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Bathroom Plans
Here's what our second floor currently looks like: If you look in the lower right hand corner, you can see that you have to walk through the room labeled "bedroom #1" to get to the room labeled...
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Acoustic Footboard
After years of playing around with electronic footboards, I'm thinking of going back to an acoustic one. Even though my most recent electronic one is more expressive in a lot of ways, and a big...
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Snowpants
Growing up, snowpants were for playing in snow. If we were going out to play and there was snow on the ground, we wore them, otherwise we just wore the same pants we had on indoors. This winter with...
View ArticleTaking someone aside
(This is written with the contra dance community in mind, but is reasonably general.) Let's say you're on a safety committee at a dance, or an organizer or something, and someone's causing a problem....
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Facebook Donation Match
For the last three years Facebook has offered donation matching on Giving Tuesday (11/27) where the first $X to be donated is matched 1:1. In general, I'm pretty skeptical about donation matches: much...
View ArticleLegal questions around safety committees
As communities try to do a better job preventing and limiting abuse, harassment, etc, one common approach has been to put together a committee to hear reports and investigate problems (example). For a...
View ArticleRight-hand mandolin or guitar
When I play mandolin or guitar for dances a huge amount of what I'm doing is three things: Left hand chooses what chord to play, typically as an open fifth (root-fifth, no third, so no distinction...
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Boston Solstice 2018
Six years ago Julia and I took the bus down to NYC with a group from the Boston LessWrong meetup. We were headed to a Solstice celebration and 'megameetup' Ray was organizing. It was a good weekend:...
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Blinky Lights
My rhythm stage setup now has a lot of settings: toggles for piano, jawharp, bass winds, high and low drums, high and low footbass, plus which instrument I've set my jammer buttons to (accordion, sax,...
View ArticleWhat is Live?
In experimenting with different ways of making music, one thing I've been thinking about is what makes music "live". What's the difference between having a band on stage vs an mp3? This is something...
View ArticleFestival Stats 2018
Here we are, 2018: Bandstimes bookedband14Buddy System10Great Bear10Toss the Possum7Mean Lids7Uncle Farmer6Elixir6Wild Asparagus5Latter Day Lizards5Maivish5Notorious5Pete's Posse5Rushfest5Turnip the...
View ArticleTickling
Before our kids learned to talk, I would play tickles with them. I would make tickling gestures as I moved towards them, they would start giggling a little, then I would tickle them and they would...
View ArticleFiguring out sounds
One of the most frustrating aspects of playing an electronic instrument is figuring out sounds. You're not constrained to what a physical instrument can make, so the range of possibilities is...
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Rhythm Stage Setup
I've been playing with a jammer, breath controller, foot board, and tilt controller, trying to figure out both what sort of music they're good for and how to combine them with piano/mandolin when...
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Water Usage and Washing Machines
Earlier this month (9/4) our dishwasher started leaking, and I disconnected it. The new dishwasher comes in about a week, but I was curious whether I would see an increase in our water usage from hand...
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Dual Bagpipes
A standard bagpipe has a single bag feeding multiple pipes. The player keeps the bag inflated with their mouth, and maintains the bag at a constant pressure with their left arm. The chanter and drones...
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Diatonic modes as progressive flattening
Most tunes are built around a diatonic scale. The most well known diatonic scale is the major scale, C D E F G A B, but all seven cyclic permutations of those notes are named scales: C D E F G A B:...
View ArticleBrendin Lange is a Scammer
In Spring 2016 we contracted with Brendin Lange to put dormers on our house. He took the deposit, did a single day of interior demolition, and then disappeared with the money. Since then I've spoken...
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Charging Shelf
A few months ago I made a set of built-in shelves for our living room. Recently I was noticing that people tended to leave their laptops and phones in awkward places while charging, so I decided to...
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Load Testing a Battery
I wrote earlier about how I was putting together a battery backup. I wanted to measure its capacity to see how it compared to the rating. It uses a lead-acid AGM battery rated at 100Ah, though the...
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