Old Friends New Worlds – TimefireVR

Adriana demoing some updates in Hypatia by TimefireVR LLC

Had some visitors by the offices of TimefireVR today, former staffers Adriana and Kyle. I had recently run into Adriana while I was out shopping and said hello after not seeing her for eight months since we experienced a total layoff of staff back in July. Slowly, the company was restaffed and, for a while, was in other people’s hands, but in January, it found its way back to the original shareholders.

Kyle visiting Hypatia at TimefireVR LLC

Adriana’s other half is Kyle, who also worked for us last year and was one of the casualties. Behind him, also in VR, is Jason, who was kept on through all the chaos, and Stephanie, on the left, recently came back on for some contract art and is staying with us part-time. It was great seeing these two, but at the same time, it’s still rough as the emotional toll of last summer has lingering effects.

Piston Honda MKIII

Piston Honda MKIII from Industrial Music Electronics

Well, it has been three weeks since I first got this Eurorack module that will be known as the Piston Honda MKIII. Scott Jaeger the founder of Industrial Music Electronics is its inventor and mad scientist that is currently programming this beast. Tonight I’m testing note tracking by voltage, a built-in tuner, and then I thought to self-patch this thing in every way I could think of. So far today I’ve installed four firmware updates bringing the total to 40 different versions. My “job” is to test for bugs but Scott also gets an inordinate amount of feedback on the interface and how the user might be confused by particular modes or methods that were initially experimented with. Throughout this process, I’m watching the evolution of a brilliant yet extremely rough module come into a smooth maturity that is creeping ever closer to perfection. Trivia; today was the day that Scott introduced oscillator tone variations called Orthodox, Degenerate, Problematic, and Pathological.

Facebook

Facebook

I read a lot of negative stuff and listen to far more about how bad Facebook is. It may have its flaws and experience growing pains that verge into areas of behavior that could be questionable, but I hope these blemishes are repairable. Social media is evolving and is the first platform of its kind to connect so many people in the largest gathering ever. To me, it’s a kind of Woodstock, and the information fills in for the bands. Earlier today, I wrote the following on someone else’s post:

“What makes Facebook valuable to me is the diversity of people who have congregated in a single location; it is up to the individual to choose who to hang out with and what qualities of people meet their needs. Is this really so different than the real world?

For example, I go to a nightclub where 300 potential friends are also at. Statistically, some of those people are going to jail; others will go home to abuse a spouse; there are radicals to the left and right; some have crap diets, limited intelligence, or are poor dancers. I DON’T friend them all. I have to filter them, and if it’s the only club in town, then I can either bitch about what I have, move to the village that doesn’t have a club, or open my own.

Facebook is what we make of it. I’ve not friended 1.5 billion members; it’s only 180 people. Then I rub shoulders with maybe 500 others in places like Synth and Eurorack forums on Facebook. Occasionally, I bump into someone, and I think, “Yeah, this person might be interesting,” and so I join a conversation.”

Why does this have to be so difficult and rife with drama? Could it be because we are missing something in our own lives and need to blame anything else instead of taking responsibility for our own decisions to eat all the junk food, be it social or edible, that is within our grasp?

Time To Go

Maine License Plate "VEGGIES"

On May 12, 2007, while driving south on the Atlantic Highway between Belfast and Camden, Maine, we found this license plate. For some reason, we dragged it back to Arizona and for the past 11 years, it has sat on a bookshelf gathering dust. Today it is finally heading to the landfill, but it couldn’t have traveled 2,830 miles west and hung out for over 10 years without it being put to use for something so here it is going up on my blog. Maybe someday someone will reach out and let us know that we found their license plate way back when.

Randomness

Random light

Looking through a glass brick in the late afternoon the bending light was animating in random patterns dependent on where I allowed my eyes to gaze. All weekend I’ve been kind of random in my studies of everything from the beta Eurorack module I’m testing to exploring Allegorithmic’s Substance Painter 2018, Blender addon Speedflow and Wazou’s RMB Pie Menu to learning more about Hedgehog Connect that allows Blender and Substance Painter to exchange texture data. I set up my Wacom tablet after years of it sitting unused in anticipation of me putting it back to use. A Mocha Pro for After Effects tutorial was neglected, but Caroline and I hit the halfway point in the book she’s reading to me in the car: “The Silk Roads: A New History of the World.”

Caroline’s weekend played out by her meeting with a few other women to look at block design and profile drafts, terms that relate to weaving. She’s also been working on a crochet project that has to do with the art installation “Arizona!” that will premiere this November at the Scottsdale Canal. Her 8-shaft floor loom also figured in her activities as she’s been exploring a weave structure called Summer and Winter for the making of coasters. If that wasn’t enough fiber-related stuff she even found time on her spinning wheel to make yarn while she boned up on her German while talking to her mom in Frankfurt, Germany.