Northern Song

My sister tends to downplay gifts. She’s not a person that tries to fill the space under a Christmas tree. She tries to take dead aim and give you a gift that she really thinks you want. Sometimes she’s a bit off the mark, but this year she hit a bull’s eye and then split the arrow. She got me and Alyssa three hours with a professional glass blower.

One other thing about my sister and gifts: she likes surprises. I hate surprises, and I have a slightly sordid past of doing recon on presents. In my childhood I would poke and prod presents under the tree to figure out what was in them. Scientific curiosity, if you will. Sometimes I would spy a bit harder. I’m past that now, though I’m still slightly obsessed with my Amazon wish list (see below) around holiday time. Just for the record, I love true good surprises. Suddenly having a wonderful thing drop into my lap is, well, wonderful. What I hate is having surprises dangled in front of me. I know something is coming but I don’t know what it is. It makes me anxious and unhappy.

Remembering my gift recon, Laura will not tell me what I’m getting until she’s ready to give it to me. All she would tell me is that she had something lined up for me and Alyssa and that we had to wear long shirts. This lead to idle speculation between me and Alyssa. Feeding monkeys? Painting class? Who knew?

The morning of the gift, she had us follow her in our car until we ended in an industrial part of Portland. There was Elements studio, and we knew what was up. We didn’t know how awesome it would be until we started, though. Elements has gift sessions around the holidays, where people get to make an ornament or two in an hour. This was much more than that. Laura had booked us for three hours in a private session with a professional who would help us do what ever we wanted.

Brian has been a professional for many years, training under Dale Chihuly. His son went to the same daycare as Calvin, so he and Laura became friends (one of the benefits of being a parent: strange networking). Brian teaches glassblowing at various art schools and also works with lots of studios as a gaffer, the guy who can get things made. He knows his glass.

Since we didn’t have any idea that we would be working with glass ten minutes before we met Brian, we were at a bit of a loss as to what to do. We quickly decided to make some paperweights since they are relatively easy and since they could be given as gifts for our difficult-to-shop-for mothers. It was a lot like making cookies with kids; Brian asked us what we wanted and did all the hard steps, at least at the beginning. We got to pick shapes and colors and textures, and he made it happen. We certainly got to handle all the tools, but he would jump in when things started to go wrong. Over time, he needed to do that less and less, but we’re still amateurs by a long shot.

My pink paperweight came out OK.  My mom likes purple and paperweights so that’s what I tried to deliver.  This was the very first project I did and there was a lot of learning about glass in the process.

Alyssa’s entwined red helix paperweight came out beautifully. I think it was the best piece we did.

I requested a vase, which was a lot more work than I expected.  I wanted cobalt blue, but it turns out the studio is not very good about properly shelving colored glass.  I think Brian (who was renting time for us) was a bit annoyed, too.  The colors in the raw glass are so intense that it’s hard to tell the difference between most colors until you start using them.  Blue, green, and purple all look pretty similar.  Nevertheless, I think it came out well.  I couldn’t tell you much about the individual steps, since it went by quick.  I’m waiting for Alyssa to post her pictures so I can see what I did.

Here are the two Christmas ornaments we made.  At this point, we were getting a bit more comfortable with the process.  We still needed a lot of help (especially with the blowing part which apparently takes months to get comfortable with)  but we were at a stage where Brian could let us do easy steps on our own.

From a physics point of view, it was remarkable how resilient glass is and how dramatically its behavior changes at different temperatures.  The glass we started with was at 2500F, practically white hot.  It was too liquid for most manipulation, but you needed that hot so that it would be the right temperature when you finally got it to the workbench.  A lot of the shaping used tools that were at room temperature.  We used wet wood bowls and even wet newspaper to shape the glass.  At one point, Brian needed to rough up the surface of the glass, so he quickly dipped a ball of red hot glass into a bucket of water.  It cooled and cracked the surface but left the interior glass hot.  One of the big challenges for glass blowing is that the glass attached to the blowing tube cools much faster than the glass further out.  To blow a bubble, you have to slowly force air through the more viscous glass into the softer glass.  Not easy.

It was a treat to work with someone who knew his craft so well, and to try something I’ve always been curious about.  Brian was a very generous teacher and really worked to cram a lot of experience into those three hours.  I will definitely try to do it again;  I think the Crucible has glass classes.  Thank you so much, Laura!

There are whole set of videos about fluids in zero-g. Without the influence of gravity, forces that we mostly overlook dominate. Surface tension and internal cohesive forces cause fluids to form giant spheres that are just big toys.

I just wanted to wish everyone that reads this blog a happy Thanksgiving. I am thankful for friends, a fabulous wife, my niece and nephew, a job that lets me play for a certain number of hours a day, my general good health, and the amazing world out there.

I am also thankful for this ridiculous picture.

Halloween has come and gone. Overall, it has been a good one aside from the specter of grading that has haunted all me weekends of late.

Last weekend Alyssa asked me if I had a costume in mind. I did not (aside from a few that will probably never materialize, like my all black and white Flash Gordon costume) and so she asked me if I’d like to be Max from “Where the Wild Things Are”. I said sure, thinking that she would get some white sweats and a white hoodie and it would look OK.

Day by day, our living room started to fill with fabric and buttons and doodads. She called me from one of her shopping excursions and asked me if I had a hoodie that she could cut up. I respectfully declined and a cheap hoodie was purchased and sacrificed to the cause. I hinted that I’d like to wear the costume to school on Friday and she picked up the pace.

Friday morning I was awakened by her coming to bed. She had stayed up all night finishing it. When I came downstairs, there was an impressive Max suit waiting for me.

I wore it to school and it was a big hit.  Due to a mysterious decision by the student council spirit committee,  everyone had been given the directive to dress in particular colors.  I was the only person in a costume Most of the students recognized it., mostly from the movie but a few proudly from the book.   A few teachers were befuddled — they had not read the book and had not seen ads for the movie.  One asked if I was King Rabbit.

Strangely, the only somewhat negative comments came from teachers.  They agreed that the costume was well done, but they couldn’t imagine anyone spending that much time on a costume.  It wasn’t the costume or me wearing it that offended, it was the time that went into it that offended.   It was weird.

The costume was quite warm, especially the feet.  They base of the costume was a white furry bath robe.  Alyssa added material at the bottom and the top to complete it. To make the feet, she used a pair of fuzzy boots that I guess were designed to be slippers.  They were black, so they had to be covered with a layer of the furry material that she used to extend everything.  My feet were encased in two layers of heat-trapping material.  When school started on Friday, it was in the high 50s or low 60s and I was quite comfortable.

Alyssa chose a simpler costume for herself and went as a pirate.  It was a very nice costume, but it paled against the fabulousness of mine.

All in all, a great Halloween. On to grades, sadly.

I got a phone message from my four-year-old nephew yesterday. This was exciting in and of itself since he has never shown much aptitude with phones, nor a desire to use one. People in real life are exciting and interesting to him. Disembodied voices at the end of a piece of plastic have never been interesting before. My sister has attempted to get him to say things to me over the phone, like thanking me for a present, and it usually ends being a tentative, barely audible whisper.

Yesterday’s message opened with my sister saying “Calvin has a question for you.” Then Calvin asked, loud and clear, “How do you make a rocket?” I panicked. I know all about rocketry theory and history. I know the rudiments of building a rocket, but he’s a bit young for flammable rockets. Maybe a water-powered rocket? Maybe he just wants to build a realistic model. What’s necessary and what’s optional? Does he know the words I need to use to describe typical rocket design? Should I bring up conservation of momentum?

I called back and got him on the phone. He asked the question again, and I started in on all the details. My sister was listening on speaker phone, and clarified the purpose of the call. “Calvin wants to know how to turn the couch into a rocket.” Oh, you put a steering wheel at one end and put fuel in it and have fire come out the back. Much like transforming the couch into a car or a bus or a plane (though no fire out the back). That made him happy, though he was curious about what would happen if you sat on the wrong end of the couch. Well, you couldn’t see where you were going and the fire might get too hot. That satisfied him.

It always helps to know what your audience wants.

Music Hall meets hip-hop. It’s remarkable how the rhythms of hip-hop and the story-rhymes of music hall songs mesh so well. MC Formby!

Both George Formby and Mr. B favor the banjo-ukelele, a delightful instrument by any measure.

This is the way the web works: a guy in Chicago inherits a bunch of old movies that his grandfather shot in the 50s; he cleans them up and posts them on Vimeo; a Chicago blogger finds them and posts links; one of the videos is footage of a San Francisco vacation so a San Francisco blogger stumbles over it and posts it; a big aggregator blog (Boing Boing) links to it; I see it and post it on my blog.

This is footage of San Francisco in the late 1950s. It’s remarkable how little some of the skyline has changed and how much other parts have changed. The view towards the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz from the top of Nob Hill is about the same; looking east, the ferry building is still visible. Some cities seem to bear the look of an era. San Francisco seems to capture something about the 40s and 50s, even as parts of it are brand-new.

San Francisco 1958 from Jeff Altman on Vimeo.

1950s footage
(Those of you interested in San Francisco should look at the rest of Spots Unknown; there is much to be learned about all sorts of things, including our surprisingly progressive sewer system.)

This is her after the show. Huppah!

One of the wonderful things about my years on the periphery of the circus is all of the genuinely nice (and talented) people I’ve met. Several friends of mine have been touring with a small tent circus all summer and they hit Northern California last weekend. Carlo and Orlene offered to get me into their sold out show and I jumped at the chance.

My niece Amelie has shown a definite interest in the circus. She likes to watch me juggle and her parents have mildly encouraged her inclinations to tumble. She’s been taught to style after trips and falls, actually. Small injuries can lead to tears or laughter depending on how parents react and her parents definitely want her to laugh.

I knew that Circus Zoppe would be a family friendly show, perfect for Amelie’s first taste. It would be in a small tent, with no really scary acts or big animals. Carlo and Orlene, the parents of two small children, assured me that the show would be good for a four-year-old, and it was. In fact, it was one of the nicest circuses I’ve ever been to. While none of the acts was technically dazzling, they were all satisfying. The clowning was exceptionally well done, a rarity. Plus they had a dog act, which I tend to enjoy. The Zoppe family has been running circuses since the mid-nineteenth century. Their show had a timeless air to it, and there was little to remind us that we were in the 21st century, or even the late 20th.

It was a two-hour long show, and Amelie sat still for the whole thing. We got to tour the backstage area and visit Carlo’s trailer, which she seemed to enjoy. Her mother told me that she’s still talking about it days later, which makes me happy. Now I need to find a circus for Calvin!

I just stumbled over Abstruse Goose. It’s very similar to xkcd, though xkcd has a bit more of a heart and a higher hit-to-miss ratio. The cartoonist (who seems rather anonymous) likes name-dropping advanced math and physics. Sometimes the jokes work and sometimes it’s just showing off. A fairly large number of cartoons end with characters hitting each other after a bad pun, sadly. I do like this cartoon, though:

It’s an old idea, but a nice visualization. Seeing the good and bad of American broadcast culture and how far they could have spread invokes a certain amount of awe and wonder (and occasionally shame; can’t we recall some of those radio waves?).