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Over and Over

I wrote a post on LinkedIn that got some attention, so I wanted to tell the full story behind it. Here’s what I said:

We need a 100 under 100 recognition awards for those people who did awesome things after they were 30, or 40, or 50 or even older. It’s great that young people do things, but plenty of people do good things later in life too.

Like many of the things I say, I was not 100% serious, but Let’s explore the idea a bit more… after some context.

First, a story. Years ago a friend of mine said he was submitting his name to a “40 under 40” thing a local business publication was doing. He explained that a year earlier his business partner applied for it, and was recognized, and felt that he really wanted that too. But why? Well, exposure can lead to business opportunities, maybe an ego boost, or just another thing you can claim as an accomplishment. The reasons are as varied as there are types of people.

Alas, my friend turned 40, did not get recognized, and his hopes were dashed. He still managed to live a full life and run a successful business, so I guess it ended just fine.

Hey, I’ve got one more story. There’s a guy named Doc Searls. He’s on Twitter, and he’s got a web site, and… a blog. I remember something that Doc said, and it took me a while to find it, but I did. It was in a post from Rex Hammock’s blog on July 29. 2006:

“Everything you know me for, I did after the age of 50.”

(Rex notes that Doc may have said or written that in other places, but I found it on Rex’s blog, so I’m giving him credit.)

There are entire organizations and communities and students who only have experiences with me after I was 40 years old, and who I was (and what I knew) after 40 was vastly different than the person I was before I was 40. I don’t mean to make 40 a line in the sand, it could be 30, or 35, or 50, or whatever… I know the whole “40 under 40” thing shouldn’t be taken too seriously, which is why I wanted to skewer it with my post.

So yeah, we could do a 40 over 40, or 100 under 100, or whatever. It doesn’t really matter. What I’ve learned in my age is that there really is no replacement for experience. Living your life provides you an insight into how the world works, and how you work, and you might not even work properly until you’re 40 or 50 or 60. The old idea that we might peak at different times during life. (I’m not even going into the subject of ageism but that’s a whole topic of its own.)

If you look at the image above, it could be taken as 100 over 100 or 100 under 100. It’s all a matter of perspective, right? Right.

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A Film About Touring

There’s a film about touring called “Why Am I Doing This? (A Film About Touring)” which you can watch on YouTube. It’s probably not for everyone, but if you were in a band and you went on tour you might enjoy it.

I was in a few bands, and went on a few tours, so I did enjoy it. The tours we did were only a week long, typically. I think we did one during spring break, one in the summer, and one over winter break. Since I was attending university at the time breaks were a good time to hit the road.

Some of the people in the film mentioned being in punk bands, and maybe it’s a little different for us versus straight-up “rock” bands. I think almost all of our shows were booked through other punks, not directly with clubs. We probably used the MRR “Book Your Own Fuckin’ Tour” feature. And eventually Book Your Own Fuckin’ Life when it came out in 1992. I don’t think I did much of the booking, honestly. I did own the van for two of the tours (and countless gig around the state since it was my daily driver.)

We never stayed in any motels. It was always at someone’s house. Usually not a punk house, but there were a few, none that were too crazy. At least once we just slept in the parking lot of the venue. Like, on the ground, in the van, on top of the van. (That was pretty terrible.)

I kind of want to write up separate posts for each tour, so maybe I’ll do that. It’s going to be difficult to remember everything so I’ll just write what I can remember and if it’s wrong one of my former bandmates can tell me what really happened.

I’m reminded of what Aaron Cometbus told me, or maybe he just wrote it in a zine… “Touring is the best, and touring is the worst.” The man is a damn poet.

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Fun with WS2812 LED Sticks

Back when I used to build museum exhibits we put WS2812 LEDs (also known as “NeoPixels”) into things. Lots of things. Sometimes inside cabinet walls or tubes or pipes for glow effects, and sometimes as feedback devices for interactivity. I’ve also built a few signs before, so I’m not new to NeoPixels/WS2812 LEDs…

But I never seem to have any laying around wired up to just mess around with. So I fixed that. I mean, I’ve got tons of strips lying around in a box in my office, but I wanted something smaller and easier to deal with. I found these poorly named Comidox 5PCS WS2812 5050 RGB 8 LEDs Light Strip Driver Board 8 Channel Built-in Full Color-Driven Development Board Black for Arduino which is 5 sticks with each having 8 LEDs, for a total of 40 NeoPixels. (And yeah, it was less than $8 for 5 sticks! That’s 20 cents per NeoPixel.)

What I didn’t know when ordering is that they came all together as one that you are meant to snap apart. Why bother!?! I just soldered them up to make an LED matrix! (Terrible soldering, but it does work.)

Now I feel like I have something handy, on my desk, that I can easily use to prototype NeoPixel development. I started out with the Adafruit_NeoPixel which I’ve used in the past, but now I’m using the FastLED library, which so far seems pretty awesome. There are also some matrix libraries I’ll need to investigate. I’m running these from an Arduino Pro Micro with the Leonardo firmware on it, which seems totally up to the task.

By the way… I recently realized it’s been over 10 years of “screwing around” with Arduino boards, and in that time I’ve been a Technical Editor for two Arduino books, taught Physical Computing (“Arduino for Artists”) in a university, taught classes at a makerspace and a museum, and written plenty of guides about Arduino projects. It’s been an interesting ride!

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Pandemic Sleep

It’s been nearly 10 years since I started using a CPAP machine. It has helped me sleep, possibly kept me alive, and sometimes made my life a living hell. But hey, check out this clip of me snoring from 2006. Things have improved!

I think I’ve had insomnia all of my adult life. And I’ve suffered from insomnia many of those years. When I was younger I though “Ah! Insomnia? Awesome! I can get more done if I don’t sleep!” I even knew a guy who named his company “Insomnia Development” in reference to staying up late, working on software projects rather than sleeping. Yeah, it’s just unhealthy.

2020 was… rough. Not just because of the pandemic, though that didn’t help. It was the most stressful year for me in so many ways. I started to suffer from anxiety and depression in 2019 and it rolled into 2020 full steam ahead. Things have improved since then, but for the past few months my sleep has not been great. (I mean, it’s never been great.)

I pulled the data from my CPAP to take a look at the last year (as in, 365 days, give or take a few.) I tend to say “I only get about 4 hours of sleep” and I wanted to check on that. I was a bit off, but it’s good to remember that the number on the CPAP shows usage time, not sleep time. So if I lie away from 5:30am to 6:30am before turning off the machine, that hour still counts. Anyway, here are the numbers:

I slept for 8 hours just 4 nights. (Well, it’s actually 3, but one was 7 hours and 59 minutes, so I’m going to count it.)

Between 7 and 8 hours? 78 nights.

Between 6 and 7 hours? 131 nights.

Between 5 and 6 hours? 92 nights.

Between 4 and 5 hours? 32 nights.

Less than 4 hours? 23 nights.

And, supposedly… one night I slept 9 hours and 13 minutes. I don’t know how this is possible. (Wait, the night before I only slept 1 hour and 16 minutes!)

Looking at the numbers, I tend to get more than 5 hours most nights, and sometimes over 7 hours. Maybe it just feels like only four hours. (Again, some of these times may be slower due to being awake with the machine on.)

I do tend to fall asleep very quickly. But I often awake at 4am or 5am. I can’t really explore biphasic sleep because I have a job and a spouse who is a very light sleeper. I once used the toaster oven at 5am and she asked me about it at 8am. I basically just leave the bed and go to another bed and rest for a few hours in the morning if I wake up before 7am.

The thing about insomnia, for me anyway, is that you’re just exhausted. Tired, worn out, run down. Low energy. And it sucks, and it’s hard. On the days I can get 7 hours, it’s pretty good! I can’t imagine what it’s like to regularly get at least 8 hours of good sleep every night.

Oh, I used OSCAR to get the CPAP data from an SD card. A friend of mine has a WiFi enabled CPAP that sends data to the cloud and his doctor. I do not have that.

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3D Printed Print Baren

In the world of printmaking (of which I am far from an expert) there are many ways to print, including a printing press. I no longer have easy access to a press, so I’ve been using alternate methods of getting ink on paper. One method is to use a baren. The baren is a thing you hold in your hand to rub the paper against the printing plate, thus causing the ink to be transferred.

I bought a cheap Speedball baren years ago, and I never liked it, so I started looking at other barens. Now, printmakers tend to appreciate fine things and aesthetics, and there are a lot of different barens out there. Some are made of glass, some are bamboo, some have rope or ball bearings or pads, etc. So I finally asked the wisest of printmakers I know, and Jessica told me she just uses a wooden spoon.

Well, I decided to just make my own baren. So I quickly modeled something really ugly, and I 3D printed it. After I printed it I thought of a better way to model it, and I still haven’t made a new one. This one works, so I’ll just keep using it for now. It’s functional. It’s good enough.

I did sand the bottom of it… quite a bit! Working my way up to high grit sandpaper until the bottom was smooth. Really smooth. It’s smooth. Yeah. Smooooooth. I also sprayed it with Liquid Wrench and rubbed that in real good. It glides across the paper really nice. I’ve done a few prints with it and I’m pretty happy. 3D Printing. It’s handy!