No big news, just checking in. It was a glorious fall day here in Taos, but very windy and colder than I needed. This was the third time I’ve built a fire before noon this fall, and it seems a little early to me.
The best thing I accomplished today was installing Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and the 10.6.1 update immediately thereafter on my 24-inch iMac. Imagine my astonishment when I ended up with over 100 GB more free hard drive space than before! Way to go, Apple. Of course, the printer didn’t work, so I had to google for a solution, which was actually very simple. Overall, the user interface is snappier, and shutdown and startup are much faster. Applications launch more quickly, especially Apple’s own. Preview, for example, is much faster when opening a large number of photos simultaneously.
While I was waiting for for the operating system installation to finish (about 45 minutes), I decided to get out my Guild 12-string and tune her up. It had been a couple of months since I’d taken it out of the case, not since before my rock & roll birthday. There wasn’t much time to play it, though, until later this evening, and that’s when I had my second surprise of the day. Apparently all that practicing for the surf band gigs built up the strength in my left hand and wrist to the point that I can now do things on the jumbo acoustic that were never possible before. Ohhhh: practice — THAT’S why we do it. But what a shock that I was so much better.
I played for 90 minutes just a while ago. You need to play for at least an hour before the guitar becomes optimally playable — after that it has a bigger sound somehow, as if the wood finally wakes up, and there’s more color, resonance, whatever. It’s the darnedest thing. But then you have to keep going and going, because it sounds so good…
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it’s the same deal with my monster analog modular synthesizer – after you first turn it on it takes a while for the oscillators to warm up properly and the tuning to stabilize, but then you get on a roll with it and find The Zone, and the whole process takes on a life of its own.
(and believe it or not i’ve actually found a practical use for a lava lamp! the time it takes for the wax in the lamp to soften is about the same as it takes for the synth to warm up, so i have it plugged into the same power conditioner, and when the lamp is flowing freely i know the synth is ready.)
I believe you have a unique perspective on all this, Number 6. Just offhand, I don’t know anyone who even has an analog synth, much less anyone who times the warmup with a lava lamp.