Me and my PowerMac. Even after replacement, even after repairs, it has never quite behaved the way I want it to; lately it’s been unexpected crashes at inopportune moments. At this point I think it has to do with my particular mix of peripherals and software, and no small amount of gnome. Never enough to be a real bother, but enough to make me not quite trust it. Apple of course never made it easier, constantly coming out with new and shiny machines that promised to make my life better.

Yesterday, after an especially ill-timed crash of Logic (a lot of creativity can be packed in the 10 minutes between autosaves), I felt demoralized, and somehow thought that going to the Apple Store and drooling at new hardware I’d somehow get better. A moth to flame.

So again we traveled to the Apple Store, and gawked at the iMacs, the PowerMac, the Mac Minis. I took consolation that one day, after Hrothgar’s AppleCare expired, there would be a new machine from these displays waiting for me, and that day would be a good one.

It was then that I saw it, back in the “fire sale” section. Open boxed merchandise. iPod cases, floppy drives, and… what’s this? …a lone PowerMac G5. Floor model. Dual processors. 60% off. I looked at the price tag, and blinked. I looked again. I asked a sales associate to confirm. Yes, that’s right, sir. 60% off. We opened the box and I looked it over. Fully under warranty, everything there. Compared to the fully loaded dream Mac Mini I was pricing in my mind, this was only a bit more money for a whole lot more computer.

It was deal too good to pass up. After a brief pow-wow with Varia, which might have involved some bended knee pleading, money was exchanged. We loaded the G5 into the car and lugged it home.

I’ve named it Wyngarde, as it is a computer that’s definitely neither weak nor decadent. It still hasn’t sunk in that I’m on a new machine, that there’s a powerful and whisper quiet G5 under the desk; part of me is still ogling dream computers at the store, blissfully unaware that selfsame computer is in the room at this very moment.

I’m indulging in undirected tinkering, computation navel gazing, on the Mac this weekend. I’ve been thinking about the way I work, the tools that I use, and testing out some new ones.

Quicksilver has finally managed to unseat the reigning champion Launchbar as my application launcher etc. It’s come a long way since the last time I looked at it, and its Trigger mechanism also manages to replace the hotkey functionality of Keyboard Maestro. It does what I want, and as a bonus Quicksilver is a deep program (I’m fond of the way it can interact with the Finder). Sadly the documentation is shallow, so plumbing into the mysteries of advanced functionality will have to wait a while.

Recently it happened that an opportunity arose to do some nude modeling for a local artist, and I accepted. I would have done it for the experience alone, but there was a small amount of money involved. The artist was interested in, in his words, “what happened when human forms got squashed together,” so I was to be one of the forms; the other was Sue, who has modeled before, and who lined up the job.

When I was approached, I had a very clear image of what nude modeling was like; it turns out that it was nothing at all like what I’d expected, and it deprives me confidence of explaining the essence of experience. I can make the attempt, however.

I held a host of worries going into the experience. I was worried about lack of flexibility (I’ve inherited my mother’s joints) and my ability to hold a pose. I was worried about various biological issues. I prepared like I once prepared for concerts (back before I was performing every day, and concerts were special occasions), and as it often turns out, all fears were unfounded.

It was not a erotic event; the artist, looking at me, saw right through to my lines and the way I interacted with the light beaming through the attic windows. I wasn’t being objectified — I was being abstracted. Even the addition of another person didn’t change this. There was neither shame nor pride as we lay naked and entangled on the foam mat.

We posed. The artist loomed over his easel, swiftly painting with forceful brushstrokes; we’d chat as he worked, talking about our jobs or sarcastically commenting on what was playing on the radio. His work was highly abstract, to my eyes compelling, and as he finished each sketch he showed it to us (I had to often work to identify the “me” portion of the finished piece: “look, that’s my arm!”). The last hour was devoted to a single large canvas, and we held a pose for nearly an hour. My arms fell asleep.

At the end of the session we got dressed again. I recall clearly the moment, as I was dressing, as the expectations of my behavior shifted back to normal, that I suddenly felt ashamed to be naked. How strange and terrifying are the in-betweens! thought I in a Miltonic moment. And then it was over. Fully garbed, we exited the studio into the cold Cambridge afternoon.

Am I model now? No, but for three hours I was.

I’ve always had a thing for pocket watches. I’ve had a number in my life, but I’ve either lost them, or had them break, or both.

Chava knew this. She (the giver of the Orb) found this beautiful watch, and thinking me worthy of such a gift, sent it my way. Thank you so much!

Some hidden mammalian section of my mind is emerging, only to find that the world is cold and inhospitable, and wanting only return to hibernation. The rest of me is getting fed up with the snow and having to function regardless.

Work has started up again in earnest over the past few weeks as we prepare for the Valentine’s Day crush and beyond. The business aspect of things is still a bit befuddling at times, but I’m learning quickly. Trickiest of all (and one of the most satisfying portions of the job) is understanding the user mindset, which quite often is entirely the opposite of what I myself want. There’s a whole field of research built up around this question for a very good reason.

I’m nestled at the Diesel cafe, happily sipping an americano and watching winter continue in grand style outside. Where will all the snow go?

Last night Sue and I went to see The Incredibles. This was my third time seeing the film in the theaters, which is a mark of how taken I am with it. The stylized visual style appeals, and the music makes me giddy; it’s as good as anything Henry Mancini ever wrote.

Two nights ago I had a dream where I was ladling a viscous liquid out of a bucket onto a bed. As it landed on the bed, the liquid transformed into a light brown cloth, woven through with more colorful threads. Ladle by ladle I expanded the size of the cloth, and finally I had poured out a blanket.

Earlier this morning, I was wishing that I’d gotten the big snow shovel instead of the small, compact one. Despite it, I managed to free my car from its barrow of snow. These past months I’ve been thinking of my car more and more like a horse; it requires constant feeding, care, and stabling if it is to remain friendly and perform reliably.

I ordered two small stands to hold my horns, and the company sent me two boxes of stands, leaving me with ten extras. I’m sending them back, but for a few days I’m the undisputed king of superfluous french horn storage.

Contrary to all common sense, I bundled up and did a bit of walking today through our neighborhood as it recovered from the blizzard. It was a pedestrian’s dream; as cars were rare and the sidewalks were piled up with two or three feet of snow, people took to the streets in boots, snowshoes or skis. Armies of people were quietly digging out their cars from the snowdrifts, and the soft scraping of shovels provided a constant accompanied to the howling wind.

Woke up cold and inspired, and Landscape is what came out. It’s cold and slow, gently unfolding and then retracting, like the deep breath of winter, something of a lovechild between myself, Vangelis and the amazing John Luther Adams. I don’t know how that would work, really.

I’m worried. I’m feeling guilty about being worried, and guilty about feeling guilty. You can see where this is going, and it ain’t to Disneyworld. I’m sure it’ll pass in time.

I’ve been thinking this morning on how I listen, or more particularly, how I process what I hear. At times it seems like I’m in some “scientific method” dream, where I’m sitting in a small corner of my brain observing myself listen and then saying to myself “hmm, I could react one of three ways, given this input…” This is useful, to be sure, but it’s also annoying when a more direct experience is desired. (I wonder if this is an occupational hazard of software development). I’ll add it to ears into the pile of “things about myself I’d like to be able to turn off when its convenient.”

The last of the Christmas gifts was delivered; a Zojirushi rice cooker, Japanese. It’s a little pod of a device that can cook up to three cups of any kind rice to perfection and keep it warm for hours afterward. It even has a timer so that the rice can be set up in advance and ready just when dinner is. It’s a cute little rice robot.

It almost makes me sad that I slagged off on kitchen robots in the past. If all kitchen robots were like RiceBot, I could almost get used to the idea of a congregation of robots in the kitchen.

The last sentence, as I wrote it, made me wonder what the proper collective noun for robots would be. A clamour of robots? A click of robots?

Last September my iTunes Library chucked a fit and I had to start a new one. This didn’t hurt the music, but it did reset all the statistics; for those who don’t use it, iTunes keeps tabs on things like how many times you’ve played a song, when you added it to the collection, when was the last time you heard it, and so forth. This information is in fact useful, if for nothing else but to determine what I really listen to.

It’s not the size of your collection, it’s how you use it. I can imagine a literary analogue, where an application transparently records when a book was brought into the house, when it was read, and so forth. It might then be possible to tell which books are display books (like that complete set of Dickens on the mantle) and which books actually get read (like that pile of Danielle Steele hiding in the corner).

As of today, I’ve listened to approximately 45% of my library at least once, leaving around 6000 tracks waiting for the chance to vibrate for me. Not so much out of pretense (I know full well that my tastes when I choose usually run to more simplistic) but to know what’s in there, Tuesday morning, I set out on a great adventure.

When I was a kid, once a year the Houston classic rock station would dust off their collection and play the entire thing by song name, A-Z; it took days, and I was enthralled, tuning in as often as I could to find out how long it would take to get through the songs starting with “How.” But here’s how I’m doing it. I made a smart playlist of all the unheard tracks in my library*, set it on shuffle, and went to work.

Here’s a sample of what I’m getting right now:

• song from Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire
• movement of Webern’s Five Movements
• song by Tori Amos
• The end of the musical Chess (Broadway version, sadly)
• part of the Mind’s Eye reading of The Return of the King
• song by DEVO
• snippet from Götterdämmerung
• song from Les Illuminations by Britten
• song by Clinic
• aria from Tosca
• part of the Mikrokosmos by Bartók

There’s a lot ahead; at this rate I’ll be at it for a month of workdays. If nothing else, it’s serving me as a reminder that I’ve collected a lot of music in the past fifteen years, and as always letting me know that for every song that’s here, there are hundreds I’ve never heard of.

* just the ones under 90 minutes, I don’t really want to work to 12 hours of A History Of The Arab People

Head cleaning, day three. Activities to facilitate this include house cleaning, cooking and eating well, reading, sleeping a lot, writing music, and letting my mind wander when it wants. I can’t say I’m delightful company though, and there is some part of me that feels selfish for taking this time even though I sorely need it.

I was marveling last night about the difference in methodology between composing for live instruments and performers. With electronics, I tend to lay something down and then spend a long time twiddling knobs and sliders and switches, just to see what happens. Eventually I’ll get to something that feels right, and I’ll go on from there. I’m pleased about the happy sound accidents I’ve created, but I would never conceive of doing this when composing for instruments, which for me is a realm of careful planning and forethought. It might be because of the difference in media, or just because I haven’t yet acquired the depth of knowledge of a) what sounds are available to me and b) how to create a sound I want with the various knobs and levers at my disposal.

Hot off the encoder, here’s a new tune: Twisty Passages All Alike. Yes, it’s a Zork reference — as I put it together I found myself getting lost in the interplay of the many many layers. Enjoy, and no Grues, I promise.

Errata 1/19/05: It turns out that the twisty passages reference was not Zork, but an earlier game called Adventure. I knew this at one point, but over the years things get a bit muddled in my head. The Grue is of course from Zork.

I’m making space in my mind, and making space and order in the house is following along, a ripple from mind to hand.

I got rid of about half of my clothes today, and am now turning my eye on the books. My books. For those who know me, they know the seriousness of this. But, really, am I ever again going to use Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk? I think not.