So, that was a thing

Wired up all 200 feet of LED strip (it only took 3-4 hours). The hard part was calculating it all, spec'ing it all, making sure everything was actually going to work. So that's done and delivered.

Also finished the costume for my friend's kid. We didn't get to work on it on the weekend so that was a big push yesterday and today. That and being so tired yesterday I gave up around five and basically went to bed (woke up for dinner then went right back to sleep).

The best I can say for the costume is during the last push I finally started to remember what I was doing. It takes a while to blow the dust off skills you haven't used in a while. It all more-or-less worked but I'm sorry the version #2 (version #5 if you count the muslins) of the hood is a little too small. All the others were too big but somehow we overcompensated. Pity, because that medium canvass really drapes well, and I lined it and everything.

(In case you are wondering, that's a simplified Arrow Season One as a vest instead of a long-sleeve body suit. The hood-and-shoulders is detachable, strapping under the arms and velcro'd to either side of the zipper in front. The raw un-hemmed edge at the shoulders is one of the "tells" of that outfit, like the contrasting lining and the chevrons on the angled twill tape (done with iron-on patch material...I am not one to be afraid of expedient construction methods).



Means I am basically clear of favors and designs and other projects with deadlines and can go back to practicing violin and repairing my bass. And possibly shaping a bronze sword; there's a couple of people who offer a raw stone-cast bronze blade for reasonable bucks.

Grading on a curve

Dracula is open. The LEDs are calculated and now it is up to the theater company to actually get around to purchasing them in time to install them. And I took most of today off to work on my friend's costume (I was really sleepy after being in rehearsal until almost midnight two nights running anyhow).

Vinyl (that's the generic term; you can call the embossed stuff pleather if you like and I usually do), is a real pain to sew. It alternately grabs and slips in the machine, bunching up at the slightest excuse. I sprayed the presser foot with silicone lubricant and that helps a little. A trick I just read about is to smear vaseline on the fabric just in front of the foot.

It also doesn't heal. You need to use a wide stitch or risk weakening the fabric so much it tears like a page from a memo pad. And you really don't want to cut open a seam and re-do it. You also don't want to pin anywhere but the selvage, which makes pinning even that much more pleasant.

Flattening the seams is almost worse. Because you can't press it. Only way is to glue. The one nice part is that if you glue a hem first, you can actually topstitch it for strength and looks without it going crazy on you.

But I also found out close to the end of the day that because it doesn't rebound the stitches end up loose, and you can't backstitch for strength because you'll just make a hole. Which means my seams were weak. Because my friend needed it for pictures I temporarily protected the seams with a few drops of fabric tack, but when I get it back I'm going to back all of them up with seam tape. Or bias tape and more glue (top stitching would be even nicer but I think it would look cluttered at this stage.

Interestingly enough, the actual show-used costume this is based on did no hems and all of the seams were "open," instead of stitching leather to leather they topstitched the leather to a black jersey knit. That gave the seams a little give for movement.

If I do another personal project with this material, I'll either use a similar trick or I'll do lapped seams. Or if I am lucky enough to have garment weight instead of the current upholstery weight, something like a flat-felled seam.




In any case, that's one more fixed-date deliverable off the table. Aside from lingering tasks with this LED thing I'm able to relax again. Just in time. My recovery from the last bout with the unknown illness was in danger of hitting a relapse if I had to keep up this week's crazy schedule.

Snowball

It's been nice and cool, finally -- though not enough to help with all the fires. I sometimes wonder if it is like the experiment with the long-lived rats; if I keep the bedroom a little colder than I'd like, eat less than I'd like, and sleep just slightly less than I'd like, I seem to feel stronger overall.

Monday I was at the peak of the sine wave, 180 degrees out of phase from Aug 27 when I was lying under my desk trying not to pass out. Did a long and busy day at work, did laundry, did errands, and still had enough left over to go out to dinner. Experience says I'll be forced to slow down soon enough but at the moment I'm finally getting things done.

Right, so that's when I volunteered to help a co-worker out with a costume for his kid.

And of course that snowballed. I've made six visits to fabric stores, been researching dyes and re-reading my old costume books and re-learning the tricks of my sturdy Bernina Record 830 (thank you again, Wendy, for such a fantastic gift). I've got a table at work covered with fabric and patterns and all those bits and pieces and scraps and small strange tools of the trade.

Maybe I'll actually finish my bass case -- after my friend's costume is done -- if I haven't gone back into fatigue before then. Of course I also need to build two rolling carts and write up two sets of assembly instructions for work. At least I finished the parts I needed to machine.

(Yes, the lathe at TechShop is looking pretty scummy by now. It also needs some maintenance. I've written them one nasty email already.)

Rudimentary what?

If a lathe can build a lathe, it makes total sense that there are scads of people upgrading their cheap T962 reflow ovens (used to solder surface mount components)....with new circuit boards filled with surface mount components. (Well, the first thing I printed with a borrowed M3D 3d printer was a spool holder for itself).

I'm already unhappy with some aspects of my new board. I plan to drop down to 0805 chip size, for instance, and (having carefully read the Design Rules at OSHPark) narrower traces packed closer together. I can probably shrink the board by half! But I'll wait before I change anything. I expect to learn quite a bit when I solder up the first prototypes, and more when I try to program them and put them in Holocron kits.

Already I have grand dreams, of course. Given one of various audio chips and a socket for micro-SD, I could actually make a "talking" holocron. And of course if some of the ideas on the new board pan out, I'll be one step closer to actually having the DuckLite marketable. Oh, yes. And back to Wraith Stone as well (already I'm wondering...can I do capacitive touch sensing if it is hung around my neck?)



Also burned a CD for dad. He probably knows very well that video games passed the chip-tunes barrier roughly the time they stopped using vector graphics. But I'm not putting together a "greatest hits." The original conversation was about amateur covers, so I've tried to pack in a good spectrum of skill levels and a variety of approaches, from people recording themselves on a camera phone messing around on the piano in their front room, to professional-level production numbers like the work of Lindsey Stirling.

The first video I saw from Lindsey, she did a nice cover on violin of themes from the Zelda series. The production values really raised the bar; exceptional recording and mixing and professional-level backing tracks that are almost seamless. And the video is of her traipsing in gorgeous scenery, with her violin and with equally gorgeous outfits based on characters from the game. But what really nails it is how lively she is, sawing away at her violin, leaping about, all with this fantastic grin on her face.

Oh, yes, and there was one of those Oh My God moments. You know how it is when you've just learned about something new, something you are just getting into, something you want to share your excitement of with friends? And you open the wrong door and suddenly there's this massive conference room absolutely jammed by people who are into the same thing and know it more deeply and more expertly and are more passionate about it than you will ever be.

Yeah, all of this discovery of amateur covers of music from video games has been like that. Well, I knew they were out there. I didn't realize just how many, how good they really were, and how popular they are. The moment that really informed me was a video from a concert of game music (with a professional orchestra and band) at the Symphony Hall in Boston.

So soloist steps up and starts singing. Giant cheer as the crowd recognizes the number ("Still Alive," of course, from the breakout hit Portal). But that's not the worst. They start singing along. A huge, symphony-hall sized audience, and every one was a better fan than I'll ever be. I recognize the tune. They know all the words.

(There's another moment in the same video that perhaps needs some setting up. The lyric is "Maybe Black Mesa? That was a joke, haha, fat chance." Well, the soloist stepped back and let the audience sing that part. And I can't help thinking that there was a certain bitter humor in their voices. Because "Black Mesa" is the location of the first game in the Half-Life series, games created by the same company who made Portal, and the long-awaited third and final game of that series is now considered by fans to be the gaming industry's greatest piece of vaporware. "Haha, fat chance," all right. There is no longer a "maybe" about Black Mesa.)

So anyhow. Tried to select a number of piano covers, and made a conscious effort to bring back some of the same themes (in the way a concerto might) by showing off different covers of material from the same games. And I tried to focus in on games I've played myself but not only aren't there a lot of offerings there but that would leave off some of the great stuff like Skyrim, the Final Fantasy series, and of course Zelda. And I shuffled and shuffled to get a good flow, building up tension and relieving it, contrasting styles while maintaining certain continuities to help one track follow another.

Tried, too, to include some of the contexting. To show the penetration of game music into church choirs and high school marching bands, the intense fan interest, the stature of acoustic instruments and vocalists and life performance and the cross-cultural world community (as contrast the possible stereotype of nerdy white guys tinkering up music tracks in MIDI). And show too the social networking, the recording and collaboration and jam sessions that take place through the online world.

What I really wish is a little more space than a CD. I have five hours of the stuff already on my hard disk (I auditioned twice that many before making even that selection, and that's barely a quarter of what turned up in my rather basic searches). But then, dad will probably turn off around the middle of the second track anyhow.

So now I just need to find the Ukulele music I promised...