Resonant Constellation

Some of you out there might remember a post I wrote a little while back about NASA’s online poll to name their new Node 3 module for the ISS. I suggested the (already provided) name, Serenity, for the obvious reasons (Browncoats unite!). But recently, Stephen Colbert mentioned the poll on his show and asked his fans to write in his name for the module. There is no way Serenity will win now-Colbert’s following is large and particularly good at contests like this one. Now, I must say, I love the show, but in this case I have to vote against Colbert, even if I know I’ll lose. Ah well, at least this’ll be entertaining.

Well, last night a few friends and I got together to play a session, and as promised I recorded a few of the tunes we played. Here’s a sample:

This is my friend Gordon on the flute and me on guitar. I have no idea what the name of the tune is. The talking in the background is the other members of the session:

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This next is the Star of Munster played by Anton on his Bulgarian tambora (this is not strictly Irish, but it sounds awesome), Claire on fiddle, Gordon on flute, and myself on guitar again:

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My mandolin was a bit out of tune that night, so there aren’t any good tracks with me playing. Perhaps next time.

Those of you who actually read this blog (I’m amazed there’s any, actually) may remember from my post on the 1st that I said:

I had a hell of a lot of fun, and I look forward to continuing this session. Next week I’ll try to get a recording of the action and post it here.

The moment I wrote those words and pressed the “Publish” button on my WP-admin page, I began an epic quest to find a suitable field recorder. I did not sleep (beyond my usual 7 hours), I did not eat (any more than I usually would have), I spent every waking moment (that wasn’t otherwise occupied by, for example, contemplating naval lint) searching for my next gadget.

Like a true geek, I did my research on this one. I laid out a spreadsheet to compare the properties of each individual gadget to the next (things like frequency response, sample rate, recording format, storage size, stereo mics, price, etcetera). There turned out to be three distinct categories of devices I considered: fully dedicated, hi-fi, super expensive, multi-directional, multiple microphone recorders (Example: Zoom H2, which I still may get if I can scrape together money [ha ha!]), stereo and mono voice recorders which were slightly smaller, and less high quality (usually “CD” quality at 44.1 kHz sampling and ~800Hz-1kHz response), though consistently $50 cheaper (Example: Olympus DS-40), and finally the iPod attachment variety, which is basically a device that you plug into your iPod and record directly onto it (Example: Belkin TuneTalk).

This last category had many sub-categories (mono, stereo, power adapter capable, external source, various quality settings), but the most outstanding feature is that they are practically all dirt cheap compared to the other gizmos I was looking at. My dilemma at this point was that there was no one device which clearly was superior in the price versus quality department, so I turned to the mandolin cafe message boards where I’d seen posts about this kind of product. My question was instantly addressed, and I found a very nice guy by the name of Fred who was willing to send me some recordings made with the Belkin iPod device. The sound quality of these far surpassed my expectations, so I ended up getting the Belkin TuneTalk from Amazon for about $30. Just a few days later, it has arrived and is in my hands! Here’s a quick little recording I made:

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I hope you’ll agree that, besides the playing, it sounds pretty good (quality-wise). Hopefully I’ll get some good recordings at the session this weekend and I’ll be able to share them with you here!

It’s about time I mentioned my favorite sport, Hurling, here. Hurling is the national sport of Ireland, an incredibly fast paced and skill-intensive game. I won’t go into the rules here (there’s a lot-look them up on wikipedia), but suffice to say, this is an incredibly entertaining game. I first saw a match when I was on vacation in Ireland with my family in (I believe) the summer of 2004.  Now that I think back on this, I believe I may have been exceptionally lucky.  We were in Munster at precisely the time the epic 2004 Munster Senior Hurling Final was being played-by all accounts one of the most incredible games played in modern times.  I’ve watched it myself since and I certainly can’t argue. I was instantly entranced.

Since then, I’ve been curious about the sport, but I hadn’t been able to find a way to watch any games here in the U.S. until just last year. I found a few websites offering downloads of several games (including the aforementioned MSHF from 2004) and watched them three or four times each. I was again entranced and decided to get further into the sport.

Of course, I’d have to pick a team to cheer for-this was no easy task. Waterford, Cork, and Tipperary are all entertaining teams that have great players I enjoy watching, but in the end my Irish ancestors were from county Clare (as far as I can tell), and so I chose the banner county (Clare’s nickname). Sometimes I regret this decision-Clare haven’t won the All-Ireland since 1997-but I’ll stand by my team.

As I’m writing this, I’m watching the 2008 All Ireland Senior Hurling Quarterfinal between Clare and Cork. Here’s a great example of why Hurling is so awesome:

Clare Forward, Dermot McMahon has the Sliotar (the ball, a little bigger than a baseball) in the box, runs at the goal. Seán Óg Ó hAilpín (great Cork defenseman) bats at him with his hurley (big stick). The ball falls loose, rolling forwards towards the goal, excruciatingly slow, the Cork keeper lunges for it but…it rolls in! An incredible goal, to be sure (just to let you know, teams can score points and goals; a point is scored when the ball goes between the goalposts above the net-think an American football field goal. A goal is worth three points and is scored when the ball goes into the net below the goalposts. Scores are then tabulated goals-points to goals-points).

Yes, Hurling is an awesome sport, but you don’t need to take my word for it. Follow this link to YouTube to watch the 2004 Munster Senior Hurling championship (the link goes to part 1 of 8, there are subsequent links in the videos). You won’t regret it.

Note: Even though they started out great in the game I was watching, Clare lost 2-17 to 2-19. Arg.

People should really pay attention to the words they’re using, sometimes what they say doesn’t make sense.

A good example is this recent article from the New York Post is about a small asteroid that was just discovered on Friday and passed within 65,000 kilometers (40,000 miles) of the Earth today at about 9 AM (EST)-about twice as far as most communications satellites.

2009 DD45 is about 30 meters across and (I assume) silicate-based like most asteroids, so it would hit the Earth with about as much energy as a relatively large atom bomb. If it were iron, of course, this force would quite a bit larger. The article above says that it would have hit somewhere around Tahiti, but I’m not sure if this is entirely correct-that was the point of closest approach. If it had hit, it probably would have hit beyond that point (as the closest approach would have been at distance=0 and it would have moved over Tahiti by then).

Also, it irks me that the article says:

Astronomers said the asteroid is likely to return for another series of near misses since it’s somehow drawn in by our planet’s gravity.

“Somehow drawn in?” What exactly are they saying here? Bah.

Anyway, what peeved me most about this article was the opening line:

Talk about a near miss!

Not so. As my personal hero and general go-to guy, George Carlin said: It’s not a near miss, a collision is a near miss. “‘*Crunch* Look! They nearly missed!’ ‘Yes, but not quite!’” It was really a near hit-it nearly hit us. Ah, well, maybe I’m too much of a stickler for correct language use. This is probably why I only have friends as weird as I am.

A friend of mine recently (Saturday, February 28) invited me over to a local pub to play with a small group for a party being held for one of his friends. I met a few people I haven’t seen before, and a few with whom I’ve played many times. The fallout of this is that we had so much fun playing together, we’re going to make this a weekly thing-starting with house sessions and moving up to bigger and better things as membership/interest grows.

The nice thing about all of this is that it gives me a good place to work on my playing: other sessions are too crowded and most of the people don’t listen to what others are doing. This is particularly a problem with guitar: some people completely dominate the sound with their ‘accompaniment,’ playing louder than everybody else. This is highly contrary to my style of playing, so I rarely get to play guitar-until this session. I think people were truly amazed that:
1) There is an amateur guitar player who understands accompaniment (at least a little).
2) That I play guitar (I’m really known as a mandolin player).

I had a hell of a lot of fun, and I look forward to continuing this session. Next week I’ll try to get a recording of the action and post it here.