Recent Acquisitions

My family has spent Christmas at the Bavarian Inn Lodge and Restaurant in Frankenmuth, MI for years. It's become a family tradition. The inn is reasonably priced and close to home. Only takes us an hour's drive.  The inn also has several indoor pools, a water slide, put-put golf, and game room. This is nice when the weather is nasty, we can stay indoors at the inn and still have some family fun time. The restaurant has a great family style broasted chicken dinner that is to die for. My son would eat the bowl of buttered noodles alone if we let him.

Downtown Frankenmuth has lots of shops but by far the best known is a huge Christmas store called Bronner's CHRISTmas Wonderland. The store is so huge, they measure it in football fields. It's five and a half football fields of indoor sales floor space, all in one building.

This was this year's first purchase.

THIS is how Santa looks in our home.

I also found this kilted Santa but passed on purchasing it. Maybe next year.

Things From My Desk: Grumpy Coffee Mug

There are many things I find necessary to function each and every day. One of these is caffeine. My preferred delivery system is coffee. Tea is okay, but I still like a double strong, double sweet cup of joe.

This mug has a couple of nice features. First of all, it's huge. It's almost impractically large for your standard mug shape receptacle. It's kinda heavy, and unless you guzzle it down, the coffee goes cold before you can quaff it. Secondly, it has a prominent image of Grumpy from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on it. The text running around the edge says "Grumpy from morning to night."

I don't use it very often. When I do, you'd rather leave me alone until it's empty.

Grumpy needs more coffee!

Knead Free Dinner Rolls

I stopped making these after I got a KitchenAid mixer. They are great rolls if you don't have time to knead. Here it is as I found it on the Internet years ago.

Melt-in-Your-Mouth Holiday Dinner Rolls

This is a traditional recipe from my wife Nancy Spence's family. These dinner rolls are a big hit during holiday meals - where a double recipe served 24 people, including seven under the age of seven, last Christmas! The little people loved 'em.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons butter
1 teaspoon salt
1 pkg. dry yeast
1 egg
3 1/2 cups flour

Directions:

In a large bowl mix the sugar, butter and slat into 1 cup of boiling water. Let cool to lukewarm. Dissolve yeast into 1/2 cup lukewarm water. Beat egg. Add yeast and egg to first mixture, then add flour - don't over-mix. Cover, let rise, poke down.

Turn half of the dough out onto a floured board. (NB. The dough is very sticky - don't give into the temptation to add flour!) Roll out to form a rectangle roughly 8x4 inch. Brush with flour, roll up jelly-roll fashion and slice off 1-inch pieces. Place slices into buttered muffin tins and brush the tops with butter. Repeat for balance of dough. Let slices rise in the tins once more. Bake at 375 degrees F. for 15 minutes or at 400 degrees F. for 10-12 minutes. Makes about 16-20 rolls.

Note: you can refrigerate this dough after preparing the rolls in the muffin tins and before the second rising. You can then pull the rolls out 2 to 2 1/2 hours before baking to let them rise the second time. This procedure works well for busy holiday meals - the dough can be prepared the day before the big day and set aside (if you have enough refrigerator shelf space!) Then pull the muffin tins out a few hours before serving to sit at room temperature and rise before baking. They are best served straight from the oven to the table, where the delicate butter and yeasty aromas help them live up to their name.
- Contributed by Ryck Lent

Things From My Desk: Lunchtime Edition - DiBella's Subs

This is a special lunchtime edition post. I'm starting to run out of somewhat interesting things from my desk.

I decided to try out one of the local sub shops. Ann Arbor has many great restaurants, but it can be a challenge getting to them from south of town. Fortunately, I'm near Zingerman's Bakehouse. The selection is great but limited compared to their main deli location. But, I've been there several times and want something different.

Yelp pointed me to DiBella's Old Fasioned Subs just a short hop over the expressway from my office. Reviews were pretty good so I decided to give it a go. In short, it makes Subway look like a kiddie sandwich shop. I had the Godfather - Genoa Salami, Capicola, and Spicy Ham on a Everything bun. The bun is a bit like an everything style bagel. Nice crusty exterior with a semi-soft interior that holds up well. I can't go there often as I'm trying to lose weight, but I'll definitely be back!

The Godfather

Things From My Desk: Start Trek Next Generation Pez

A friend of mine mentioned seeing this at her local Meijer store last weekend. An hour later, I was in the check out lane. Goes great with my Star Trek TOS Pez.

Next Gen Pez

V7/x86: Adding the current subdirectory to the prompt

The .cshrc script for the C shell in default guest account in V7/x86 is pretty spare. One of the first things I wanted to change after switching over to C shell is the prompt. I'd like the prompt to display the current subdirectory as I navigate the file system.

I want to go from this:

% cd src
%

To something like this:

/usr/guest% cd src
/usr/guest/src% 

The Unix V7 "pwd" command returns the current directory path. We can use this in our .cshrc script to include it's output in the prompt.

% pwd
/usr/guest
%

A great reference that helped me figure this out is the Unix FAQS at http://www.cs.albany.edu/~wuye/unixfaqs.html

Open .cshrc with the "vi" editor and move to the bottom of the file. Add the following text and save.

# add the current directory path to the prompt
alias setprompt 'set prompt="`pwd`% "'
setprompt
alias cd 'chdir \!* && setprompt'

The "alias" command gives us to create a new command that is composed of other commands. We've created the command "setprompt" so that we can use it twice without accidentally changing it between each use.

On the next line we call "setprompt" to display the current path when we login.

On the third line, we create a new alias for the "cd" command that will change the directory and reset the prompt to include the changed directory path.

Editing the .cshrc script

Logout and log back in and you'll see the following:

It works!

V7/x86: Changing the User's Shell

"And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning. There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred had not swum that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the third time." - Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

The default shell in Unix V7 is the Bourne shell (sh). It replaced an earlier shell and has itself been replaced by a long line of shells over the years. V7/x86 also includes the C shell (csh).

The computing history has produced a lot of wordplay like this. For example, GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix!", YACC is Yet Another Compiler Compiler, and GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. I had once created a PHP based template processor years ago called YATP - Yet Another Template Parser.

The C shell included several improvements over the Bourne shell. The script syntax was more like the C programming language whereas the Bourne took its inspiration from Algol 68. There were improvements in history tracking as well as others, you can read the details in the link above.

The user can drop into another shell from within a shell just by executing the desired shell program. For the C shell, just type in the following command. The prompt will change from the Bourne shell '$' to '%'.

$ /bin/csh
%

This is convenient for occasionally switching shells, but what if we want to change the user account default shell?

User account information is stored in the passwd file found in /etc. Passwd contains the user's login name, password, and other information including the program to use as shell. You can read more about it in the passwd man page.

Changing the user's default shell is pretty simple. Switch to the root account with "su", edit the /etc/passwd file with "vi", find the line for the desired user account, and add the path to the shell program at the end of the line.

guest::7:3::/usr/guest:/bin/csh

Change the shell for "guest" to "/bin/csh".

Exit the root account, logout of your account, and log back in. You should now be in the new default shell.

Running the C shell by default

V7/x86: Unix Version 7 on a virtual machine

You can never really go back. Or can you?

My first computer programming experience was on a Texas Instruments TI 99/4a home computer. As many kids did back then, I taught myself BASIC programming on it.

Later, at the local community college, I took my first programming course on a PDP-11 minicomputer. It was a course in BASIC again. But I also fiddled around with C. I didn't start learning C until a course at Michigan State University using Xenix and I think the lab microcomputer had a Motorola 68020. At least that's what I used to learn assembly with. The course at MSU was interesting. We started with Assembly on the 68020, then after a week or two started reading the intermediate compiler output from C to learn both C and Assembly. Then I continued with Unix and C at Northern Michigan University on a VAX.

The VAX was a pretty cool machine. I learned quite a bit about Unix at NMU. Such a simple and elegant operating system. Once I left college, I started programming in DOS on personal computers. After moving from Borland's C compiler to Microsoft C,  I've always worked in a Microsoft development environment. But I've really do miss that first experience with Unix.

The Unix Seventh Edition Manual can be found at http://cm.bell-labs.com/7thEdMan/. There is a really nice PDF version available through a link at the site.

They say you can never go back, and I suppose that's true. That first experience is special because it was your first after all. But sometimes it's fun to dig out that old computer (you do still have your first computer don't you? I still have that same TI.) Unfortunately, I don't have a working VAX or PDP like this guy.

Back to the Future...

Recently I came across Robert Nordier's website where he has an x86 port of Unix Version 7. Unix V7 is considered by many greybeards to be the pinnacle of Unix and the last true Unix version. I'm more familiar with a slightly newer version and have some experience with Linux, but it's enough like my first Unix that it just feels right.

V7/x86 running on VirtualBox

As Robert states, the virtual machine download he has is probably the easiest way to try it out. Although I could scrounge up an old laptop, running it in VirtualBox on my current laptop is convenient.

You can find Robert's V7/x86 - x86 port of UNIX V7 at http://www.nordier.com/v7x86/index.html.

VirtualBox can be found at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/virtualbox/downloads/index.html

Robert has an article explaining how to setup V7/x86 on VirtualBox and documentation for booting it up, so I won't repeat all the details here.

I stumbled a bit getting things working correctly. Some of it I was able to figure out by Googling. I also resorted to sending a couple of emails to Robert asking for help. He was very gracious in his response. It's interesting just how much I've forgotten the mundane day to day details. Thanks Robert!

How do I transfer files to this thing?

I did run into some trouble getting files from a floppy disk image. Creating the image is pretty easy. Using it in V7/x86 was a bit confusing at first. I'm using a Macbook, so if you're using Windows or Linux I'm afraid I can't help you there.

How to create a floppy disk image.

Open a terminal window and type in the following command.

$ dd if=/dev/zero bs=1024 count=1440 > fdisk.img

Creating the image file.

This will create a 1.44 MB floppy disk image file called fdisk.img. Now you need to format the disk with the MSDOS FAT file system. Open "Disk Utility" and, from the "File" menu select "Open Disk Image...".

Open Disk Image

Select the fdisk.img file you created with the dd command. Disk Utility will attach the file and display an error message indicating it cannot attach the image because it has no mountable file systems. Click "OK".

Of course it's not mountable. We haven't erased it yet.

You'll see that fdisk.img has been added on the left. Select it, select "Erase" from the options across the top, select "MS-DOS (FAT)" from the "Format" drop down list, then click the "Erase" button near the bottom of the window.

Preparing to format the floppy image.

You'll be asked if you want to erase the disk. Double check to make sure you've selected the correct image and click "Erase". I'm not sure why they bother asking since the disk is unformatted - how could you lose any data?

Yep, I'm sure

You're freshly formated MS-DOS (FAT) disk will be mounted and displayed on your desktop. You can now open it and copy files to it. The dos file utilities in V7/x86 are pretty simple. Just make sure you use short files names (8.3) without subdirectories.

Untitled floppy disk image

I copied the FORTRAN 77 source code files for the game Adventure (Colossal Cave). You can get the source here http://simh.trailing-edge.com/software.html.

Adventure source code ready to go.

How to add a floppy disk to the virtual machine

Start VirtualBox and select your V7/x86 virtual machine.

VirtualBox Manager

Click the "Settings" icon and then the "Storage" icon. If a "Floppy" controller isn't available in the storage tree, add one by clicking the "Add New Controller" icon on the bottom of the screen. Then click the "Add New Attachement" icon and select the fdisk.img file. Your floppy image created earlier will now be listed under the storage tree.

VirtualBox storage with fdisk.img attached to the Floppy controller

How to access your floppy disk from V7/x86

Robert has some great documentation that introduces V7/x86 and explains how to get started, including details on the boot sequence.

I'll just go over enough to show how to get to the files on the floppy. The floppy disk is available in /dev/fd0.

I was a bit confused how to access the floppy. I thought I needed to mount the device, which didn't work. The fatdir command returned a read error. After Googling and finding nothing, I sent an email to Robert. He responded the same day with instructions and a screen shot describing exactly what I needed to do. I was over complicating things. The fat* commands access the floppy directly on /dev/fd0, no mount is needed.

Start your V7/x86 virtual machine. You'll be presented with the BOOT prompt.

BOOT prompt after machine startup

Press the ENTER key to continue. This will drop you into single user mode.

Single User Mode

You'll want to switch to multi-user mode and login to a user account. V7/x86 comes with a guest account without a password. Press Ctrl+D to switch to multi-user mode.

Muli-User Mode

fatdir, fatget, and fatput

Login to the quest account. V7/x86 provides simple MS-DOS FAT floppy access through three commands: fatdir, fatget, and fatput.

Fatdir lists the files on the  floppy disk.

$ fatdir /dev/fd0

Fatget copies files from the floppy disk.

$ fatget /dev/fd0 advent.f

Fatput copies files from your system to the floppy disk.

$ fatput /dev/fd0 foo.txt

Fatdir and fatget work fine. For some reason fatput isn't working. I get a "Cannot open" error. I'll update this post if/when I figure out the issue. To use fatput, you need write access to /dev/fd0, which the guest account does not have. If you "su" to root you'll have write access. To grant the guest account write access, use chmod from root.

$ su
Password:
# chmod a+rw /dev/fd0
# ^d
$ fatput /dev/fd0 foo.txt

The fatdir command

Things From My Desk: Star Trek Phaser

Star Trek is, without a doubt, my all-time favorite science fiction television program. Especially, the original series.

When they started promoting the latest movie, you could get a free Star Trek uniform shirt from Kellogg for a certain number of box tops. I cannot remember exactly how many, but I purchased enough Corn Flakes to start a survival shelter. Enough to get four shirts for my family.

Sean wasn't interested, but I got him a gold command shirt anyway. I've always wanted to be an engineer, so mine is read. I think Stacey and Lydia wanted medical and science (blue).

Today at work we had a Halloween dress up day. I was out of the office at a Microsoft sponsored event this morning so the kilt was out. Instead, I just dressed in a t-shirt and black jeans and tossed my Star Trek shirt and cheap costume phaser into my bag. A simple shirt change back a the office was all that was necessary.

Someday I'll spend the money on some TOS props. A hand phaser, tricorder, and communicator. I also think I'll make a Wrath of Khan style uniform jacket to go along with my kilt. Scotty didn't wear one in the movie, but a fan must have put one together judging from the image below. He did wear one in an episode of the original series. Not the same tartan as below but I think the MacQueen colors complement the uniform jacket.

Best of both worlds :-)

+

=

Nerd Craft: Star Trek Tribble - Initial Plans

Trouble with Tribbles

Update
You can buy your own from ThinkGeek for less than $20!

One of my favorite Star Trek TOS episodes is The Trouble with Tribbles. A Tribble is a small, soft, furry and gentle asexual animal that produces a soothing purring sound. That is, unless you are a Klingon. Mortal enemies of all Klingons, a tribble screams when they encounter a Klingon. The Klingon acts like a frightened child.

Anyway, I've always wanted a replica tribble. But not just some furry stuffed animal. I want one that screams, purrs and otherwise sounds like a tribble. Technology has finally caught up with my wishes and my pocketbook!





Unfortunately, we cannot genetically engineer pets, at least not tribbles. Glowing fish aren't my thing. I'll have to make a tribble puppet of some sort.

Here are the behaviors I want my tribble to express:

• Purrs when petted or held
• Screams at Klingons

And the ones that I'll have to leave until I get my genetic engineering chemistry set:

• Consumes mass quantities of food
• Procreates
• Moves around

What I'll need:

• Shaggy faux fur cloth for the pelt
• Polyfill for stuffing
• A couple of recordable sound chips for gift cards
• A tilt switch
• A pressure/contact switch

The faux fur and polyfill shouldn't be too hard to get at either a craft store or somewhere online. A simple baseball style pattern (two strips of fabric in the shape of teardrops attached with a neck) but elongated. 

Sound chips are available online. One will record and playback the purr, the other the scream.

Klingon agents and Tribbles don't get along

What's the tilt switch for? A Klingon detector isn't available so I'll fake it. If you pick up the tribble and keep it level it will just purr. If you hold it a steep angle, the tilt switch will disable the purr and activate the scream chip.

A simple tilt switch can be made with a small circuit board, a couple of stiff wire contacts, a metallic ball bearing, and a short tube. 

Most definitely not a Klingon

The pressure switch might be a bit trickier. I'll need something that doesn't require a lot of pressure, but just enough that the tribble doesn't randomly purr and run down the battery.

Things From My Desk: Star Trek Pez

Stacey gave this to me several years ago. The original Star Trek series will always be me favorite, but I did enjoy Next Generation and the latest movie.

The NASA Apollo missions, Star Trek, Space 1999, and Star Wars motivated me to read science fiction. At first just to get my science fiction fix. Later for the simple pleasure of reading.

Things From My Desk: Gimli

Gimli son of Glóin is a member of the Fellowship of the Ring in  J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
I've had this since Peter Jackson's movie came out.

I think the movie exaggerated his characteristics making him appear rather comical. I don't think he carried around this many battle axes. The book only mentions one.

Féileadh Mòr - Kilt Hose

Not too shabby

I made kilt hose from flannel "tartan"cloth. Unfortunately, wool tartan cloth is just too expensive for my Renaissance Faire garb. I'm sure some historical reenactors would say flannel is probably one of the worst fabrics I could pick, but it was the only thing available at a reasonable price. My great kilt requried at least eight yards of cloth. Someday, I'd love to make my garb from vegetable dye homespun wool - someday.

Since these hose are not knit, you need to cut on the bias so the fabric has some stretch. Don't bother trying to find a pattern. The easiest way to make them is to drape some scrap fabric around your leg and foot, pin it, and trim. You want to trim fairly close and with the seam along the back of your leg. Sew up the scrap, try them on, sew them a bit closer to take up any slack, and repeat. Stand with the pattern on to make sure you can flex your foot. If you trim too closely, you'll put too much stress on the heel. Resist the urge to cut out the bunched fabric on top of your ankle, I'll explain later.

When you've sewn them as close as you can, trim the excess fabric close to the seam. This will simplify tracing them onto papper to make a pattern. Give your pattern a half inch margin for the seam. This will give you some extra fabric to adjust the fit. It's much easier to cut excess fabric off than to add it back on.

My customized tartan kilt hose pattern

You'll notice the pattern is a single piece and does not have a seam in the front. The seam runs along the back. This keeps any mismatch with the tartan pattern along the back of the leg, under the foot, and over the toe. You want to place the pattern on your fabric with the long axis (this becomes the front of the hose) aligned along the bias of the fabric. With a tartan, especially one with a square pattern, this is easily accomplished by lining up corners in the pattern. 

If you are careful, you can pin the fabric along the back seam to match the tartan pattern. To get it right, the edges of the fabric might not be perfectly aligned, but the pattern has enough play in it to take this into account.

The bias cut fabric will be a lot stretchier than what you may be used to sewing. My scrap for the pattern was muslin and not cut on the bias. I found that I needed to sew the seam closer than the pattern to take up the slack. When you're done, just cut around your seam leaving about 1/4 inch of fabric. I used a straight stitch and went over it again to strengthen it a bit. Unless you had to cut a huge edge of fabric off, don't bother adjusting your pattern. You never know how stretchy the fabric for your next pair will be. Again, it easier to cut off excess fabric than to sew it back on.

Tartan kilt hose

I used some short pieces of jute to make simple garters to hold them up. Genetics and karate have given me fairly decent calves, so the twine did not need to be tight and they stayed up all day. Fabric will bunch over the top of the ankle, but it's not much and didn't bother me. Trimming to eliminate it would disrupt the tartan pattern.

Féileadh Mòr - Shoes

Ballyhagan, Drumacoon, Pampootie, Cuaran, and Rivelins are early bag shoes that were worn by Scottish Highlanders. Made from a single piece of rawhide leather, they were simple to make and easily replaced. All you need is a source of leather, a knife to cut out the shape needed and to cut holes and strips of leather for lace.

I started with a Ballyhagan/Pampootie style pattern made from an image found at http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/shoe/SHOES/SHOE57.HTM. It is gathered at the toe (and along the sides in the Ballyhagen shoe) with an open vamp. Holes were punched into the edges to let water work it's way out so the foot can dry out. Since the pattern wasn't very clear, I made a couple of scrap fabric versions, making adjustments as I went. 

I picked up a leather coat from the Salvation Army for $15 for the leather and some foam arch support shoe inserts to substitute for the grass or felt that would have been shoved into the shoe to give the user some support. I'm not entirely happy with the way they came out. The inserts shift around a bit and I'm not sure they'll work well. I tried lacing across the vamp to tighten it up, but the leather wasn't strong enough to support laces and tore through the holes. I might make a closed vamp shoe more like the Drumacoon. 

Shoe leather punched and ready to go

Ballyhagan

I also have a pattern for a later period latch style short boot (Butterick pattern B5233). I tried making a scrap version, but the largest size is too small for me. It fit my wife, so it's probably a women's size eight or nine.

After adjusting the pattern to fit and making a few minor modifications, I managed to get the boots done for the last weekend of the Michigan Renaissance Festival. Instead of the dodgy loop stay from the pattern, I added a grommet to the flap and tied it with some leather strap sewn into the back. They held up rather well. I thought they would fall apart halfway through the day, but they didn't. The boots looked pretty good, but slipped too much and didn't provide enough support.

I'll sew a layer of material to the bottom to add a thicker sole and use them for my sister's Halloween party, but I'll buy proper short boots before next year's festival. Finished leather if I can find some reasonably priced. If not, suede and try to keep them clean.

After a long day at the faire

Michigan Renaissance Festival - Shamrocks & Shenanigans

Playtron Outfits
Stacey and I went back to the Michigan Renaissance Festival yesterday. I've always wanted to go as a playtron. A playtron is a patron who dresses in costume, or garb, and plays a character even though they aren't a cast member of the faire. So, for the last month, Stacey and I have been researching period costume to make our own.

Kilt-ed!

Looking awesome!

I'm part Scottish, and have wanted a kilt for decades. I have a traditional small kilt on order from Got-Kilt made with MacQueen/MacQuien tartan. But it won't arrive until the end of September. For RenFest, I decided to make a great kilt, also known as the Breacan an Fhéilidh (belted plaid) or Féileadh Mòr (great plaid). The great kilt just barely makes it into the late English Renaissance represented by the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. You see a lot of small kilts or fèileadh beag at festivals, but it wasn't created until the late 17th century, well outside the Elizabethan period.

Piper complete with
Féileadh Mòr, Brogan Tionndaidh,
and Cadadh 

English wool is very expensive, and you need eight to nine yards to make a great kilt. For this kilt I picked up some flannel from Joann Fabrics with a Gordon tartan pattern. Family tartan patterns are a recent development, they weren't formalized until the 19th century It's ok to use anything you want for a renaissance period kilt. Something with natural dye colors is best (browns, black, dark blue, etc.) bright synthetic dyes weren't available.

I made the shirt from unbleached muslin using a Simplicity pattern. I can sew a little, but haven't done much, so it took quite a while.

I still need to make shoes and hose. Brogan tionndaidh are shoes made from a piece of raw hide, drawn up over the foot, trimmed, punched with holes, and laced in place with raw hide thongs. They are the precursor to modern ghillie brogues. Rawhide boots up to the knee would be another option. Cadadh are sewn up kilt hose made out of the same material as the kilt. Since they aren't stretchy like knit socks, they need garters or raw hide thongs to hold them up.  Yesterday, I got by with black shoes and short black socks.

Stacey wanted to make something to go along with my kilt. There isn't a lot of information available about Scottish Highland women's clothing. Both men and women wore a leine - a long shirt. Women wore them full length, and men wore them to mid-thigh, the knee, or longer. Over the leine, went a corset, overdress, and an arisaid, - a simpler plaid, unbelted like a shawl, or belted like the men in a later period. 

Stacey started the day wearing her plaid over her shoulders but as it grew warmer, she tied it over one shoulder. 

Men in Kilts Competition!
On our way into the faire several women on the queen's court suggested I enter the men in kilts competition. They took the time to show me how to present myself to the queen.

Queen Elizabeth prepares to examine the contestants

It was quite a lot of fun. Queen Elizabeth encouraged us to demonstrate the proper kilt swish as we paraded about the stage. She had a kilt examination tool - a dental mirror with a telescoping handle. While examining each contestent she would make appreciative comments. Several contestants wore their kilts in the traditional "military" style and gave the ladies in the audience more entertainment than they bargained for. This was my first day in a kilt, so I chickened out and wore compression shorts. A couple of younger guys in USA flag kilts and a guy who looked like Wolverine in a kilt took the lead. One of the flag kilt guys wowed the ladies by yanking off his jockey shorts and twirling them in the air. He ended up winning.

The Ded Bob Sho

We always try to see the Ded Bob Sho. We stuck around after the performance to get a photograph.

Me, Ded Bob, Smug, and Stacey

Tired but happy rennies

Michigan Renaissance Festival - Got Kilt?

I'd forgotten how much fun the Michigan Renaissance Festival can be.

Stacey and I haven't been in quite a few years (13 or 17 - she was pregnant with either Sean or Lydia at the time). Lydia and Sean have never been. Stacey asked Lydia if she'd like to take a couple of her friends for her birthday. Usually, she has her friends go camping with us but that didn't work out this year.

Warrants of Arrest
for
"Sweet Entertainment"
 "Beatlejuice x 3"
and
"Revenge"

I received two Warrants of Arrest thanks to my lovely daughter and her friends. The first for Notorious DAD and again for Bein' Eveeeil.

The girls took off to spend some quality time with each other. Our paths crossed several times - at one point Lydia acquired Elf ears and Emily sprouted horns.

We didn't see as much of the stage acts as we'd have liked but did get to see some of the Scottish Dancers and US Canadian Highland Heavy Games. We saw the Braemar Stone Put (like the shot put but with stones), Caber Toss (flipping a tree length pole end-over-end for distance and accuracy), and 56lb. Weight for Height (iron weight on a short chain tossed one handed, over head, and over a horizontal beam).

Sir I-Can't-Remember-His-Name with Sean and Stacey

We saw the Roundtable Productions Joust, which Sean enjoyed. Sean also liked the glass blowing where he bought a glass paperweight. He also wanted to see the blacksmith demonstration, but they wouldn't be demonstrating until late that day so he missed it.

The Black Watch
3rd Battalion
Royal Regiment of Scotland 

I've always wanted to get a kilt, and almost bought one from Got Kilt. Not wanting to offend, I was looking at a Black Watch tartan, a tartan that anyone can wear, but there wasn't one readily at hand in my size.

Stacey and I are planning to go back Labor Day weekend without the kids, so I decided to wait until then. This turned out to be for the best. I remembered last night my maternal grandmother's maiden name is MacQueen (or MacQuien if you look at census data). The only down-side is that it requires a special order and will take longer. But, I should get it in plenty of time for my sister's annual Halloween party. Stacey is now looking at suitable attire to complement a kilted Scotsman.

I think the RenFest will become an annual event for us from now on.

Ukulele - Intro to Stairway To Heaven - Not Terribly Shabby Strumming Version

I took the finger-picked version of the intro to Stairway To Heaven I've been working on and added a strumming pattern. I have no idea if it's even close to being correct, but it sounds okay to me. But then, what do I know?

The strumming patter I used is Down-Down-Up-Down. The only really problem (other than the obvious lack of skill) is my slow transition to the G chord.

I recorded a video while practicing at my desk during lunch. If you watch it at the end you'll see one of the perils of practicing at work.

Ukulele - Intro to Stairway To Heaven, Karate, Philosophy, and BASIC Programming

There are a plenty of problems with how I play. An immediately obvious one to me is that I play like I'm programming in BASIC. 

I'm sure this is the same with learning just about everything. When we learn a kata in karate, we break complex movements up into distinct motions based on earlier kata or basic punches, blocks, etc. and string them together. A rendition of the kata starts as a robotic activity without fluidity or finesse, with the result being less than the sum of the parts. But you have to start somewhere.

As you get better acquainted with a kata, your instructor will begin replacing the robotic logic with "this is how that part is really done." This can be very frustrating until you realize you're never actually ever going to learn the correct and final "this is how that part is really done." That kata doesn't exist.

It's like concept of chair-ness. Everyone knows what a chair is. But I argue it's impossible to give a simple and complete universally accepted definition of a chair. You can give examples and describe the purpose of a chair. But can you enumerate all prior and future versions of a chair? How about a absolute and universal letter "a"? There are limits to knowledge, or perhaps to the expression of knowledge. Something about Kant and the sensory manifold. Sorry, I digress. Philosophy 101 was a long time ago.

Here's some song playing algorithm pseudo-code:

• For i = 1 to Song.Chords.Count
• Look at Song.Chords[i].ChordToPlay
• Set fingers on Song.Chords[i].ChordToPlay
• For j = 1 to Song.Chords[i].StringToPluck 
• Pluck Song.Chords[i].StringToPluck[j]
• Next j
• Next i
• ??????
• Profit!

The tutorial I'm watching doesn't explain anything verbally. Even if it did, it would be in Spanish. I wouldn't have a clue. I started out playing using the algorithm above, which kinda works. I slowed down the video playback enough so I can see the individual finger movements better and it's obvious most chord transitions are made while plucking strings. 

The string plucking finger pattern for this song is: pluck the first and forth strings, the third string, the second, and finally the first. Some chords drop off the second, third, or forth pluck. When playing the G chord, you can pluck the first and forth strings as soon as the fingers are fretting the first and forth strings and before the second string is fretted. I won't bore you with more pseudo-code.

Yes, I'm sure this falls into the category of having an amazing grasp of the obvious. But I'm going to guess that if it wasn't obvious to me there's a chance it isn't to other n00bs. 

No video today. I'm working on it, but I'm not prepared to embarrass myself yet again. I'll save that for another post.

What the hey. Recorded this at lunch. Better than the last one but not my much. Meh.

If you want to see how it should be done, check out Stairway To Heaven Tutorial (Led Zeppelin) Ukulele Chords on Ukeclases YouTube channel. Great resource for tutorial videos.

Ganbatte Kudasai!

Ukulele: Stairway To Heaven Intro - The Really Crappy Version

Well, here it is. I decided to try recording a video while I'm practicing at lunch. Here's my "best" take out of three for the intro to Stairway To Heaven.

My fretting is sloppy and slow, and my plucking is wrong. I'm using my middle finger on string three when I could be using my thumb. That's going to slow me down if I ever hope to get better. I tried fixing it, but royally messed up the rest of the recordings. The first one will have to do.

If you want to see how it should be done, check out Stairway To Heaven Tutorial (Led Zeppelin) Ukulele Chords on Ukeclases YouTube channel. Great resource for tutorial videos.

Sorry about the background noise.

Ukulele: The Noob's Guide to Tuning

Argh! I am such a music/ukulele n00b.

After I restrung my ukulele with Aquila strings, it didn't sound much better. It wasn't the digital tuner. We tested it with some other instruments and it works just fine.

Facepalm

I've been watching some videos on music theory, ukulele chords, strumming patterns, etc. the past week. While I was on vacation, I was able to get in some practice switching between Cmaj, Fmaj, and Gmaj. Not too shabby, but the strumming sounded really sloppy. I moved my strumming position down toward the bridge and it improved, but not much. I chalked it up to my naivete.

I was tuning an octave lower than I should have. 

In my defense, this is my first musical instrument, I do not have an ear for music (but hope to develop one), and I was skittish about tightening the strings. When the chromatic tuner said it was tuned to GCEA, I assumed it was correct - and it was, sort of. No wonder the C string sounded twangy.

This tutorial, How to tune a Ukulele using a digital tuner, on YouTube uses a chromatic tuner that displays the frequency. When I tried tuning with a program on my iPod Touch that also displays the frequency, I realized I was way off. At least the comments under the video made me fell a bit better, I wasn't the only person who had the same problem. Lesson learned.

Ukulele: My First Chords, Strumming, and a New Tuner

I've goofed around with the new ukulele off and on for a week retuning it constantly. Tuning with an iPod Touch app isn't easy, but it works. The strings are pretty well broken in now. I only need to tune it slightly every half hour or so.

Not really loving the strings that came with it. They are nylon, and the C string doesn't have a lot of tension on it making it twangy. Is that a standard musical term?

Aquila corde armoniche

After a bit of Googling , I decided I may as well get my finger tips in shape, so I started looking for Aquila Nylgut Soprano regular tuning strings. They are synthetic, but are formulated to feel as much like gut strings. I'll probably need to polish the frets so they are smooth and well rounded or these strings won't last long.

I emailed our local music shop to see if they had any, and that I'd like to restring before we go camping this weekend. They emailed back they had some GHS and Martin strings. Here's the great thing about Schafer's House of Music, he went ahead and ordered some Aquila strings and emailed me back again they would probably be in tomorrow. That's my kind of customer service.

Snark!

Got a nice surprise from my family tonight. They had to stop at Schafer's to get Lydia's marching band flute repaired before band camp. They bought me a Snark clip-on chromatic tuner. Makes a world of difference!

Tonight I started learning a couple of chords; C major and F major. C major is a piece of cake. Third finger, first string, third fret. F major is a bit more difficult with my fat fingers, but doable. I tried G major for a few minutes but decided to focus on C and F for now. Started switching between C and F major while just strumming down. Not too bad.

Decided I should at least try to add a more complex strum; down, down-up, up-down. The first down is the same length of time as the second down-up and third up-down. 

After an hour and a half I had to give it a rest. My fingertips are sore. I know they will get tougher with time. Yet another reason to do finger-tip pushups at the dojo.

Maybe in a week or so I'll post a video. I'd like to record something each week just so I can look back someday to see how truly awful I was.