Tag Archives: hobbies

Spaghetti Is Bad For You

Brainfield studio is down at the moment for renovations.  This is the big push to bring everything online and together, and it’s led me to realize some things that will pain me for a bit.

First, I have a lot of gear.  And up until this point, I had been using it piecemeal and never really had to worry much about connections.  To accommodate it all, I need a lot more connections.  That means lots of wires.  Lots of them.

So to sort of map it all out, the final design will have a 6-keyboard stand, a 4-keyboard stand, and a 2-keyboard stand.  Then there is the rack and mixer, and the monitors.  All of the rackmount devices can be considered one unit as they have a submixer.  So that’s 13 stereo inputs, or 26 channels.  I have a 16 channel mixer.  How will I reconcile that?  Time to level up the studio with a patchbay.

The patchbay sits between connections and lets you override any at will.  So I can have my usual favorite devices connected and if I need to hear a different device, I can patch its output in the patchbay to a free input on the mixer.  It takes a little bit to wrap your head around, but I’m getting to the point that I can’t imagine not doing it this way.  The alternative is having a bunch of cable ends laying on the floor around the mixer and I have to figure out which one I need, unplug something from the mixer and then plug in what I want. It’s also a lot of wear and tear on the mixer ports.

So that sounds lovely, but now, consider what I said, the patchbay sits between every connection.  So while you used to have a connection between the device and the mixer, now you have a connection from the device to the patchbay, and another from the mixer to the patchbay.  That’s more wires.  With my 16 channel mixer, that’s going to be 8 stereo cables, plus the monitor outs.  Because the monitors connect to the patch bay and the mixer outputs connect to the patchbay.  Everything connects to the patchbay.

I have options in which patchbay I choose.  I decided to bite the bullet and buy one that uses TRS (tip ring sleeve), which is functionally equivalent to a stereo jack.  Biting that bullet means that all of my existing mono cables are worthless.  Well, I can still use a mono cable I suppose, but I will be running each port as stereo and I’ll need to buy new TRS to dual mono cables.  That’s going to be pricey.  And on top of those, I also have to buy TRS cables to do the patching on the patchbay.

So there’s that.  That’s the first point.  The second point is:  I have a lot of gear.  It’s not only audio signals I have to concern myself with, it’s also MIDI control.  So I’ll have a few input devices and whole lot of controlled devices.  I have just maxed out my MIDI interface hardware, so I have 9 in and 9 out ports, which is far more than I probably need.  Why so many ports?  Because some devices can be multitimbral and can listen on all 16 channels so they need their own dedicated port.  Monotimbral devices can share a port and each use a unique channel number.  And to accomplish that, I’ll be using MIDI thru boxes to split the signal.  That means I don’t have to have all the devices on for the signal to pass through each one.

But you know what that means, more cables!  And with the added devices spread around the room, I need more cables and longer cables.  So I made up a rough list of what I need to buy to connect everything together.

Audio Cables (TRS to dual 1/4”, aka Insert cable):

  • 3’ – 8
  • 15’– 11

Audio Cables (TRS-TRS)

  • 25’ – 2

TRS Y adapters – 2

TRS Patchbay cables – 6

MIDI Cables

  • 6’ – 1
  • 15’ – 4
  • 25’ – 4

I placed an order with MonoPrice and Amazon to get everything but the 6’ and 25’ MIDI cables.  I have other MIDI cables already and I have some F-F adaptors that can extend a couple cables.  I think that’s going to put me closer to the goal.  If not, I’m just wasting money, but what else is new?

Where From Here?

After updating my studio buying log for the last couple months, I thought I should take a moment and reflect on the journey so far and what the road ahead looks like.

The good news: I have not lost interest in the reconstruction effort for the old tracks.  Even though I’ve been working on them on and off for months now.  And the progress is fairly steady as well.  So far 29 tracks have been reconstructed, which I think is amazing.  There’s only maybe 8 left to do and of those, maybe 3 may have lost data or sounds that are impossible to source or recreate.  The progress is substantial enough that I purchased the device needed for yet a different recording from the era, done on gear not in the original studio.  Gear that was cutting-edge at the time but now is cheaply available.

And that’s sort of the roadmap for this month and next month.  This month is sort of paused on spending since homeowner’s insurance was due and it just feels prudent to keep my expenses level month to month.  But, there is a plan for the next phase.

The next phase obviously is new creations.  I’ve got a massive selection of new devices to work with now and there should be no wanting for any sounds for inspiration.  In order to make that next phase happen, I need to get all those dives out of the closet and set up for play.  That means I need a rack, maybe multiple racks.  There are ten keyboards in the closet right now.  I have my eye on a rack that will hold six of them, which might just be fine.

As far as repairing devices, I’ve done alright.  Most devices that I take in only need little changes.  Like the U220 on the table right now.  It had a completely dead battery and the power button got stuck in when I power it on.  After disassembling it, the plate that held the MIDI message light, which was also the frame for the power switch had become detached.  Just needed superglued back into place.  I think someone though the MIDI message light was a button and pushed it so hard it detached it from the frame.  The Kurzweil was a mystery that I returned to a couple of times and by random chance I seemed to have fixed it by changing the default startup patch.  My suspicion is whatever the previous default patch was had some bad configuration data in it and when it was loading that faulty patch, it caused the sound output settings to get botched.  The wonder of fully software-driven devices.  My Alesis QS8 started exhibiting audio problems after it warms up, so it’s relegated to a MIDI controller right now.  And the faders are still nasty, spewing garbage on the MIDI channel, so its time may be short altogether.

So in summary, the travel has been smooth and the road ahead looks clear and bright.  Barring any unexpected events, the year is looking positive.

Talking About Repairs

My latest project arrived in the mail today.  I’ll discuss that in detail in a bit, but first wanted to recap this whole journey.  I kind of fell haphazardly into the “buy broke and repair” thing with synthesizers.  And I’ve struggled each step, but in general, I’ve been successful and nothing has turned out to be as bad as I thought it was.

The one that started it off was the Alesis.  I thought it needed a change of capacitors to solve a voltage situation.  I changed them out and it made no difference.  but I didn’t break it any worse.  And I eventually got it working by cleaning some faders on another board – a solution that was not even on my radar.  I just got lucky.  That was a cheap thrift store find, so the only worry was disposing it if I ruined it.

Also in my closet is a non-working Roland Juno-Di.  I got it for only $80 at a pawn shop in non-working order.  So far, I have not had any success in fixing it.  In the quest for answers I purchased an oscilloscope.  I honestly don’t know what I’m doing with the scope, so it got me nowhere.  a local repair shop says the know it’s a chip that needs replaced and they’re waiting on parts to come in.  So that’s sitting and waiting.

Next up was an expensive purchase, an Oberheim Matrix 6R, at almost a grand.  and it was advertised as needs work.  Supposedly needs a new battery and a firmware upgrade.  The firmware ship was supplied.  I figured I could change the battery easily enough.  The end result was that the volume fader needed cleaned and that was all.  I swapped the firmware chip easily enough and it’s good to go.  I replaced the caps on the display board and the display looked great, but went wonky again when I reassembled it.  I’ve yet to take it apart and look further.  It’s serviceable right now.

Now for the newest item in detail.  Another expensive purchase of the same cost and same family, an Oberheim Matrix 1000 is the latest on the bench.  When I first got it and tested it, I got maybe a few notes out of it then it went silent.  I popped it open and inspected everything.  Things looked ok.  I cleaned the volume pot, which didn’t change anything.  The problem is, I didn’t know exactly what was supposed to be happening.  From the past repair videos that I’ve watched, I understand that the power supply should be feeding a 5v and 12v power to the board.  I broke out the multimeter and got measurements of less than half a volt.  It sounds impossible that the display would even light up with that little voltage.  That’s where I suspected the problem was, so I found a lone seller on eBay selling a used power supply (untested) for a reasonable price, and I bought it.

I then spent a lot of time watching other videos of repairs of the Matrix 1000, none of which had the problem I had.  But I did learn a couple of important things.  First that patches under #200 might be blanked out on a reset, so they won’t have any sound.  And secondly, that there was an indicator when the device was receiving a MIDI signal.  Hmmm.  With this info, I went back, reassembled the power supply into the device and tried again.  Changing to patch 333 still had no sound, but also, there was no indicator light saying it was getting a MIDI signal either.

And the “fix” was to wiggle the MIDI in jack.  Then the MIDI signal was received and sound was made.  So the problem wasn’t the power supply (but who knows, it may still be.  Now I’ll have something to compare it to).  But that MIDI jack does need changed.  Upon closer inspection, it is loose.  And that actually is a problem that was described in one of the videos I watched.  They swapped out the jack with a similar jack.

I thought about this over dinner.  I don’t know exactly what jack to purchase to ensure the pins line up correctly, and that sounds like a lot of trial and error.  What would be better, I think, is sacrificing one of the other good MIDI jacks and swapping it with the broken one.  I never expect to use the MIDI Out, but I will probably use the MIDI Thru, so I can pull the MIDI Out and use it.

That’s the plan.  I got home from dinner and started setting up the soldering station to remove the jack.  However, unlike capacitors which have two leads and are generally easy to wiggle out while the solder is liquid, this jack has seven pins and you can’t heat all of them at once to release it.  While the solder sucker did ok on most pins, I still could not get it free.  So I did what any frustrated hobbyist would do.  I threw money at the problem.

So I already have a multimeter, a soldering station, and an oscilloscope, what’s next?  Well, what I’ve seen on videos, which is envious, is a desoldering gun.  This device, you put it over a pin, it heats up the pin and solder, you pull a trigger and a vacuum sucks up the solder.  It’s the same as the manual solder sucker, but the soldering gun isn’t in the way.  That would reduce a lot of my frustration, which I’ve had right from the start.  My first repair attempt had me struggling horribly trying to clear a hole that had solder in it.

So that’s where we are right now.  What’s on the horizon?  There’s a synth sitting in a pawn shop where  I had made another purchase.  It’s in sad shape, with rust on the base, plus. it’s a synth I already have.  But, repaired, it can be worth about $450.  I’ll make an offer of $150 and maybe I can bring it up to a level where it can be sold for a profit, or better yet, a trade.

And what purchases can I expect to make during that repair?  I expect I will purchase a EPROM writer so I can upgrade firmware.  Looks like around $100 on ebay.

Painting Looks Fun To Own

The title is a reference to the punchline from an old comic strip where a character wants to get into pottery and buys anything and everything for the hobby, unsure yet of whether the hobby will stick.  With the entire purchase laid out on a large table the question is raised,  what if that hobby fails?  Well, painting looks fun to own.

I’m having a queue problem with my music hobby, and I’m growing the queue for little good reason other than, it looks fun to own.  I’ve purchased a couple more keyboards since the last time I mentioned buying keyboards.  I’m not sure what the total is now.  Barring any "that’d be neat" items I happen across, I only have one more planned purchase to replicate the 700cb studio of the 90’s.  With all those elements, I will be able to work further back in the catalog and rebuild the original songs in higher quality than the old cassette tape of the era.

While that’s the goal in mind, I have a lot of steps I want to complete in order to get there.  i have an actual written list of the things I want to accomplish along the way.  A lot of that list is reducing the stuff I already have, and that’s where the blockages are happening.

I have to sound modules that are just too similar and I don’t need both.  The Yamaha Mu80 and MU100.  However, before I part with the MU80, I decided I should take advantage of the availability of the device by rewriting an old utility program I wrote back around 1996 that would allow the MU80 to be used as an effects unit.  Back then, I wrote it for the PC version, the Yamaha SW60.  I had later advanced to the Yamaha SW1000 in my computer but I never had an MU80 or MU100.  Now is a good chance to do that rewrite.

However, that old utility was written back in 1996, in Visual Basic 6.0.  We’ve moved on a lot since then, so I can only read the code as a guideline and I’m essentially writing the thing from scratch again.  And it’s rather a pain in the ass.  I have no idea how I cranked out that utility so quickly back then.  Youth…

But anyway, writing that program requires my programming desktop to use the MIDI interface, which means I can’t use it for any work on my recording PC.  And I decided I’m going to sell the chintzy novelty guitar I’ve been using for testing the utility, but I can’t really do that until I finish this application.  So it’s blocking me twice.  You know what, i should just use another guitar for testing.  Yes, they’re not as disposable, but they should survive the office environment long enough.

So there, I’ve talked (typed) myself into making a decision.  I can list the dumb guitar on ebay.  And I have CD players and other audio equipment to list as well.  I have a lot of CDs listed and the best have already sold off, so the rest are just taking up time.

In the future, expect something to be said about this dread in the back of my mind.  I have all these devices and nowhere near enough space to store them, set them up, or mixer inputs to plug them in and use them at once.

And also on the hot sheet, one of the devices I bought needs work.  Parts are being ordered and I’ll have another attempt at frustration with soldering.  I went through my pottery stage and I have everything I need to pick it back up again.

So Let’s Do This Again

So, for what seems like the 100th time in my life, I’m getting back into music.  Some things are a little different this time.  The primary difference is $$$.

A quick history of my keyboard collection.  In the 90’s, at the peak of my creative period, I had 3 main keyboards: the Ensoniq ESQ1, the Roland Alpha Juno 2, and the Oberheim matrix 6R.  The Juno and the Matrix 6 were sold off and I added a Casio CZ (varying models over time, but eventually the CZ1, which was top of the line), and later, a Roland RD-600.  A little later on yet, I added a General Music Equinox Pro-88.  I had these 4 boards for a long time, but eventually sold the ESQ1.  Then later, I didn’t think I needed two 88-key boards, so I sold the Equinox.  That left the Casio and the Roland.  And I got by on that.

But, I regret – REGRET – selling every one of those keyboards.  I should have just put them in storage.  I lost a lot of money selling every one.  And that regret has cost me as I try to reclaim those old sounds.

Now to the near present.  I wanted to "remaster" my old recordings and to do that, I needed the original sound devices.  I started from my most recent stuff and am working backwards.  So a lot of my newest stuff, I was using the Yamaha SW-1000 sound card.  This sound card is obsolete for computers now, but there was a professional module called the Yamaha MU-80.  I bought one.  It seemed like it didn’t have the right sounds, so I also bought an MU-100.  That was a wild goose chase, so now I have an extra sound module I don’t need.

Going back further, I needed the sounds from the Equinox.  This synth is quite uncommon.  If it does come up for sale, it ain’t cheap.  I scanned the internet hard, and eventually had to jump on one that suddenly appeared on eBay.  It was only the 76-key model, which was actually better for me.  And that was a big blow to the wallet.  But, it was just what I wanted.

Now inspired, I started seeking out other synths.  I picked up one from Craigslist for $400, a nice sounding Korg I’d never used before.  Then I made a pawn shop run and got a newer Roland synth that needed some help.  That one’s all fixed up and going good right now.  I made another pawn shop run and picked up a dead Roland synth that is queued for professional repair someday.  And along the way, I resurrected an old thrift store purchase that was sitting in my closet.  Finally, I made a long drive to pick up the one synth that started it all, an Ensoniq ESQ1.  Again, not cheap, but still, part of the plan.

I need to be realistic and say I’m probably never going to own another Oberheim.  They are even more expensive than the Equinox I bought.  And the Alpha Juno, I have a great software VST version of it that will suit my needs.

So where am I now?  Let’s take stock (in order of purchase):  Roland RD-600, Casio CZ-1, Alesis QS-8, Yamaha MU-80, MU-100, General Music Equinox, Korg DW-8000, Roland D-70, Ensoniq ESQ-1, Roland Juno Di.  That’s 10 that I count.

And where to put all these?  I only have a stand for two.  They’re in the closet, but they need cases, so now this is my new buying spree.  I’ve purchased 2 used cases in the last few days and I still need two 76-key cases and one more 61-key case.  I have two 88-key cases from when I owned the Equinox Pro-88.

To offset a little of this cost, I’m selling off a lot of duplicate CDs I’ve collected over time.  I also have CD players to get rid of.  Money comes, money goes.  Hobbies keep coming back.

So let’s do this again.

I Can Never Take On A Simple Project

Last weekend, I made a day and hit a bunch of pawn shops, specifically looking for keyboards.  I guess collecting CDs was getting too hard, and collecting CD players was too infrequent, so keyboards is now what I collect.  I had two a couple weeks ago, now I have five.  I’ll figure out something.

So, to keep that story short, I made a deal at the first place I went and the rest of the day was pretty crappy.  For some odd reason, my phone could not keep a GPS signal, so my trip was cut short.  No idea what was up with the GPS, but I hope it’s not a regular happening.

So anyway, at this first shop, they had a keyboard out front – a Roland D70, which is a 76 key synth from 1990.  Not bad.  The original price was $720 and it was marked down to $450.  ehhh, not that great.  But there was a sign nearby that said anything on that table, make an offer. Hmmm.  I did a quick price check and the D70 sells for about $500.  Ok, let’s at least check it out.

I ask to try it and the first thing I see is that the MIDI thru jack is ripped out.  I have no idea how something like that happens.  Not a deal breaker because I wouldn’t need that port, but it is a negotiation point.  It powers up and I start testing the keys.  To my amazement, some of the keys don’t work.  And when I say they don’t work, I don’t mean they don’t make a sound when you press them, I’m saying you could not physically push them down.  Five keys had that problem, all black keys.

The store got a little busy right then, so I had an extended period to consider what level of effort a repair would be.  Absolute worst case, find a dead donor board and swap the keybed.  The electronics seemed fine, the issue was only mechanical.  Time to barter.

Know this about me:  I don’t haggle.  I like to be a people-pleaser.  I don’t like the discomfort of potentially insulting the person who is offering me a service or product.  So I continually tell myself, I don’t need this board.  There’s no reason not to walk away.  I set my price at $250.  Now remember, this is a pawn shop, so it’s likely the person pawning it only got like $100 at most for it, so my price is still giving them a profit.  However, that price was lower than their lowest time-based discount price was.

The salesman came back and I explained the problem and the level of effort I’d have to take to see if it’s even repairable and told him I could only offer $250.  He immediately said, no, I already have $400 into it.  Well, that was quick.  So I was like, ok, I can’t take it.  But I can tell you there’s a repair shop nearby that could fix it for you if you want to get its full value.  I know a pawn shop doesn’t want to sell good stuff; they want to turn over product with as little hassle as possible.  Fuck, they don’t even clean things they put on the floor.  Such a simple thing to increase the value, and they don’t.

He changes his tune quickly, "let me ask the manager."  Yup, just like a car dealership.  However, unlike a dealership, he came back and said, manager says he’ll take $250.  I didn’t have to fight wave after wave of bosses to get the deal.  So, deal done and back home to see what’s up with this thing.

To get to the point, this keyboard had what I’d heard about in repair videos but had never seen yet: the Roland Red Glue.  This glue, in keyboards from 1985-1990, would melt in heat and humidity, loosening the key weights and running into the internals.  The five broken black keys all had their weights fall and that is why they could not be pushed down.  It’s quite funny to me to think that this board might have originally worked well, but because pawn shops suck, they might have left the A/C off at night to save a couple bucks and caused this problem all on their own.  I love that sort of justice.  But anyway, the problem was mine now.

I did some research and found that the usual fix is to soak the keys in drain cleaner to dissolve the red glue and then reattach the weights with epoxy glue.  The recommendation was to use a drain cleaner with lye.  Well, guess what, you can’t get that anymore.  Why?  Goddamn methheads.  Lye is used in making meth.  So I picked up some other cleaner that had some of the chemicals that are associated with lye and hoped that would do the job.

The keys soaked overnight and while it did appear to dissolve all the running glue and freed the weights from the five black keys that had their weights fall, the other key weights were still rock solid.  Solid enough that I broke the plastic on a key trying to pry the weight out.

So the next day, I spent a lot of time scrubbing the keys, to get whatever glue was left (which had turned black) and planned my next move.  In one video, the person said the glue was susceptible to high pH and tested his soaking solution before starting to show it was high pH.  Well, I can make a high pH solution with some pool chemicals.  So I took the broken key as my new sacrificial tester, bought some alkalinity increaser from the pool store, and soaked the key in a solution with a pH off the charts of my pool test strips.  After a few hours, the key weight was as firmly attached as ever.

So at this point, I think I’m just going to fix the five black key weights, buy a replacement key for the one I broke, and put it all back together.  Some part of me says it’s leaving a job unfinished, but another part of me is saying, those other key weights are on there.  And I’m not leaving my keyboards in a non-climate controlled environment anyway, so they should remain solid.  I dissolved all the excess glue that had seeped out, so the only glue left is what is behind the weight.

The replacement key arrived quicker than I expected.  And immediately upon opening, I check it.  Red Glue.  Ok, off into a drain clearer bath overnight.  The next day, I scrubbed the dissolved glue off and installed the key.  I had been waiting for this and had installed every other key in advance.  I put everything back together and powered the board up.

No sound.  Further, the display was completely garbled.  Actually, this is ok.  I’ve heard that you might need to do a memory erase and then go through a tedious process of transmitting data to the device to restore it.  So I download the data file, get the utility program and try.  And try again, and again.  We’re not seeing any success here.  I read a couple more posts about the process and someone comments on turning off a memory protect switch.  Oh yeah, that would help.  A few more tries.  More reading.  Eventually what worked for me was navigating to a system menu, enabling sysex receive, and setting the device id to 17 (why I don’t know).  But then I had sound.

Unfortunately, some of the keys weren’t responsive.  I was too optimistic about their integrity and I probably shouldn’t have been.  So, everything comes apart again and I disassemble the keybed completely again.  Now I have to clean the membrane contacts and pads with alcohol, which wasn’t really as bad as I thought it might me.  I put on some music and went at it.  Two albums later, I was done and reassembling everything.

I had sound and now I had keys that work.  Some of the black keys were more sensitive than others, but that’s livable.  I can tweak any obnoxiously incorrect velocity in the sequencer if I need to.  And that actually wraps up the repair and restore of this device.

In the meantime, I’m buying another keyboard next weekend, which might need some attention, and also the keyboard that started this buying frenzy, the Equinox, needs some care.  The pitch wheel is wonky and I think some of the faders are dirty and spamming the bus.  And I know the battery is low on that, too.  So, no shortage of future projects, let’s hope they don’t become as involved as this one.

The Last Time Is The Charm

In an earlier post, I talked at length about this keyboard that came from a thrift shop and had a problem and how I tried to fix it over and over and eventually gave up and left it sitting in the garage, queued for the dump.  Well, sometimes, I just can’t give up. 

It’s been so cold the last few days that I didn’t want to touch the keyboard, seeing as it’s all metal (official weight: 51.4 lbs. – stupid heavy).  Today was warmer and I left the garage open so it could warm up a little.  After work, I went out and hauled the beast back in for yet another attempt at repair.

Did I have a plan?  Not really.  I was going to take the keyboard assembly out and just deal with the main board through MIDI.  Doing that, I could at least move something in and out of the closet that was probably 30 lbs. less every time I wanted to make another repair attempt.  And with that, I set the massive key bed out and hooked up the synth to another of my keyboards.

MIDI worked,  And enabling a sound on the master keyboard verified there was still the pitch problem.  I dug out the service manual and went through the reset and test modules.  Everything seemed ok from what I could tell.  A couple of the faders didn’t seem to register any movement and I had the pitch and mod wheels disconnected, so some blanks were expected.

Noodling around on the master keyboard, I happened to think to try the pitch wheel and when I moved it, I was very surprised to hear it didn’t work as it should.  The pitch would shift a little bit and snap back to the original incorrect pitch.  That would suggest that the contacts might be dirty, but this is a remote keyboard.  These are MIDI messages being sent and the synth is not honoring them.  Or something else locally is spamming the pitch controller signal.

I finally had a lead I could work with.  I started thinking schematically about what components could cause the pitch wheel to be triggered consistently even when disconnected.  I had the idea I should reconnect the pitch wheel and see if I could stabilize the pitch by holding it a certain amount.  To reconnect it, I had to remove a circuit board that had all the fader controls on it, like volume and four programmable sliders.

When I got the board off, I immediately noticed the connector for the pitch wheel had some trauma.  It was bent at an odd angle.  That seemed suspicious.  I inspected it closely and didn’t see anything broken.  But the faders were disgusting.  And as long as I had this board apart, I thought I’d try out my new chemicals, Deoxit and Deoxit Fader, the latter of which is specifically made for cleaning and lubing faders.

As I cleaned the faders, it was pretty clear they were just shot.  The cleaner was running down the board in a black oil.  But I cleaned them up as best I could.  With the pitch wheel reconnected, I powered the synth back up and tried out a few keys.  It was suddenly in tune.  No drift.  The pitch bend worked locally and remotely.  And that’s the end of this saga.

Reflecting on the "fix", when I very first got the keyboard, it had a pitch problem.  I was the one that disconnected the pitch wheel, so that was not the source of the problem.  One of the faders had to be the culprit – it must’ve had a short somewhere.  But I’m not going to be overly concerned about it from here out.  If the problem comes back, I will just buy a new fader board or maybe the faders themselves, since that is where the problem is centered.

The important thing is I have the keyboard I originally purchased in non-working order, now in working order.  And on a similar topic, I purchased another keyboard on a whim this week.  So I now have five keyboards and a stand that can hold two, so three have to be in storage.  I’m not sure where this is going at the moment, but we’ll see.  One thing for sure, I’m not getting rid of any more keyboards.

2023 Hike Log

So let’s try something different this year.  This time, I’ll just make one post and update it throughout the year with dates, location, distances, and notes.  That should be easier to maintain and I’ll be more apt to just put a quick log entry in here than trying to write a blog entry on a hiking trip.

So let’s start.

Date Location Distance Notes
1/7/2023 Colt Creek 3.6 mi
1/14/2023 Alafia 1.2 mi Thin trails with lots of opportunity to climb, but much more bike-oriented than hiker.
1/15/2023 Colt Creek 6.7 mi How long? How long? How long to the point of know return?
1/22/2023 Tenoroc 2.7 mi Blue loop; nice elevation changes and great views.
2/18/2023 Gator Creek 5.3 mi Deer Run loop. 1 tortoise, 1 gator.
2/25/2023 Colt Creek 2.7 mi No real hike. Just back and forth on spur trails.
3/5/2023 Colt Creek 6 mi First half of Yellow trail
3/21/2023 Green Swamp 3.7 mi First weekday hike after DST change
3/26/2023 Colt Creek 4 mi Second half of Yellow trail
5/30/2023 Gator Creek 2.3 mi Yellow trail
Laziness 0.0 mi
11/23/2023 Green Swamp 1.7 mi Something’s not right. No stamina. Need to start over?
12/5/2023 Green Swamp 5.4 mi That’s more like it. Still sore, though.
12/7/2023 Green Swamp 5.0 mi Tired, but not sore.
12/25/2023 Green Swamp 5.3 mi
12/30/2023 Gator Creek 5.3 mi Deer Run
12/31/2023 Tenoroc 4.3 mi Red Loop

Doesn’t Play Well With Others

Well, back from hibernation.  Seems like every once in a while I need to take a few months off.  And I have a need to break in the new keyboard I have.  That’s one little new thing in my life.  A month or so ago, my keyboard finally died.  I had spilled some liquid on it and it put up a brave fight for a few months, then one of the traces went out and some keys stopped responding

And normally, this would be a case of, just go get another, but I have been using the same keyboard model for, I don’t know, maybe 30 years?  And the problem is they don’t make them anymore.  I spent a little time researching a new brand and model to use, but broke down and searched harder for my life-long model.  Believe it or not, some charity shop had a few unopened packages of them.  I bought two and now I’m back in business.  Well, sort of.  These keys are really stiff and need broken in.  So, blog on.

So anyway, the thing that made me want to write a new post was about a side project.  I have a few side projects going right now.  One involves archiving older magazines with a new, fancy book scanner.  That’s a post for another day.  But another of the projects involved coding.  And it has turned into a once-and-done project, simply because I have to work with other people.  I didn’t think I’d have to, but that’s how it turned out, and that’s where I bow out.

The heart of the project was a conversion of some of the earliest published BASIC software programs to modern languages.  I feel that I am a pretty well-prepared person to do the conversion because I grew up with those programs, back when you needed line numbers and you didn’t have subroutines, only GOTO.  In addition, I enjoy teaching and helping new coders on their way.

So over a few hours, I converted a program from the old BASIC version to the new VB.NET version.  I felt I had done a good job.  I retained the procedural structure of the program, with only one subroutine for efficiency’s sake.  I documented the code for a beginner, to explain the why and the how of each element.  I checked in the code and it was approved.

A couple weeks later, I decided I’d convert another program, so I went back to the public repository to see what was left available.  In the process, I checked on the application I had converted.  To my surprise, it had recent edits by another user.  Ok, that’s fine, that’s what open source code is all about.  So I looked at the new code.  It wasn’t mine anymore.

The next developer restructured the entire application, putting everything into subroutines, renaming all my variables, even reversing the IF statements I used.  I was aghast.  And I was done. 

Later that night, I tried to come to terms with what happened and why I was so furious and what if anything I could do about it.

It boiled down to two things.  First, all my time was wasted.  There was little to none of my original code remaining, so I can’t say the next dev improved my code, they flat out replaced it.  If I had not done anything at all, the result would have been the same.  The same thing could happen with anything other conversion I may choose to add to that project, so why even bother?

Second, the code was written at maybe a 201 level, instead of my 101 level.  It was no longer a beginners program to learn from.  It was an end-of-course demonstration of everything you should have learned.  And this is the part that annoyed the hell out of me.  The new code had everything included except OOD (object-oriented design, which I would say is 301 level).  That’s way too much stuff for a first-timer to absorb.  It’s what would be termed "tone-deaf", or not understanding your audience.  For example, I had two variables.  The next dev changed that to an array with two elements, then used LINQ expressions .First() and .Last() to access the values.  Absolutely pointless except for illustrative purposes, and much too complex for a first-timer to grasp.

And that whole experience brought back a painful old memory when I tried to defend a particular coding style in a public forum and got viciously torn to shreds by all the other members for even considering anything but one single, approved method of doing it.  It literally drove me from the forum and I have never been back since.  Ironically, I just saw that forum mentioned by the same blogger that was running this conversion project.  Go figure.

So this is my position.  I am pissed off at people who think that everything must be constructed to the standards of some architect’s wet dream.  I’ve been in the professional world for decades and I can tell you, it’s not like that.  There’s some bright spots and there’s some rust.  And the people that I am pointing my middle finger to are the exact ones that are going to say, "It’s like that because of people like you!"  MAGA programmers, essentially.

But don’t get me wrong, I know code.  I know shit code, I know beginner code, I know unnecessarily over-engineered code.  I know which of these those people write.  And I can certainly appreciate well-written code, which I am sure they are capable of writing as well.  It’s the gatekeeping and exclusivity that are uncalled for.  Can I separate the art from the artist?  Nope.  People need to be more inclusive and welcoming instead of insulting, dismissive, and abusive.  And that’s not for just programmers.  That applies to everyone, everywhere.

Being Stupid Outdoors

Somewhere around 10 years ago, I got into hiking, which is a more impressive way of saying walking outside.  The local terrain doesn’t really constitute what I would call hiking, since it’s just flatland.  But regardless, it is outside and it is on a trail, so I can say that I hiked trails.  I was a hiker.

I did that for some time and eventually it kind of stopped being a thing.  I just slowly stopped doing it.  But recently, I’ve decided I want to start doing the hiking again.  it was a tentative beginning, I wasn’t sure if I would still enjoy a physical activity and honestly, I didn’t see any way it would be fun.  It sounded boring now, but whatever I was or wasn’t doing around the house was as much or more boring, so I also didn’t have much to lose.  And anyway I needed to do something to take positive strides in my health. 

I was 10 years younger back then, and as you get older, that nice round milestone becomes more and more significant.  However, I never have seen myself as the actual age I am.  Maybe I’m deluded or stupid or something, but I don’t think I am my age.  I probably think and act my age, but I don’t perceive myself that way.  The point I’m trying to make here is, however I was then, that’s how I think I am now, and I’m probably not.  And that’s not smart.  My new experiences with hiking have been a collection of smart and not so smart things; mostly the latter.  So I will chronicle the most recent events.

A couple weeks ago, we had a tropical storm moving in.  This caused me concern, not because of the storm itself, but because of the coming rain.  All of the nearby trails have been flooded from the summer monsoon and it pisses me off.  If there’s a couple days without downpours, the flooded trails can turn into muck instead of lakes, which makes the hike more tolerable.  The first time I had visited this particular trail, I had left the house and a mile down the road realized I did not change into my hiking boots, I still had my sneakers.  "It’ll be fine," I said.  "This trail is not as low as the other one I go to."  When I get there, right past the entrance gate – lake.  I had to go back home and change into my boots.  I haven’t made that mistake again.

Since that time, I’d been back to that trail and the water had gone down, mostly.  But today I was trying to get in a hike before the tropical storm hit.  I checked the radar and it looked fine.  I did not consider, and I should have known, weather here changes fast.  So I get a mile or so out on the trail and I’m seeing some dark clouds forming.  "It’ll be fine."  Then it becomes obvious that it’s not going to be fine and I need to get back to the car, like soon.  The moment of my realization was captured by my fitness band.

Screenshot_20210814-161341

I suffered a few minutes of downpour, but I escaped the worst of the storm, and there was no nearby lightning, which was the bigger concern, since these trails are open fields.  Lesson learned?  I got caught in another downpour on another day and I was far enough out on the trail to cause me to don my rain jacket I carry in my pack.  So, no.

Last week, I decided I was going to do a bigger hike, which at this point in my redevelopment is over 5 miles.  If you think that’s weaksauce, remember I am doing this while the temperature and humidity are over 90.  To reduce UV exposure, I wear a long-sleeve sun shirt, but I’m still wearing shorts.  I need to get some water-wicking hiking pants.  I reset my GPS and set my exercise band and go.  And very quickly, the sweat starts to go too, because I’m upping my pace to cover more ground quickly.  10 years ago, I could cover 5 miles in an hour.  Based on past hiking records, I move about 75% of that speed now and I need to get that speed back.

I have a trail map and I refer to it frequently, but it’s disintegrating from being soaked with sweat in my pocket.  At some point, I checked my band to see how far I’d gone.  My sweat-soaked sleeve had impersonated a finger and cancelled my recorded hike.  That had happened about 1.5 miles in.  No idea how far I’d gone since then.  I checked my GPS and it said I was about 2.5 miles.  Ugh.  Onward I went, referring often to the soggy paper map for what path I wanted to take to loop me around and back close to the entrance.

I ended up on an unmaintained part of trail and worse, it was flooded.  I thought I’d be better off pressing forward than backtracking so I navigated the water best I could.  Luckily none was over ankle deep so my socks stayed dry.  Still it slowed me down.  I checked my GPS to see where I was, relative to the path I had taken so far.  The GPS battery is dead.  Right now, I have no idea if I am better off going forward or backward or exactly where I am on the trail.  I really have no idea how hikers survived without GPS units.

As luck would have it (because it ain’t been brains), I had purchased replacement batteries and packed them just before leaving for the hike.  With a quick swap of batteries, I had GPS again.  And I saw that the GPS had died some time ago.  So now, I had no reliable track from either my band or the GPS to tell me how far my hike was today.  Yay.  I’m done.

The trail continues to be flooded, so at the first sign of a cutoff path that would lead me back to my prior track, I took it.  Granted, it was not on my paper map, so I was making an educated (if that’s even possibly appropriate at this point) guess.  The trail dried out and and I also continued to dry out.  After a certain point, your body won’t absorb moisture quick enough to replenish what’s been lost, and I feel I was there, or close to there.  I was mouth breathing at this point.  My gait was unsteady.  I was walking with a forward lean.  None of this was good.

But as I’m not writing this from the afterlife, I did make it back to my car.  Not without getting bit by a deer fly, twice.  It’s almost been a week and I’m still suffering from the bite on my knee.

Despite the stupidity I’d accomplished so far and my knee still swollen and itching (but not sore or painful), I decided to grab a quick hike after work yesterday.  Again, I planned this as a 5+ hike.  I would go to the trail nearest me to start as soon as possible.  I got on the trail at about 5:30.  The first mile was a warmup pace, then I sped it up.  I didn’t have a trail map, but had a decent memory of the trails and the path I wanted to take.  After a short trail ended in a tiny loop, I doubled my path and ended up on the big loop.  I had been on the trail a couple weeks ago and it was totally flooded, so I hoped things had improved.  I was pleased to see that the area that stopped me before was dried out.  And I kept going.

Probably about 50% of the way through the trail loop – lake.  About 30 feet of water with no high spots and certainly more than ankle deep.  I had plenty of expletives to summarize the situation.  I had no choice but to backtrack my whole track, which was over 3 miles at that point.  Not only that, but the sun was going down.

Once I got all the swearing out of my system, I just resigned myself to my fate.  And no point in pretending to be tired, sun’s setting, gotta go fast.  And so I did.  I upped my pace to the quickest of the entire hike and went back the entire length of the trail.  And lets not discount the fact that mosquitos really love dusk, in a swamp.

All told, that hike was 6.75 miles, accomplished in exactly 2 hours.  So far, my dumbest hike this year.  But there’s still plenty of days left in the year, plenty of chances to beat that record.

Screenshot_20210826-211540

Aerobic training effect: "Improvement".  Fuck you.