I spent the weekend with my two gorgeous (which is a fancy word for good-looking; and if you get that reference, I think I love you) nieces. In the car I heard Ryleigh (three years) whispering to Ceilidh (fifteen months): “I need to tell you something…” Then Ryleigh called out “Uncle Matthew!” and I turned around to both of them blowing huge kisses to me. “Mmmmmwwaahhh!!!”
These dialogue boxes, from Garageband, are amongst my favourite computer things. I can’t escape the idea that there’s a cranky-yet-diligent old robot whose sole function is letting me know the status of my MIDI devices, even though I’ve just physically plugged them in.
Don’t confuse legibility with communication.
Greg and I are doing a Top Chef Fantasy Draft for Anthony Bourdain’s new book.
I watched Species III tonight; I think I had to. The most incredulous part is that we’re supposed to believe this little guy can be the genetic offspring of people who look like Natasha Henstridge and Justin Lazard.
Now, this might be the “need to justify spending five hours watching the Species trilogy over three days” in me, but these movies could be humankind’s greatest artistic achievement.
I watched Species II tonight (don’t judge me), which begins with the most stunning product placement I’ve ever seen (branded space station!) before turning into a pseudo-buddy cop movie.
After a Wikipedia trip going through Hackers, Jonny Lee Miller, Eli Stone, and Natasha Henstridge, I watched Species: the first anything I got into with a fake ID.
Incredibly, it holds less appeal than it did to the pre-Internet 14-year old me. But watching it again did give me a chance to enjoy the nuances… like this handsome gentleman.
Game Over (Super Mario Bros Remix)
This is absolutely amazing. (via)
Moot’s testimony from the Palin email hacking is pretty wild. (via)
Greg and I had a status battle tonight. Clearly, this was the winner.
Dear Harmonica Tester,
You are not an appropriate prop for this record shop.
“No no no, finger prints!” (via)
Gogol Bordello - “Baro Faro”
One my favourite things in the world is that choppy Klezmer sound you get by making your bow dance/bounce on top of a fiddle—you’ll hear/recognize it a lot in this song, starting at around 1:00.
So about ten years ago I decided I wanted to learn how to play it, but I didn’t have a fiddle; I saved up for a lot of months and made my way downtown. The first attempt failed when the store was randomly closed and I ended up in Brossard, sharing a phone booth with my fried Sue while we waited in the cold for a bus. The next time I went down, the shop was opened and I picked out the cheapest fiddle/bow/case set I could find. The clerk made an inappropriate joke about my friend Sophie, so I feigned my best shock and insisted, even though she was older and very Greek, that she was actually my little sister and how dare he make such a joke!
He was a bit horrified and I ended up getting a nice discount: the full setup and a “how to play fiddle” book for $80.
The problems started right away when the string holding the tail piece snapped. I headed down to Wal-Mart, picked up some nylon string, and fixed it. Then the bow started to fall apart. A fiddler friend tried to fix that, but it ended up with only half the original hairs and effectively unplayable. I took a couple months off, saved up for a new bow, and tried again.
The nylon string broke, the bridge cracked, the chin rest fell off, the strings snapped, etc. etc. Every time I got to the second lesson in the book, it broke again. Maybe it should be expected from an $80 fiddle, but I kept going. My repertoire consisted of 2-3 Irish songs, Nirvana’s “Come as You Are,” and the intro riff of Metallica’s “Master of Puppets.”
Then I moved. Unsurprisingly, the instrument I could barely play and broke all the time didn’t make the “what do I bring?” cut. My best friend’s Mom wanted to keep it above her fireplace because she thought it looked fancy… weird, but that’s where it stayed for about five years.
When I eventually got it back, I started to tune and *snap*, the nylon string breaks on me. Back in the closet until earlier this year when I took it out, fixed it up, tuned it up, and went to tighten the bow. It wasn’t getting tighter. I looked closely at the frog and there was a crack from one end to another. It turns out that it “fell” off that fireplace “frequently.”
I still can’t make that sound, and even though my fiddle doesn’t want to let me make it, I’ll be doing my best to epoxy that frog back together. Then I’m going to start a band called Epoxy the Frog and my fiddle will break during our first performance.
Matthew Gruman, cyborg-ish, neurotic about my age.
I love robots and I love dogs, but I'm not fond of robot dogs.
I live in Vancouver, BC.
Sometimes I post about my job(s), but no content on this site represents their opinions or ideals.
I make things and put them here:
You can ask a question or send email to my first name @ my full name dot com.
