we ride on waves of

magnetic invisible

  messages we hear

favorite things 18

the days around here are finally beginning to warm, and of course the baseball season is now in full swing. which for us means a lot more time spent outside. last night as the sun began its descent we barbecued nathan's hot dogs while my son aaron and i played catch on the lawn. in the background we could hear the sights and sounds of another game being played by our local team far away in the land of their birth. there in new york it was cold and wet, and i smiled as some of the remaining sunlight still touched my cheek.
since we're well inside the broadcast area, my little transistor radio works well. this one is a repro we picked up years ago based on a design from the 50's. like most of my favorite things what i love about it is the simplicity and reliability. unlike so many of the complicated digital whatsits of today, this device only does one thing and needs no online tutorials to operate (that is unless you were born after 1985) the cost to operate this little marvel amounts to less than a couple dollars a year. and for now the airwaves remain free.
there's something very calming about listening to the ballgame on the radio on the porch or while working in the back yard. for a time you can imagine that life is still simpler, like the design of this transistor. but then your line of thought drifts forward as you remember that this gadget heralded a coming future, where we could not only take the broadcasted programming to the beach with us, but one day become the broadcasters ourselves.

playmobil

 one of the better perks in being a parent is selecting your children's toys for them when they are still very young. in fact, it is something quite like an art picking things out for their play. it requires a combination of keen logical deduction and a reckless abandonment to intuition. and sometimes it is a payback to the wounded days of your own childhood, that without check can get away from you like a runaway train. yet in all of this, there has been a careful attention to quality. an attempt to help form long lasting relationships with toys that will not only spark the imaginative play, but give the user an excellent entry point into solid design.

 all of this is captured in the world of playmobil. born of the fatherland, where some would consider the father land of toy production, the branstatter  group began production in the 1970's. as a child i remember these sturdy plastic figures in themes based mostly in generic historical settings, such as pirates and knights. currently they still produce over 30 themes both historical and modern.

over the years we've collected quite a bit of the stuff. we have the obligatory knight and castle sets, pirate boats and island, (with napoleonic navy in hot pursuit) and of course the city sets with our private lear jet at the ready to take our little people all over the playmobil planet at a moment's notice. although they lack the more intricate assembly and building traits of the rival lego sets, there is still much interchangeability. and with that comes so much of the fun.

 as we routinely clean out the garage and donate or sell outgrown items, the question always seems to come around to what we'll do with these. they get played with less and less these days, and yet it's difficult for me to let them go. i'll pick up a piece or two and stare at the wonderful details that have been included and think what a shame it would be if they were one day gone. so i guess until the kid in me has had enough they will continue to occupy a shelf in my garage and a warm place in the heart.

carrug island

one of the reasons i think the t.v. show "lost" was so popular is because i believe within all of us is an island of private thought. a construct of all of the sacred dreams and desires we carry around separate of our connection to others. this place, which i have named "carrug island" appeals to me very much.
it's my place of escape, and a land where a boy may be king. still featuring a restored castle from original inhabitants of centuries past, now open to guests as a kind of museum, winery and b+b. there is also a football field nearby (and when i say "football" i'm not talking about the american offering) which hosts world cup qualifying and exhibition matches from around the world. just to the south of it is the little hamlet of carrug where one can grab a pint of local ale while listening to folk music or spoken word. further south one may choose to stay in our 5 star international accomadations with all modern technology and convenience.
of course the biggest event each year is the vintage moto gp, whose road course challenges riders from all backgrounds and which circumnavigates the island. after the race you may find some of the riders hanging out at the igloo club and dancing the night away. all of this fun does require an organization, and you'll find our three building headquarters and offices down on the southeast side of the island. when we take a break from the busy planning, we like to head down to the gourmet hot dog stand below on street level.
of course there are other attractions and amusements including the carrug peaks, with an still active volcano, and its unusual desert valley below. a large greenhouse cultivating some of our more delicate fruits and flowers, and even a circus show to rival cirque du soleil's. and too there is always the beach. never far from our gaze, it's beautiful blue reminds us that we are always close to life.

ground control to major tom...

atari age

i've known about atari age for a while now, but somehow i didn't put 2 and 2 together until just the other day. you see, almost 2 years ago i finally decided to put my own atari lot up for sale. it was a little bittersweet for although i sure didn't need the boxes of consoles and cartridges taking up space in the garage anymore, and had mostly had my fun and was done, my ebay auction didn't yield the result i was hoping for. in fact, to be honest i really lost money on the deal which was the biggest disappointment.

time goes by. sometimes i would hear a song or see an ad in an old comic book that reminded me of those days in the early 80's when i would go over to my best friend's house and play atari for hours. and i missed that a little. so while browsing the atari age website the other day, i was a little surprised to come across an emulator for my mac, and an astonishing collection of roms for the 2600. and the download folders for these take up so little memory. so in no time i had not only replaced every single title i had basically given away in the ebay auction, but was playing games i'd never even heard of.

and in addition to having access to all these fabulous game experiences, atari age is the definitive resource for everything else you would ever want to know about the system including scans of all the ephemera, the instruction booklets, packaging, ads and even a marvel comic series called "atari force". and now i am able to tap into a little bit of that feeling, the memories of long gone days when life just seemed simpler. at my uncle's house in arizona on vacations we would swim all day until we got tired, and then came in and played asteroids or space invaders or missile command until we got the urge to jump back in the pool. and now i'm floating in an 8 bit sea again.

fields containing pearls
lie beneath our feet and wait
for full hearts to dig

the stars of yesterday
now abandoned as
orphan technology

member review

so first, a little background. i like so many others came to the netflix as a disgruntled movie lover tired of paying those ridiculous late fees, which as i understand it was also the impetus for the creation of the company. although it took some getting used to (no more instant gratification in running down to the rental store for that quick hit) i soon became accustomed, and then fell madly in love with the company. and in fact it really felt there for a while like we were all of us sticking it to the man as we watched the video rental giants began to topple. (hard to believe as a former blockbuster employee that they once sponsored a college bowl game) and there was a certain elegant control i know i felt when checking in to my work computer the morning after putting that red envelope in the mail. reviewing and then reordering the queue. a mystical pleasure at finding hidden treasures on dvd while i sipped that morning cup o' coffee. and it seemed like our love affair would go on and on, even as the number of movies in my queue grew longer than a year of days.
then tragedy. first the great recession hit the reset button on all non-essential expenditures (i know, like film watching isn't essential?) which killed all media in our home for a time. and although initially a bitter and jagged little pill, the hiatus ultimately proved quite positive. i realized how much time i was wasting night after night, sitting mindlessly in front of the tube. (and yes, it was still a tube) then i discovered the local library, and learned to work the system, gaining access to the entire placer county library network. i was singing the praises of our great shared institutions of learning. but after about a year my folks kicked in with a one year gift subscription to the old netflix. sure, it was only a 1 disc, unlimited streaming, and not our old 3 at a time, but it was nice to be back. i'd missed the familiarity of the queue. and although i had knocked off quite a few in the interim, the access to the new releases was a plus.
but something had happened in the absence. where i used to jump on the new releases, as if there was some limited shelf life to them, the thrill of the hunt was gone now. it just didn't matter like before. and if this was art after all, wouldn't it keep indefinitely? and i certainly wasn't riding the zeitgeist any more. i mean i'm just a regular dude. it's not like i work for the ny times or something.
the following year the folks re-upped our subscription, and it was during this period the company made its fateful decision to separate the streaming and disc plans, basically doubling the price for many of their loyal followers. we who know the story, remember what happened next. a spiral of members walking away in feelings of disgust and betrayal as netflix watched its value drop by nearly half. (hmm, double your price - lose half your customers) we were still grandfathered in under our subscription, and i wondered what our plan of action should be once it expired.
now here we are, just a few days in to paying for the same plan, and i just don't know how to feel. on one hand i too wanted to join the angry mob and walk out on my former lover. i had been wooed away from blue to red. i'd learned the fight song, preached its good news, and now i felt no love returned. but as i have weighed all the options in recent days, it seems that some of my fire has smoldered. when i think of how much i used to spend on cable tv, and how little i got back in return, it's easy. and going back to the all free route, although tempting, takes a lot of work. and for less than 20 bucks a month i am getting access to quite a bit of film and tv archive. so, although i no longer go out and rah rah anymore for netflix, at the end of the day i'm giving them a solid 3 stars for like. (but look out red, something better comes along and it was nice knowin' ya :^)

hangar one

i was sitting at my desk the other day, when i spotted this heading our way. so bizarre to see it coming out of the east. we never saw them when we lived up in sacramento. and it made me think about the glory days of the original airships. i wondered what it must have been like to be in a farm field somewhere in europe, and then to look up and see this giant silent monster bearing down on you.

this one belongs to the hangar one vodka people and has been on a 30+ city tour. the blimp is housed nearby and must have been heading back to home base the day i spotted it. i understand that they book flights back and forth between sf and la. how cool. i wonder what it would be like to float up there suspended in the sky...

as day shifts to night
we lose our ties and wind down
the reel to reel

analog

at thanksgiving my cousin asked if i had seen the movie "super 8". i had not. she then told me how much it reminded her of me. curious, i got around to seeing it over the weekend, and though i wasn't crazy about it, i did enjoy taking a little time machine trip through the landscape of my youth. seeing a walkman in the movie reminded me about all of the "personal stereos" i had picked up over the years. back in the day sony was the gold standard, but there were others. i once picked up an aiwa because the sales guy said "s' got sony guts".

but my finest purchase in the field was undoubtedly back in '84 when i somehow managed to drop a hundred bucks for the wm-10, the world's smallest cassette player. without a tape inside it was as big as a cassette cover. and as i thought about this little marvel of the age, and all my fond memories of sporting it on ski trips and walking to and from school listening to big country and duran duran, i wanted to geek out a little more and went looking for any information i might find on the world wide internet.

and of course the triple w did not let me down, as i uncovered some great archival sites deicated to all things pre-digital. chief among them is walkman central, an exhaustive portal to some fine sony machinery. and as i perused my new found love interest, one thing leapt out at me. sony was the apple of its day. as i read some of the more technical achievements for each model i really got this sense that these guys were pushing the envelope wider and wider with each successive model. as problems occurred, they looked for ways to solve them and they did, again and again. and even as the shift from cassette to cd began, sony was still at the forefront of development and technology.

sadly then, it is difficult to understand why they were so soundly defeated once the shift again moved us from cd to mp3 technology. i mean they had it all. the design and manufacturing departments, research and development, marketing, even a solid link to the music business through their publishing label. so why did little apple which had never before delved into the music market become not only the spoiler, but the only dominant force in making these little music sticks that we all carry around now? in a word, simplicity. as sony added more and complexity to their devices, apple just made it simple. but looking at that old wm-10 reminded me that they once knew how to do that really well too.

space age usa

this little collection of images is from our newly acquired matchbook collection. they feature illustrations of the apollo 11 mission into space and lunar landing. i'm not really sure of their origin. although probably not nasa approved, they were most likely produced in the afterglow of the triumphant moon landing. as i looked around a little today i saw quite a bit of other independently produced apollo 11 memorabilia commemorating this mission.


i was just a baby when the world first thrilled to this event, but it has always produced a bit of awe when i think of all the incredible effort that went into the preparation and lead up to that day in july of '69. in my minds eye i see time standing still briefly here on planet earth, as the whole world holds its breath and stares into the night sky at that great beautiful orb and wonders. and stops to look at grainy black and white images through television shop windows. and in those moments tens of millions of the dreams of children are launched as well.

if you'd like to see more images from this collection, there's a nice little lot for auction on ebay here. bon voyage space travelers.

the sign of my hand
stamped here to resist time and
electrical current

insulated

and this is the crazy collection of my wife's grandfather who is 95 this year. these are old electrical power pole insulators that live full time at the family cabin. most of them are glass but he does have this very large ceramic example as well.


why is this interesting you might ask? maybe it's not, but when i first saw these i wasn't sure exactly what they were. some had been turned into candle votives and i dismissed them. but after a second and third look i began to realize this wasn't their original purpose. so i got to talking to grandpa about them. how did you come by them?


apparently back when they began to replace these (with polymer materials) the utility guys would drop these from the poles as they went and just left them. so if you took a walk you might find a pile of these sitting at the bottom of a string of power poles.


there is something really beautiful about them apart from the function they used to perform. like art deco depression-era glass and ceramic. these really pretty lines and curves.


and a reminder too that a long time ago people used to make things by hand. there were once great glass and ceramic factories in this country producing these things on order for the various utilities across the country. linking art and commerce on the very earliest representation of the grid.

transformation

today at work i discovered a little treasure trove of vinyl in the giveaway area next to the break room. there were like 20 of these and i was a little surprised too. usually it's pretty slim pickens over there, but david crowder band on vinyl? cool. anyway, i went back later and they were all still there. doesn't anybody own a record player anymore?
so i decided to do a little art project while i made a fresh pot of coffee. i grabbed another one and put it in the oven in our break room and let it cook while the coffee brewed. after several minutes it was malleable (and probably quite toxic) and i was able to form it into a little crumpled box. the dcb wax is now my new key tray. and something tells me that this would make mr. crowder smile as well.

the dial turns and
a voice bids me welcome my
friend to the machine

geek snobbery

saw this bloke sitting near a seaside wall with this contraption on our last visit down to sf. i watched him pull all the bits out of his beater chevy astro van that had been given a rattle-can black paint job. inside it looked like a film camera grip's car with all kinds of shelves and cubbies to store things. he then proceeded to set up his odd rig when this shot was taken. i have to admit i was a bit curious as to how it all was going to work.
and as i stood there quietly watching him work, he stops what he's doing, turns to me and says "this takes a lot of concentration and i really don't want anybody staring at me while i work. so can you please leave?" now i'm generally obliging but for some reason this really ticked me off. i thought to myself "are you kidding me? you drive up in your burning man van and start pulling out all kinds of equipment to set up your sun powered whatsit in the middle of one of the most lively places in san francisco like some street performer, and then you've got the nerve to ask me to LEAVE?!"
i had to really contain myself for all the vitriol that was building up inside. i mean it's not like he was in his backyard and i lived next door to young mr. edison and popped my head over for a peek before getting shooed off. he was outdoors in a public space! but i smiled and slowly turned away begrudgingly as if i had been kicked out of the public park by another citizen, which in a sense i had. ah well, i could have stayed and just said "no, i don't think so. i was here first. but i didn't want to be that guy. so if you ever see this delicate genius, be forewarned.

borders

i have been looking at borders lately. i'm doing this project at work that requires me to find remote radio antenna locations. sometimes there are addresses listed, but often i only have a set of gps coordinates. using google earth this usually gets me right in the backyard, but sometimes it pins a position quite a distance away. as i went through my list of sites sometimes i would notice "nad27" before listing the coordinates. most of ours use nad83. a little bit of research showed me the nad27 model was created in the 1800's by a survey team that traversed the entire north american continent and was based on an ellipsoid.
in the 1980's satellite mapping technology revealed that earth was not as perfect an ellipse as originally suspected and thus a new more accurate model was created. and even today there is a another model called wgs84 using the center of the earth as reference. so what does all this mean?
interestingly, as we travel around the country and pass from one state into another, these borders may have shifted. often as much as the length of a football field or more. the invisible lines we have drawn on maps to establish fences have been re-staked. all those folks who made trips to the four corners states as kids and stuck a hand and foot in four different states at once may have only been bending over in utah.
and this got me to thinking about what is it that actually creates a border anyway? if you look at a map of the united states, those early established states are often separated by natural borders like rivers, ocean and mountain ranges. this it seems to me is an idea that makes the most sense. but when you get into areas like kansas and nebraska where it's all just rolling flatland, then what? i guess since there's no more land to discover and draw new lines on we'll just keep erasing the old and re-drawing new ones.

the slow turn of a
monday unbuckles freeing
rusty wheels to roll