Being able to make something you want or need out of things that were never intended is both a blessing and a curse. I spent FAR TOO long this week replicating the reusable paddles from a traditional Japanese festival game.

I documented the process in case anyone else searches the web for how to do this:

How to make a Kingyo Sukui game from materials found in North America

I found this 3am funny. I found that I hadn't units and was just being random.

cat@nephthys:~$ units
2411 units, 71 prefixes, 33 nonlinear units
You have: 12 monkeys
You want: fun
conformability error
12094.2 US$
0.000375 kg
You have: 1 gram
You want: fun
* 2.6666667
/ 0.375
You have: 12 monkeys
You want: 1 dollar
* 12094.2
/ 8.2684262e-05
You have: 1 monkey
You want: 1 dollar
* 1007.85
/ 0.00099221114
You have: 1 pig
Unknown unit 'pig'

Grr... the pavers broke the sprinkler system and the builder has been such a pain in the butt that I'm likely just going to fix it myself.

Oh well, minor annoyance.

EDIT: scratch that. Woo! i have paving and a sprinkler system that can be broken!

I'm very seriously considering putting myself on the wait list for a bali steel hand pan. (I'm still waffling a little bit, of course.) If I did, I would have to choose what scale I'd like to have made. They have a list of all their scales here but I think I've narrowed it down to three:

Gaku Joshi
F Bb C Eb F G Bb C Eb

Kokin Joshi
F Bb C Eb F F# Bb C Eb

(these are both common koto scales) (minus the F and F#)

D Minor
D A C D F G A C D

(which is more costly)
( cut for the embeded scale videos )

I've been wanting to post about this for a very long time, but wasn't quite sure what to say about it. Retroactively at the start of this year am officially an independent contractor for Odaiko New England as an instructor and YA cast. I've been teaching classes since last year, but the YA cast is new. Young Audiences (YA) is a program that brings arts programs to public schools. What this means is that I travel around new england and perform for school children on a regular basis. I love this, though it's surprisingly tiring.

Taiko has always been a weird chapter in my life. I look back at all my entries and it has always been this thing that I care deeply about, that love doing, but also something that has always never been quiet what I expect it to be. It has definitely made me a better person, but I think that long winding road that got me here is why I wasn't sure what I wanted to say about this. I think I learned a few years back that I should love the now of taiko, and not worry to much about the future, because if I do, then I get caught up in pressuring myself to be something I'm not sure I can be, instead of just doing the best I can now and seeing where the road goes.

So is this cool? Definitely. But I will just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings.

It's been about a year since we moved in. (We moved in several waves and apparently I didn't document exactly when we first slept here.) And so far, very good. The house cracks that scared me at the start haven't gotten much bigger, if at all. Most of the work the builders were supposed to have done got done and G has mostly adapted to driving without cursing my name. (Though he's yet to have any real snow driving.)

It's stopped feeling like a hotel, and my own bad house keeping is starting to catch up with me. The neighbors have mostly taken to ignoring us, pretty much. It does feel like our little mini-mansion. I'm still loving the luxuriousness of the space and everything being modern and mostly flat and level. I feel very lucky to have found the house.

While the noise from 93 is still noticeable when outside, and the loud thing can be heard, it's much quieter than Somerville. I still miss the convenience of Somerville, but I don't miss 133 at all, really, other than where it was, I can't think of one thing I miss about that house. I'm loving having a pond I can go look at (it would have been even cooler to be able to see it from the house, but then we would have likely needed and had to experience claiming flood insurance. I'd rather have a dry basement), a marsh with bids and a nice walk to the store. I love having an attic and a music room and an exercise room and bathrooms that are to code and not claustrophobic. And I love having closet space and good kitchen. And a garage! And someday I hope to have a shop setup in my basement (pending getting an electrician in.)

My mom has already had the chance to enjoy the guest bedroom not at the top of a very narrow, steep and winding staircase with a guest bathroom all to herself. I assume my mother-in-law will get the same opportunity sometime.

So far no regrets and I feel so lucky that life allowed me to have the opportunity to find my dream house. Here's hoping only the normal house issues (like the microwave, which, while premature, is mostly something to expect about home ownership) in the future. We're keeping an eye on the foundation crack.

Next year I'll see if I can't get my lawn in shape, figure out how I want to do composting, maybe make an herb garden, get the shop in shape, get my music/craft/sewing room all set up, get a shower door in, get the broken marble replaced, get a whole house humidifier before next winter and get myself to do actual spring cleaning to keep the house nice for a long time to come. I also want to figure out a way to mount wheels on my kayak so I take it out more often in the summer.

So avacon happened to be getting rid of a over the range microwave, that happened to be the right size and he just happened to being going north today, so he kindly dropped it off.

The fan swap from external vent to internal was a snap.

Getting the old one down, was a brute. Those things are heavy. I had to go out and buy a drill bit and some toggle bolts and I was little worried by how many holes the wall and cabinet now has, but we got the new one in. It was almost as hard getting the new one in.

The "new" one (which is actually from 2005) has a dial control that we'll have to get used to. It's also an normal oven too, but I don't think we'll use that feature. But for less than the price of a repair guy, and a days of work and heavy lifting by both me and G, we have a microwave again.

Yay! and thank you avacon and spouse (I'm not sure I have her lj name)!

( before and after photos )
The interior bulb seems to have not survived the transportation and it's officially not user serviceable and would require taking the oven down from the wall again to get at it! Way to go GE. Yeesh. There are some people on the web who think it's possible to do with it mounted and by the user if I can just figure out the part number.

Our microwave just stopped working yesterday. Greg opened the door, and then nothing. No light, no display, no error code. I got the vent cover off, to discover that the plastic holding it on was shattered, but this seemed to have nothing to do with my the microwave stopped working. we checked the fuses, we unplugged and replugged it, we checked that the outlet had power. I've crazy glued the plastic that shatter back together.

This is the shiny, expensive over the range microwave that came with the house. We think they paid about $500ish for it. It's about two months past it's 1 year warranty.

I thought I would phone GE's repair number, 1-800-GE-CARES, and ask if there was anything else easy I could check or a reset button or anything but they're phone tree had no way to talk to a person, that I could find, including trying just pressing 0, which sometimes work, and the trees were designed around whether or not you had a warranty. Sorry GE, you clearly don't care, or at least you don't care about me.

Luckily a friend is getting rid of his microwave and will be bring it over today. Sadly it is also a GE, but it's been running for 7 or so years and it sounds like it will fit and hopefully installation is as easy as it seems to be on youtube.

As a side note, this doesn't really upset me that much. It's such a first world problem. But I like to warn people about companies with bad customer service and items that are bad deals.

In April 2009 I bought a fujifilm f100fd for $250 because it reported to have good low light performance and would go to an amazing 12800 virtual ISO. Mainly for taking pictures of taiko on a dark stage. At the time, I wrote a review about it's low light performance.

Since then it's acquired an interesting issue. Hold the power button it turns on in gallery mode. Try to turn it off via the same power switch, nothing. Press the photo button, it goes into photo mode. Try to get it back into gallery mode, nothing. I've been turning it off by opening the battery case. It still takes photos, and if you open the battery case and turn it back on, you can get it into gallery mode, so it's usable, but annoying. I've been using it for a while in this broken state. (I even started to fill out a service email, while I was writing it, the camera started to work properly again, so I deleted the email, at which time it stopped working properly again.)

Then I bumped into an article that canon had come out with a new low light series, the HS series. So I got the low end one for $125 (turns out two weeks later it was $105, sigh.) (Still not sure if I should have sprung for the 300 HS, but I couldn't find a difference that was worth the price.) So I decided that before I retired the f100fd (I'm hoping someone will want to buy it for parts since it's mostly working) I thought I would compare the two cameras.

( and here is the comparison photos. )
So I think I am in general happy. The color and performance are dramatically better in the 100HS, even if there is a bit more motion blur. I'd gladly make that trade off.

Played Black Eyed Peas Experience for Kinect and it was pretty fun. The moves were very confined to a box, so not much leg movement, but it had a nice sense of dynamicness. There are little bright stars where I think it's really wanting you to hit the beat. I didn't find the feedback that useful, and had to figure out what I was doing wrong mostly on myself. I think I agree completely that if you like BEP music, it's a fun game, because they really have a lot of very heavy beat, dancable stuff. If you don't like their music, well, stay away from this game. The dances are also high energy, so you do get your body moving, which is nice.

One thing I didn't like is there's this big long intro where your avatar (mine was wearing heels, but was other wise a hot version of me) strolls in basking self indulgently from the fame of being the one chosen to dance with the computer-BEP.

Apparently it had a mic mode too. so I think I need to purchase a wireless mic for my xbox now.

Dance Masters is still the winner on the dancing games, but again, you kind of have to be able to tolerate benami music to enjoy it.

A new house, selling the old, a new job teaching taiko. Sounds so simple on paper, but wow, what a year.

I got some SMS spam (and later MMS spam) phoned t-mobile and asked them to help me stop it, since it costs me everytime I receive one. they offered to change my phone number, I explained, this was untargeted spam, that wouldn't help anything and would be a horrible pain for me. They offered to shut off my SMS service... um... no. eventually she gave me a number to report the spam with, but no credit, no indication that they or I could do anything. Really, I don't blame t-mobile that much. I'm with them because they're cheap and SMS isn't designed for spam. Really, you should pay when you send, not when you receive. It's horribly overpriced too, because it's grandfathered and hopefully, someday, I can go pay as you go email and stop using it.

I don't like dentists. I have dentist anxiety (likely related to the epinephrine they put in the Novocaine. I liked this dentist. about 30 minutes of work, no Novocaine (because of where the chip was.) You can't see where the patch is, it looks great, feels great and was $150. Yay for good dentists, yay for modern dentistry. Even the assistant was super cheery and calming.

I've been trying to get more exercise. nothing will replace the time I was completely addicted to DDR and dropped 50 lbs, but I still hope and search. First, DDR still gives a nice work out, but I just don't NEED to play it like I used to. So I'm still seeking that new addiction. Luckily the technology is marching forward.

A while back we got a kinect and an box 360 so I could try Dance central. Super fun, but not as much exercise as I would like. Hamonix got most of it dead on. The UI is great, the music selection is terrific and they track surprisingly subtle motions. But like DDR, you still feel like you're playing a video game and not dancing. The choreography, while good, is clearly limited by needing to track your skeleton the entire time. I got Dance Masters, konami's foray into the gerne. The UI is horrible, but I got used to it. The game play, however was good. Instead of tracking ever motion, they want key poses (many of which are dynamic), arm arc and hand positions. They also seem to some how track steps and use the mic to see if you're clapping. The result feels like a full body Elite Beat agents and ends up being a lot more dynamic. The choreography is a lot freer (though still clearly reined in by the game) to the point where there are a few dances that I want to learn as dances. The music is very DDR/parapara, but since I'm already a fan that's not a problem.

I've also been looking at the straight up work out games, but nothing seems to be that engaging. I think I was spoiled by eye toy Kinetic which, if it were on the kinect would be the best thing ever. It's too bad the eye toy let that game down.

I think I will still try to make myself play DDR for the full on cardio, but at least these other games get me up and moving and might teach me a few tricks for more dynamic taiko choreography.

EDIT: I have NO parapara instincts at all!

We had a tree fall in Irene. The tree guys showed up today, unannounced. They were $300 under the other quote we got. They were great, however. They climbed up two of our trees expertly. One guy, handing from one tree, used the broken branch to pull himself over to the tree that would not have held his weight, then climbed that to get the branches down from that. They kept getting a little suck, so we watched him navigate the smaller tree amazingly. Then he swung back to the original tree. I told them they didn't have to do anything past the tree line, but they made the tree fall that was past the tree line look much nicer. They were amazing.

so shout out to the crew at Carpenter Costin!

Taiko conference is, as always, a reminder of just how much my skills are lacking. There's nothing like being in a workshop and having some 10 year old in front of you pick up the rhythms instantly and play them with grace and panache and find yourself still not being able to play them by the end. But this conference to me was a good reminder of what I do have that does hold up to the rest of the community, and that's passion. I have enough skill to share that passion with other people and I think that's the most important thing. I want to share taiko. This is what makes me happy and I'm sure it makes the world a better place. So as I go forward, I know that I will never be a taiko star, but that taiko played and taught from the heart is as strong and as important as stuff fit for Carnegie hall. If I can give people happiness, power, spirit, community, connection and just make them see the world a little differently, then I am serving the taiko community.

It also made me come to realize that there are so many groups out there who are even more sheltered than us at ONE, and that maybe every excuse I've ever given needs to be turned around, so instead of saying, "oh, syncopation is hard for me" I should say, "how can I get better at syncopation?"

It also showed me that we need more foot work. You can windmill your arms until the cows come home, but a simple shuffle back and forth can change the whole staging of the group and the visual and add so much movement, especially as a group. So many groups had really nice footwork which added so much.

As always, I'm amazed at such big hearts the taiko community has. Especially the people who are the stars and the masters and all they want to do is share taiko too.

I'm a horrible lawn owner.

First, there was some weird miss communication and we didn't reprogram the sprinkler system soon enough, so the lawn went a long time with a lot of water and lots of weeds grew. I tried to mow but it was too mushy plus my mower was broken, shipped with a cracked wheel.

Then I got sick.

I mowed about 1/3 of the lawn a few days ago, once I was better, but since I didn't charge my mower before starting, it ran out of juice. The weeds have already grown mostly back.

Now we're in a heat wave and I'm still not fully recovered from being sick. Mowing in the heat is supposed to be bad for the grass anyway. So I hope to get a full mow tomorrow, but I'm likely driving my neighbors batty. She's already laughed at me mowing twice now.

I tried to phone an electrician to get a free estimate. The number forwarded to "servicemagic." I was stupid enough to hand over my phone, address and email. They said the place I was trying to contact was no longer with them. I said, "oh, ok, I'd like to do some more research then." They said, "too late, we've already given your information to three other local places." My call waiting went off while I was still talking with service magic. We got two voice messages and one live call, despite asking for "email contact only."

After doing some research it seems that servicemagic is a "not-quite-a-scam-but-close" that targets contractors. Each one of those people got CHARGED to get given my info even though I wasn't ready for them to have it. Servicemagic seems to have a practice of placing search entries for local places with a number that phones them. I can't find a non-service magic phone for the place that I was trying to contact. I feel very sorry for the poor contractors, but given the business model, I can't trust the reviews on the site and really don't want to deal with service magic at all.

So if you phone a contractor and get forwarded to service magic, HANG UP!

I don't normally plug my shows, but this one is 1) going to be T-accessible and in Harvard Square 2) going to feature all sorts of local artists doing their thing, including two new taiko groups playing together with my group on the same stage for the first time. This will actually be my first time getting to see them perform, which is very exciting.

Plus it's all to raise money to help Japanese Disaster Relief Fund and the Japan Earthquake Animal Rescue and Support.

http://sites.google.com/site/artistsforjapanboston2011/

G is getting his own car, now that he's car dependent. We went to the dealer today knowing we were going to go play the car game. It's a lot easier game to play when you aren't under any time pressure.

Highlights include:

Us making him wait for us to talk outside.
G planning ahead of time to get an ice cream sandwich on the first "I'll go talk to my boss." (they have free ice cream in their waiting room.)
When he said, "it's just $200" me saying, "well that argument goes both ways."
Me giggling. Giggling a lot, as he played out the script (I'm not sure what he thought of all that.) I really couldn't help it when he did the melodramatic, "Really, you're going to walk out for $100, what if I put $50 of MY OWN MONEY down?" (G and I had already discussed if they'd come down another $50.)

It was actually kind of fun, because we didn't NEED a car right that day. Because cars are fungible. Because we didn't have any appointments and because we expected the game.

I feel little bad about all the giggling I did.

Once again I think we got an ok price. If we were experts at the game, I'm sure we could have gotten lower, but I'm not sure I ever want to be good at the game.

Now to wait for their swap, then we get to see the actual car we'll be buying. We're getting a subaru impreza.

I do a lot of gigs these days (which is wonderful) but I thought I'd let people know that I'll be playing at the arboretum during lilac sunday on Mother's day, which is a very lovely day at the arboretum. It's only day they allow picnics. In the past I've seen many of our friends performing morris dancing there as well. Plus since we'll be outside, we'll not be as loud as we can be inside.

We'll be playing at noon. I have no clue where we'll be, though.

I would also love for someone to operate my DSLR since the lighting and background should be lovely for pictures.

What is your favorite method/device for keeping hard floors grit free?

What about for washing them?

Be detailed. "mop" is a large category.

For the purpose of this poll, I'm assuming your neighbors were strangers when you moved in. If you have multiple neighbors, take an average.

Poll #1726541 Neighbors
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36

What kind of relationship do you have with your neighbors?

This morning the house shook. Twice. I though something large had fallen somewhere in the house. After some searching inside, I searched outside and my neighbor was on the porch, she said about to phone me. Apparently it was the quarry blasting. She said the first time she heard it, she panicked and didn't want us to do the same. I was just afraid the house was doing something bad. All in all it wasn't that horrible a noise or feeling once you know what it is and apparently it doesn't happen very often, since this is the first time we've felt/heard it.

New houses always have surprises. Luckily as surprises go, that wasn't so bad.

DO NOT USE BUILDING 19 rug underpading it will react with some finishes and destroy your finish as I found out the hard way. Now to at least make them take it as a return.

EDIT: I emailed them a complaint, they sent the following:

I have made several phone calls to trusted people in the padding industry. I know that you are not supposed to put anything down on newly polyurethaned floors for at least 6 months to let them cure. Unfortunately, there is nothing written on the pads, and nothing written in any of the stores that sell these pads (not just Building #19, but Home Goods, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, etc) about that fact. All of the padding people say that the person who polyurethaned the floors should have told you. Even if you put a rug down, the color will change because of the difference between light and dark (under the rug). Maybe some policy should change in the padding industry. I'll see what I can stir up.
Of course, you can return the pads. If you have any problem, have the store call me.

I hope this house is "the one" because the costs are adding up. Moving is almost 3x-4x what I was expecting.

( A very long two days, but long story short, we've bought a house in North Reading. )

The first open house was January 29th. 20 days from first seeing the house to closing.

And now the real work begins.

Brand new house, close to a pond with swimming, boating and ice skating, just out of the 100 year FEMA flood zone, with in walking distance of bank, groceries and restaurants, not much traffic noise, a shared drive plowed by the neighbor, the right size, asking with in our budget, huge attic, his/hers walk-in in closets, 2nd floor laundry, a front hall closet AND a mudroom from the garage, 4 steps from the garage to the kitchen, eat in kitchen, forced air, gas, AC.

The Mayor is the neighbor. Not sure if this is a plus or a minus.

Septic, which is a bit of a minus.

And the biggest minus, it's in North Reading, 31 minute commute for G.

The pond might also cause noise issues with peepers or smell issues if the swamp is too swampy. No way we can really tell that, other than I guess the Mayor wouldn't live there if it smelled bad. Also might be mosquito issue, but there's fishing in the pond, so that likely keeps their numbers down.

I'm taking G to see it tomorrow.

I've not posted as much here lately because facebook seems to mostly fill that gap in announcing news, but I figure a longer post might be a good thing.

Still looking for the dream house. Still hopeful, even if the constraints get harder. I might have to relax my traffic noise restriction a little bit to find something. We'll see what the next season brings.

Taiko is going well. The next year promises to be interesting as Odaiko New England is undergoing some changes and the Boston area is looking at two new taiko groups forming. Taiko also continues to make me do woodworking and web maintenance.

I'm hoping to start up my koto lessons again soon. I still have so far to go on that.

I'm blessed to have a wonderful husband. Kitties are good too.

Still no job and no plans for one.

Still play World of Warcraft. Though I haven't had as much time for this as I used to. The cataclysm changes to old world are kind of awesome and I look forward to doing all the revamped zones again. I didn't like the level 80-85 section as much, but it wasn't bad. Also Stormwind is really pretty from the sky. I'm also happy that I'm continuing to raid with my completely awesome Wrath raid group.

I've been pining for a better DSRL after some nice taiko photos I took. I've also been dabbling in canon hacking to get an intervaolmeter for taking pictures of myself playing taiko.

Well that's all the update I can think of right now.