It's easy to forget that the first week of June is still squarely in the springtime, not yet summer. As we became increasingly drenched today at a nearby campsite, I was reminded of this fact. The Pacific Northwest won't let you forget.

I didn't bring recording gear, so I just made this field recording with a cellphone, laying on a table, under a pop-up shelter while quietly reading a book.

((download))

These photos were taken about 3.5 hours and 10 miles apart:

Weather changes pretty quickly in PDX! We were still cold while volunteering at the community garden down in Milwaukie today, but it wasn't snowy. The drive home took much, much longer than it ever should have...but now we have a TON of snow.

In the fall of 2007 I was working at a job that took me out to the Portland suburbs. I sometimes commuted in a car with a coworker and sometimes I took public transit -- both seemed to take around 45-60 minutes each way, and neither was super pleasant. The trip on TriMet was fine (but slow) and I had to transfer twice which made the travel time less stable.

A colleague suggested that I should try commuting to save some time. I thought they were insane -- no way could riding a bike be faster than cars, busses, or trains, right? The idea was to ride from home to the Goose Hollow train stop and then take the train the rest of the way. I didn't own a bike at the time (and hadn't for more than 10 years!), but I was into experimenting with this commuting idea. I wasn't exactly a stranger to bike commuting (I rode a beach cruiser to the next town when I was in college in Texas), but this was going to be different. I found a viable old steel bike on Craigslist, paid $90 for it, and started bike commuting.

The bike was a mid 1970s Raleigh Record, 27" inch steel wheels, steel frame, original cotter-pin cranks, built in England. I was able to use the stamp on the bottom bracket shell to date it to 1975 (I think).

Even though I was not bike fit, I was able to make the 6.5 mile ride each way to the train station, and surprisingly, it did shave about 15 minutes in commute time each way. Mainly, it was a gazillion times more enjoyable!

It didn't take long to sink a few hundred dollars in upgrades (new cranks, ditched the steel wheels, cables, cassette) and start riding somewhat regularly. I stuck with the bike commuting and before long it was the main way I got to work most days. I think that bike helped me to get to 4 other jobs over the following years, and I also took it on quite a few group rides in the city.

Sadly, in the summer of 2016 (less than 10 years later), a strange creaking sound developed and it wasn't long before the steering started feeling funny. Somehow, and not suddenly, the front fork had fatigued and cracked. It's unknown if the fork failure helped cause it, but the downtube also had a noticeable (albeit slight) bend. The fork was destroyed and the frame was bent. I got a few opinions and the consensus was that it wasn't worth fixing....so it was time to let it go.

According to Strava, I clocked 3,462 miles on that bike. I suspect that the actual number was probably 50-60% higher.

I had already pulled most of the interesting parts off the bike, but last weekend I finished stripping the old bike down just to the frame. I chose to mount the frame on the ceiling of the workshop as some garbage decor and to remind myself of this classic bike that served me so well and got me back into bicycling.

It was a good bike!

Wow this long summer of 3 months of Pedalpalooza has really been fun and intense. I'm definitely more engaged and riding more, or at least it feels like it...but maybe it's just that things are spaced out more?

On a ride today, as is common when meeting new friends on rides with strangers, talk turned to past pedalpalooza rides. I didn't realize until later that I have actually done quite a few this season, including:

• Flanders ride - bunch of Ned Flanders cosplayers riding over the new bike overpass bridge on....FLANDERS street. Props to the project!
• Rocky Butte - climb to Rocky Butte at sunset. Lots of people, friends and new friends, lots of fun.
• Monster Ride - Lots of furry beasts and strange creatures. I took my demon son Jeffrey along for the trip. He frightened a few folks, and was welcomed by good company.
• Goth Ride - (the above pic, in the cemetery, before the start) - Music. Eyeliner. Darkness. <3
• Music for Airports - A bunch of awkward music geeks with unsynchronized versions of the seminal album playing on repeat while we circle the airport on bikes and try not to die.
• PBP not a Brevet - That was today. A longer and smaller ride, but really fun and challenging. I locked up my front wheel when the (metal) fender folded on the single-track descent on Rocky Butte, but somehow didn't puncture and didn't crash and managed to hand-bend the shit back enough to keep riding. Not boring at all! What a forearm workout on these Paul canti brakes. :) Never riding a trail again on purpose with these fucking fenders, that's for sure...

I suppose I've done a ton of other riding as well, like to friends birthday parties and to play disc golf once and to test some personal limits/things... but yeah, pedalpalooza has been super fun this year! I wonder (and secretly hope) that the multi-month format will maintain past covid...

Most of a month remains. Looking forward to even more rides!

This year, World Listening Day was on Saturday, July 18th, 2020. The global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and civil unrest (caused by social injustice) have dramatically altered the world. I thought it would be interesting to try and recreate the soundwalk I did last year in hopes of making a recording that could demonstrate a sonic contrast.

In order to be more faithful to the previous recording, I took the liberty of doing the soundwalk on Friday, one day before the actual official World Listening Day. I met up with my colleague Wes downtown at noon, and we wore masks and stayed outdoors and socially distant. There were a few surprises along the way.

First, the wind was considerably stronger than prior years. I decided to try the windscreens that came with my in-ear binaural microphones, but I wasn't sure how they might be impacting the recording volume (plus, it was just really quiet downtown). Once we were walking for a few minutes, the wind really wasn't that bad and I'm not entirely sure how necessary the windscreens were (although they probably helped). The recording did end up being quite quiet, so I applied a constant 15dB amplification, which I think sounds pretty good but maybe calls up the background hiss/noise floor a bit more than I'd have preferred.

Second, the route I chose last year winds along the Willamette river via a stretch of private greenway (shared use path). Sadly, this year the path was closed due to construction in parts and covid-19 concerns. We ended up with more sidewalk time than I had hoped, which probably makes contrasting with the prior year more difficult. The upside, however, is that we got to find and explore some interesting new spaces, like a parking lot under the Broadway bridge. Ultimately, this detour caused us to be out recording longer, and we captured closer to an hour (compared to 50 minutes last year)

During our walk, I found it harder than usual to concentrate on my intentional listening. The sights and sounds of the city seemed more alien than they normally would, and so my mind was easily distracted and my focus drifted. While this is normal for me (and probably for most) during soundwalks, I found the sense of distraction elevated from previous times (especially visual distraction). Every new bit of graffiti seen brought me back to thinking about our current crises. I tried a new technique of purposefully "softening my gaze", and I think it helped fair amount. Before today, I genuinely didn't know that this was an actual thing, let alone that it's leveraged in Buddhism, anxiety therapy, and yoga (drishti...which I have unknowingly used both in eagle pose and while track-standing on a bicycle).

This is a binaural recording, so good stereo headphones work best. Click here to visit the archive.org page for this recording or just listen to it here:

See you next year for WLD.

Earlier this year, I found some CDs of a minidisc recording of the 2005 PDX NoiseFest. I ripped the CDs and pulled together some pictures and video that I shot and put up an info/archive page and also put the .flac files up on archive.org.

If you've stumbled upon this and can help me identify any the unknown recordings and/or images, please email me.

Hope you enjoy!

Well, here we are again, another blog entry paying late respect to one of the greats.

I learned last week that Portland wrestling superstar Rip Oliver had recently passed away after battling heart disease.

As a child of the 80s in Oregon City, I grew up watching Portland wrestling and Tom Peterson, and "Playboy" Buddy Rose, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, Don Owen, Sandy Barr, and the whole bunch. Me and my friends used to love staying up late (while the parents all played cards) to watch the spectacle and hopefully make it to the main event. We were just like all the other young idiots who thought it was all real...and, to that young, impressionable, naive macho tween kid brain, it was fucking amazing! We lived for this shit. We cheered and yelled and recreated the action in our living rooms. We always begged to go to a match, but it never happened.

These wrestlers were ahead of their time. These mostly naked dudes were legend.

We used to just call Rip Oliver (and Buddy Rose etc) "the bad guys" or sometimes villains. Today we might call them "heels". It didn't matter, they were great! We'd always boo them and cheer for the "good guys", but the most important thing was always the show and the spectacle and the action. And they always delivered.

Back when junior high was a thing, I was on a (Greco-roman) wrestling team in the 'burbs, and Rip Oliver's son Lance was on my team. I think he might have been a year older, and I didn't really know him that well, but we were teammates. I was a skinny little dork, he was our crushing heavy (IIRC). I remember being star-struck when his dad RIP OLIVER would show up to our matches (and rarely our practices). I honestly felt conflicted, though, by having "the bad guy" rooting for our side, and giving us advice. I didn't think we were villians...and I wanted to be one of the good guys. I was an idiot.

In doing some late-nite nostalgia diving / web stalking, it's definitely clear that the sport of wrestling was important to Larry "Rip" Oliver and his family. From a couple of google searches, it seems like Lance might have even continued the tradition with his children...which I think is pretty amazing and brings me joy to see the bloodline live on.

RIP RIP OLIVER. 2020. Your legend is missed.

I've bicycled by Shirley's Tippy Canoe quite a few times, but only recently (last year or the year before?) stopped in with my cousin and brother for some bike-fueled brunch action.

The above picture was from today, and note the police tape. :(

The spot was fun! Had a wonderful divey roadside feel with rad outdoor bike-friendly seating near the river. The interior mood and decor were amazing and the bar was a real treasure. To get a sense of it and the menu, I guess you could look at this page from Guy Fieri's "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives". The portions were ridiculous and the drinks strong.

Sadly, I missed the news from early January...but Shirley's Tippy Canoe burned down completely due to a fire that started in the second story, the timing of which corresponds to the final day a temporary closing for "deep cleaning". Apparently it's suspicious, which sucks...but selfishly, for me, it also sucks finding out the hard way.

I'll miss not being able to stop in there while riding through scenic Troutdale. I snapped these photos today through the chain link fence that entirely surrounds the charred remains. It's gone. There's nothing really worth saving, although I think a few chotchkies might still be out back. There's a canoe still between the trees.

Bummer.

Like any other white-collar drone, "What did you get up to this weekend?" is the common smalltalk come Monday morning at the office. The usual response is something like "oh not too much, worked around the house" or something....which usually isn't complete nor accurate, but moves the situation along.

Well, this time, I'm prepared. What I do this weekend? Let's see...

• Started out the weekend strong by going to see this show with a couple friends. Captured By Robots has been on my radar for many many years, but I hadn't seen them live until this week. What a great idea and pretty excellent execution. My friend's friend is Ormus who opened with some heavy drums and sequenced synth leads backed by some rad realtime visuals.
• I took advantage of the break in the clouds (omg the sun was out!) to get on top of some dandelions in the yard and do some raking and general cleanup. This not a normal activity for mid January.
• Took a short nap. zzzzzz.
• Spent maybe 2 or 3 hours repairing the glass/digitizer on a broken iPad. A family member had broken theirs and it was in pretty bad shape -- multiple cracks going across the entire glass, and shards of glass near the top bezel were straight up gone/missing. I bought a replacement kit online for $28 and managed to do the surgery. It wasn't easy, but it also wasn't insanely complicated. The worst part was tracking down and removing all the glass shards and then cleaning up/removing the old adhesive (yes, the glass/digitizer is just glued into the metal bezel).
• Made a light dinner and hung out with the progeny while he did some of that online video gaming.
• I sorted/partitioned about 700 images for eventual use in cuspid (one of my software work-in-progress projects).
• Started Sunday off early with a quick trip to the market for dinner items before heading out on a 25 mile bike ride. I was a little worried about the weather since it started raining moderately during the first 10 minutes... but it quickly turned into sprinkles and mostly lifted. The weather was actually really really nice!
• Checked out Richard Stanley's new Lovecraftian horror masterpiece Color Out of Space at the Hollywood Theater. I absolutely fuckin loved it! I think it's pretty easily the best take on Lovecraft that I've seen on film.
• Made this pretty delicious kale/potato/sausage/mushroom soup.
• Jumped my mom's car battery for her
• Snuggled down with the kiddo to learn about the history of sub-hour speed running in Mario Odyssey
• Wrote the blog post you're reading now!

Something something idle hands...

Background: 5 years ago I decided to guide a soundwalk for World Listening Day.

5 years later, I decided to do it again.

My employer is awesome. We are encouraged as part of our happy employment and ongoing professional development to engage in "thrive time" -- essentially expansive work that may not be directly related to daily business deliverables, but work that makes us better, stronger, healthier, and happier. I offered this sound walk.

Here is the recording I made on World Listening Day in 2019 in Portland, OR. It's a binaural recording, so listening on headphones with little/no background sound works best.

Click the link above or listen to it here:

See you next year for WLD.

True story: This was the pin prompting keypad today at the local convenience store:

I bet there's a crazy story about how the hell that came to exist!

Not my writing..but I did find this scene above the Steele this evening...

Earlier this month at the end of a Dorkbot meeting, somebody had a chunk of dry ice. I put it into the empty popcorn bowl and recorded it.

Click the link above or listen to it here:

Enjoy!

So I took a staycation! And this time, it was voluntary!

People are often curious about staycations -- asking "What did you get up to? What did you get done?".
I'm not sure why -- maybe they're just nosy, but maybe it's because I always have so many projects in the air and I talk about my interests all the time? Maybe people just love the idea of a staycation. I dunno.

In any case...for my own fulfillment and sense of GSD, I decided to log some of the high points of my staycation. I feel pretty good about it overall. :)

In no real order:

• I made pretty great bánh mì for my home team. We had some pork chops that needed to be utilized, so I ended up marinading them in a lemongrass/fish sauce potion and quick-pickled some carrots and radishes and made sandwiches with the usual bánh mì gear. They turned out super delicious and I think I will never not marinade pork chops.

• Hung our xmas lights. Honestly, I probably only actually realize that it's winter and frigging cold when I have to take warm-up breaks during light hanging. Every. Single. Year.

• Updated the DEQ/registration on the 20-year old car (and the only car I've owned). Another stupid-yet-necessary yearly ritual. In the interest of staying positive and constant learning, I chatted with the DEQ guy and learned that failing vehicles will emit a code(s?) that vehicle owners then take to mechanics to do adjustments. That sounded awful...and I started pondering this later as I caused our car to emit a squeely sound as I hit the gas hard. Hmmm. #thisisfine

• Topped off the wiper fluid in the car. Yup. AMAZING! Not really, but since we park outside under a pine tree we end up using it a lot.

• Spent most of Tuesday volunteering with Futel to finish installing a public free payphone on NE Killingsworth (near 12th).
  You should check it out and call your mom (or the operator) and leave voicemail and listen to LPC. It looks like this:

• Made a pretty solid beef stew in the InstantPot. Isn't that like the first thing you're supposed to make? Well, meh, I finally did that...and I tossed in a ton of weird/variety mushrooms that I got in a pack. Between the thyme (maybe I used too much?) and the gross-ass-shrooms...I wasn't that into it...but it was hearty. Ok, it was pretty good.

• My comic backlog is pretty out of control, so I took some time to get caught up on a few things. Like Prism Stalker (which is amazing and beautiful) and Plastic (which has been sitting waiting for over a year). I don't read that much...but when I do, there are pictures...which I can enjoy while....

• LISTENING...to a backlog of sounds. So. Many. Podcasts (and radio shows). And sounds. And music. So much everything, always. After binging on Shit Town I also was stoked on this Negativland Vicki Bennett anniversay thing and some Institute of Spectra-Sonic Sound (which I wish was a snarfable podcast) and this recent :zoviet*france: live set and this radio show that LPC did with Negativland and the new Xiu Xiu video (I was stoked to learn that Thor drummed on the upcoming album) and probably several more things I'm forgetting...

• I attended a parent meeting about middle school safety/climate/culture...and sent emails, and read emails, and planned meetings. We also volunteered to walk around the middle school for 20 minutes to serve as recess monitors. While being notably different from elementary school, wasn't too crazy...just more fuckwords and clandestine cellphones. #dadstuff

• Got some sweet hot mud drywall repair done in our kitchen and stairs from Ruben Cortez Drywall, who was prompt, reasonable, and kinda excessively (funnily?) chatty.

• Attended HH with some friends/colleagues who all got fired from Adidas with me a year ago. Great people, good times, harsh nostalgia. ///

• Hung with my cousin and his partner in their new place which is only about 5 minutes by bike! We went late...and I have seriously not laughed that hard in so so many years. This.

• We stalked/hunted a wild xmas tree from a parking lot, much like our ancestors. It's a real beauty! At least that's what Stacy's FB feed says.

• After 10 years, I finally managed to stitch+sync audio with video for a show that I played on KBOO in May 2008. I got it uploaded to youtube and archive.org and maybe one day I'll finish reworking infiltrationlab.com and host it there too. Big thanks to earfeast (2) for getting a huge/rad 1080p recording before it was reasoanble. :)

• It's the holiday season, so in keeping with tradition, I watched Jason Eisner's "Treevenge". Nothing else can ever get me in the xmas spirit like that brutal short film.

• Went to a birthday party for my 1-year-old niece, who is frigging adorable. I got to rock her to sleep for a nap and watch her eat cheesecake. What a joy!

• I hand-sewed 3 patches on my kitchen apron. It always takes longer than I estimate, and my fingers are always cramped and sore after. It kinda looks like this:

I definitely had a different view/perspective/appreciation of the staycation after being laid off last year. I haven't been squarely project focused. I pace myself. I think thoughts and carve a mild trajectory, knowing full well that it's all subject to change at a moment's notice. I feel like a dad. I celebrate small victories and enjoy the variety and base excitement where I can find it.
Positivity. Regardless.

(image attribution: wellcome collection)

It must finally be fall...because the crows are in full effect in Portland.

I took a recording of them this evening in Waterfront Park. Enjoy!

(download)

I never want to take this view for granted. <3 pdx.

We've been back in pdx for about 16 years and I had not yet made it out to the Witch's Castle in Forest Park.

So I decided to do that on Monday.

I can't really say that I recommend it on a road bike, but it was mostly fine. I couldn't ride about half the trail, due to the rocky/steep/slippery/muddy nature of a trail in a park...but it was quite ok early on a Monday morning. Only passed about two other people on the trail (one hiker, one jogger).

The trail dumps you out on Cornell, and then you get to take the lane and bomb maybe 2 miles downhill, including 2 tunnels. I didn't know the area that well, so I was fully clenched and expecting to fall/die.

My device said I hit 40MPH. It was insane and also fun as hell...

Some interesting street art in Portland (not mine):

Sidewalk graffiti in PDX.

Fantastic noise show at S1 tonight.  Excellent sets all around!  I didn't capture much, but the MSHR set was absolutely amazing and I offer up a few clips:

The Church of Robotron has been working hard to find the mutant savior and to train members of the last human family. We had an opening on Wednesday, and my friend Zach edited together this fantastic video:

Here's a test video I shot of oscule's much improved jacob's ladder...it's terrifying:

If you have not yet been tested, please join us on First Thursday, October 2nd, 2014 at Diode Gallery for indoctrination, testing, anti-robot training, propaganda distribution, and some good old-fashioned street devival.

• More pictures/video from me.
• Pictures from Mike
• Pictures from Zach

So Open Source Bridge was a month ago, and I had been so bogged down and frazzled thinking about an planning for toorcamp 2014 that I didn't have a chance to collect my thoughts/bookmarks.  Until now.

So yeah, this is a series of thoughts random, poorly organized thoughts and bookmarked tabs from the conference.  In no particular order...

• Aaron Parecki gave a great talk on OAuth and "IndieAuth" and what it means to an open and free web.  There's this thing called web sign in, and they have a wiki on how to set it up.  I want to get this going on noisybox.net. There are a bunch of important reasons why this is mostly rad, but it can also allow you to do powerful things like using 3rd party tools...like...
• Quill.  Post content to your own website, securely, using a 3rd party tool.  Shows the power of these open interchange technologies, and formats...like...
• Micropub.  An API spec for doing time-based content posting (blogging, microblogging) with 3rd party tools, but to your own site, in a way that you are fully in control of.  It's kinda deep and complicated and gnar, but it's damn sure the best thing I've seen in this direction...
• Mesh technologies, especially after certain leaks, are hotter than ever.  They still don't live up to their expectations/misunderstandings yet, but have real potential for grassroots and emergency response situations.  The Mesh Potato seems like a fun device for experimentation, if not already antiquated.
• Not only are tons of nerds using Python for data analysis and visualization, but there are mature OSS product suites that help with this stuff.  Also data dorks often use iPython notebook to facilitate sharing and exchange of bad-assery.  Reminds me of a cool mashup of sketchpad.cc and etherpad and pastebin, but Python.
• The Internet Archive is still kicking ass.  They could stand to be more redundant (DR) though.  No seriously.  They also have detailed APIs (change the "details" in any item url to "metadata" for an example), an s3 compatible API, an rich suite of open source cli tools for interacting with their APIs.  They also run openlibrary.org, an amazing lending library for digital book content.
• I learned a little about Camlistore, which is a complex personal storage system.  I think the goal is to provide a framework into which you can store and index the stuff you create online (blogs, tweets, photos, recipes, fanfic? all the things?) and have it be robust and searchable and have many other advanced things.  I'm having a hard time trying to grok how it might fit into my own personal storage needs, but I sure do get the sentiment.  It also reminded me about Tahoe-LAFS and the interesting things that can be done with that.

I'm sure I've only captured a fraction of what I found fun/interesting/inspiring!  Until next year...

I know what I'm doing when the next economic downturn slices our faces in half!  I'm going to the pawn shop with all of my Hargadons!

For historical record:  First observed yesterday morning, around Broadway and 3rd (??). This is not a common morning route for me, but the sign was there and appeared fairly new.  I considered going back last night to pick it up but decided to give it a day or more to cook(?).  Tonight it's mine mine mine mine mine mine mine...

I want the g-voice number response team to be moar responsive, though I respect that my calls are hopefully just noise in the matrix.  From the support perspective, we should be OUTRAGED that it's this difficult to get actual cash money for your actual Banksy (original artwork).  Actually.

Please call the above sales line and let them know how upset you are that you can't actually sell your actually original Banksy.

I can't speak to the authenticity, but the Pad Kee Mao today from the "I Like Thai Food" cart (10th and Alder) was perfection.  Ingredients were amazing and fresh, flavors were balanced, and the heat was thru the roof!   Bonus points for no mushrooms (default!).  

I especially love their spice scale:

At the chef's recommendation I went with OMG.

I know I've had their food a few other times...but I can't ever remember it being this good.  Wow.

The view from the max station is probably just as iconic as the view from the front...but maybe 1000x worse.

Sadly, it seems that the bowling alley will be closing in May.

This is inspiring:  http://humansofpdx.com/

especially this:

http://humansofpdx.com/post/69692797209/ronald-spoke-softly-seeming-vulnerable-and-with

Reinvigorates my desire to do grassroots street recording, interviews, exploration.  I vowed to field record once a month.  Starting that again.

Seen this morning on the Broadway Bridge.

(presumably a jumper)

Tonight I...

• ...rode a bicycle across two bridges.
• ...was approached by a man and a woman (both strangers) and was told "we wish to join the cult".
• ...witnessed a man tapping a plastic pad connected to a tangle of circuits and wires and causing a drum sound to be played.
• ...saw a pair of multicolor robot eyeballs glowing on a tabletop
• ...witnessed a middle-aged man covered in a mass of glowing LEDs and EL wire.
• ...listened to the sound of a cello convolved with the impulse response from a wooden door.
• ...helped a woman field test a subversive, covert anti-television teddy bear implant prototype.
• ...watched a slot car adjust its speed in response to a computer's system load average.
• ...was in good company.

Dorkbot.

So my pal Mykle has done this EPIC event called LIGHTBAR to cheer people out of their seasonal affective disorder during February in Oregon. If you can't see the victory in building a GIANT and BRIGHT bamboo-event-party-dome, by hand, in the middle of winter, then you need to be poked (with sharp bamboo).

A few of us from dorkbot PDX have been peripherally involved, even contributing some works.

My friend Brian and I collaborated on a light-based project dubbed the RETINAL TATTOO GUN. The concept involved a series of bright flashes intended to [temporarily] imprint iconic imagery directly into the retina with strong after-images (ghosts).

We had a semi-working prototype up at LIGHTBAR last weekend before it collapsed(!!!) this week. This iteration of the retinal tattoo gun was a pretty big technical failure, but it was a fun project and we have a nice foundation going forward.

The circuit I designed/built had a series of issues, the worst of which was some form of ground bounce or inductive jibber jabber that caused all 8 flash channels to fire when any of them fired. Turns out that yeah, it's nontrivial to sequence a bunch of disposable camera flashes.

The day of installation we also found out that the repurposed viewmaster switch was connected in a way that caused the flashes to trigger when the advancer jobby was directly in front of the slide...so most of the light power was dampened. Whoops, doh!

We hope you enjoy the above image, and we hope to have something dangerous, compelling, and electrical to mount to your face in the near future.