Pinpoint Uncertainty

The true story of R.E.M. once opening for the band that now plays in bars

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Sun, 14 Feb 2021 07:00:00 +0000

This is a story of synchronicity and finding the truth about an apocryphal story.

This starts with the Insect Surfers "Planet Earth's Longest Running Modern Surf Band!", first formed in 1979 in the Washington DC area (actually, Chevy Chase, Maryland), which is before anything I mention in this post occurred.

From 1981 to 1985 I went to Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where I would listen to CMU's radio station, WRCT, broadcasting at that time a tiny 10 watts (or as some of the DJs would say, "10,000 milliwatts!")

My initial familiarity with the Insect Surfers was almost surely hearing their song "I'm in Gear" from their 1980 "Wavelength" EP on WRCT. You can listen to it on the below video while you get dizzy watching the vinyl EP spin on the turntable and the slight undulation of the the tone arm as it plays the slightly warped record, and when the side of the record ends you can hear the slight scratch as the needle moves to the area of the record that I now know is called "dead wax".

"I'm in Gear" is their only song I can remember by name and and the only lyric I recalled. When I played the video of the song, listening to it for probably the first time in 30-plus years, it jogs a bit of my memory; the tune is slightly familiar and I definitely remember the slightly out-of-tune organ. As one YouTube comment says, "A bit of surf - a bit of new wave - a bit of power pop."

In 1984, my final year of college at CMU, I shared an apartment in Pittsburgh with two roommates, one of them from Chevy Chase and he knew some of the band members from high school.

In 1985, after graduating college, I returned home to the Los Angeles area. That year the Insect Surfers relocated to Los Angeles.

A few years later in Los Angeles, my younger brother dated a woman from Chevy Chase. She knew the members of the Insect Surfers and my roommate in Pittsburgh. This is one of those "what are the odds?" things - My brother met his girlfriend without knowing anything about the Insect Surfers and my roommate. I may have been the common connection between my brother, his girlfriend, my roommate, and the Insect Surfers, but I had nothing to do with making the connection, I was just in the middle of it.

I finally saw the Insect Surfers perform, probably in 1988 or 1989, at a somewhat divey bar in either Manhattan Beach or Hermosa Beach. My memories don't include the name of the of the bar, but they do include that it was decorated with fishing nets and starfish and had light pine wall paneling. I don't remember their performance at all, but I did buy one of their T-shirts.

I saw them one other time when my brother hired them to play at a party in an apartment courtyard in Santa Monica. The neighbors weren't pleased, and the Santa Monica Police came and shut them down in about half an hour.

Something I heard about the Insect Surfers was that back in the early 1980s, when they had a college radio hit, there was a show they played which had R.E.M. open for them. I may have heard the story from my brother or my roommate, I don't remember. But I occasionally repeated it as an ironic tale to tell about the fates of the two bands - the band that still played in dive bars after twenty years of existence once was bigger than R.E.M. who had no problems filling stadiums when they performed. I don't want this to come across as some sort of sad fate for the Insect Surfers; given that they still chose to continue to perform after decades means they were doing something that they loved - how many bands manage to continue to perform for so long?

In the years after I saw the Insect Surfers perform, I moved to Seattle, and my Insect Surfers T-Shirt disintegrated. On September 22, 2011, while listening to KEXP while driving to work, it was announced that the Insect Surfers were going to be performing live on the radio that day. I was surprised that they still existed as a band. But there was something else big in the music world that was reported that same day - R.E.M. announced they were breaking up.

While at work at my desk, I listened to the Insect Surfers perform on KEXP. It was the perfect moment to find out whether the story about R.E.M. opening for the Insect Surfers was true. I emailed KEXP as they were performed:

Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 2:09 PM
To: KEXP DJ
Subject: The time R.E.M. opened _for_ the Insect Surfers

Perhaps this is a bit cruel to ask, but you have to ask the Insect Surfers about the time that R.E.M. opened for them in the 80s.

And the response from KEXP:

From: KEXP DJ
Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:19:36 -0700
Subject: RE: The time R.E.M opened _for_ the Insect Surfers

That's not cruel, that's genius. Thank you!

During a break between sets, my question was asked, and yes, R.E.M. opened for them once.

But it wasn't the R.E.M. that everyone knows; it was a different band that was also named R.E.M.

And there you have it, my apocryphal tale was sort-of true, and it now has amusing coda to add to it.

(Alas, the performance is no longer archived on KEXP's website. When KEXP did a website upgrade a few years back, they never restored it. I started a draft of this post about five years ago in the hope that they would eventually restore the recording so I could put it in this post. I've given up waiting, so here's the post without the recorded evidence.)

Instant Oatmeal Pancakes

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Tue, 14 Apr 2020 20:01:00 +0000

Becomes:

This is a recipe I came up with at work, where we had a kitchen with stoves, but a limited supply of ingredients. I wanted pancakes, and although eggs and instant oatmeal were available, no staple ingredients such as flour or bulk sugar were available.

And these days with everyone stuck at home and markets being sold out of flour, you might find this recipe useful.

Note that one of the instant oatmeal packets is cooked in the microwave in advance. In fact, whenever you prepare instant oatmeal, you should use the microwave. For my entire life, I used to just add hot water to the instant oatmeal, making a pasty glop that was edible, but not that great. When you prepare instant oatmeal in the microwave, it puffs up, and is much lighter, and not too different from non-instant oatmeal.

2 packets regular instant oatmeal
2 packets sugar (or 2 tsp sugar)
1 egg
1/2 cup water
1 pat butter (or 1/2 Tbsp butter)
Dash of salt

Add 1 packet of instant oatmeal to a bowl.
Measure 1/2 cup water by filling one empty oatmeal packet with water to the marked 2/3 cup line printed on the packet (yes, what the packet says is 2/3 cup is only 1/2 cup. 2/3 cup will make the batter too thin).
Cook for 1 minute in microwave (if the oatmeal hasn't puffed up after a minute, give it another 30 seconds).
The oatmeal needs to cool before adding the egg. For faster cooling, transfer the oatmeal to another bowl, spread it as thin as possible, and let it cool for about five minutes.
Add the other package of oatmeal, the egg, sugar and salt to the cooled oatmeal and mix thoroughly.
Put pan on stove on medium-high, and melt butter in pan.
Drip the butter into the batter while stirring, then mix thoroughly.
Use a spatula to spread the remaining butter over the surface of the pan.
Pan is ready when droplets of water skitter around a bit before evaporating.
Pour the batter into pan to make 4" pancakes (I usually make three in in two batches, the first with two pancakes, the second with one).
Peek under the pancakes to check if they’re nicely browned and ready to flip.
The pancakes are a bit fragile, so carefully slide the spatula under a pancake before flipping to cook the other side.
Eat! (they’re good plain, or with syrup, jam, Nutella or anything else you’d like)

Options:

Use Maple and Brown Sugar oatmeal (but don’t add any sugar if you do).
Dice up a slice of cheese and a couple strips of bacon and some onion. With two pats (or 1 Tbsp) of butter cook the onion and bacon together until the onion starts browning. Add onion, cheese and bacon to batter. (Note: at work we had pre-cooked bacon, so it didn't give off much grease when cooked, thus the reason for the butter. If you're using raw bacon, you can probably forgo the butter).

I am an Arbiter of Lepidopteran Life and Death

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Sun, 18 Nov 2018 07:35:00 +0000

The nights of a Seattle summer are cool, with the temperature almost always dropping down into the 60s. The cooler nights happen regardless of the high daily temperature; even as the high temperature day approaches or exceeds 90 degrees, it will drop 20 to 25 degrees during the night.

It is rare for homes in Seattle to have air conditioners. Historically, there just haven’t been enough days during the summer to warrant homeowners investing them (although it does seem to me that the recent summers have more and more days exceeding 85 degrees). Without air conditioning in our house, the summer ritual is after the sun sets to open the windows to let the cool night air into the house (augmented by, in some rooms, a window fan blowing air into the house from the outside).

Our house did not come with screens on the window, and until this year we had none. Which, of course, means that moths with their attraction to light would easily make their way into our house. Moths' attraction to artificial light (which the reasons why is still not clear), luring them into our homes, is not a good survival trait. A house is a death trap for a moth. Once a moth enters a house through an open window, it is unable to navigate the reverse journey, and the interior of house is is no place for a moth survive. There is no flower nectar for it to feed on (for those moths that feed; some species only eat as caterpillars and when after metamorphosis they are mouthless, only existing to find a mate to leave eggs for their next generation). A moth in a house is lost and confused, an unpleasant state to be in as its short life ends.

(An interlude of a memory returning as I write this: My junior year of college, I lived in a single dormitory room, with a multi-tube fluorescent light mounted to the ceiling right above my bed, and a large window with no screen. One night soon after I moved in, I went out, leaving the light on and window open. When I returned their were scores of moths hanging upside down on the light’s frosted white cover, stuck at the point they could no get no closer to the light. I had no choice but to sleep with the moths above me with the window open, with the hope that they would be lured out my room by the light of street lamps. That was the last time I left the room at night with the lights on and the window open.)

One morning I awoke and when I went to use the toilet, I noticed a moth with about an inch an half wingspan inside the toilet bowl, perched just above the water line. I could have just flushed the toilet and let it spiral down to its death in the sewer.

And although I have no hesitation about killing the small Indian meal moths (and their maggoty larvae) that occasionally invade our pantry, the moth in the toilet was not a pest and was just trying to find a dim place to rest during the day.

I lowered a piece of tissue down to it and with a slight touch of my finger coaxed it on to the tissue. I carried the moth and tissue to a nearby open window, gently shook the tissue, letting the moth fly off to the outdoors. I was now a moth savior.

A few days later, in the middle of the night, I heard our cat, Jay, in the bedroom, squeaking and pawing at something by the window. I returned to sleep, but in the morning on the floor was a crippled moth with tattered wings walking around in circles. Our cat is known for catching things, not killing them (do not ask me about the rats). The moth clearly wasn't going to survive long, and to put it quickly out if its misery (if that's even a state a moth can be in), I slid an open magazine under it, closed the magazine, then stomped on it, feeling its thick stubby body get crushed to goo between the pages.

One day a savior of moths. A few days later a killer of moths.

On Knowing Your Childhood Home Has Burned Down

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Fri, 11 May 2018 05:37:00 +0000

During the December 2017 Skirball Fire in Los Angeles on a news website I saw the below photo. It brought what I can best call a distant and mild sense of dread and nostalgia:

The highway is the 405/San Diego Freeway going down the Sepulveda pass between the San Fernando Valley and West L.A. The buildings belong to Leo Baeck Temple.

Here's a picture of the same scene from Google Earth from 2016 (somewhat skewed and distorted due to how aerial images are converted to an oblique view). Note the homes right above where the flames covered the hillside last December:

When I saw the photo of the fire, I had no doubt the homes above were burnt down.

One of those homes my parents built in 1966, and my family lived there until 1973 when I was ten years old (and Bel Air must have been a lot more affordable then, as my parents managed to build a 4 bedroom house on my father’s salary as a junior high school vice principal). The house is on Casiano Road, on the east side of the Sepulveda Pass. A familiar landmark (which wasn't there when I lived there) is the Getty Center, across the pass, on its west side (Google Maps view from above).

From when I lived there with my two brothers, I remember riding our bikes down the hill (of course, without a helmet), then calling our parents from a phone booth at the Bel Air Shop Easy market (as seen in the George Burns and Brooke Shields film, "Just You and Me, Kid"), to pick us up so we wouldn’t have to make the ride uphill back home; the deer bones we collected on the brush covered hillside behind the house; the blue-bellied lizards we would try to catch (hopefully without them dropping their tails); and the rattlesnakes we ran away from when we came across them hiking on the fire road that began where Casiano Road ended.

In January 2016, my wife, son and I made a trip from Seattle down to LA over the MLK Day weekend, and one place we stopped was at the house on Casiano. Part of it was to show my then ten-year-old son where I had a lived, and part was for the nostalgia about a place I lived more than forty years ago. As I drove up up Casiano Road, memories returned. The apartment building that had a pool in the courtyard; the curve of the road that I had forgotten was there; the house with an atrium; the house where the wife gave art lessons to the local kids and later committed suicide by a drug overdose; the house where a player for the Dodgers lived for a short time; the house with the kid who had a go-kart; the gutter in front of the house where we found a dead six-foot-long boa constrictor (my father later put it in one of our garbage cans; the garbage collectors were not too pleased about about coming across a large snake unexpectedly).

We parked in front of the house (with the same pecky wood siding that it was built with 50 years ago):

Just up the street we found the rough concrete sidewalk panel my father poured with our names and the date (7-17-68) written on it:

In July 2011, my family moved to a new house in Seattle, and our old Seattle house was put up for sale. The next month, while on a vacation in Alaska, we got a call from our real estate agent: our old house was broken into. We had left a few things of value there, a Dyson vacuum cleaner, an electric lawn mower; they were stolen. But most of what was stolen was the rented staging furniture - that is furniture you would not or could not use as real furniture, just furniture to decorate the house for a sale (apparently there was group of thieves targeted houses for sale and stealing staging furniture).

If we had been still living in the house when in was robbed, I knew I would have felt a sense of being vulnerable and violated. But since we had moved, those feeling weren't there, just annoyance for having to deal with it. The distance from when we lived there (only a month and a half earlier) was enough to temper any strong negative feelings.

That was in some sense similar to feeling I got when I saw the photo of the hillside on fire. Something that I had nostalgic memories of and had no control over was gone.

The day of the fire, on the news websites of local Los Angeles TV stations, I followed the progress of the fire. And then I saw this news report:

So, my assumption after seeing the photo of the fire that all the houses on that hillside were lost was wrong. The fire fighters managed to control the flames enough that only two houses were lost. Neither of them was the house my parents built. It was close though; one of them was next door to it.

And the day ended with a distant relief to match the initial distant dread.

My apologies for the twist ending. But the day I thought the house burned down, I too experienced the same twist ending.

(And a New Yorker article about the fire)

Snowboard Time Machine to the year 1999!

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 07:01:00 +0000

With the 2018 Winter Olympics ongoing, it reminded me of this Craigslist ad I put up in 2011 after finding an old snowboard left in the attic by the previous owners of a house we had just moved out of:

The previous owners of the house had left way too much stuff in the attic after they moved out in 2000. It wasn't until we were cleaning out attic for putting the house for sale in 2011 that we found the snowboard. I originally thought it was a monoski as I had not seen a snowboard shaped like that before. I googled snowboarding lingo to put in the ad, and sold it that week to a vintage snowboard collector who lived at Snoqualamie Pass (little did I know when I found it that 12 years old made it a vintage snowboard). After I sold it, I also got an enquiry from France about it. These days, I'm seeing these listed for over $500 on eBay.

Beware the Future Making Your Unpublished Stories Anachronistic

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 22:00:00 +0000

On Monday, the very day my story "Love, Anger, and Pity; or Fuck Everyone in the Entire History of Humanity" was published, the U.S. Supreme Court made a ruling that made a plot point in the story an anachronism ("Supreme Court rules: Offensive trademarks must be allowed").

(Well, not perfectly. The ruling [pdf] invalidated the Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure §1203.03(b)(i), and my story refers to §1203.01. But close enough.)

This is not the first time that U.S. Supreme Court affected that story, although the first time didn't cause an anachronism. My first version of this story was written in 2012. Originally Eddie called Tom his partner, and in 2015 after the Supreme Court ruled gay marriage to be legal, I changed the story to have Eddie call Tom his husband.

(And gay marriage has changed what used to be non-ambiguous phrases into ambiguous phrases. Ten years ago, "Before Tom and Peter got married..." would be interpreted as two separate weddings where Tom and Peter married their wives. Now you need to make it non-ambiguous by writing something like, "Before Tom and Peter married each other..." or "Before Tom and Peter married their wives...")

There are a number of unpublished or unfinished stories sitting on my computer's drive. I can think of two of them that now have anachronisms since I first started them:

1) Some characters get to the International Space Station on the Space Shuttle. And since the last Shuttle flight was in 2011, when I get around to finishing that story, I'll have to choose another means of getting them to the ISS. With luck, I'll be able to get it published before 2024 when the ISS is scheduled to be retired.

2) A woman is checking her calendar to determine the best date to break up with her boyfriend. Original story: the calendar is a Day-Timer, a small notebook. Updated story: She uses the calendar app on her phone.

Of course, the you can avoid the future causing anachronisms in your stories if they take place at a certain time in the past. But then, you have to worry about inadvertently putting anachronisms in stories from the start. (I imagine in a hundred years there will be stories written where 1970s punk rockers use email).

You can take this post as a plea to writers (and myself!) to finish their stories and get them published. Don't let your unfinished stories remain unfinished, and your finished stories unpublished.
(#SFWApro)

This year's sacrifice to Cthulhu is sponsored by…

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Sat, 22 Apr 2017 16:18:00 +0000

In my story “Who Weeps for Cthulhu?”, the old gods have returned, but perhaps there is a greater horror. Featuring Trader Joe’s tequila and turkey kielbasa, plus mariachi music. Published on Literally Stories. (#SFWApro)

Spinach Tomato Chorizo Soup - Quick, Easy and Hearty

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 17:00:00 +0000

Winter is over, but there have been plenty of cold days that can bring on a craving for thick and hearty soups. This soup (or is it chili?) is delicious and can be made in under 30 minutes. You can make it with only the four main ingredients (spinach, tomatoes, onion and chorizo) or embellish it with corn, beans and/or peppers.

Blend together:
2 cups of spinach (packed slightly) or half a defrosted 10oz box of frozen chopped spinach.
2 15oz cans (or one large can) of diced tomatoes with oregano, basil and garlic (I'm looking for easy, so I use the pre-seasoned tomatoes). The best way I've found to do this is blend 1/2 the tomatoes, add 1/2 the spinach and blend, and then repeat again with the other halves of the tomatoes and spinach.

1 pound chorizo
1 medium onion, chopped
Cook in pot with 1 Tb oil with medium-high heat together until meat is fully cooked and onions are softened. If you want, empty the chorizo and onions into a colander to drain the grease, and then return to the pot.

Pour in blended spinach and tomatoes.

Bring to a boil, turn down heat to medium-low, and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes.

Salt to taste (I usually end up putting about two shakes from a salt shaker). Season further if you'd like: ground pepper, crushed garlic, etc.

And you can stop there and have a nice thick soup.

Or you can embellish it:

Right after adding the spinach and tomatoes (and before the simmering), add:
1 drained can of your favorite beans (I've used black and navy).
1/2 cup of corn (okay to throw in frozen)

After the soup is done and put in bowls, you can garnish with:
Mini sweet peppers cut into rings
Grated cheese (Parmesan is probably the best choice, but in the picture I used gruyere because that's all I had).

Garlic bread goes nicely with it.

The origin of this recipe is here. It called for using only ground beef or half ground beef and half spicy Italian sausage. You could certainly try that, or your favorite vegetarian substitute (perhaps soy chorizo?). I've found chorizo works perfectly and with the seasoned tomatoes I've found no need to season the soup any further. The original recipe also called for carrots and green beans, and I found they.just.did.not.work, especially the green beans.

Ingredients:

2 cups of spinach or half a defrosted 10oz box of frozen chopped spinach
2 15oz cans (or one large can) of diced tomatoes with oregano, basil and garlic
1 pound chorizo
1 medium onion, chopped
Optionally, any or all of these:
1 drained can of your favorite beans
1/2 cup of corn
Mini sweet peppers cut into rings
Grated cheese (parmesan the best choice)

Dessert Improvisation #1: Crumbled Gingersnaps in Applesauce

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Thu, 05 May 2016 04:56:00 +0000

That is all.

NTSB report of In-Flight Breakup During Test Flight in Magnuson Park, Seattle, WA

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Sat, 27 Feb 2016 05:49:00 +0000

NTSB Identification: WH34ATEV3R

14 CFR Part 91: General Aviation

Accident occurred Sunday, September 27, 2015 in Magnuson Park, Seattle, WA

Aircraft: Unknown make constructed of expanded polystyrene

Injuries: None.

Executive Summary

On September 27, 2015 at 1501 PDT, an experimentally modified aircraft suffered catastrophic structural failure, losing its left wing and the underside of its tail, impacting terrain at Magnuson Park, Seattle. The aircraft, composed of expanded polystyrene ("Styrofoam") was purchased at the Dollar Tree, located at 7816 Aurora Ave N, Seattle, WA 98103 on August 20, 2015 for $1.10 including tax. The aircraft manufacturer and model are unknown as the original packaging was immediately disposed of and the Dollar Tree no longer had any similar aircraft in stock. It is considered highly probable that the country of origin of the aircraft was China, due the large number of other novelty items sold at the Dollar Tree that have a Chinese origin.

1. The aircraft after breakup on September 27, 2015. Note the cricket game in progress in the background. The author of this report first witnessed a game of cricket in 1995 while on vacation in England with his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend Amy. While watching the cricket game, the author was somewhat confused as he could not quite figure out its rules.

The aircraft was originally designed to be launched by grasping it firmly with a hand, pulling back the arm of the hand grasping it, and forcefully flinging it forward while timing the release of the grasp at the moment of the arm's highest velocity. However, for a reason described as "awesomeness", the aircraft had been modified by attaching to its underside a tube, approximately 0.75 inches in diameter and 10 inches long, open at the aft end and pinched closed at the forward end. The tube, constructed of plain white paper and duct tape was secured to the aircraft with masking tape. The purpose of the tube was to allow the launch of the aircraft by the release of pressurized air from a rocket launcher constructed out of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe.

For the aircraft's fatal flight, the launcher was angled at approximately 45 degrees from vertical and pressurized via a bicycle pump to approximately 70 PSI. After a countdown by the Flight Control Operator (FCO), inexplicably in Spanish, the aircraft was launched with a press of the launcher's electronic trigger.

2. The FCO was in a good mood. The author remembers that he too was in a good mood in 1995 at the start of his trip to England with his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend Amy.

Almost immediately after launch (T0), the aircraft suffered an in-flight breakup and impacted terrain approximately 15 feet from the launcher in three separate pieces: 1) The left wing. 2) A portion of the underside of the tail. 3) The rest of the aircraft.

3. Aftermath of in-flight break-up. When the author of this report was in 7th grade, after math class he had history. But the attempted humor in the previous sentence does not mitigate the author's experience of an in-flight breakup of another type when returning from his vacation in England in 1995. When the flight took off from London, he was sitting next to his girlfriend Amy. Ten hours later, when the flight landed in Seattle, he was sitting next to his ex-girlfriend Amy.

The aircraft was put in a shopping bag and recovered to a secure location for further examination.

Fortuitously, the launch resulting in aircraft failure was recorded on video:

Analysis of the video has allowed an understanding of the cause of incident with the following observations:

The time elapsed from launch (T0) to impact was 2 seconds.

In the first frame after launch (1/30th of second since T0), the aircraft can be seen inverted with its wings deflected towards the ground at an angle of approximately 35°, with the damaged tail piece already separated from the fuselage:

4. The inverted aircraft's wings deflected downward (or is upward the correct term because the wings are deflecting over the top of the aircraft? When should relative directions be used and when should absolute directions be used? The author has no idea) and the broken tail piece (on the left). Reflecting back to his 1995 trip with his ex-girlfriend Amy in England, the author can see incidents that led to the subsequent breakup. If Amy is reading this, the author wants to let her know that, yes, in cricket, the bowler (not the pitcher) really is attempting to knock down the wicket.

In the second frame after launch (2/30th of a second since T0), the left wing can be seen broken off the fuselage:

5. In-flight breakup as it happened, immediately after takeoff. The author of this report still wonders why in 1995 his ex-girlfriend Amy initiated their breakup immediately after takeoff and not after returning to Seattle, to avoid the miserable experience of being cooped up next to each other in an aluminum tube at 35,000 feet for an interminable ten hours. However, as the author is typing this, in retrospection, perhaps she didn't want to sit for an interminable ten hours next to the person she was planning on breaking up with and just wanted to get it over with. The author does believe the breakup was the right thing to happen and the author's life has turned out very well in the subsequent two decades.

In the third frame after launch, the aircraft has flown out of frame, with the exception of the tail piece. One half a second later, the tail piece impacts, and one and half seconds later the left wing and the rest of the aircraft impact almost simultaneously.
The speed of the aircraft at launch can be calculated by the ratio of the FCO's actual height (H_A = 144 cm), the height of the FCO on the video monitor displaying the video (H_V = 20cm), the distance on the monitor the aircraft traveled after launch (D = 6cm), the number of frames per second (F = 30), and the angle of the launching tube (θ = 45°):

Plugging in the above values into the equation results in:

(The author did attempt to find ways to quantify his heartbreak in 1995 by using this equation and finding appropriate measures that could be substituted for the variables. He did not succeed.)

Findings

The Not the Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was a combination of a poorly thought out experimental modification to the aircraft and an excess of air pressure in the rocket launcher.

The launch velocity of 41 mph surmounted the maximum load the aircraft's wings could handle. The deflection of the wings during launch exceeded the tensile strength of the expanded polystyrene until the left wing fractured.

In fact, previous launch attempts at 25 psi (instead of the devastating 70 psi) were successful without damage to the aircraft, but as the aircraft only reached a height and distance of approximately 10 feet from the launcher, 25 psi was deemed "boring" and a decision was made to pressurize the rocket launcher "to the max."

Provided for further reference is the full 11 second long video of the flight accident, including the audio of the countdown in Spanish and the laughter of the camera operator:

An Utter Abomination of a Cake I Will Never Bake Again

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Wed, 02 Dec 2015 08:07:00 +0000

I present Caramelized Onion and Mango Upside-Down Cake:

Sometimes when you improvise when you cook it comes out well (e.g. this previous post). Sometimes, unfortunately, you end up with something you regret making.

It was supposed to be a rhubarb upside-down cake, but mutated into the unpleasant-looking caramelized onion and mango upside-down cake you see here.

I'm a fan of rhubarb. I have a loose-leaf binder where I collected printed out recipes from back in the days when it wasn't possible to store the recipes on the cloud (that would be the 1990s). On one of the binder's dividers, I have a tab labeled "Rhubarb". I'm guessing most people who collect recipes end up never making most of them (I've never made "rhubarb-aide"), but there's one recipe I've made a few times, although the last time was a number of years ago, which is for a rhubarb upside-down cake (here's the recipe I had printed, as posted on rec.food.cooking in 1993. It looks like the the recipe is supposedly "healthy" - I've always replaced the margarine with butter, and use a whole egg instead of two egg whites).

CC Stephen Bowler

A couple years ago in our garden, we planted rhubarb. This year was the first time it thrived and produced some nice big stalks. But, I didn't end up harvesting it until last week, the second week in November. There were three usable stalks left this late in the season.

To start the cake, in a 9"x9" cake pan, I put a 1/4 cup of melted butter and a pressed down 1 cup of brown sugar for what becomes the caramel on the top of an upside-down cake.

Then as I started slicing the rhubarb to put on the layer of sugar and butter, I decided to taste a slice. And its taste was missing the most important virtue of rhubarb - its tartness. None of the rhubarb was tart, and without the tartness, I was not going to be making a rhubarb upside-down cake. Not wanting to the waste the butter and sugar that was already in the pan, it was time to come up with another plan for another type of upside-down cake.

My first thought was apples, but the bowl on our kitchen counter non-refrigerated produce had none. And it was Thanksgiving morning, and although there are markets open and I could have bought some, there was something else in the bowl - onions. Caramelized onions are sweet. Why not a caramelized onion upside-down cake?

And that's where everything went wrong.

CC Allison Matherly

So, I sliced up three onions, and for the next 45 minutes I caramelized them in butter. While the onions were cooking, I thought it would still be nice if there was some fruit on top with the onions. Apples would be my first choice (remembering the pork dishes I've had with apples and onions), but with no apples, an alternative was needed.

I remembered over a year ago I bought a bag of frozen mango at Trader Joe's. After digging around the bottom of our freezer for a few minutes, I found the mango, and defrosted it in a bowl of water. Okay, after being so long in the freezer, it had some freezer burn and a slight taste of something left too long in the freezer - but with all the sugar on top of the cake, I was pretty sure it wouldn't matter.

CC Rachel Andrew

And thus, the rhubarb upside-down cake had completed its mutation into a a caramelized onion and mango upside-down cake.

I also thought I could improve the cake batter by spicing it up with cardamom. But our cardamom was so old that it barely had a scent or flavor. So instead, for spice I grated about a tablespoon of ginger root and the pinch of saffron we had left in a bottle on the spice rack.

I put the caramelized onion over the brown sugar in the cake pan, placed a layer of cubed mango, and poured the batter over it and put it in the oven.

While baking, instead of getting the lovely scent of baking cake, there was the oniony scent that you get when roasting brisket with onions. That's when I knew the cake wasn't going to meet my expectations.

After taking it out of the oven, letting it cool for a bit, and then flipping it over onto a plate, I ended up with the unappetizing-looking cake you see pictured at the top of this post.

And its taste? It was, well odd. Not bad, just an unfortunate mix of flavors, and the stringy texture of the onions out of place on a cake. My son hated it. My wife thought it was, "Okay." I still brought it to our friends' Thanksgiving gathering to see if anyone would dare have a piece. There was one taker who found it, "Interesting."

As we were helping our hosts clean up as our Thanksgiving visit was ending, I plopped the cake into their compost bin to be picked up by the City of Seattle's Public Utilities on the next trash day. Next spring, its transformed remains will be spread as compost somewhere, hopefully to grow something delicious or beautiful, two qualities the cake never had.

Later I found a recipe for "sweet-onion & apple upside-down cake" on Food.com. The one review for that recipe matches my feelings about my cake:

I made this with high hopes, but it just wasn't for me. It's kind of like eating dinner and dessert all in one. Thanks, but I don't think I'll be making this one again. ~Amy

A Quick and Lazy Write-Up of a Quick and Lazy Recipe: Chinese BBQ Pork in Orange Quinoa With Peas

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 05:43:00 +0000

A while back, after purchasing packaged Chinese BBQ pork at CostCo, the idea for this recipe came to me. It's easy and takes about 20 minutes. The last time I made it, I thought about adding toasted sliced almonds for flavor and texture, but the market where I was shopping didn't have any in the bulk section, but they did have spicy pepitas. The pepitas added an extra spicy seasoning and texture, but I would are completely optional.

1 cup quinoa, washed

1 cup chicken stock (low sodium)

1 cup orange juice

¼ tsp salt

1 medium onion, sliced

1 Tbsp oil

¾ to a 1 pound of Chinese BBQ pork (char siu), sliced into ¼" wide sticks

1 cup frozen peas
spicy pepitas (optional)

Heat the oil in a pot on medium-high, then add the onion. Cook until onion browns (5 to 6 minutes).
Add the quinoa. Stir while toasting it for 1 minute.
Add orange juice, chicken stock and salt, turn heat to high until boiling, then turn down to low and cover pot. Set timer to 6 minutes.
After timer goes off, uncover, add the frozen peas and turn up heat to high. When boiling again, cover pot and turn down heat to low. Set timer to 6 minutes.
After timer goes off, check to see if the quinoa is done with the liquid absorbed. If not cook it covered until liquid is absorbed.
Stir in sticks of BBQ pork and leave on heat for 1 minute.
Serve in bowls and sprinkle spiced pepitas on top (or maybe stir them in before serving).

Four Serious Events Where Laughter Was Inappropriate, and the Feedback Loop of Inappropriate Laughter

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 07:19:00 +0000

1) In 1993 I attended a five day camp of the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop. It's sort of like summer camp for adults, with music classes. I took a not-quite for beginners guitar class, a singing class (I learned a lot, but you still don't want to hear me sing), and a beginner's harmonica class. I also somehow managed during cabin signup on arrival to choose the cabin assigned to snorers (despite not being a snorer myself).

The last evening of the camp, there was a showcase for the students who wanted to perform for the other campers. One them a bearded man, probably in his late 30s, performed on guitar a composition of his. The piece was decent, and the guitarist quite clearly had a lot of talent. His seemed not quite at ease playing in front of an audience, but his skill shown through, he played from the heart with serious intensity and you could tell the time he spent practicing the piece. It was a good performance. But the audience was laughing through almost all of it. Not because of the guitarist, but because the camp dog, a yellow labrador retriever, which had already been hanging out on stage during other performances, while to the side and behind the guitarist (and not visible to him) chose to spend the entirety of the performance licking his balls.

From Rembrandt's Joseph Telling His Dreams 1638 (This is the classiest picture I could find of a dog lickings its balls.)

2) In early 2000s, I attended a play at the Seattle Fringe Festival in a small performance space that could hold maybe 40 people. I don't remember much about the plot - a drama about someone visiting a ghost town and its ghosts. One of the props was a doll, a doll that looked exactly like the Talky Tina doll from the Twilight Zone episode "Living Doll" (can be seen on Netflix). In that episode, a doll belonging to a little girl, starts off saying recorded sentences such as "I'm Talking Tina, and I love you very much." The girl's unpleasant stepfather (played by Telly Savalas) is angered by the money spent on the doll. When the stepfather is alone with the doll, it starts saying things like "I'm Talky Tina and I'm beginning to hate you," and, "I'm Talky Tina and I'm going to kill you."

In the Seattle Fringe play, the naked doll (which was not intended to be Talking Tina, or even a bit evil), when it was first picked up by one of the actors one of the audience members let out in an unintentionally loud whisper, "That's Talky Tina!" For those in the audience familiar with the Twilight Zone episode, that's when the laughing started. The laughing was brief and the serious play went on. At some point, on a chair facing the audience, the doll was put down in an unfortunate position; on its back, its legs lifted and suggestively spread wide. Something like this picture I found in my father's slides from his trips to Mexico in the 1950s:

(I have no idea who this woman is, but she was with my father in Mexico in the 1950s)

At this point, about half the audience lost it. For the audience members who were unfamiliar with the Twilight Zone episode, seeing the doll in the incongruous and lewd position, it was amusing. For those who had seen the episode, surely many of them could imagine the doll saying, "I'm Talky Tina and I'm going to (inappropriate sexual word of your choice) you." And the serious play continued on.

3) In the late 80s I took a UCLA Extension creative writing class. During one of the sessions, the students read aloud work they had finished the previous week. One of the student's story had a dead cat in it. A dead cat isn't funny. A second student's story had a dead cat in it. Again, a dead cat isn't funny. Then a third student had a story with a dead cat in it. Dead cats still aren't funny, but there was some stifled laughter, as having the coincidence of three stories about dead cats was funny.

CC Paul Bass

4) My younger brother was at the Los Angeles zoo with a friend when on a hill a stroller with a baby in it got away from a parent and they managed to catch it before anything serious happened. In a video it could be considered funny in the sense of slapstick, but in real life nothing particularly funny about that. Mildly heroic, even. A few months later, with the same friend, he was at the New Orleans zoo, and the same thing happened. My brother and his friend were laughing as they caught it. The child's father was upset at them about laughing until they told him it was the second time they were at a zoo and had to catch a runaway stroller.

Originally, I was going leave the above without comment, but as I wrote about them I realized I wanted to understand why they're amusing (and I imagine some people wills say, "Why ruin your post by analyzing everything in it?")

For the first two events (the guitarist with dog, and play with Talky Tina):

There is a serious event occurring.
An amusing event occurs during the serious event.
The inappropriateness of the incongruity of the serious and amusing event results in inappropriate laughter.
The inappropriate laughter is a self-sustaining feedback loop: as inappropriate laughter is inappropriate during a serious event, the inappropriateness of inappropriate laughter will induce more laughter.

The last two events (with the stories and dead cats and the runaway strollers) are different in that there is nothing intrinsically amusing that triggered the laughter:

A serious event occurs.
The event is unexpectedly repeated.
The repetition triggers mild amusement.
The inappropriateness of the mild amusement during the repetition of the serious event, starts a self-sustaining feedback loop: as inappropriate laughter is inappropriate during a serious event, the inappropriateness of inappropriate laughter will induce more laughter.

I'll postulate that the feedback loop of inappropriate laughter is the most important component of what makes something funny that isn't supposed to be funny.

I'll avoid further analysis of the events, but you could ask what makes these funny?:

A dog lickings its balls.
A doll in a lewd position.
Unexpected repetition of a serious event.

I'm certainly not the first person who had wondered what makes something funny, but I took this post as an experiment on what I could come up without looking up any research on humor research. Here's a few links if you're interested:

Henri Bergson's Theory of Laughter
What, exactly, makes something funny? A bold new attempt at a unified theory of comedy (Part 1 of 10).
An Analysis of Humor and Laughter

When You Can't Unjam Your Jammed Brother HL-3170CDW Printer

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Sat, 05 Sep 2015 06:17:00 +0000

(Another "how to fix" something because I couldn't find the solution on the web.)

What are you supposed to do when your printer says "Jam Tray 1" and there's no paper jam to be found?

We have this Brother HL-3170CDW printer:

(It's a great printer: fast, prints duplex and reasonably priced. Although, a bit big and heavy.)

And it stopped working due to a paper jam error and despite not finding any paper jammed in it, it still claimed it had paper jam. The manual was unhelpful in solving the problem. Web searches didn't provide a solution. I emailed Brother support, and they gave me the solution.

Here I reproduce the Brother support email almost verbatim for other people who had the same problem can find this page for a solution.

Thank you for contacting us about your HL-3170CDW. We understand that the Jam Tray 1 message is not clearing. We understand that you have thoroughly checked the machine, and we thank you for completing those steps.

We do have just a couple more steps for us to try before we are able to into warranty options for the unit. To complete these steps, please open the top cover of the machine. Remove the drums and toners, as well as the belt unit from underneath this area. Please also remove the paper tray from the machine as well before completing the steps listed below.

Obtain 5 sheets of 20lb OR 4 sheets of 24lb letter size paper (8.5" by 11"). Stack the sheets of paper together. Fold the entire stack of paper in half, top to bottom. The size of the paper stack now will be 8.5" by 5.5" (folded top to bottom).Look in the area where the paper tray was removed from. In the upper portion of the machine in the paper tray opening area, locate 3 gray rollers. There is one wide roller and two narrow rollers behind the wide roller.

Take the folded paper stack and place the folded edge of the paper stack against the wide gray roller near the front. Placing the paper in this position will align it with the paper slot that guides the paper into the drum/toner area manually feeding the paper through the paper path.

Holding the paper stack with both hands and while applying firm pressure, push the folded paper stack into the paper slot until. Once the paper stack has been pushed half way or far enough into the paper slot, it will enter the inside of the machine (toner/drum area).

Pull the folded stack of paper out of the machine.

If any small scrap pieces of paper come out, remove them and then reinstall the belt unit back into the machine. Reinstall the drums and toners. Reinstall the paper tray.

If the Jam Tray 1 message still shows after completing these steps, we will need to go into warranty options for you unit.

I followed the instructions and no pieces of paper came out. But, when put back together and restarted, there no longer was a paper jam error.

And after I printed the first page afterwards, the jam was confirmed. It coughed up this piece of paper with the page I had printed:

How to Fix the Lever that Came Off of Your Kwikset Entry Lock (It Is NOT a Missing Set Screw)

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Fri, 04 Sep 2015 06:16:00 +0000

If you have a Kwikset entry lock with a lever, and the exterior lever comes off, and you think the cause is a missing a set screw, it almost certainly is not a missing set screw - the set screw is in fact still there, but screwed in enough into the interior of the post that it looks like it's missing (and no longer able to secure the lever). Jump here for the fix and to skip over any blathering I do in advance of giving the fix.

(This is another in a series of posts to help people fix the same thing I had to fix, where I couldn't find the instructions or found incomplete instructions on the web. Last week I had two things I needed to fix where the fix was given by emailing or talking to the manufacturers' customer support, but not provided on their web sites.)

We have a Kwikset Commonwealth entry lock on our front door. The exterior handle came off. Looking at it, there's a small hole in the lever, and your first thought is that the set screw used to hold the lever in place came loose and fell off. This would be confirmed by looking at the interior lever, where there is a set screw that is screwed out from the shaft to hold the lever using the hole in the lever. A 3/32" hex wrench is used to turn the screw (Kwikset provides one with the lock). For whatever reason, the screw has left-handed threads (that is righty-loosy, lefty-tighty).

Interior post of lock showing head of set screw that is screwed out to hold handle

Interior post of lock with hex wrench in set screw. Due to left-handed threads, screw clockwise to screw out. Of course, you'd really do this with the lever on the post with the wrench passing through the hole in the lever.

However, the exterior lever's set screw has its head inside the post and is screwed by a hex wrench passing through holes in the lever and post. The set screw pokes out the other side to be screwed out into the inside of lever to hold it fast. And this set crew is right-handed. I have no explanation why the inside set screw is left-handed and the outside one is right-handed.

Here's a photo of the exterior post and the base of the set screw sticking out of the post (pointed to by red arrow):

A photo of the other side of the exterior post, showing the hole the hex wrench passes through to reach the set screw in the inside of the shaft:

Here's a photo with the exterior level on, and the hex wrench passing through the holes in the lever and post. As the set screw is turned clockwise inside the post, it pokes out from the post to secure the lever:

The instructions for reattaching the exterior lever:

Things to note before you start:

The exterior set screw has its head inside the post, and is screwed out of the post to secure the lever.
The exterior set screw you think is missing is just no longer sticking out far enough to secure the lever.

Put the lever back on the exterior post so the small hole in the lever lines up with the hole in the post.
Take a 3/32" hex wrench (Kwikset provides one with the lock), stick it through the hole in the lever to the inside of the lock.
Move the hex wrench around until it connects with the hex head of the set screw that has to be screwed out of the opposite side of the post to connect to the inside of the lever to hold it securely.
Turn the wrench clockwise (from the point of view of looking at the hole in the lever), to get the set screw to screw out of the post.
Continue turning the screw until it's firmly pressed against the inside of the lever and securing it to the post.

And because I like recording the process I used to do things, and similar to my previous post on Why It Took Me a Minimum of 74 Steps to Build a Simple TV Stand, here are the steps it took me to resecure the lock's exterior lever:

Look at exterior of lock and exterior lever - it appears a set screw is missing.
Have no luck searching for set screw on ground.
Look at interior lever - see set screw that is screwed out from post to hold lever.
Head to Home Depot to get replacement set screw.
Home Depot guy opens up the same lock package, and determines that the set screw is a left-handed thread screw that they don't carry. Suggest to get the screw at Tacoma Screw Products.
Pull out interior set screw and take to nearby Tacoma Screw Products. They don't have a replacement and scratch their heads wondering why Kwikset would decided to put a left-handed thread screw where it doesn't need to be left-handed.
Call Kwikset customer service, and told that the exterior set screw is different from the interior set screw, and that 98% of the time when they get a customer call about a missing exterior set screw, it isn't missing. The hex wrench just needs to be stuck in the lock post until the set screw is found, and screwing it outward will hold the lever in place.
Confirm that's the problem, the screw isn't missing, use it to reattach the lever.
Wonder why Kwikset did two seemingly unnecessary things with the design of their lock:

Why do the interior and exterior levers have different means of being secured?
Why the choice to use both left-hand and right-hand threaded set screws?

Wonder why Kwikset doesn't just put the instructions for this fix on their web site.

My Katrina Story - How I Helped Getting the Power Back On in New Orleans

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Sun, 30 Aug 2015 08:13:00 +0000

With the ten-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans upon us, I have a story to tell.

In 2005, I was working at ESCA, a company that wrote software to mange electrical grids. In a power company's control center, displayed on huge screens, the electrical grid and its state was represented graphically. Something like this:

(Actually, ESCA had been an independent company, first purchased by the French company ALSTOM, then sold to another French company AREVA, and then sold back to ALSTOM. It's just easier to call it ESCA.)

I could go on in minute details about the issues with ESCA and the software. But a short list is:

A lot of twenty-plus old legacy software, much written in Fortran.
Software written to run on VAX VMS (although by the time I left ESCA, only Windows and Linux was supported).
A horrible, HORRIBLE user interface designed by people who had no business doing UI design ("to get to that action, you have to select this new mode, with completely different main-level menus, a dig down through three layers of submenus").

TagNotes (in C++), the application I worked on was for "tagging" electrical equipment on the network. Back before everything was automated, the tag was a physical tag attached to a piece of equipment to note something, e.g. "Do not turn on this switch because this line is being worked on." With TagNotes, a tag icon would be put on the grid display next the device being tagged. Some tags were just informational, some prevented any change of state of the device (such as closing a switch) for safety or grid management.

All the data for the grid control was kept in a proprietary database, something designed 20 years early, written in Fortran, and definitely not relational, and definitely not up to modern standards. The tables in the database could vary in size, but the total space of the database took was fixed size and could not be changed except by a complete rebuild of the system which took many hours.

To see a list of the tags, there were separate views for your ordering preference: by date of creation, tag type, creator, and a few more that I no longer remember. The tags were in their own database with each view requiring a separate table with the tags listed in the desired viewing order (that is, not like a relational database where a single table can be queried with an ORDER BY clause to get the desired order).

This is where Katrina comes in. A few days after Katrina hits, New Orleans' electrical utility, Entergy, needs to get the electrical grid back up. And to keep track of work to be done, devices need tags, A LOT OF TAGS. So many in fact, that the tag database gets full and they can't add any more tags, seriously hampering the recovery effort. They need a fix, and they need it now.

I'm on an emergency phone call with Entergy, trying to understand the issue and figure out a solution. The tag database is full, and there's no time to spend the hours to rebuild the system to expand the database. And then an idea for a fix comes to me. I ask, "Do you need all the views of the tags right now? Could you get by with, just say, two, like tags in order of creation, and tag type?"

The seat-of-the-pants fix is to only have two tables of tag lists, which will have space to expand in the limited size of the database with the unneeded views and their tables gone. The code that creates the tables is a small part of the system and can be rebuilt in a under 10 minutes. I look through the source code (the Fortran source code) and tell the Entergy engineers what needs to change. Entergy has the source code and the ability to rebuild what's needed. And they now had space in the database for all the tags they need.

And that's my Katrina story.

550,000: An Absolutely True Story with Four Disappointments for the Reader Along the Way

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Thu, 28 May 2015 06:34:00 +0000

This story starts with 550,000, the high score on the pinball machine I inherited from my father.

Beyond the memories we have of those who have passed away, we also have physical tokens of their existence. Photographs of those no longer alive are no doubt the most common (although if a photograph only exists in digital media and never printed, you could say it's not a true physical item). But we also have their handiwork, such as the ceramic matzoh plate my father made in the early 90s that looks like a sheet of matzoh:

To me, some of the most emotionally resonant tokens are things that had been handwritten by the deceased, mainly due to the uniqueness of handwriting that has the immediacy of "This was written by the person who no longer with us, in their own hand, holding a pen or pencil." One example that I have is a label on a large thermos, identifiable as being from the 70s with the orange floral pattern decorating it. It has a large white push button on the top to dispense its contents. It is the type of thermos you find on folding tables at something like a PTA event, used to provide coffee. In fact, on the label is "Decaf Coffee" is written in my mother's handwriting, a precise narrow slanted mix of cursive and block letters that far excels the quality of my handwriting. And I'm going to disappoint you in not showing a picture of the label with my mother's handwriting as I can't find the thermos, somehow misplaced in the move we made four years ago. (Disappointment #1)

But I have my parents' rolodex. Under its dust-covered smoky-brown translucent lid, it is overstuffed with hundreds of mostly hand-written cards. Here's one with an example my mother's handwriting:

There's a story to be told about the rolodex, an obsolescent tool containing a collection of cards written by the deceased, listing people who are mostly assuredly deceased as well by now (and even dead while the rolodex was in use: note the crossed out "Frank"). But that is a story for another post. (Disappointment #2)

But perhaps the thing that I've told most as being the most interesting token of my father in my house is that twenty years after my father's death, the high score on the pinball machine, the 550,000 is still his. It's a William's "Flash", manufactured in 1979.

The story of the pinball machine is that my brothers and I bought it as a gift for my father's 62nd birthday in 1988, the year after my mother's death. Why a pinball machine? We had family friends in Palo Alto that had one at home, and in the occasions we visited them, my father clearly enjoyed playing it. So, my brothers and I decided to give him a pinball machine. It's been nearly 30 years, so the memories of buying it are somewhat hazy, but what I remember is that in the Yellow Pages I found a company that sold used pinball machines, located near LAX on Aviation Boulevard. I don't remember how much we paid for it.

After my father's death in 1994 (and after his 1990 move from L.A. to Bainbridge Island, near me in Seattle), as being the only one of his children not living in the Bay Area, it made sense for me the one to take it. It's sitting in my family room, and not used frequently, except when we hold parties. (I had it refurbished a couple of years ago by Pinheads Pinball, a couple of really great guys who are pinball aficionados who have other careers, but have a business that repairs pinball machines because of their love of pinball).

I once came close to beating the 550,000 high score, more that 25 years ago. Each game has three balls, and on the second ball I became a pinball wizard, was in the zone, was in the groove, was in a moment of Zen. I knew where the ball would head next. I knew when to hit a flipper at just the right moment. I knew when to jostle the machine a little to the left or right to make sure the ball didn't slip through the gap between the flippers or the side lanes. And after what seemed like endless minutes, I finally lost the ball and had a score just 8000 points behind the high score. With my third and final ball, I knew it would be simple to get those last points to beat the high score. It could be done is less than ten seconds, maybe even five, and quite possibly without me having to do anything but pull the plunger and shoot the ball out. The ball just needed to hit enough bumpers and rollover switches at the top of the arena before the it rolled down towards the flippers. I pulled the plunger, the ball shot up, hit one bumper which bounced it straight down between and past the flippers. And it was over. (Disappointment #3)

But then, if I had beaten that high score, I wouldn't have been able to tell this story about seeing the lit up 550,000 point high score and it reminding me of my father.

However, the story continues. Last year when my brothers were visiting me in Seattle, the pinball machine was on and while the 550,000 flashed, I told my brothers about how Dad still had the high score. My older brother said, "Actually, that's my score." (Disappointment #4)

And this sentimental nostalgic story I've been telling for years, I find is not true. I wouldn't call it a lie. I certainly thought it was true. But I can't tell that story anymore.

But I have a new story to tell. This story is the one where for twenty years I told the story about one of the legacies my father left was the high score on my pinball machine, only to find out that for twenty years I was telling a false story.

(I have a piece of fiction, with perhaps a similar theme, called "An Honest Man". Its first sentence is: "The first thing you should know is that everything that I write here is a lie.")

Build Your Own Pizza (How to Entertain Children #2)

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Thu, 09 Apr 2015 06:45:00 +0000

So, you have to not only find a project for six boys 5 to 9 years old, but you also have to provide them with a snack. How about combining the project and the snack? - build your own pizzas.

This is the idea I came up the final time I hosted a meeting for the fathers and sons YMCA Adventure Guides (formerly known as the Indian Guides). It's a father-son program where once a month there would be a meeting at a member's house. For every meeting, some creative group activity would be done. One year when I hosted, the project was making rubberband-powered spool cars. For 2013 it was pizza.

Get Trader Joe's ready-made pizza dough. Each packet of dough can make three small pizzas
Get a selection of pizza toppings. From Trader Joe's (mostly) I also bought shredded cheese, red sauce, white sauce, pesto, pepperoni, pancetta, mushrooms, chicken, spinach and red pepper. Place the toppings on the table where the pizza making will occur.
Split each bag of pizza dough into three approximately equal pieces.
With a rolling pin, roll each piece of dough into rectangle about 4" by 8".
Place each piece of dough on its own sheet of parchment paper.

Note regular and whole wheat pizza dough. The kids were not interested in the whole wheat.
Pre-heat the oven.
Give each child their own rectangle of dough and let them top it however they like.
Put the pizzas on cookie sheets (a cookie sheet can take three of the pizzas).
Bake as directed on the pizza dough bags.

Finally, for no particular reason, a squirrel eating an apple just outside our dining room as I was putting out everything for the pizza making:

Why It Took Me a Minimum of 74 Steps to Build a Simple TV Stand

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 06:52:00 +0000

I recently built this TV stand for a spare TV:

Well, that's not quite the final product. The fact is, that there was a major design flaw, which I will explain below.

At a high-level, the process of building it could be broken down into these four steps:
The high-level list of the process was this:

Decide to build a TV stand out of wood.
Cut the pieces of wood.
Screw the pieces of wood together.
Attach the stand to the TV.

The fact of the matter, was that in reality, there were many more than four steps in building the stand. In fact, when I wrote them down there were 74 steps.

The point of this post, is that in designing and building something to its final form, there are often an huge number of steps to get to the end that you never considered when you started the project. There's a process you go through of thinking, designing, building, fixing mistakes in the design, fixing mistakes in the building. Most of the time, things don't go as expected and/or you haven't thought through everything that was needed to be successful.

This can apply to many things designed and built including: a software application, a work of fiction, or in this case a simple TV stand made of a few pieces of wood.

This was the problem: We have a corner shelf where I wanted to place a spare TV, but the TV with its stand was about 1/8 of an inch too tall to fit.

I ended up solving the problem with my modest carpentry skills, and the tools I have (a sliding compound mitre saw and a drill/screwdriver).

The end result is pretty simple. Basically, attach the TV to few screwed together pieces of wood. Yet, after I finished, I thought about the process I took to get from conception to final product. And it wasn't a few steps. It was a lot of steps with a lot of missteps. There were screw-ups in the design that I had to correct while building it. There was the misreading of a table on Wikipedia. There were holes drilled not quite in the right place.

Now, a skilled carpenter would have done this in fewer steps (and missteps), but I just want to show my minute details of the process in getting this project done.

Decide to put old TV on the shelf.
Measure corner shelf. It's 22¾" tall and 40" wide.
Measure TV - 22⅞" tall. ⅛" too tall. TV is 32” wide.
How can TV height be reduced?
Sand down stand. Could possibly work, but don’t have power sander, maybe possible by hand. But how to make sure the sanding is done evenly and not slightly off horizontal. And would it affect the structural integrity of the stand?
OK, what are the alternatives? How about building a new stand out of some of the scrap wood I have in my shed. And since the stand would be behind the TV and not visible, it could look crappy and it wouldn't matter.
So, how do I build this stand? Scrap 2x4s, 2x3s, or 1x3s I have? Could be done, but could be hard to align everything square, especially with scrap wood not necessarily straight.
Ah, but I have some old IKEA Ivar shelves. ¾" pine glued together in strips to form a strong and square shelf 12x30. But they do have metal brackets on the ends to attach to the frame. They could be cut off the end of the shelves, but they shouldn’t be in the way, so I can leave them on and avoid extra cuts.
The stand can be one piece of shelf mounted vertically at the edge of the other.
How would I mount the TV to the stand? I see screw holes on back of the TV and measure them. An 8” square. But what type of screws?
Google TV mounts, and learn about Flat Display Mounting Interface (FDMI) or VESA mount.
The mount model table lists the dimensions in millimeters. There's 25.4 mm per inch, so 8 times 25 is about 200mm. And that matches a VESA F M6 200 mount.
I can buy a VESA 200 bracket and attach it to my wood stand.
Monoprice has one at for $4.42 with free shipping, but it’s normal ground shipping and I want to just get this done without waiting for the bracket.
The same mount on Amazon with two day prime shipping is $11. I still don't want to wait two days, I want to start tomorrow.
But why do I need to buy a mount if I’m building a stand anyway? Duh. I'm just mounting a mount on to the stand. I can just drill holes in the stand for the screws.
Wait a day for the weekend, so I have the time to build the stand.
I read the table on Wikipedia and it says VESA 200 takes M4 screws. Not sure exactly what they are, but presume it’s a metric measurement.
Measure depth of screw holes by how far a skewer goes in: ¾". It think the wood I'll likely use is about ¾” thick - so about 1½" long screws.
Don’t want screws that are too long - won’t be able to tighten TV to stand. Too short and the screws won’t hold the TV well. But short is better than too long.
Go to local hardware store and look for M4 screw bin. Find it. But these are metric screws, so their length will be in millimeters. Again 25.4 mm per inch, so 25.4 + half of 25.4, say 13, makes 38mm. There are M4 screws in 35mm and 40mm. To be safe, and not have to return to hardware store, I buy 8 screws, four M4 35m and four M4 40mm. They’re about $.25 a piece, so no big deal buying extra screws.
Bring screws home and try to screw them into back of TV. They aren’t wide enough. This VESA mount doesn’t use M4 screws. So, I have to head back to the hardware store anyway. My guess is that the screws should be M6. 35mm, seems right, though. I go back to the hardware store and buy the 35mm long M6 screws. (I didn't recheck the table then, but looking at it now it clearly says for VESA 200 to use M6 screws, not M4).
Now, how do I build the stand that square and rigid?
I could use a scrap 4x4 piece as a support where the boards meet in the corner? Both horizontal and vertical pieces of stand can screw into the 4x4.
Ah, but I’ve had this Kreg Jig kit for a couple of years and never used it. This is the perfect use for it. Use the jig to drill 2 shallow angle holes in the vertical piece to attach to the horizontal piece with the Kreg screws.
But I know that won’t be rigid enough, so I can cut a 2x4 at 45 degree angles on both ends to make a brace.
How tall should the vertical piece be? The finished stand must bring the TV down lower than the original stand for it to fit on the shelf. I measure about 19” from top of screws to just below the TV. There can be some slop here. It doesn’t matter if the stand is a little tall as it will be hidden behind TV. I can always cut it down if needed. But can’t make it too short or bottom of TV will be below bottom of stand.
Cut off a 19” section of one Ivar shelf for vertical piece, leaving metal bracket on top edge.
But what dimension should be used for the horizontal part of the shelf? I decide to cut my other Ivar shelf to 21” long, again leaving the bracket on the piece I use. The long side of the horizontal section will be along the length of the TV. The vertical section will be screwed to the middle of the horizontal piece in the edge.
Read instruction manual of the Kreg jig. Set the stop collar on the drill to the ¾” setting (for ¾” thick wood). Clamp the jig to the non-bracket side of vertical piece near edge. Drill one hole.
The hole looks to be too close to the edge of the board for the screws to go in. Something’s not right. Oh, there's another setting. I forgot to set the depth to ¾” on the jig.
Drill a new hole with jig. Looks better.
Drill a second hold with jig near other edge of board.
Using the Kreg 1.25” screws (the Kreg manual gave that length for ¾" lumber), screw the two pieces of the stand together.
Looking good. But as fully expected, not rigid enough.
Adjust saw to cut 45 degree angle from vertical. Use scrap lumber and cut brace, eyeballing a size that will work with the stand.
Screw one 1.25” screw in brace to vertical part of stand.
Damn. I’m not making sure this is square. Unscrew single screw in brace.
Clamp two Rocker Clamp-It Assembly Squares to stand to square it. These are rigid plastic L's and easy to use to square a construction project.
Put four screws in brace. Two on top, two on bottom.
Remove clamps and assembly squares.
Stand is nice and rigid!
Now I need to drill the holes for the screws to connect to the TV.
I lay the TV face down on a table.
Tape an 8x11.5” piece of paper on back of TV for template for mounting screws.
Use a pencil to poke through template over screw holes.
Tape template to vertical piece of stand, making sure it’s neither to high nor too low.
Mark where the holes are in the template.
Use a carpenter square along the edge of the to draw a line across the wood so I know that the holes will be properly aligned.
Find drill bit that seems the right size for the M6 screws and drill the first hole.
The hole isn’t wide enough. Choose the next size up drill bit.
Drill all 4 holes for the mounting screws.
Put the stand on the back of the TV, pass screws through the holes and tighten.
Hmm, the lower right hole is slightly off and I can't get the screw in its hole. Remove other screws and take stand off TV. Drill that hole wider so there can be some slop on where the screw goes through to the screw hole. The slop is not a big deal as three other screws are aligned correctly, and all four screws will be in tightly.
The stand is now installed! Take TV and stand off table and put on floor to see how well it works.
Uh… This is top heavy, the TV would fall flat on its face if I let it go. The regular stand goes right under the TV and is balanced. This stand is all behind the TV and thus not balanced. I really should have thought of this in advance.
How can I fix this? Put something heavy at the back of the stand. What will work? Let me test with an expired fire extinguisher sitting around. That works, but is sort of awkward. How about some weights? I have a 1 pound, 2 pound, 3 pound and 5 pound dumbbells. How much weight do I need? 5 pounds does it. But I want to keep my dumbbell, so I need an alternative.
I could buy some new dumbbells, or just some loose weights.
But bricks are cheaper. I buy 3 concrete bricks at Home Depot for about $1.50.
I put stack the bricks together and put them at the back of the stand. It works. The TV stays upright.
I take the bricks off the stand (making sure TV is supported against a table leg), and wrap duct tape around the stack of bricks to hold them together.
The bricks do work to keep TV and stand upright, but the stack of bricks could fall forward or backward.
The solution I come up with is to cut a 4x4 at a 45 degree angle, and stick it on the brace, so it is between the bricks and brace. Then duct tape it all together.
But since I don't want to lift the weight of the TV and bricks together, the final duct taping can wait until the TV is on the shelf.
But hold it! The shelf the TV is to sit on is a corner shelf. With the stand's base's edges of 90 degrees, the stand won’t fit on the shelf as it will hit the corner walls. Again, something I should have thought about in advance.
I have to cut the stand's base at 45 degrees so it will fit on the shelf.
Remove stand from TV.
I first have to cut off the metal bracket that I didn't bother cutting off before because I didn't think it was necessary.
Cut the back corners of the stand off at 45 degree angle.
Reattach the stand to the TV.
Lift the TV and stand onto the shelf, put the bricks and 4x4 on the back of the stand.
Take this picture of the (almost) final project:
Tear off some lengths of duct tape to tape the bricks and 4x4 to the brace with some inelegant loops that are conveniently hidden behind the TV.
Straighten out TV and stand on shelf.

And done.

The Only Purpose of this Post is to Help People Reflash Their Nexus 7 Tablets

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 05:09:00 +0000

(You probably don't want to read this unless you care about reflashing your 2012 Nexus 7 tablet from Android 5.0 (Lollipop) back to a release that make the tablet usable. After a few missteps I was able to reflash it, and the point of this post is for help others deal with the problems I had while reflashing on a single website, instead of the multiple ones I needed to solve the issues I had.)

(For those that care, you can ignore the below introduction and jump immediately to the issues this post is about.)

I have the first generation Google Nexus 7 tablets from 2012. It's major usage has been for reading email, using it as an Amazon Kindle reader, and my son's playing of Minecraft. It was an adequate tablet - until the Android OS upgrade.

It came in 2012 with Android 4.2 (Jellybean) and it worked fine. I upgraded to Android 4.3, and it worked fine. But when I upgraded it to Android 4.4 (KitKat) it started having trouble. It was sluggish in responding to user input, and it had trouble connecting to our WiFi router. It was so sluggish, that I rarely used it except for the Kindle app.

So, when Android 5.0 (Lollipop) came out, I was hoping Google had fixed all the problems in KitKat that made using the Nexus 7 painful.

It took months after 5.0's initial release before Google had 5.0 ready to install on the the 2012 Nexus 7. I had great hopes that 5.0 would fix all of the problems 4.4 had caused.

But 5.0 was even worse than 4.4. The tablet had become so sluggish it was unusable. Which meant it was time to reflash it back to the last OS version where the tablet was actually usable, 4.3.

Now to the hints to help other reflash their Nexus 7.

There are a number of guides on the web that give instructions and I'm not going to duplicate them. I mostly used this one.

Problem #1:

After running this command (you may choose to use a different .img file):
./fastboot flash bootloader bootloader-flo-flo-03.14.img

I would sometimes get this error message:

< waiting for device >

This is due to a bad USB connection. Try wiggling the USB connection on the tablet. Or try a different USB cable. Some websites said it could happen if you were using USB 3.0 (which my iMac doesn't have). If you get the < waiting for device > error message, just hit Control-C, fiddle with the USB connection and try again.

Problem #2:

While running this command to update the image (again, you may have a different zip file):

./fastboot -w update image-razor-jss15r.zip

You get these supposed error messages:

archive does not contain 'boot.sig'

archive does not contain 'recovery.sig'

archive does not contain 'system.sig'

These are not error messages! These messages are completely benign. Don't worry about them.

Problem #3:

After running the above ./fastboot -w update you get the message:

checking product...

FAILED

This means you tried to reflash your tablet with the wrong image. The first time I tried to reflash, I inadvertently downloaded the image for the 2013 Nexus 7. After I downloaded the correct 4.3 image and restarted the process, I successfully reflashed my tablet to 4.3.

And I really wish whoever wrote the fastboot code at Google realized:

1) Any message that is not an error should be clearly noted that it is not an error.

2) An error message should be absolutely clear what the problem is. Outputting just FAILED is not very helpful.

How can you tell if you have a light saber or a heavy saber? (How to Entertain Children #1)

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Sun, 15 Mar 2015 23:23:00 +0000

For my son Liam's tenth birthday party, his chosen theme was a mashup of Star Wars, Star Trek and Dr. Who. Here's the invitation my wife sent out:

IMAGINE IF YOU COULD TRAVEL ON THE T.A.R.D.I.S. TO A GALAXY FAR, FAR, AWAY AND BOLDLY GO WHERE NO ONE HAS GONE BEFORE....

The Doctor (10th one of course), Captain Picard, and Yoda request your presence at the celebration of Liam turning 10!

Please drop your children off for a scavenger hunt and birthday treats.

Gifts are welcome but not required. Daleks, Klingons, and storm troopers will be turned away.

WHAT: Liam Rudoff is turning 10!

WHEN: Saturday, February 7, 2015, 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm

WHERE: ~~Gallifrey~~....no, wait……~~Alderaan~~…oh, that won’t work either…Okay…our house

We promise to have your children returned to this time period and universe by the time you come to pick them up.

The activity he requested was a scavenger hunt. I had about a month to come up with how to do a scavenger hunt in our house (with a January birthday in Seattle, you really don't want to do it outside). And the scavenger hunt needed to be related to the Star Wars, Star Trek and Dr. Who theme.

First, I had to come up with what this scavenger hunt would be. I decided it would be puzzle clues, one leading to the next. With 14 of his friends invited, and not wanting everyone hunting for the same clue en masse through our house, I decided to break everyone one up into teams of two or three, each team searching for their own set of clues. That meant five teams, and conveniently I found this set of 50 small envelopes, with 10 each of 5 bright colors. Each team would be assigned an envelope color and would hunt for their envelopes one by one.

This meant I needed to come up with 50 Star Wars, Star Trek and Dr. Who themed clues. Which seemed daunting. Then I decided that all teams would share the last clue (more on that below), which cut down the number of clues to 45. Over a few weeks, I mostly succeeded in coming up with the clues on the theme, and some that were completely off theme because I ran out of ideas for theme-related clues.

The ones I thought that would be relatively easy:

The Royal Mail has a stamp to honor Dr. Who’s 50th anniversary - (Under the basket holding our mail).
This place is hotter than Tatooine! Are those the ashes of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru? - (In the oven).
The Empire Strikes Back starts on the planet Hoth - (In the freezer).
Did you know Spock was a vegetarian? I wonder what his favorite recipe was? - (In a vegetarian cookbook).
It's so wet here on Dagobah! I must find something to keep a least a part of me dry - (In a rain boot).

Some of my favorites:

How can you tell if you have a light saber or a heavy saber? - (Under a bathroom scale).
This well known planet is definitely not in Star Wars - (Under a globe).
It' snot under a Tardis that fell over - (No typo. Under a blue tissue box in a bathroom).
La Amenza Fantasma is the Spanish title for Stars Wars Episode #1 - (In the box holding a deck of UNO cards).
One game Trekkies like to play is “What are the worst episodes of the original Star Trek?” You’ll find “Spock’s Brain” in here - (In the box for the game "Cranium").
"It's a trap!" said Admiral Ackbar as he bumped his head on the low ceiling - (In a game of Mousetrap in the loft above Liam's room).

(And to not bore you, I won't list the 30+ other clues, but if you're really interested I'd be happy to email them to you.)

I tried to be helpful in hinting to the location of the next clue in the previous clue. For example, if the clue had "water" or "clean" in it, the next clue would be in a bathroom. If the clue mentioned "game", the next clue would be in the family room where we keep all of our games.

For the five teams, I tried to give them a good spread of clues with various levels of difficulty, and distributed relatively evenly around the house.

For their last clue, I decided to give everyone the same task to complete: to go to Liam's room and out of Lego build either a Tardis, a land speeder, or the Starship Enterprise. I thought this would be good way to end the scavenger hunt, with all the kids together in one room keeping busy and hopefully relatively quiet.

I wanted the kids to have fun, and for this to not be too competitive, so it was set up as a challenge, not a contest.

These are the rules I read out before the hunt began:

There will be 5 teams of 2 to 3 people.
Each team has 10 clues to find around the house.
Each clue is in an envelope colored blue, green, orange, yellow or pink.
Each team will randomly be assigned one color of envelopes. The teams only look for envelopes of their color.
At the start, each team will be given their first envelope.
Each envelope contains a clue. The clue will lead you to some place in the house where to find another envelope of the same color with a new clue.
Read the clues carefully. Some are easier than others. Every word in the clue may be important, leading to a room or thing in the house where the clue is located.
There are some places in the house where there are no clues hidden. These are: the basement, the laundry room, closets, in dressers, any drawers. Do not look in those places.
The envelopes are mostly hidden under things or in things. You do not need to dig though anything to find an envelope. When you lift something or open something you will see it. Nothing you need to lift will be heavy, hard to move or gross.
If you see an envelope belonging to another, you are not allowed to move it.
If a team is stumped, Liam's mom or dad will be able to give out hints.

There was some squabbling about who was which team (which I solved by my assigning the squabblers to teams with the explanation "Because I said so."). At the start a lot of the kids need help understanding how the clues worked ("The Empire Strikes Back starts on the planet Hoth - I don't get this. What do we do." Me: "Do you remember the start of the Empire Strikes Back?" "Yes." Me: "Where were they?" "On the ice planet Hoth." Me: "Okay, if it's an ice planet, it's very cold. Where is somewhere cold in the house?"). Hints were needed by almost every team, but as the hunt went on, they needed fewer hints.

And it all turned out well and not only did the kids had fun, I really had a good time coming up with the hunt and its clues as creative diversion.

I'll leave this with what was probably my hardest non-theme clue:

He took away the tea and was left with a table. The police could charge him with theft as he left a lot of fingerprints on it.

If you can solve that, here's the last of the cookies I made for the party:

And in memory of Leonard Nimoy:

Nobody Ever Complains About the Chocolate Covered Toffee (Recipe Included)

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

One thing I bring quite often to parties is chocolate covered toffee. I've been making it since sometime in the '90s. The recipe is from an inherited 1951 copy of The Joy of Cooking with a broken binding (you will find the latest printings no longer have instructions on how to skin a squirrel, which I have gladly never had need to use).

The toffee is quick and easy to make, I usually have all ingredients on hand, and it will be eaten quickly. This is all that's left of the batch I made yesterday for a gathering:

1 cup sugar
½ cup butter (1 stick), cut into 4 to 8 chunks
¼ cup water
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup sliced almonds, divided in half
6 oz chocolate: chips, chopped or melted

Prepare a cookie sheet with parchment paper, silicone pad, plastic-coated freezer paper (which I use), or grease it if you have no other option.

In a saucepan put the sugar, butter, water and salt. Under high heat, cook without stirring until it reaches 285° F. Take off heat, and immediately stir in ½ cup almonds.

Pour from saucepan (carefully!) onto prepared cookie sheet, and with a spatula spread it until it's about ¼" thick.

Sprinkle chocolate chips or chopped chocolate on top of toffee. Wait about a minute to allow chocolate to melt on the hot toffee, then spread (if you don't have chocolate chips, and you want to avoid chopping bars or chunks of chocolate, just melt in the microwave and spread on top).

Sprinkle the remaining ½ cup almonds on top and use a spatula to press into the still melted chocolate.

When cold and hard, break into pieces. If you need it to harden quickly (which I usually find I do since I wait too long make it before leaving for a party), let cool about 10 to 15 minutes, then place the cookie sheet in the freezer another 10 to 15 minutes.

More of Finding my Father in a 1957 Mexican Movie

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

After my previous posting about a photograph my father, Leonard Rudoff, took of a movie being made in Acapulco and realizing that he was in the movie itself, I decided to buy a DVD of the movie, "El bolero de Raquel" ($6.99 on Amazon) to see if I could get higher resolution view of him than in the YouTube video.

What I didn't realize until I saw the movie on DVD was that in the one minute scene at the pool, he's in three different shots in three different places (so much for continuity).

First, so he can be recognized, from his slide collection here are excerpts from a couple photos of him about the same time in Mexico, one with him swimming in the same pool at Hotel Caleta:

From the DVD, here he is in the background in the movie, first as Cantinflas as the boy are having the drinks poolside:

Then as the headwaiter and Cantinflas argue:

Not high resolution, but clearly him.

And here's a clearer view of him with a camera on the diving board as the waiter is pushed into the pool:

And I might as well show the full photos from above with my father. This is with his brother Alex in their stylish 1950's wear:

And at the the pool at Hotel Caletas:

I have no idea who the woman is, but there are enough photos of unknown women in his slides that I will likely have a later post entitled, "Who Are These Women That Accompanied My Father and Uncle to Mexico in the 1950's?"

Your Own Words May Unexpectedly Surprise You

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 04:35:00 +0000

Nine years ago, I took a playwriting class called "Unreal Theatre" at Seattle's Richard Hugo House. In that class, I adapted a short story I had written, "The Circumstances Around Steve Wickland not Receiving The Silver Star", into a play.

After the class ended, the instructor, Bret Fetzer, asked if he could produce a single performance of it a late-night cabaret put on by Annex Theatre. Here's a video of the 10 minute production:

Previously in this blog, I wrote of the unexpected emotional resonance that my college band's song had on someone.

But that can happen to the author as well. The last day of the class, four actors came to do readings of the students' plays (not the actors in the above video). These were cold readings; they had not seen the plays before. I provided four copies on my script with lines highlighted for the actors.

As the story unfolded for the actors, they were able to become the characters as they read their dialog for the first time. It's an impressive skill. But what amazed me was that they took my words and brought out an emotional depth to the story whose existence I was completely unaware of, and they did it on the fly.

The actors took my words and made them their own, resulting in an enhancement of my work.

I imagine authors whose work is published as an audio book discover this as well.

I would say this is an extension of my words in my previously mentioned post:

How a piece of art is interpreted is completely out of the hands of the creators. Things can have meaning beyond their creators' intentions.

A play is, of course different from prose. A reader's interpretation of prose is internal, while plays are meant to be interpreted publicly by actors and directors, and the writer may have little say in that interpretation (I was happy enough that Bret wanted to direct my play that I told him to do it anyway he wanted).

(This can go wrong, as shown by any number of bad film adaptations of novels.)

The point of this post is that if you ever hear your work read out loud, don't be surprised if an aspect of your work is revealed that you didn't expect to be there.

(#SFWApro)

I Find My Father in a Scene From a 1957 Mexican Movie as a Waiter Falls into a Swimming Pool

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Rudoff) — Sat, 18 Jan 2014 13:00:00 +0000

A few years ago I had the thousands of my family's slides scanned. There were family vacations, and also a number of slides of visits my father made to Mexico in the 1950s, before he was married (he died in 1994).

This was one of the more interesting ones:

This is clearly a photograph of a movie being made at a hotel, and my father managed to capture the exact moment when an actor playing a waiter is falling into the swimming pool:

My brother Matt had the photo up a Flickr page, and a couple of years ago received a message from a Michel:

It is a filming of the Mexican movie "El bolero de Raquel" where there appears recognized actor Mario Moreno "Cantinflas" ... That's a nice memories of that beautiful Acapulco, very different from that of today.

My father also took a photo of Cantinflas:

"El bolero de Raquel" was released in 1957 and can be found on YouTube. Here is the scene that includes the waiter's fall into the pool (1:43 into this video):

Michel identified the location as Hotel Caleta in Acapulco. The hotel and pool are still there:

If you look at my father's photo, you can see a diving board in the foreground, which means my father was either by or on the diving board.

Watching the scene from the movie, the diving board is in the background:

It's very low resolution, but there is someone on that diving board, and from his reverse angle photograph, that must be my father.

Update: I bought a DVD of the movie, and with its higher resolution discovered that he was in three separate shots in the one minute scene at the pool. See new blog post.