Observe The Banana

I have just had the displeasure of attending an (otherwise pleasant) orchestra performance which contained the 28 minutes of cacophony known as “Apotheosis of this Earth” by Karel Husa. This composition is meant to express the composers displeasure with the terrible way in which man was / is treating the planet earth. It included a number of unusual devices such as instruments playing quarter stepped notes to be deliberately out of tune with others instruments, and sections of the score which direct to play some unspecified notes for a certain amount of time. These devices seemed to be most often realized at high pitches and high volumes which frequently became physically painful to listen to. It did not help matters that it was being performed in a relatively small “recital hall” space and not a large concert hall which may have been better able to handle the intense sound levels. While I do appreciate the technical skill involved in composing 28 minutes of music while completely avoiding anything resembling conventional musical melodies and maintaining a continuously difficult listening experience for the audience for the entire time, as a member of the audience I found it to be a (not surprisingly) somewhat unpleasant experience. Before the music began I had high hopes for something interesting as they brought out 2 marimbas, 2 glockenspiel, 2 xylophones, 2 gongs, tom toms and a set of concert bells, but alas that was before I knew they would be used for evil instead of for good. I could see how this piece would make a very interesting soundtrack for a movie of some kind, maybe an avant-garde art film, or even creatively used for a space science fiction, but it was not well suited as a concert piece. One kind of cool thing I enjoyed was when sections of the orchestra would speak the words “this beautiful earth” in quiet breathy voices during lulls in the noise, but that might have also been due to the momentary pause in the loud cacophonous discord. The conductor stated that this was a piece you would not often hear in a concert, alas he apparently did understand why that was.

TechE Blog has a nice feature on robots what can skillfully play a musical instrument. I like the way the trumpet player and violin player move and sway to the music they are playing in a very life-like way. The percussion player is very cool in the way it improvises along with a human drummer. I am also impressed with the quality of music they produce as playing a musical instrument requires some subtle control. I wonder how the trumpet player changes its “mouth” to produce different notes from one valve position. I imagine iit won’t be long before we see a entire band or even orchestra made up entirely of robots.

TechEBlog » Feature: Robots That Can Skillfully Play a Musical Instrument

I love this little drumming robot called “Yellow Drum Machine”. I like reading about little “carpet rover” robots, and have done some experimenting with Lego Mindstorms in navigation and obstacle avoidance, but once you have created a little bot that can wander around and avoid things the next obvious question is “now what?” This creative individual answered that by making his bot not just avoid obstacles, but instead drum on them. It finds a suitable surface and plays a little riff with its two front drum sticks while recording what it hears. It then it plays back the riff in a loop and drums along adding in a little floor stick in the rear. Very creative idea. I can imagine a group of these communicating with some swarm behavior programming to find drummable surfaces and make music together. Watch the video and tap along….

Why? Well.. I was sitting thinking what I should do for my next robot, what it should do.. Listening to music.. making a rythm with some robot-parts.. Thought; “Hey, I will make a robot that drives around and plays on stuff”

Get more video and some good technical details at:
Yellow Drum Machine

Today is March 14, or 3/14 which is international Pi day. How will you celebrate it? We have settled on the old standby and made a pie. B made her amazing Kaluha cream pie actually – yum (Basically a dream whip and chocolate pudding pie with a splash of Kaluha for added flavor). There are lots of fun pi day things on the web, a good place to start is http://www.piday.org/ . Interestingly, March 14 also happens to be Albert Einstein’s birthday.
In our household, the number pi will always somehow be linked to the expression of perfection by our favorite robot in love:

We are very avid users of our local library. We go to the library at least once a week, frequently twice or more. We get loads of children’s books for our son the super reader, and adult fiction and non fiction, and sometimes videos (although less now that we Netflix). We love the easy inter-library loan system available to us and are always requesting things from other libraries in the system. We often have 20-30 items out at one time with 3 or 4 different due dates. With all this going on it would be impossible to keep track of when things were due without the help of the wonderful free service “Library Elf“. This service checks our library account online daily and sends us email notifying us of when books are due the following day, or when inter-library requests have arrived. You can configure how early it alerts you, or how often it emails. They have almost every major library system available, or (as in our case) they will be happy to add your local library system if it is a Polaris PowerPac (v3.2 or later) or a Dynix library system. Check them out!

From www.libraryelf.com:

Track your library books

Let Elf help you manage your library loans and holds

Avoid overdues with email alerts Check multiple library cards Track books, DVDs, CDs, videos, etc. Join for free

Who uses Elf?

• Anyone who wants to reduce overdues

• Families with children and lots of books

• Individuals with several library cards

• Anyone who requests a lot of holds

What’s delivered?

• Email and/or RSS alerts before items are due

• Email and/or RSS alerts on overdues and holds

• Consolidated list of yours or your family’s library loans and holds

• Cellphone text message alerts for holds (US and Canada)

• Real-time checking by browser

I decided to experiment with making some of my photographs available for sale on Imagekind. They offer high quality prints with optional framing. So far I have one gallery of Iceland pictures, and I planning to upload more soon. Check it out!

I just came across this anonymous quote

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it is about learning to dance in the rain.”

I like that. Dancing in the rain is a good thing.