From The Family

And it?s about time Spring decided to show its face. Sam needed to splash around in some puddles. Very necessary. Those poor frog boots might be dry next week some time. Shouldn't prevent more puddle slogging though.

Time for all of us Minnesotans to head out of our caves and see each other again. Was good to actually talk to our neighbors for the first time in months.

Next up... Summer! And mosquitos.

Saturday was a crazy day. There was Will's birthday party, umm... Okay, truth be told that was all there was. By myself on daddy duty it was about all I could handle trying to get everyone up from naps and out the door only 15 minutes late.

Third birthday parties are hilarious in my opinion. In this instance Spiderman was attending. Most of the other kids we a bit weary of him, but not Sam. He monopolized the poor guy's time. Following him around, telling him Sam stories, giving him high fives, webbing out (as seen in photo). After Spidey was allowed to leave the benign clutches of Sinister Sam we had some cake and headed for the home front.

Got home, grilled up some cheese sandwiches which of course produces the coveted grilled cheese. Cut one into quarters, slid it in front of Sam, and back to cutting the other into tiny pieces for Nora. Out of the corner of my eye I catch Sam staring into a piece of the sandwich. I ask the standard parental question What do you see buddy to which I expected the normal cheese or I dunno type response. Baby Jesus he said, and with that picked up the piece and proceeded to munch it down. After doubling over with laughter it took me a good 30 seconds before I was able to stand up straight again. It still cracks me up to even think about it. Where did that come from? I didn't hear anyone discussing baby Jesus at the party. The last time we really talked about it with Sam was Christmas and the Nativity was out. If I had my wits about me I guess I should have taken a picture for later inspection. In the end it didn't matter because Sam was eating that very piece and by the time I recovered and could ask the follow up question You saw baby Jesus in your grilled cheese his only response was Mmmm, tastes good with a mouth full of cheese.

Shopping

• http://www.classicalguitarnet.com/ The guy in Boone Iowa. Some really fine guitars.
• http://www.classicalguitarstore.com: Little store in philidelphia. Another I'd like to check out when on the east coast some day.
• http://www.gspguitar.com/ - GSP has quite a bit of sheet music that is not found elsewhere.
• http://www.guitaraffecs.com/ - Some cool stuff.
• http://www.guitars-int.com/ - Popular one on the internet. In Ohio I think. Always has lots of nice guitars
• http://www.kirkpatrickguitar.com/ - Place near mom and dad's work. Would really like to hit it up sometime when we're out there.
• http://www.lamancha.com/
• http://www.luthiermusic.com/ - Odd little site I found wandering around the web.
• http://www.rosewoodguitar.com/classic.html - Rosewood Guitar. Not sure how much they update their site. Have some interesting guitars once in a while.
• http://www.sprucetreemusic.com/guitars.html - Not too far away from Minneapolis. Good to keep an eye on.
• http://www.theguitarsalon.com/
• http://www.thepodium.com/ - Local guitar store near the University of Minnesota campus. Trying to sell a guitar there right now.
• http://www.vintage-instruments.com/navigate/catidx5.htm - Some crazy vintage intruments.
• http://www.zavaletas-guitarras.com/ - Dealer in Handmade guitars. Some beautiful ones for sure.

Manufacturers and Luthiers

• http://www.guitarrasramirez.com/english/inicioEn.html - The english site for Ramirez guitars.
• http://www.rebrune.com/main.html - Luthier
• was - http://home.mn.rr.com/harringtonguitar/index.htm Harrington Guitars - This is the guitar I have now. Looks like this site has moved again, or maybe is just gone altogether
• Classical Guitars by Fritz Mueller. He's big into double tops.
• German Vazquez Rubio
• Johnny Walker Classical guitars. Says he's tried walnut and it worked pretty well. Always wondered about that. Fun to keep an eye on.

Community Sites

• http://www.delcamp.net/ - Good forums and some sheet music.
• http://www.partiture.org/menu.html - some good sheet music.
• http://dirk.meineke.free.fr/classical.html - interesting idea
• http://icking-music-archive.org/ByComposer.php - some sheet music for more than just the GUITAR
• http://www.guitaralive.org/playlist.html - Classical guitar alive! playlists. And their site in general. Someday I will actually listen to some of this stuff. Looks really interesting.
• http://youtube.com/group/ClassicalGuitar - You tube's classical guitar group. Some really great videos.
• http://www.acousticguitar.com/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum;f=7Classical corner over at Acoustic Guitar's web site.

Randoms

Much to know and learn on the old classical guitar. Going to use this little section for documenting all the fun. What songs I would like to learn or have already been working on can be found in ClassicalGuitarRepertoire. After I get to a certain point I would like to get all the songs I know recorded here. Been checking out a lot of stuff on ClassicalGuitarBuilding so I will start that page. There is a new forum at http://www.digitalguitararchive.com/index.php that is brand new. Should keep an eye on it. Oasis is the name of that cool humidifier that stringsbymail has. Would like to try one or more of those some day.

Finding sheet music online

• http://www.muslib.se/ebibliotek/boije/indexeng.htm - Cool public archive of old guitar music.
• http://gallarda.narod.ru/ - This place has just about every piece of music I've gone to look for plus some of them are Segovia transcriptions which is cool in it's own right. Keep finding more and more resources online, so we should now have a ClassicalGuitarMusic page.
• http://www.sheetmusicarchive.net/ - Lots of original scores. Who's up for transcribing?
• Free sheet music on CreativeGuitar.org - Quite the collection from around the internet.

Jazz thoughts

Thinking if I ever start playing more serious jazz on the classical one of these http://www.godinguitars.com/godinwhatsnewp.htm might be just the ticket. Something to think about. There was a write-up on them in one of the recent GuitArt magazines. Sound like a really cool guitar.

Guitar Tone - Spruce v. Cedar

Where did I find this?
Question: I would appreciate some guidance on whether to choose cedar or spruce as a top wood. Jeannouel van Leeuwen, Netherlands Antilles--July 1998.
Answer: A full account of the difference between these woods is not easy to put into words, but let's give it a try. An important luthiery consideration when using these woods is that cedar is generally lower and density and has a little higher stiffness/weight ratio than spruce. Cedar typically produces a sound which is warm and "Spanish." Spruce is more likely to produce clarity and a larger tonal palette. Cedar guitars are usually louder up close, although some spruce guitars (but not all!) project better from a concert stage than might be expected in an up-close comparison with a cedar-top. Opinion varies as to why this might be so; it is my conviction that the primary physical variable is fullness in the overtone structure of the treble notes, e.g. the upper partials. (The human ear treats partials as additive, which can make a musical instrument sound louder than a decibel reading recorded electronically might suggest.)

I absolutely love the hair.
It cracks me up, so I had to share.

Too many children's books these days,
Must get my mind out of this haze.

Had the terrible duty of watching the kids for a day, so we went down to the Bass Ponds. It is part of the Minnesota Valley Wildlife Refuge which has a gorgeous set of trails down by the Minnesota River. Zoe enjoys walks down there several times a week with me, so I thought the kiddos might enjoy as well. Indeed! There may be more rocks in the river than on the trail at this point thanks to a strong armed Sam.

It was a beautiful day.

Once upon a time this web site had comments. Most likely when it was cobbled together in the form of a bunch of C++ cgi scripts. Those were the days! I ran across the code in one of my archives a few months ago and couldn't begin to comprehend what I had written.

I have to admit it is hilarious to go back and read about all the frameworks and languages I've tried over the years (2002 Really?!?). I've migrated so many times I'm honestly not sure what happened to any of the old comments. Probably ended up in some archive with the picture database I had created years before flickr and picasa were around. Do I sound old or what?

And here in the present again it's time to give it another go. The changes have been in place in my mercurial repository for almost a year. Not sure what the hold up was? The most likely answer: Life. After looking back at some of the really old posts I realized how fun it is to have some insight into what was going on and what was important enough to write about. I wish I had done more! I'm hoping to change that going forward. And the more I do it the easier it will become (and hopefully better).

Not much for technical details here. Used the built-in django comments framework which turned out to be quite simple. Still some rough edges to be worked out, but it is a start. Release and iterate right? My templates are already a mess after a nice clean start a few months ago.

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function shrinkpdf {
    mv "${1}" "${1}.tmp" && gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH \
	-dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook -sOutputFile="${1}" "${1}.tmp" && rm "${1}.tmp"
}

Before shrinking 7.7M 8057822 Jul 14 15:45 sc0070af27.pdf
Then ran:
shrinkpdf sc0070af27.pdf
After shrinking 1.2M 1294394 Jul 30 07:15 sc0070af27.pdf

Kate snapped a great picture of Nora and me the other day in the park. Had to share because it turned out so cute. Our little Fremen with her blue eyes just cracks me up. Hope it makes everyone smile.

In order to verify the functionality of my web log I would like to document the following:

• Changing the belt on your bug couldn't be easier. Don't blink.
• Flight of the Conchords: if you've never seen them check out a few of these
  • Business Time
  • Hiphopopotamus vs Rhymenocerous
  • Frodo - Don't Wear the Ring (of course)
• Crazy Biking by Danny MacAskill
• Star Wars Status Updates looks like some forum comments from your favorite SW characters

Once every ten years or so I archive some mail and ran across this gem. Like most email funnies I have no idea of the source. Received from an old cow-orker circa 1998.

Things I've Learned from My Children (Honest and No Kidding) -- an anonymous mother

• There is no such thing as child-proofing your house.
• If you spray hair spray on dust bunnies and run over them with roller blades, they can ignite.
• A 4 year-old's voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.
• If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42 pound boy wearing pound puppy underwear and a superman cape.
• It is strong enough however to spread paint on all four walls of a 20 by 20 foot room.
• Baseballs make marks on ceilings.
• You should not throw baseballs up when the ceiling fan is on.
• When using the ceiling fan as a bat you have to throw the ball up a few times before you get a hit.
• A ceiling fan can hit a baseball a long way.
• The glass in windows (even double pane) doesn't stop a baseball hit by a ceiling fan.
• When you hear the toilet flush and the words Uh-oh, it's already too late.
• Brake fluid mixed with Clorox makes smoke, and lots of it.
• A six year old can start a fire with a flint rock even though a 36 year old man says they can only do it in the movies.
• A magnifying glass can start a fire even on an overcast day.
• If you use a waterbed as home plate while wearing baseball shoes it does not leak-it explodes.
• A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2000 sq foot house 4 inches deep.
• Legos will pass through the digestive tract of a four year old.
• Duplos will not.
• Play Dough and Microwave should never be used in the same sentence.
• Super glue is forever.
• McGyver can teach us many things we don't want to know.
• Ditto Tarzan.
• No matter how much Jell-O you put in a swimming pool you still can't walk on water.
• Pool filters do not like Jell-O.
• VCR's do not eject PB&J sandwiches even though TV commercials show they do.
• Garbage bags do not make good parachutes.
• Marbles in gas tanks make lots of noise when driving.
• You probably do not want to know what that odor is.
• Always look in the oven before you turn it on.
• Plastic toys do not like ovens.
• The fire department in San Diego has at least a 5 minute response time.
• The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make Earth worms dizzy.
• It will however make cats dizzy.
• Cats throw up twice their body weight when dizzy.

Lately Sam has taken to the old digital camera. Canon super-pure-ultra-shot something or the other. What I find interesting is seeing the outcome of all the snapping. The perspective is truly unique.

This is one of those OMG why didn't I know this before moments. Been developing python for how many years?

Was slapping some doctests into an ancient library written years ago and searched for... I don't even remember. But ran across this little gem about %doctest_mode in iPython

http://renesd.blogspot.com/2009/08/ipython-and-doc-tests-cutting-and.html

Outrageously cool. Game changing. Life altering. Okay, at least outrageously cool.

For my couple of friends writing in python it's totally worth checking out.

Since it has already been hilarious to look back at the things I thought were cool in the past, I wanted to write up something about all the tools I find most useful today.