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My idea of mounting a digital drum controller on a stationary bike didn’t make much of a splash when I recently posted it on Make: Projects, but for me, at least, it has been absolutely revolutionary. It makes the 30-45 minutes I spend on the bike five days a week, now, not only bearable, but actually enjoyable. It’s a step beyond “gamification” of the workout chore (or “exergaming,” if you like), because I feel like I’m not just jumping through arbitrary hoops in a game to distract myself—I’m learning an instrument. Or re-learning, anyway. I was a pretty fair drummer, in high school, and it feels great to be dusting off those skills again. And I just upgraded it, a bit. The Yamaha DR-55c controller comes with two 1/4″ phono plugs for foot switches for “hi-hat” and “bass drum” pedals. The box included one such switch, and there’s a second port for an aftermarket add-on. Unlike the dynamically-sensitive percussion pads on the controller itself, the foot switches are simple momentary switches that do not respond with louder or softer sounds depending on how hard you hit them. Because I’m using my feet to operate the bike pedals, however, they are not free to operate foot-switches, so I wired up a simple arcade cabinet momentary switch (the odd member of the pair I bought for my secret garage door opener project) to a 1/4″ phono plug and mounted it inside a screw-top black plastic vitamin powder container. There’s a “large” size broom clip on the bottom of the container, as well, which secures it to the bike’s handlebar. I went all out and installed a rubber grommet on the cord exit hole, too. In practice, the arcade cabinet button is no more difficult to strike than the pads themselves, and the static volume isn’t much of an issue since the dynamic sensitivity on the pads is not all that great to begin with, especially when you’re playing without drumsticks (as I do) using the DD-55c’s “hand percussion” setting. It is mechanically much louder than the pads, however, due to the button’s “clicking” action, which detracts the system’s “quiet mode” operation: Playing just on the pads, wearing headphones, I can exercise at 3AM and not disturb anyone in the house, rocking out all the while. Add in the arcade cabinet button on the pedal trigger switch, though, and the noise could start to be a problem. Still, it’s worked out well enough that I will probably build another one ,to almost exactly the same plan, to mount on the left handlebar. Just need to score another arcade cabinet button. Since I’ll probably have to buy one, this time, I may opt for a pair, and look for buttons that are specifically designed to operate quietly.
I tend to share the trendy distaste for Wal-Mart and all things Wal-Mart, but this orange bike-shaped bike rack I just saw outside store #2133 here in Austin is certainly a win. I like anything orange or yellow for visibility, and it’s another good example of functional pseudomorphism, where a thing looks like something what-it-ain’t in order to unambiguously identify its function. I’m beginning to learn something about my own taste, which is that I look for functional excuses/justifications for features that are also childishly delightful, like a bright orange paint job or a shape that imitates a familiar form.
A nice surprise on the kitchen counter, this morning, from my roommate Jennifer. We talk about “Platonic” relationships, a lot, but sometimes forget the connotation: “Ideal.” In a Platonic relationship, neither party really needs anything of the other, and chooses the association for its own sake. Little or no diplomacy is required, whereas with more “serious” relationships, sooner or later, both sides have to set up embassies and start thinking like ambassadors. On Friday, I finished a book. It’s a tragically rare occurrence, these days. Even more unusually, it was a novel—Richard Matheson’s The Beardless Warriors, an autobiographical bildungsroman set among U.S. infantryman fighting the Second World War in Europe. The main character, Hackermeyer, is one of several “beardless” teenage soldiers in an infantry squad under thirty-something Sergeant Cooley, who becomes, inevitably, a father figure to the “kids” that fight and die under his command. “Hack,” whose own family background is abusive and neglectful, forms a very close bond with Sergeant Cooley, and essentially the novel is about Hack finally coming to understand love and familial belonging against the horrific backdrop of war. It’s a cliché, now, though I don’t really know enough about the genre to say whether that arc was quite so tired when The Beardless Warriors was originally published. Cliché or no, it works for me, and I did enjoy the book. While reading, I assumed that it was Matheson’s first novel, and that he’d written it shortly after coming back from his own tour in Europe, sometime in the late ’40s. Though that may well be the case, The Beardless Warriors was not actually published until 1960. But, in any case, it reads like a first novel, to me. The prose, pacing, and dialogue are often clunky, though there are undoubtedly some very effective—almost brilliant—moments. As an example of the former, here’s an especially clumsy paragraph from near the end of the book, during the climatic assault on Saarbach:
Here’s how I would edit/rewrite it:
Some of these edits could be boiled down to stylistic differences, but I don’t think there’s any denying that some of Matheson’s original prose is just sloppy. He favors a “brutalistic,” vaguely Hemingwayesque style, but that doesn’t justify awkward, inefficient, wordy phrases like “He noticed Tremont kept his eyes on Guthrie.” The entire novel is told from Hackermeyer’s POV, after all, so “He noticed” is pretty much always going to be unnecessary verbiage. It’s no more necessary to mention Hack’s “noticing” Tremont keeping his eyes on Guthrie than it is later, in the same paragraph, to say “he noticed Guthrie started firing at the building” or, “he noticed that Tremont lay shivering in the snow.” Here’s another paragraph, from the same scene, that could’ve benefited from some attentive editing:
My version:
Again, stylistic choices. But consider, particularly, Matheson’s evocative but awkwardly-phrases simile: “Hackermeyer trembled, helpless, cleaving to the mud as if gravity had lost its hold and he resisted being sucked into the sky.” First, the homonym verb “cleaving” coming right on the heels of the noun “cleaver” (just used to describe the flying shrapnel), is repetitious, as is the reappearance of “mud,” which is both the object to which Hackermeyer clings and the substance “jetted” into the air two sentences before. Then there’s the mess at the end: “as if gravity had lost its hold and he resisted being sucked into the sky.” It is a nice image, but there has to be a more eloquent way of expressing it. I also marked some passages that I liked. This exchange between Hackermeyer and “sad clown” squad-mate Guthrie actually works pretty well, for me, unlike much of Guthrie’s humor, which tends to fall flat (though very often, in fairness, it is supposed to):
He was alarmed. Comic understatement for the win. Here’s another good Guthrie moment:
During the assault on Saarbach, Hackermeyer and his squad fight their way past a statue of Christ on the Cross that had earlier been identified to them, during operational planning, as a tactical landmark. In fact, Matheson does not belabor the symbol of Christ crucified amongst the desolation and horror of war, which is all for the best, as far as I am concerned, because it is not exactly subtle. The image only stuck in my mind because it reminded me of an essentially identical scene in Samuel Fuller’s 1980 movie The Big Red One, which is also an autobiographical story of infantry combat in WWII Europe. In Fuller’s movie, the crucifixion image is rather overplayed, I think, but at least visually it is quite striking: The wood of Christ’s face is bleached, weathered, and cracked, and is covered with crawling red ants. Matheson also explicitly mentions the “weather-worn face and body on the cross,” and I was led to wonder if A) the similar imagery is purely coincidental B) the crucifix in The Big Red One was borrowed, consciously or not, from Matheson’s chronologically earler work, or C) both Matheson and Fuller independently encountered a weatherbeaten statue of Christ crucified while they were actually on the ground, in combat, in Europe, and the experience made such an impression on each of them that it later, independently, found its way into each man’s art. Case (C), of course, is the most interesting, and if I had time for idle scholarship I think it’d be fun to try to run down an answer. Did they both see the same statue? Is it still standing? Anyway. I’m going on to read more Matheson, I think. The same friend who recommended The Beardless Warriors just loaned me her copy of Matheson’s short story collection Duel. Will be interesting to compare.
Though skeptical, I decided to experiment with adding a facial exercise routine to my regimen back in November, and took a “before” picture (left), so I could compare later on and decide if it was worth keeping up with. The photo on the right was taken 60 calendar days later, having done the exercises five days out of every seven, about ten minutes each morning and evening, during the intervening time. There’s no doubt my face looks stronger and better defined, but I would not characterize it as “younger.” In fact, I’d say it’s aged me, most noticeably by deepening my “smile lines.” Of course, Xmas happened between the first picture and the last, and it at least feels like I do 80% of my aging, each year, over the holidays.
This is the first full print off my MakerGear Mosaic FFF 3D printer. A shot glass is the traditional “maiden” print among RepRappers—it’s a quick, simple object and the libation-tightness of the finished print is a pretty good test/demonstration of the printer’s abilities. In fact, the traditional file is minimug.stl, which I elected to forego in favor of this slightly larger and more impressive shot glass, which is Thing #11944 from user raldrich. It is teardrop-shaped in honor of the RepRap project logo. It was printed from red 1.75mm polylactic acid (PLA) filament on the evening of Tuesday, January 17, at a small party my friends and I had to celebrate the event. We each independently verified its Glenfiddich-tightness. The traditional playing of Daft Punk’s Human After All album, during the printing, was also observed. The rhytmic, protomusical whines of the Cartesian robot’s stepper motors are a good complement to most Daft Punk songs.
Remember the ongoing weird similarities between myself and my teenage neighbor? Yeah. His mom recently found the picture of me, above and to right, taken Halloween 2009, on my old site, and immediately e-mailed me the picture of him, to left, taken Halloween 2011. Kinda uncanny, at this point.
In the house next door is a family of four—a married man and woman and their teenage son and daughter. I met the woman shortly after moving in, at the mailbox, and when she heard I worked for MAKE, she started talking about her son, who builds exotically-shaped Rubik’s cube-type twisting puzzles and sells them to enthusiasts around the world. I wrote a blog post about him shortly thereafter. A few weeks later, while working outside of a morning, I heard a familiar sound over the fence in their backyard: a light metallic whang, repeating three times, with ten seconds or so between each, and then 30 or 45 before the group of three repeated. I knew the sound, but it took me a minute to reach back into memories of my own adolescence and place it: someone was practicing with throwing knives. I stuck my head over the fence and said hello. The boy brought over his throwing knives—three of them, handmade from pieces of an old circular sawblade. I still have my own set (though mine were bought, rather than made) from when I was almost exactly the same age, doing almost exactly the same thing. The boy and I struck up a friendship, and since that time he has rung my doorbell once or twice a week. And each time he brings over something he’s made, to show off. That, and questions: How would I make this? How would I find out about this? Where would I get this? And the uncanny similarities between him and me, when I was his age, keep piling up. I’ve taken lately to passing down some of my unfinished projects to him, some of my venerable and treasured junk. Around the beginning of December, I made a gift of two old blades left over when I dismantled a pair of cheap display swords, a few years back, to get at some decorative castings on their handles. He fit one of the blades with a full tang wooden handle and kept for himself. The other he fit with this elaborate guard and hand shield he welded up from steel wire. Then he mounted it on a piece of oak, decorated with his own pyrography, and presented it to me as a Xmas present. The blade is a bit over two feet long, from pommel to tip, and the display board a bit under that. It’s probably not actually usable, but that is hardly the point. I hung it up on my office wall and intend to display it there, or someplace equally proud, for a very long time. |
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