trophy

trophy
Originally uploaded by M@.

Suzy and I took an hour off from work to goto Manchester City Hall Plaza to get an in person look at the World Series Trophy. There was a line to get an up close picture with the trophy, but it was at least 2 hrs long, so we snuck around back and took a few pictures without us in them. It was fun being around all the Red Sox fans yet again.

Fixing Piano

PianoLeverSingle
Originally uploaded by M@.

Suzy and the kids went north for the day, so I took the time to finaly take apart and fix a few keys on the piano. This is a picture of one of the levers that make up the piano. The metal wire/spring part has a little string to hold the top hook in the wire in place, and the string broke, you can see it in this picture. This has happened to abotu a dozen keys over the past decade. There are 88 of these in the piano, and each one has about 5 adjustments, not to mention the hammers needing some work. I planned on getting into tuning a few keys as well, but the fixing took longer than expected becuase I needed to glue a few parts, and can tune it until the glue is dry and all the notes are working again. I might just cough up the $75 and have a professional tune it.

Big Drive
Got a 250Gig external hard drive - turns out to be a pretty good picture backup solution. As of today, there are 37,870 pictures in the 1mages directory, taking up 26G. Personal movies taking up 4G, Simpsons taking up 6G and Music taking up 15G. A bunch of the music is in WAV format, stuff I made CD's of, and I'll probably compress it to mp3. I'll probably download a lot more movies and more simpsons now that I've got the space, and can bring them places really easy. The drive is made by Lacie, and ran about $160.

KeyHole

mallofnewhampshire
Originally uploaded by M@.

Been playing with a new piece of software called "KeyHole" which lets you navigate lots of satillite photography and GIS information. There's a 7 day free trial, and you can get the software here http://www.keyhole.com

Here's an image I made with it - but it doesn't do the software justice, as it's real strength is the flying around and zooming type stuff. Very kewl - I think it's the same software CNN uses for visualizations.

I wanted to use it to make a movie of the mall going in near our house, but the "save movie externally" feature is only avail on the pro version, which is +$500. I might try to shoot the movie through a camcorder pointed at the screen or something.

IMG_0953

IMG_0953
Originally uploaded by M@.

The Simpsons Party was good this year. A lot of poeple decided they couldn't come the day of the party, after saying they were coming. This was unfortunate as there were a bunch of people I didn't invite becuase I was worried about how many people would come. This being the 5th annual party, I think I've identified the people who are just not going to come, and to stop inviting them.

I voted!

I voted!
Originally uploaded by marcn.

Was browsing around flickr and came across a citizen of my town who posted a digital pictre of his ballot.

violin

violin
Originally uploaded by M@.

Another expiermental blog entry, this one generated from the FLICKR website, which I'm told is a good place to post photos for blogs.

This is the new violin, it's not a strad or anything, but I like the way the bridge is worn like it's been played a lot.

I wonder about it's history. Anna says it's previous owner was "Laura"

Merrimack New Hampshire Online Forum :: View topic - Exit 10 Mall Zoning Proposal
Here's the latest discussion on the proposed mall. I'm mostly just testing out the new "blogthis" extension to firefox. Might make my blog get a lot more active.

Suzy went to an estate auction on friday, and came home with what she thought was a pretty crappy violin. I'm pretty sure the luthirer can fix it up though, and am excited to have another instrument in the house. I am going to take Suzy's old high school flute up to the music store in Manchester to have them "recondition" it. We're accumulating quite the collection of instruments. I'll try to list them, in the order we got them
1. Piano - baby grand
2. Flute
3. Recorders (all plastic, someday I hope to own a nice wooden one)
4. A pretty good "kids" piano, mechanical - and a couple crappy electronic kids pianos
5. Guitars (2 acousitc, one nice Fender, one not as nice for the kids to play with)
6. Saxamaphone (alto)
7. Violin *not strung

I've also got a Korg M1 on the way - but the kids can't touch that for quite a while.

If either kid has an ounce if musical ability, they will find many outlets.

M@

My frustration level was raised a bit in relation to the spammers and piggy backers and low-life no ethics internet ruining bum-ufcks who take advantage of every little scam to shove advertising in your face. The latest is the posting of Cigarette Selling ads on a couple of the forums I participate in. As a moderator on one of these forums I was able to delete them right away, but there's been a couple other posts advertising other stuff as well.

The only solutions I can posit for this sort of thing is to impose a fee on everyone using the system, so the ROI on the activity of advertising there goes away. The problem is that this ends up costing the entire community more than advertiser would have made in the first place. And: It goes against the whole beauty of the internet being free. I'm at a loss to decompose this futher, something to the level of the web isn't free... I am paying for it at some level from connectivity to taxes that pay for research... and identify that the advertiser is abusing this service that I am paying for and therefore owes me.

In the end I am left with just the frustration and no idea how to somehow contribute to a solution.

M@

The Mall:
Once again the owner of the 170 acer plot of undeveloped land near my house is trying to change the zoning from Industrial to Commercial. This is the 3rd year I am participating in this discussion. The last 2 years we convined the planning board that it was a bad idea - and the decided not to put it on the ballot.

As last year, the developer has entered into a purchase agreement where an interested developer will buy the property contingent on the zoning change going through. This years developer is spending a LOT of money and time on the project. They have a lawyer who drafted the zoning change, they hired a traffic engineering firm to do a traffic study, and they have prepared many charts and materials for the planning board discussions.

It's kind of frustrating having to go through this over and over, but it's what I have to do to be good neighbor.

M@

Forums: I spend a bunch of time reading and posting to several forums. Here's the list:
TimeForTuckerman A group of people who ski Tuckerman Ravine. I'm crazy active on this one, reading almost every post, and currently hold the "High Poster" position. I've met a few dozen people on this board and regularaly ski with them in the ski season, and see them a lot during the spring skiing season.

Merrimack, NH Forum A forum focused on the town I live in. This forum is often an example of how NOT to post to a forum. I'm overwhelemd by the situation where people post a longwinded, non spell checked, opinion filled rant with questions in it like, "Who's job is this?" Got me thinking of tracking how many questiosn go unanswered, mostly becuase there is no answer.

NoHomers Club A simpsons forum I found recently. Wicked high volume - I don't read more than 1% of the posts - but it's fun to check from time to time.

SugarbushRSN and SugarbushMRV
These both revolve around the ski area Sugarbush. The RSN one is very old (like 4 yrs, old in internet time that is) and has weak forum functionality, recently there is talk of it going away. The new one is an attempt at getting things into a more modern format, and also in anticipation of the RSN forum disappearing.

SonsOfSamHorn forum: This one of the best red sox forums, but I don't post here, I'm no wheres near as knowldgeable on the sox as these guys.

Section39.Com This is the board for the people who sit in the bleachers at yankee stadium. I'm a die hard redsox fan, but these guys are masters in the art of flagrant and rude insults. It's been fun rubbing in the Red Sox world series win.

There's a few more I have participated in, but these are the big ones.

Ski season is finally here - we took some turns in at Killington on the 9th. I made a little movie of it - my shortest (so probably the best) one yet: http://m.sheppard.net/tuckerman/KMartOpening.mpg - it's about 8 meg long. Movie editing is getting easier, and I seem to have found the balance between quality and file size. Gotta make some more fun movies with the kids. Maybe feature Nick as a monster with the pot holder mit's on.