... AKA Mr. Random

Monday, December 23, 2024

Productive puttering

Dec. 15, Arlie Park

We had hoped rain would fall to quell any possible guilt we might feel about staying indoors today, but it didn’t begin to precipitate until dusk. I don’t think we feel guilty anyway. The last few days have been busy—hanging around inside the house felt good. And I actually got some productive puttering done, in addition to transmitting six prerecorded hours of Radio Free XMAS. I washed and dried laundry, cleaned up the kitchen, backed up my nearly full multitracker SD card, and gave it a fresh format for the new year. I also progressed to 83% in Big Sur, while hosting little Fleur on my lap; and binned a stack of my paintings that I don’t want anymore—that I'm quite sure nobody else wants, either. Plus I played with Betty and Fleur and took a nap with Mr. Griffin! It’s been a good day; and it’s only 5:30 p.m. I think we’ll watch the How The Grinch Stole Christmas (original 1966 TV version) after dinner. That’s a solid pre-Christmas tradition, and we've gotta do it either tonight or tomorrow night!

aka Radio Free XMAS

December 18, Dorris Ranch

I was yesterday years old when I heard about Christmas Adam. It was mentioned in a New York Times article Mrs. Random read. The term’s origin is obscure and obvious at the same time. I like it! Now we have special names for four days in a row: Christmas Adam, Christmas Eve, Christmas, and Boxing Day. Actually, to be fair, we already had Christmas Eve Eve and Festivus for December 23, and I just read about Tibb’s/Tipp’s Eve (Newfoundland). Plus, there’s HumanLight, a humanist holiday. But I’m liking Christmas Adam. It’s suggested to eat ribs today. lol.

Back in 2020 I served as a pandemic DJ on KWVA for a few months, making shows at home and uploading them to the station’s Google Drive. I just located the three 2-hour Christmas shows I made, only one of which was actually aired. I’m currently spinning those recordings on Radio Free Random aka Radio Free XMAS, and considering just looping them through Xmas Day—we’ll see. I worked hard on them, and I think they’re good shows! Tune in to the signal here: https://mixcloud.com/live/radiofreerandom

UPDATE: I did not loop the KWVA Christmas shows. But you can listen to them here: https://www.mixcloud.com/radiofreerandom/radio-free-xmas-20241223-162105/
Sound starts at the 20 second mark.

Sunday, December 22, 2024

A revival year

Only two more candy bags are left on our Advent Calendar, the one that Mrs. R's Aunt Sally needle-pointed for her when she was five. One bag is remaining for Christmas Adam (tomorrow) and one for Christmas Eve (Tuesday). We've been very good this year and remembered the ritual every day. As I mentioned in the post linked above, we stopped this tradition several years ago after we kept forgetting for several days in a row, and ended up opening multiple packages on one day. It was an indication that we really weren't into it anymore. But 2024 is a revival year for our Advent spirit, and we've proven to be worthy of the revival.

Swarm today was excellent and awesome. lelulaserlight and I rocked it for two sets (30 minutes and 40 minutes, respectively), and then we snacked and dined and desserted on Mrs. Random's culinary creations. Also, we opened Christmas gifts. I got a cool Celtic-design (Two Ravens) long-sleeved t-shirt from Mrs. R—a perfect wardrobe addition for the cold part of the year—and lelu gave me a diced-based Everyday Adventure kit ("Shake Up Your Day!") and a photobook!

The book lelu got me is fabulous: Helen Levitt, a 168-page hardcover volume published in 2008 by powerHouse Books, Brooklyn. Helen Levitt (1913-2009) was primarily known for her New York City street photography. Here's some prose from the publisher: "Her final book: Helen Levitt, was released in conjunction with a retrospective exhibition at Germany's Sprengel Museum Hannover, the exhibit included her most iconic works, intermixed with never-before-seen color work. Combining seven decades of New York City street life with her seminal work in Mexico City, Helen Levitt's self-titled compilation features the master works of an incomparable career."

Kerouac and me

I’ve got eight more days to finish Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur, which I’m borrowing as an ebook from the Eugene Public Library through the Libby app (or is it vice versa?). Now at the beginning of chapter 31, or 66%, I’ll make it easily. Big Sur features Kerouac (“Jack Duluoz,” the first-person narrator) suffering encroaching madness amidst alcoholic decline—but his prose flashes as brightly as ever, deepened by experience, pain, and sadness. The book documents a 1961 final trip to northern California—Jack flush with cash earned from his hit novel On The Road. (The text of Big Sur can be read online here.)

I don't have much in common with Mr. Kerouac, but we both created our own baseball solitaire simulation games as kids. He used a spinner. I used three six-sided dice, modeling my system on my buddy Greg's. But I abandoned my game when I bought the Sports Illustrated baseball board game, which came with charts for the 1971 Major League teams. I spent hundreds of hours playing it, making my own custom leagues and schedules—and I still get it out from time to time to play a game or three. My SF Giants lost the 1971 NLCS to the Pittsburgh Pirates, who went on to defeat the Baltimore Orioles in a fabulous 7-game World Series. My favorite all-time player Willie Mays was still with San Francisco, nearing the end of his career (finishing with the New York Mets in 1973). Pirates All-Star Roberto Clemente was killed a year later in the off-season (December 1972) when a chartered plane crashed taking supplies to survivors of a massive earthquake in Nicaragua. I was 12 at the time.

Rickey Henderson, 1958-2024

Man of Steal

During the years I followed the Seattle Mariners (most of the 1990s), I got to see Rickey Henderson a lot on TV. His at-bats and on-bases never failed to provoke extreme anxiety. Easily the most exciting player I've ever watched.

From Wikipedia: "He holds MLB records for career stolen bases, runs, unintentional walks, and leadoff home runs. At the time of his last major league game in 2003, the 10-time American League (AL) All-Star ranked among the sport's top 100 all-time home run hitters and was its all-time leader in walks. In 2009, he was inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility."

He died Friday. RIP Rickey.

Saturday, December 21, 2024

On our electronics and stuff

Yesterday at Dorris Ranch, Springfield, Oregon

Solstice night here chez Random. We’re relaxing, all of us—humies and kittehs—in the living room with the (gas) fireplace on. Fleur’s on my lap, Betty’s stretched way out with her front paws inching within a couple feet of the fire, and Griffin is next to the fire with his head on the base of the floor lamp—a hard pillow but he seems to like it.

We have Christmas Swarm tomorrow—lelulaserlight’s coming over in the late afternoon. She and I will rock out for a couple hours on our electronics and stuff. Then a snack and dinner feast courtesy of Mrs. Random, and then an exchange of presents.

I’m quite enjoying Blogger/Blogspot. It feels less restrictive and less structured than Wordpress (dot com) as far as what you can do with it. Greater ability to compose more creatively and design a little more chaotically—I suppose is what I mean. I need to dust off my HTML knowledge! For the first few years of my blogging career—1999 through 2007ish—I rolled my own website, adding and tweaking and removing features on a whim. Maybe I can revive a bit of that spirit here at AKA Mr. Random.

Today in radio history

The biggest continuous chunk of the day I spent On The Air—four hours and forty-five minutes spinning tunes for my rabid fan base :) Chat was fun and wide-(&weird)-ranging. Basically it was a big random musical variety show, including a 45-minute unplanned set of punk covers, i.e. punk bands covering popular non-punk songs, which I blame on Bryan from Indiana, who goaded me into playing Me First & The Gimme Gimmes. Once goaded, I could not stop. Thanks Bryan! Here's the show if you're inclined to experience some fresh Radio Free Random:

River toast

Happy solstice, random blog readers! Our Dorris Ranch walk went well yesterday, with dry weather and old friends. We toasted the solstice a few hours early, next to the river, continued our meander around one of the looping routes, and returned to the parking lot where we occupied a nearby picnic table with goodies. It was great to get caught up with people we haven’t been seeing much of lately. All of us are retired, so a daytime weekday meetup was perfect.

Friday, December 20, 2024

Betty

I changed my mind

Okay, okay. I know I said I'd keep posting on the old blog until the end of the year, but that's not gonna happen. I'm HERE, man. Moving in and getting used to the new place is just too much fun. So I'll make one final post over there with the link to this blog and just be done with the Wordpress site. Of course, I'll leave it there as an archive. But as of this post here, I'm just going to blog at AKA Mr. Random.

Let's test a couple things

Dec. 15, Suzanne Arlie Park

First photo of the new blog era. Now I want to try a Mixcloud embed, specifically my most recent Radio Free Random pop-up show from Wednesday...

Hmmm... play button doesn't work in the preview. Maybe it will if I go ahead and publish.

This is a beta phase post and may be modified multiple times. Please stand by.

UPDATE: player works!

Next, a YouTube...

Now I want to try an indented quote. Does Blogger have that option?

Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Indeed! And that was Thomas Paine from his classic Common Sense (1776).

Alrighty, that's enough for this post. I do like that with Blogger, there is one date heading for all the posts on that date. If I think of other things to test out, I'll put them in a new post. Bye for now.

Comments enabled

It took a bit o' wrasslin', but you can now comment on this blog. Do it! ;)

Now, a decade later

Hello World! This is me reviving this site for regular blogging. It used to be "Mr. Random's Photos" and I've left those posts here, all from 2015. That blog was born from my enthusiasm for a new camera, the Canon S120. I still have that camera and have loved it so much and it's gotten so worn and haggard that I got another one, barely used, virtually pristine. Now I have several cameras, including a couple in the micro four thirds system, with a collection of M43 lenses.

If you're here visiting from Mr. Random's Blog of Randomness, welcome to my new blog, "AKA Mr. Random"! I will probably continue posting at the old blog until the end of the year but also add posts here in order to get used to working with Blogspot quirks.

The main reason I'm switching URLs is that Google's Blogspot offers unlimited photos, whereas Wordpress.com limits you to a fixed storage amount (1 GB for free accounts such as mine). Also—quite important to me—the image quality is just better over here.

More to come... Thanks for reading!