Emily left yesterday for her annual pilgrimage to visit with Kathy’s folks and Martha — a 3 1/2 week stint this year. She was supposed to leave Monday, but her plane had a flat tire, and she wouldn’t have made her connecting flight, so she and Kathy had to come all the way back home from the airport and get up at 4:00am to return the next morning.

In spite of all that, she’s up to New York safely, and we’re already missing her. Have fun, kiddo!

Long-time readers of this weblog may remember The Amazing Pneumatic Cannon, a potato gun I built several years ago. Unfortunately, it suffered an ignominious end when it fell from the back of the car and broke.

Jason and I recently decided that for our next mad-science project (after the trebuchet and water rocket) we would build potato cannons. His writeup is here on his weblog. I’ll post some video once I get it put together.

My first encounter with a theremin occurred when I was about seven years old. We had gone up to Oklahoma City to visit my grandfather and decided to spend the afternoon at the Omniplex, a marvelous hands-on science museum near the zoo. Among the kinetic sculpture, the demonstrations of various physical principles, and the periscope to the outdoors, I stumbled aross a big, yellow plastic box with two handprints on its top.

I began to fool around with it, and was thrilled to discover the range of sound I could elicit from the box merely by waving my hands around. It sure beat practicing scales on the piano! Other attractions in the cavernous Omniplex soon pulled me away, but the theremin left its mark, so I was quite excited when I later started to notice its distinctive sounds in various movie soundtracks. Years later I even tried to simulate it in part of the soundtrack for The Screaming Electric Pumpkin.

In spite of the repeated encounters with the instrument, I had no idea that there was a level of mastery above that of making spooky noises, so I was floored to hear, while listening to a Radio Netherlands Documentary on the instrument, an absolutely beautiful rendition of The Swan, by Camille Saint-Saens. I had learned the piece on cello in middle school, but never played it half as expressively as it was rendered here by Clara Rockman, widely regarded as one of the best players in the instrument’s brief history.

The documentary played several other lovely works of “precision theremin” which sealed my reevaluation of the instrument. If you have any interest in electronic music at all, I highly recommend giving the documentary a listen.

Kathy and I saw Poor Man’s Fortune, a Texas-based celtic group, for the first time last night at the San Marcos Summer in the Park concert series. They weren’t quite what I was expecting, but were quite enjoyable and engaging. Some of the surprises:

• When I heard the first strums on the guitar, I was arrested by the sound — it was definitely not using the usual guitar voicings, but wasn’t any standard alternate tuning I could figure out. About halfway through the show, the front man explained that the guitar had been set up like a lap dulcimer, which has several courses of doubled strings, which accounted for the unusual sound. The fretboard was still set up for a chromatic scale, however, rather than the diatonic scale the dulcimer uses. He called it a dulcitare. I really liked the sound, and will certainly encourage Grant, my irredeemable guitar-collecting friend, to acquire one so that I can play with it.
• The group focused on instrumental music, but also did several accompanied songs. To my surprise, a good number of them were in French, which I don’t usually think of as being a particularly Celtic language. Apparently, however, Brittany is a part of France that is home to some of the Celts, and is a musical tradition these performers mine heavily. Live and learn.
• The flute and whistle player at several points pulled out an instrument with a flare at one end and a oboe-eque double-reed at the other. It had a strident, reedy sound and appeared to be fingered the same as a pennywhistle. He eventually explained that it was a Bombarde — another influence from Brittany.

They played some really interesting enjoyable stuff, and I look forward to getting to hear them again. Here’s their gig calendar if you’d like to catch them sometime.

I’m not feeling much like writing right now, but so as not to leave too great a gap in the weblogging, here are a few bits for your reading enjoyment:

• I’ve taken each of the kiddos out for a day together now, all of which were good times. Emily and I did a movie and chinese food marathon, I took Abigail for a small-scale kayak trip and shopping, and Maggie and I enjoyed the estimable San Antonio Zoo together. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to spend that time with each of these wonderful people.
• We enjoyed Independence Day at a friend’s lakehouse on Lake McQueeney. Since we used to have family who lived on the lake, it was a treat to get back there and enjoy scooting around on the boat and watching their 7 year old son wakeboarding. (He’s pretty spectacular, and is on a first-name basis with many of the celebrities of the wakeboarding world.) Kathy also rode the Molecule behind the boat, tenaciously clinging to it even while it flipped over and send the two college guys who were also riding on it flying through the air.
• Seth has written an excellent essay on Creating Custom Events with Javascript. It’s well worth a read if you’re into Javascript hackery. He’s also still raising money for the 2006 Pan-Mass Challenge. Your support goes toward finding a cure for cancer.
• We enjoyed dinner and a viewing of Cars with Dad McMains for Father’s Day. The time with the family was excellent, and Pixar hit another one out of the park.
• The Grant Mazak Band played again this past weekend after a long-ish break. It was great fun to be together with the crew again. We’re also getting to play for San Marcos’ Summer in the Park concert series, which should be a good deal of fun as well as the largest crowd I’ve played for with this group.

Thanks to my friend Scott Morse, I’ve recently been learning Go, one of the oldest games in the world. While the mechanics are beguilingly simple (Liam caught on quickly enough to put up a good fight in his first game), the strategy is incredibly deep. The complexity that emerges from such simple rules reminded me of Conway’s Game of Life, for which Go turns out to have been an early inspiration. If anybody would like a match, I’m “SeanMcTex” on the Internet Go Server.

In other news, my group at work had a picnic last friday along the river. We have a bunch of good cooks, so the food was great, and the kids and adults all had fun swinging on the nearby rope swings over and into the water. Maggie made me laugh — she didn’t like jumping into the water, so she would patiently wait in line for her turn, take the rope firmly in hand, push off, and swing way out over the river. Clinging tenaciously, she would then return to her launching point, alight on the shore, politely hand the rope to the next person in line, and go back to the end of the queue to do it all over again.

The best part, however, was that a couple of the attendees brought out kayaks and offered to share them. The kids were, of course, all over them right away, and had a grand time padding around the nearby island, hunkering down to float beneath a footbridge, and cruising upstream to meet other boaters. Passing tubers were referring to Liam, who cruised around for an hour straight at one point, as “River Patrol”. Seeing how much the kids were enjoying the boats, Brianne Corn very generously offered to let us borrow her boat for a few days, so we strapped it to the top of the van and headed home.

Since Mondays are my night to have a little self-indulgent time, I decided last night that I needed to go for a paddle. I grabbed my flashlight, took Brianne’s boat up to the river, unloaded it into the water, and set off with a plan to paddle from Rio Vista Park up to Sewell Park and back again.

The first thing I noticed was that the river is much darker at night than I’d expected. While the nearby footpaths are reasonably well lit, there’s very little illumination to help your night vision on the water itself, and what there is often shines into your eyes rather than on the water. Paddling quietly past ill-defined shore, occasionally hearing the sounds of people talking, not being sure what was making those nearby splashing sounds was downright spooky. While the lighting situation was better once to Sewell Park, the oddities continued, as I saw something plowing through the water that I took to be a dog until it went under and didn’t come up. Nearby observers helpfully suggested that they thought it might be a huge snake.

Once I turned around and started back downstream, the boat felt winged. I raced past the placed I’d plodded through on the way upstream, but as I approached the railway bridge, a freight train thundered overhead, horn blasting with an awful roar that sent my heart into my throat. Something loomed out of the water ahead — an egret, on inspection with the flashlight. More distant laughter from shore. And then I was back to the park, happily pulling the boat from the water. It was a fun adventure, but creepy enough that I don’t think I’ll repeat it solo.

It will come as no surprise to anybody that I’m not particularly found of Microsoft. Their products too often seem feature-rich rather than actually powerful, shiny rather than stable (and are frequently neither). But I have watched Bill Gates with growing respect for a number of years. Today he secured his position in my eyes as Microsoft announced that he’ll be stepping down from his position there in two years to devote his time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a non-profit he and his wife established several years ago from their own personal fortune and which has been doing some tremendous work in global health and education. I think it’s spectacular that Gates would be willing to leave behind a doubtless exciting and fulfilling job at the company he founded to pursue something that is principally of benefit to others. Bravo, Mister Gates.

Contrast this with Steve Jobs, who is at the helm of both Apple and Pixar. Apple has their share of issues with product, but overall seem to put together much better thought-out, more polished hardware and software. Pixar has consistently produced some of the best films, animated or not, of the last decade, all of which have been quite financially successful. But Jobs personally does far less to support charitable causes, in spite of having similar stratospheric wealth to Gates.

Will this make me follow Microsoft down their computing path? There’s little chance of that. But I’ll certainly be keeping a close eye on the company’s founder and what he’s choosing to do with the money that company has produced.

One of the great pleasures of summer for me is getting to spend more time with the kids, whose time is consumed overmuch by school during the academic year. (Teachers, take note! Research has shown that lots of homework doesn’t significantly improve academic performance! Ease up, for heaven’s sake!) One of my favorite things to do with the young ones is to take them out individually for a one-on-one day of fun and frolic.

We had a super time yesterday on Liam’s outing. We started off at Kidzville playing basketball, air hockey, climbing on playgrounds, and playing more air hockey. From there, we went to grab some lunch at Alamo Cafe (my choice), where Liam was quite taken with the streams running through the interior and the painted sky that cycled through day and night cycles with sunsets every 10 minutes. We then stopped by Mom McMains’ office and visited with her for a while. Our old neighbor Mary Beth McAllister happened to be passing through as well — a wonderful surprise, since it has been quite a long time since we’ve gotten to catch up with her.

It was by that point the hottest part of a hundred degree day, so naturelly we decided with the all the wisdom of males on holiday that we should go play outdoor miniature golf, where Liam gave me a sound walloping. We started back north, stopping at Rolling Oaks Mall for rehydration and a visit to Earthbound Trading Company before landing at Chuck E. Cheese (Liam’s choice) for a bit of pizza and some games.

We rounded out our adventures with a hurried trip to Bahama Bucks to get a cup of their estimable shaved ice, which we then smuggled in under my hat (not while I was wearing it, fortunately) to a showing of Hoot.

We had a great time. I’m very much looking forward to taking the rest of the kids out for their adventures over the weeks to come!

Our own sweet Abigail gets 15 seconds of fame on the latest batch of voice mails from The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd. (Yes, I realize Warhol said 15 minutes, but Abby’s carefully shepherding her time — it would be a shame to blow all 15 minutes when you’re only nine years old.)

If you haven’t been listening to Dr. Floyd, you owe it to yourself to do so. Ostensibly a kids’ program, it manages the neat trick of including some great humor for the adults without descending to Shrek-style burping jokes. It’s good, clean fun for the whole family! (Yes, I’m shilling. Deal with it!)

I’ve been back home for a week now, and have very much enjoyed being in the company of my beloved family again — not only because they’re wonderful people, but because they always inject a note of the unexpected into my life. This week’s notable incidents revolve around a hermit crab. Kathy brought it home from Schlitterbahn the other day, having given in to Maggie’s incessant pleadings. Notable hermit crab moments:

• Maggie burst in the door, clear crab box in hand, announcing excitedly “I got a crab! His name is Fluffy!” Best. Name. Ever.
• While watching a movie later on that night, Maggie put the crab on the coffee table. She then insisted that I move my feet “so Fluffy can see the movie.”
• We had to get distilled water to put on a sponge and give to the crab. Now, correct me if I’m wrong here, but a special trip to the grocery store for distilled water to feed an animal that normally lives in the offal-filled, medical-waste strewn ocean and feeds on rotting fish carcasses seems a bit ridiculous, don’t you think? If it can weather the beaches of New Jersey, a crab can certainly handle a bit of tap water.
• Last night, I was lying in bed after Kathy went to sleep, and heard a scrabbling sound. We have been having some trouble with mice, so I mentioned to Kathy when she stirred “I think your little rodent friend is back.” She immediately demurred, saying “No, it’s just the lobster on your desk.” WHAT? It turns out Maggie had left the crab on my desk in our bedroom, and in Kathy’s somnolent state, her brain mixed up crustaceans. (Maggie likes to visit the lobsters at the supermarket too.)