorites.
• Lock-Keeper. This is a gorgeous song by Stan Rogers that was written to be sung by the lock-keeper. N's idea to make it a duet, with her as the sailor, worked brilliantly. (As with the other songs we don't have rights to, you'll have to click through to the official lyrics.)
• Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts. Colleen's favorite Bob Dylan song. Unlike some of his other long songs (Desolation Row, for example), this one actually has a plot. It's not currently in Lookingglass Folk's repertoire, but Steve has been singing it ever since hearing it on Joan Baez's album From Every Stage.
• The Mary Ellen Carter This song, by the late Stan Rogers, is a frequent set closer and the household's all-around "defiantly optimistic" spirit-raiser. We just wish we didn't need it quite so often.

The descriptions are here partly as a way of jump-starting the body text of the song-pages; some of those are still broken because of bugs. Those, however, aren't likely to get fixed tonight.

So, to make up for having missed a couple of weeks worth of Saturdays, you're getting a bonus this week.

After talking it over, Naomi and I decided that it'll be better -- or at least simpler -- to ask for forgiveness than permission, so the entire recording of Lookingglass Folk at Conflikt 2012 is now up on the web.

I don't like the way the guitar came out -- sorry about that; if I have time I'll try to process the other recording I got from hms42. But the performance? Yeah. That worked.

Please enjoy.

I don't think weekly updates are a good idea. This thing is a monstrosity.

The last week began with a serious case of what appeared to be the flu, and ended with a communication slow-motion trainwreck. But in between...

The Lookingglass Folk concert at Conflikt came off very well indeed. We nailed Kitchen Heroes, with Talis in the audience. The other concerts were excellent. I didn't have nearly enough time to catch up with people. I read most of The Introvert Advantage on the plane (both ways) and in various interstices.

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times? Something like that. I overslept most days (I really needed it), and thanks to the flu lost over 4 pounds over the course of the week. The concert was a real high, of a sort that I rarely get (and, I suppose, even more rarely notice). Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were incredibly overstressed and draining. Probably would have been less so if the hotel's internet connection had worth more than we paid for it. Which was nothing. And so it went.

I'm sorry the con is over -- I needed more. I'm glad the week is over -- I need a vacation, and a couple of weeks worth of writing tech reports sounds like just the thing.

OK, the write-up is pretty small. You might want to skip the notes, which are 160 lines long.

A pretty good day, despite a persistent feeling that I might be coming down with something like a cold. Oh, and feeling my heart pounding much of the late evening. Possibly due to the sudafed I had to take in order to breathe. Or possibly due to the difficulty breathing up to that point.

I did some practice in the morning, and took a 1.5mi walk. And did a fair amount at work. So on the whole it was a good day.

As for links, I have to give points to Time Machine Maintenance for the cool title, but the best is really Hackers plan space satellites to combat censorship (From BBC News by way of siliconshaman.) Cue Bound For Hackers' Heaven, please.

It was a very good weekend. Unexpectedly good -- I will confess to having been nervous about it. Perhaps justified, since I really didn't know what I'd be heading into, in the wake of Naomi and Callie's breakup. What I did know was that I'd be staying with Naomi and working on seeing whether it was worthwhile trying to perform at Conflikt as a new duo called Lookingglass Folk.

Naomi was more doubtful than I was, but in any case all our doubts were gone by Friday night. LgF is on its way.

Let me back up a little. Thursday morning I finished the last-minute packing, then went back to the old office in San Jose to do some catching up with my former coworkers, and go out to lunch with one of them. I found them celebrating -- the first "development and demo" kits ready to ship. So, Yay! A product that I worked on is out in the wild.

Travel notes:

I was traveling with Flame, my Ovation, rather than my travel guitar -- the plan was to leave it up in Seattle so that Talis could practice with it before the con. Uneventful -- Southwest is very musician-friendly -- and I discovered that both Minnie and Chami can fit nicely under a seat. Good to know.

This was also my first trip with the Belkin computer bag, which nestles nicely into the top 2/3 of Chami (the carry-on rolling backpack). My CPAP fills the bottom third, and there's room underneath (alongside the handle tube) for the other assorted electronics.

Naomi told me that the Belkin's name was BJ. More on that in Sunday's notes, if you're into that kind of thing.

I had breakfast with Callie on Friday morning, getting back while Naomi was still asleep. I think... no, probably better not to go there in a blog post. What I think about it doesn't matter much anyway.

I also met Naomi's new housemate, A, and her new (to her) car, Talis. I'm never quite sure how much about people to put in a post. Low self-confidence?

Tech notes:

This was also my first trip with Cygnus, my new Thinkpad X120e. It was fantastic! The keyboard is a dream to type on, especially compared to the Dell netbook I've been using for the last two years. I got quite a lot done, both re-editing lyrics for the new two-person scripting, and an assortment of other housekeeping tasks inspired by having to configure a new system.

At this point almost everything in my home directory is set up using git, making it easy to keep in sync and to work even when disconnected. At this point about the only things I really need the home system for are email and DW posts, and of course audio editing.

A pretty good day; productive if you consider a long group meeting and an interesting talk to be productive in the work sense. Also some singing and work on rescripting some of the songs in the Conflikt set.

No walk, of course.

The talk? WIMM Labs' Android watch. $299 for developer preview.

If you prefer music to gizmos, check out moonvoice's 'feel better' playlist.

My former band, Tempered Glass, has fallen apart in a shower of jagged shards. Naomi and I intend to keep making music together, and we're pleased to announce that we are now a duo called Lookingglass Folk. We are hoping to pull off our first concert at Conflikt next year, taking advantage of the year's worth of planning and hard work we put into it as Tempered Glass.

The next two months are going to be a wild ride for the two of us, but the concert we're putting together is going to be worth it. I'm going up the weekend after next for a rehearsal; we'll know then whether we can pull it off. If we do, it will be something special.

We'll see you at Conflikt. Give us a listen.