I remember my father deciding (again uncharacteristically…he’s Ukrainian, and Ukrainians are famously cheap and political) to buy a Commodore when I was about 10 or 11. This was big deal in our house, because money was never spent lightly. I think these “new fangled” computers were the biggest Rubix Cube to my father that could have existed…he loved them! He absolutely loved trying to figure out how to make the darn thing work.

It was more of a mystery to myself and my mother. I do however, remember one night when I went into his office at around 9 (pretty late for our house rules) and seeing my father entranced in the sensual glow of the computer and darkness of the office. I remember thinking that computers must have some sort of religious power at that point; I had never seen my father so fascinated by anything before and this man is an organic chemist with brains to spare…if ever there was a nerd, he was it! He eventually traded up for an equally enormous IMB PC. Mom jokingly referred to it as “the MainFrame.” But I think she was a little scared of it too. Funny enough, when the computer entered that office, she seemed to make a permanent exit, though she is more friendly with computers these days.

But I suppose my father has the last laugh as he grew his own nerd too. I’m now a music history professor in college as well as a professional musician…how much nerdier can you get? I still blame the Commodore.

Don’t confuse thinking in three dimensions with think in multiple variables….

Having said that, I basically think in one dimension…. up, or down.

…if you need help, and if you can find them, you need…[/quote]

Oh, I’m definitely your guy. I pity the fool….

must … resist … urge … to make snarky comment about political perspectives …. must resist.

…if you need help, and if you can find them, you need…

So to me the world is a big flat place. I accept that people see three dimensionally, but I have no concept whatsoever of how that might feel or look.

You should see me try to thread a needle….

My theory is that those parts of my brain that would have been busy processing the input of the weak eye are dedicated instead to making up arguments in contravention of the plain truth…. but that’s sheer speculation, of course. After all, I am a composer, not an attorney or viola player.

The hacking part might not be amiss… but I’m much too nice for that, and most hacking isn’t computer expertise, it’s just an inside job…. so no challenge there.

Besides, explosives are illegal in California. And with that one eye, I can barely manage to light a birthday candle, let alone a fuse.

sigh…. nothing so exotic, gentlemen. In fact, rather old fashioned.

And why do you assume it is some means of violence? Why couldn’t it be composting, or knitting, or yoga?

Survey says? explosives

“I have a recurring experience in my life; I keep arriving at places and finding myself unexpectedly prepared.”

When I was learning to program in Fortran on an IBM 360, my freshman year in college (we used punch cards to input the programs, and the computer punched cards to give us output, which we fed through a card reader to get a line by line print of the computer’s results… the computer really DID fill up the room, and it was about as powerful as the remote control for my stereo system. It looked a lot like the computer on Star Trek… and was about the same vintage),

[and THANKS, MOM, for taking a job you didn't like to help get me through.... I'll always remember what you did]

and taking physics and math (and learning about waveforms, using oscilloscopes, setting up resonance experiments in powder filled tubes so you could SEE the wave nodes, etc.),

and writing marching band arrangements to help pay tuition bills (the band director gave me a book by Paul Yoder that explained how to do it… to this day, I don’t see how he knew I could learn it that way),

and later (1977), taking classes at USC in how to use a Moog Model 15 analog (table filling) synthesizer (it had THREE OSCILLATORS, so you could play one note at a time with a nice fat sound, or you could tune them into a chord…. either way, you recorded the output onto an 8-track Otari 1 inch reel to reel deck… no, not THAT kind of 8 track, dummy),

well, I simply had no idea that the whole music technology revolution was coming, that I would be perfectly positioned to understand and apply it, or that I would spend my life learning how to write music in styles that hadn’t been invented when I was young, etc.

I thought I was doing all that stuff just for fun.

And when I was tutoring students in music theory and math, I simply had no idea that I was actually learning how to teach, just a little, anyway.

It turned out that sampling didn’t change much (conceptually) over time. Neither did the nature of waveforms. Synthesizers STILL have envelopes, LFOs and filters. Computers are still binary, and there is still a difference between RAM, ROM and storage. There are still three notes in an F major chord, and chords voiced low and close are still ugly.

To this day, I try to convince students not to specialize too soon, to let it ripen a little, major in two things if you can afford to spend the time at it, keep the doors open till you see what might blow through…. I’m REALLY convinced that God puts interests in us for a reason.

So I’m frightened now: for about the last fifteen years, I’ve been reading all manner of theology, history, science, philosophy, political science, you name it. I’ve learned some other skills I’m not mentioning just now. I’ve finally gotten the general education that my original college degree allowed me to pretend I had.

So I figure that God has something REALLY uncomfortable in mind for me, or else I’ve just been studying in how to be a crackpot troll. Since I regularly attend faculty meetings, that last has come in handy.

So, Sophia has been pretending to play the violin lately, with two drumsticks, or two long bath whistle sticks, anything she can put under her chin and bow across. The Celtic Women Christmas concert was on PBS the other night, and she was dancing around pretending to be the (incredible!) Irish violinist in the group. Hmm…a quarter sized violin maybe?

I swear, she is so dumb sometimes.

uh… you don’t know?!?

I have a very similar story with the addition that my story kept getting repeated.

For some reason my parents realized that I HAD to have a computer. The first one that I got to play with was an Apple ][. Yep, no “e”, no “c” on that back of that bad boy. My dad did the books for his friends company an got to bring home the computer on the weekends. When my parents saw this 8 year old kid playing on it they figured I should have something for my own. That something was a Commodor Vic20.

When my mom saw me spend hours typing in code to get some dumb 40×40 pixel animation of a dragon only to have to turn the computer off thereby loosing all of my work she went out and bought me a tape drive. When I outgrew that computer my dad bought the first IBM clone. From there they bought me every iteration until it got to the point that I was building my own. I just bought my 4th mac in as many months so I guess the circle is complete.

It’s amazing that my parents had the forethought to give me such an amazing tool and experience at such an early age. That and my dad bringing me to see star wars when I was 3 completely shaped my life. When I was introduced to CG about 12 years ago all the pieced snapped into place and I could see what would give me fufilment for the forseable future.

Like you Mike it was my total lack of fear and love of technology that enabled me to find fufilment in my work life. Someday if I ever have kids I hope that I’ll have the brains to realize that my 4 year old really really really needs that new fangled nano-nueral-holographic matter compiler even though I have no idea what it does.

It’s incredible the affect such things have on us… I wonder what that “thing” will be for my kids. I’m voting for the little golf clubs the boys have now…

My parents traded their couch for a used but nice, Canon SLR camera for me so I could take a college photography class. I’ll never forget coming home from work and finding them waiting at the door for me, giddy with their news…and their empty living room.

Dad did NOT appreciate my subtle brand of humor.

The IIgs was the best machine we had in 1997 at MLCS

Hrm… just earned nerd status.