Day 132, cleanup, docent, FOPAL sale

Saturday, 4/12/2019

Today I continued to decimate the long merged to-do list I put together a couple days back. One item was just “clean camera”. I had noticed that the Nikon was really grubby and in fact, I’m shamed to admit, it still had traces of an unfortunate event back in spring 2017 when, in Italy, I had a small incident with a cappuccino and some foam got on the camera. So I cleaned it up and put a bit of armor-all on the rubber bits and looks good again. “Photo stuff” was another checklist item, and that was easy to deal with. One old camera was already in the sale box. The Nikon manual, battery charger, and extra battery, and the tripod, were the only remaining items, so I put those in an appropriate “keep” location.

Eventually I went off to the CHM to lead a tour. On the way back I stopped first at Summerwinds Nursery on Middlefield. On this first warm weekend of spring it was bustling with people buying plants and fertilizer etc. Marian would have been there I’m sure, picking out bedding plants for the “porch pots”, three large bowl-shaped pots that stood on our front porch. She would plant them with blooming things every spring. I retired those pots to the garage last fall when the then-current crop of bedding plants were dying down. I thought very briefly of bringing them back and planting them, but… no.

I was only at the nursery to buy plant supports for the two big dragon-wing begonias that live in pots on the porch. I do intend to keep them for my deck at C.H., and for that they have to have saucers, so water doesn’t drip down to the next floor’s deck. I thought they’d be better off with casters as well, so I got little wheeled supports for them that incorporate saucers. That was another to-do item.

From the nursery it was just a few blocks to FOPAL where the monthly sale was going on. I went in to see how the Computer shelf was doing. Quite a few gaps in the shelving showed that some books had been bought. I was disappointed though, because I had set up a short section labeled “classics and nostalgia” and stocked it with blasts from the past, like “Using your TRS-80 in the home” and a book by Larry Yourdon on “Structured COBOL”. Maybe people had gotten a kick out of it, but nobody had bought anything. I also took a look around the Bargain Room, which is quite remarkable, really three large rooms where all books are $1 and the high stacks are just stuffed with thousands of volumes.

At home I sat down to do something about the file of “letters to us” that Marian had carefully collated, and which had sat in the closet unexamined for over thirty years. Going through it I found that almost all the letters were from the period 1975-1979, around the time we were living in London. We wrote regular letters describing our adventures, duplicated them and sent them to half a dozen friends and relations. Said friends and relations often replied, and these replies are the bulk of the file. It’s nice to know that we had people who were complimenting us on our travel narratives.

One particularly good correspondent was Marian’s sister Jean. I set the thick packet of letters from her aside and emailed her to see if she wants them. The rest I put in the recycle.

One last item: two dresser drawers of Christmas wrapping material. Rolls of paper, boxes of tags, a shoebox of ribbon spools. Bagged the complete rolls in a big white garbage bag to be sold (maybe). Plain paper and plain boxes into the recycle. Scraps of foil and shiny stuff into the trash. Two more empty drawers!

And that is bloody well that for the weekend. Sunday is a day of rest from downsizing.

Day 125, old stuff, museum, tools

Saturday, 4/6/2019

To kill time before going to the museum for the 12:00 tour, I read some more of my saved

work from 1985.

Parts are good; really good in fact. Unfortunately what I was good at, was working out the details of story backgrounds, the speculative technology and economy of some future time. I had worked out in detail what it might be like if there were human colonies on multiple nearby stars, with communications by laser, but physical transport only at small fractions of light-speed. Why would anyone travel, when a trip might mean being in a suspended animation pod for 40 years? I thought out a lot of unusual consequences.

Or, what’s a practical technology that allows regular passenger travel around our solar system? What would travel times be like; what would a passenger ship be like? I came up with some (I think) quite original ideas, worked them out in detail, and actually started what might be a young-adult story centering on such a trip. I’m keeping these notes, not tossing them.

Another folder is labeled “Fragments!” These were a writing exercise, to write the opening paragraphs of a story you’d like to read. Here’s one, a conventional story set in my birth-land of wet fir trees and tidal inlets:

The carcass of a frozen salmon made an awkward club; even so, Leslie managed three good swings with it before she lost her footing on the wet dock and fell sprawling amidst the shiny black shoes of the Sheriff and two deputies.

As I raced out toward them — the dock was linked floats that plunged and sloshed under my feet — I could see flashes of Leslie, a rubber boot, an arm in a maroon sweatshirt, behind a cage of khaki trouser-legs. Sheriff Townes was closing the second handcuff on her wrist as I reached the group.

“Tricky, they’re taking my boat!” she wailed as the deputies hauled her to her feet.

Would you like to read the rest of that story? So would I! but I had, and still have, absolutely no idea where it could go from there.

I tried fantasy as well. This one shows a strong influence of Samuel R. Delaney’s Return to Nevèrÿon series, which was new at the time:

Across a sodden field, a scrawl in black ink against a sky of plum and smoke, was a bare tree full of doves. The distant flock of them suddenly leapt into the air; their flutter caught Franla’s eye. As he turned to watch it, the spring wind threw a net of raindrops to patter on his leather hood and sting his bare calves. A line of riders was entering the field below the whirling doves. Some wore armor.

I carried that one on for another thousand words: Franla has just sold a flock of cattle to a dealer; he turns back to the village to warn the dealer and help hide the flock from being requisitioned for army rations. Hijinks ensue — or would have, could I have thought of any. But plot, actions, just came extremely hard for me. I hated sitting at the keyboard, cudgeling my wits trying to think up what happens next. Scenery? No problem. Future tech, future economies, even interesting people, all came easily and I could describe them in readable prose. But what those people would do in those settings — nunh-unh. And that’s what fiction requires.

So off to the museum to lead the

noon tour.

Yesterday I had a group of four; today it was over 30, although as usual with a big group, some peeled off early so I ended up with about 25 at the end, and they seemed appreciative.

Back home I found

a letter from Bernadine,

who had been looking through her mother Lolly’s photo collection and found several that featured Marian, from times in the 60s (probably) when she went camping with Lolly and her family in Yosemite. I had seen one of these in a tweet, and asked to see more. Bern enclosed the pics with a SASE.

I sat down at my computer and scanned them, touched them up, put them in the big folder of scans from last week (which I need to deal with shortly, so I can trash the slides). While the scanner was buzzing away I read another story from my 1985 work. I had completely forgotten that I placed two stories with Amazing Science Fiction magazine. I re-read the second one right from the pages of that issue of the magazine and damn, it was good. I re-read the manuscript of another, which was also very promising but unfortunately, was never finished. I still don’t know how to end it.

I copied the scans onto an SD card and included it in the return envelope with the pictures. Then I turned to another job,

triaging my tool collection

and putting the ones to keep into the new toolbox. This only took a couple of hours. Where I had duplicates, I put the more worn or rusty one in the old toolbox. Also there, tools for jobs I expect never to do again, like a plumber’s wrench, or an automotive 12-volt continuity checker.

Everything remaining is items I can imagine using when volunteering at a Repair Café or fixing some small item of my own. The new toolbox with everything in it weighs 38.4 pounds. I can schlep it but I wouldn’t want to schlep it far.

Somewhere in there I refilled the hummingbird feeders. Just about 1 cup of sugar remains in the canister, so the next refill will be the last.

Day 124, finances, docent, cleanup

Friday, 4/6/2019

Began with a run, which makes this the first week in a long time when I’ve actually run three times, M-W-F, which is my nominal goal. I cut the route a little short because of impending rain, but still, over 30 minutes of jogging.

Spent a little more time going through the box of old notes and files from my career as a free-lancer in the 1980s. Most significant were the notes and other items from my attendance at Clarion West, a six-week residential science fiction writer’s workshop. I took some very nice pictures of my classmates, who I now barely remember. I had saved notes from talks by several visiting lecturers, established authors like Norman Spinrad and Suzy McKee Charnas. The primary thing I now remember from that intense six-week immersion in writing and critiquing is that it ruined me for reading for enjoyment for a long time. It was more than a decade before I could pick up a science fiction book, or any fiction book really, and just read it. Well, it also taught me that I didn’t have what it takes to write fiction, although that didn’t stop me trying (and hasn’t yet).

Next up, I sat down with my laptop and updated the Portfolio spreadsheet I created on Day 31. This meant opening the Schwab month-end statements for the four remaining accounts (two accounts for Marian’s IRA now having been merged into mine), and copying figures from them into the spreadsheet.

This was the final thing that I had been using Marian’s iMac for. I have demonstrated that I can use Godot to open all financial websites and update the portfolio info, so the machine on Marian’s desk is now superfluous. The obvious next steps are to format its disk, and put it into the nice Apple return box that’s waiting on the floor by the desk. I stuck the Mac OS boot USB stick into a USB port on the back of it and then stopped. I was starting to cry, and damn it I have to go and do a Docent tour in an hour.

This shit is not getting easier with time and practice. Bleagh.

I went to the museum and led the noon tour. Attendance was light and my tour group had just four people!

On return I spent some time reading more of my writing from that mid-80s period when I tried to be a science fiction writer. I did some good thinking then, and came up with some interesting ideas. What I didn’t produce was any good characters or plots. Nor do I like the prose style I was using to describe my ideas, stuffy, pseudo-academic.

Driving to and from the museum I was recalling how Marian would have felt about my sentimental regard for her computer. I believe she would have said, “That’s pretty silly.” So, channeling her pragmatic personality, I booted the iMac from an install USB stick and formatted its drive. Then I packed it up. The Apple return program provides very nicely designed packaging with a clear instruction sheet. It took five minutes to have the machine securely boxed up and ready to go.

I got an email from Channing House: my walk-through and meeting with Angela, the manager for upgrades, will happen at 10am Tuesday. After that I should know for sure when I can start moving in.

I planned to go to a Stanford Baseball game starting at 6pm, leaving at 5:15. To pass the time I read the first three chapters of On the Road and for fun, read it aloud, which suits Kerouac’s prose. Then I left, stopping at the FedEx office to drop off the iMac.

I stayed at the game to the seventh-inning stretch, but the Candlestick-like chill had me shivering and yawning so I left with Stanford ahead 1-0, listening to the game on KZSU going home and at home. The rubberized drawer liner I ordered was on the porch, so I lined the drawers of the new toolbox while Stanford got ahead 2-0, and then UCLA tied the game in the top of the ninth. Now it’s after 9pm, and the bottom of the ninth, and I’m so glad I left early… ok, it’s a tie game, bottom of the ninth, two on, two out, full count. Here’s your live play by play: foul… ball four. Bases loaded, winning run at third. Ball. Ball. 2-0 count, hit into left, it drops! Stanford wins, 3-2.

Still glad I left.

Day 118, museum, basketball

Saturday, 3/30/2019

Started an easy Saturday morning by writing the blog post for yesterday, during which I worked out the long (long) list of things that are pending some action by C.H. and the unknowns around them. Helps to have the known unknowns, spelled out.

Then after a shower and shave, did some desk work, paying a couple of bills. I do love the bill pay system that Marian built on the Credit Union’s bill-pay site. All the usual recipients are in there. All I have to do is click on one, enter the amount to be paid, click on a calendar to say when the money should be delivered, click OK a couple more times, done.

Then I spent a fraught half hour trying to work out this annoying bit of IBM retirement red tape called a SHAP (Special Health Assistance Provision). Once a year Marian would submit a form and get back up to $900 reimbursement for Medicare Part B payments that were not otherwise covered in her IBM pension. Am I eligible for SHAP? How much am I paying for Medicare Part B? To the second question I got an answer at mymedicare.gov; indeed I am, and over $200/month. As to the first, I’m not at all sure; and if I am, there are several ambiguous fields on the form that might want Marian’s info as the eligible retiree, or mine as the survivor. It’s tempting to say “fuck this” and forget the $900, but, well. On Monday I will call the IBM benefits line and try to clarify.

At 1pm I drove to the museum and led a tour, about 15 people, went OK. Back home just in time for the start of Stanford Women’s sweet-sixteen game. They won but it was agony watching. The same shooting slump that affected the game against BYU last Monday continued. They hit one of twenty three-point shots. They stayed slightly ahead thanks to superior defense and rebounding, but allowed Mississippi State to hang around, even get to within five points in the last two minutes, before closing the game. On Monday they play Notre Dame who just had a very high-scoring game against a good opponent. If they play as in the last two games they will get slaughtered.

Feeling unexercised I walked the mile to California Avenue and fed myself a small pizza and a beer for supper; and back to burn off some of the accumulated TV.

Day 110, many appointments

Last night’s play, at local playhouse The Pear , was the world premier of

Sojourn

by Evan Kokkila-Shumacher. It was… interesting. The staging was clever and attractive. The acting was competent. But it was a lot longer than it needed to be. I almost left at intermission, but stayed for the second half to see if they could resolve the many issues; in the end I don’t think they did.

The setup is that two astronauts have been launched on a no-return mission, to pass Jupiter, then Saturn, then apparently to just keep going on toward the Oort Cloud. They have aboard fertilized human eggs and incubators and are supposed to keep decanting babies to be raised up as replacement crew members. This whole mission plan seems, in hindsight, screwy, impractical, and pointless, but it is revealed gradually through the first act so the screwiness doesn’t really hit you until you’ve left the theater. On the ship, things have gone profoundly wrong. Back home at NASA, the management wants to cut funding. But all the stage time is taken up by endless, repetitive arguments. The two astronauts argue in circles about the mission plan. Back home the mission director and a nasty manager argue in circles about funding and the value of the mission. It was all quite tedious and I thought, even as it was going on, that the main points of debate could have been conveyed in a third the amount of dialogue. But then you’d have a one-act play, I guess.

Friday, 3/22/2019

Today is full of scheduled to-dos. After a shower, shave, and dressing in my Museum Docent clothes, I sat down to assemble some

financial documentation

that I was supposed to have included in my initial C.H. application! I was politely reminded of the need for this stuff in an email from Kim, just after the email telling me I could have the nice 1BR unit. It took a while to assemble the needed documentation (basically, proving I had as much assets as I claimed).

One item wanted was a copy of “the first few pages” of our 2017 tax return. I thought I knew exactly where to lay hands on that. There is a small banker’s box with a folder for each of the last five year’s tax returns, organized meticulously (of course) by Marian each April. I opened it, there was the folder for 2017, but it only included the supporting documents — not the actual spiral-bound return document from the accountant. The folders for 2016, 15, and 14 had their returns, but not last year’s. Thinking about it… the taxes would have been finished just about when Marian got her pancreatic cancer diagnosis. We got really busy around then, with lots of doctor appointments and procedures. (I commented more than once that, when you get cancer, you have a new job: you are “doing cancer” for the duration. It just occupies your life.) So not too surprising that, either we didn’t keep the spiral bound printout, or more likely, we didn’t ask for one because the return was e-filed.

At 9am I sent an email to Cindy at the financial advisors’, and at 9:40 she had emailed me a PDF of the 2017 return. I’m getting great support from that outfit. Printed out the first 8 pages, added it to the other copied statements showing the value of various accounts. I had promised this for Monday but I think now I will drop it off on my way to the Museum for an

11:30 tour.

Which was a bit of a mess. On the volunteer scheduling site it was given as “11:30” but in fact the group arrived at 10:30. I got there at 11:00 but Mike, the second docent, didn’t show for another 15 minutes. I had the group of 40+ herded into the 1401 lab and vamped about that machine until Mike arrived. Then we split the group up and started our normal tours — he very generously offering to do his in reverse, from the present backward, so we wouldn’t conflict.

Then, five minutes in, a CHM staff person interrupted me to remind the group that their lunch would be ready upstairs at 12:00. Only now it was 11:20 and I was barely started on what is usually a one-hour tour. I edited myself severely and managed to get them off to their lunch about 12:05 but it was not a relaxing experience. For me; they seemed to enjoy themselves well enough. But seriously: this is the second time in a month that the museum staff has screwed up the scheduling of a custom tour.

I stopped on the way home to buy coffee. I use three scoops for my morning cup, and had only enough left in the canister for tomorrow. But I’m getting to be such a

short-timer;

everything I do has a resonance of, will I do this again? Will I finish this pound of Peet’s Gaia Organic in the old house, or will it last until I’ve moved to C.H.? I bought a pound of bacon because I like to fry up a couple strips and an egg for supper. Will I actually finish that pound, or will I have to throw some away because I’ve moved to C.H. where meals are laid on? It’s an uneasy, but exciting way to live.

Next event was the 2pm arrival of Chuck

the realtor

We reviewed the termite report and he confirmed the low price of fumigation and the reliability of the company he’d used. So it really isn’t a big deal or problem for the sale. He still hasn’t gotten input from any developers. We went over my likely time-line: that I could be signing for my C.H. unit as soon as next week or the week after, and when that’s done, I can begin moving things out of the house into C.H. Which means that almost surely by May he can have the house to stage and sell. He was taken aback by the speed of events but accepted it. I also asked if his stager, Amy, whom I met back on Day 94, would be open to my paying for design assistance in fitting out the new place. He said she did do that and he would let her know I was interested.

I also googled the niece of Chris the hairdresser, who she had recommended as a designer two days ago. She has a small website touting herself as a designer. However she had not responded to the voicemail that Chris left for her two days ago. I sent an email to her business address. We’ll see who responds quicker.

Then off to C.H. to meet with

Ilsabet

who is a resident of C.H. and a client of Chuck’s. I’d asked to meet her because she has an “Alcove” (large studio) and at the time I thought that was what I’d be offered. Now I’ve been offered a 1BR I don’t care so much, but I kept the appointment just to begin making acquaintances in that community. She’s a very pleasant lady and we chatted about room decorations and antiques for a few minutes. She had an idea of what I might do with the numerous decorative objects that aren’t valuable enough to sell. She suggested I donate them to the C.H. Gift Shop, which is run by residents to generate money for the library and for newspaper subscriptions for the lobby. They give a receipt for tax purposes, she assured me. I think this sounds like a grand idea.

two scratches

Louise the gemologist was to come by at four, but she emailed earlier saying she wasn’t done with my report, so we postponed to Monday.

I had planned to go to a Stanford Baseball game at 6, but light sprinkles of rain continue, so I passed on that. No fun sitting in the open on a wet plastic seat — assuming they even hold the game. That left a whole afternoon open to install the

sound bar

which I did. I removed the receiver and its subwoofer and five speakers from around the room, and connected the DVR directly to the TV. Connected the sound bar and it works OK, definitely better sound than the TV itself, definitely not as good as the old 5-channel system. However, the sound bar has an output to drive a separate sub-woofer, so I brought back the woofer and hooked it to the sound bar. That helps, adds “meat” to the sound even when the woofer is set low.

Fed myself and watched some TV. Quite a day.

Day 104, two tours

Edit: I forgot to mention that last night, I went to a TheatreWorks production, Marie and Rosetta, about the life of Gospel and Rhythm and Blues singer Sister Rosetta Tharp. Very nice production, good music, and a terrific performance by a knockout young actress, Marissa Rudd. She could be a star in time.

Saturday, 3/16/2019

I had signed up to lead one tour at the Museum at 2pm. Yesterday Katherina, the volunteer manager, put out an urgent call for somebody to lead a private tour at 12:30. I like private tours and I was going to be there anyway, so I took it. So after a lazy morning I headed out for the museum. The private tour turned out to be a family group, mom, dad, several nice kids from 10 to 16, roughly. Apparently they’d come early, early enough to catch the 1401 demo at 11:00, which they had enjoyed a lot. They professed to enjoy my tour, also.

After finishing that tour I walked out across the parking lot to the 7-11 to get something for lunch. Several people in our lot were complaining; apparently thieves had broken the windows in three or four cars. My car was fine, but it is unsettling to have this happen in a familiar place. After a snack I led the 2pm tour, about 15 people.

On the way home I stopped at the FOPAL building, mostly to pick up a couple of empty boxes to bring back full. But I went in and looked at the Computer section. There were about five boxes of sorted books. I think I may go in there on Tuesday afternoon and do some culling and pricing.

At home I had an email from Kathy at the tax accountant’s, asking if I had sent in the workbook yet. I was going to wait until I’d talked to the advisor Tuesday, but this tipped me over, and I went and clicked “send to preparer”. Answered Kathy’s email asking that she check it soon as I wasn’t sure I’d done it right.

Not sure if I mentioned this before: with Marian’s demise, there are three important documents that need to be re-made: my “advanced health care directive”, “nomination of conservator”, and “general durable power of attorney”. All of these named Marian as the person responsible for me if I am incapacitated. In all three, my nephew Dennis was first alternate. Now I need to do these documents over. I had emailed Dennis asking if he would be the first in line, and today he responded he’d be “honored”, so that’s set.

I also called Marian’s cousin Darlene, who I like a lot and has been very supportive, and asked if she’d mind being the first alternate and she said “absolutely”. So that’s set, and hopefully I can get those drafted and done next Tuesday.

Day 92, Women of the IEEE and others

So last night I had misunderstood the Stanford baseball schedule; they were playing away this weekend. So I didn’t have to brave a cool and possibly rainy night outdoors. I stayed home and streamed the SWBB game. Stanford — as the audio announcer kept pointing out — has never lost to WSU, ever, they are something like 39-0. He had to keep saying that and I’m thinking, “shut up shut up, just shut up about it” but it didn’t matter. They romped over the Cougars, winning by 30 points at the end. And so to bed.

Saturday, 3/2/2019

Today I was scheduled to lead a custom tour for the Women of the IEEE, Women In Engineering, or #WIELEAD (“we lead”, get it?). It was supposed to get underway at 11am. I asked the guys doing the 1401 demo if they would mind staying around after their 11am run to do another demo for my group at 12:30, and they generously agreed to.

Then I found out the WIE had also asked for a brunch table. Now, if they are going to eat brunch in the lobby starting at 11, when can we start the tour? There’s the scheduled Family Tour supposed to go at 11:30, will we be stepping on their toes? \Sadik, the young woman leading that tour, tells me her first stop was the IBM 360, so they would be ahead of us all the way. Fine.

Then Susan, the WIE organizer, was disappointed that I was not one of the docents trained in the Women in Computing tour. This was their fourth year doing this and they’d always had one of those. There’d been a miscommunication in the scheduling app or an error by the event scheduler. I said I’d do the best I could, and quickly opened Wikipedia to bone up on Margaret Hamilton and Grace Hopper. (Later I hooked Susan up with my boss, Katherina, who placated her with free tickets to the scheduled Women in Computing tour days.)

I managed to get the dozen women started about 11:40, but now instead of doing a leisurely tour, inviting questions, I had to cut my usual stuff short in order to get done before 12:30. Plus adding a stop so I could talk about Hamilton, and ad-libbing a reference to Hopper later. Half-way around we caught up to the Family tour who were being video’d by a professional crew. So I took my tour past them. Then there was another big private tour that we passed, but they caught up with us again, so I had to rush another stop to get out of their way… it was just a zoo. But the 1401 demo was a hit, and they all thanked me and made me stand with them for a group photo. So they didn’t notice what a zoo it was.

Back home, I sat down to begin adapting Godot, the new laptop, to my preferences. Go through all the system preferences and check them. When I start up Safari … it seems to know what sites I visit often; they are all lined up on the blank page. How did it know? One clue, I had connected to iCloud when setting up preferences. But still spooky!

Install Dropbox and get it started syncing all the stuff from there. Install Firefox. Install LastPass in both Firefox and Safari browsers. Open Gmail and Google Calendar — looks ok! Ordinarily I’ve been using Firefox for mail and calendars, and Chrome for everything else. I decide to see if I can use Firefox and Safari only, and not install Chrome. So I start opening all the URLs that I normally have tabbed in Chrome. They look OK. (I’m posting this from Godot.)

On Day 79 I told about trying to recover the contents of a drive out of an old Mac for Diane, but couldn’t because it was an IDE drive and I had only SATA enclosures. Since then I’ve acquired a gizmo that should let me connect an IDE drive to a USB port. Tonight I will meet Diane and Jean and try again.

Later: well, it worked. I was able to read the two volumes on the old drive and copy them to another drive. The three of us went out for Chinese food on Castro street.

Day 85, museum and a movie

Saturday, 2/23/2019

The first scheduled thing for the day was to lead a docent tour at 2pm. So I settled in for a relaxing Saturday morning with the computer. After about two hours I was bored, so finally I left early for the museum — might as well be bored there as at home. Did my tour; went home; changed clothes; and headed out to meet Dennis at the Pruneyard for a movie.

This was my first experience with a theater that not only has the reserved-seat reclining chairs, but the chairs have a tray, and a menu, and you can order a meal. So we ate supper in the theater while the many trailers ran. Not bad food, either. I had a “sesame chicken on rice noodles” thing which had generous amounts of chicken and bell pepper chunks in a fairly tasty sauce.

The movie was Alita: Battle Angel, a sci-fi effects adventure based on a manga series. It was entertaining, although it got kind of draggy toward the end, with a long and complicated third act. The most challenging thing was figuring out how the digital artists at Weta Studios created the central character. According to the Wiki page linked above, famous director James Cameron intended Alita to be 100% CGI. The character interacts fully and continuously with the live-action actors.

mv5bota2ntqzote5nf5bml5banbnxkftztgwotq1mtqzndm40._v1_sx1777_cr001777960_al_ — Eyes like golf balls…

Throughout the film I was looking at the effects as effects, trying to work out how this or that was done. I was assuming that at least Alita’s face and head were that of a live actress, but the eyes… her eyes are at least 30% larger than real human eyes. Did they have to edit every frame to make the eyes bigger? I was trying to imagine a program that could automatically analyze every frame, find the eyes, and stretch them. No, probably the whole face and the rest of her is all computer imagery. And yet the actress Rosa Salazar is credited with playing the part. So presumably she supplied at least the voice, and perhaps some of her body movements were captured as the basis for the images.

Day 80, slides, tour

Monday, 2/18/2019

I started the day with a run, the first in a week, and felt pretty good for it. This is President’s day, a Monday holiday, and the Museum will be open — normally it is closed Mondays. I had signed up for the 2pm tour, and as of the morning, nobody else had, so I supposed I might have to deal with a big crowd as I did on Saturday. However the desk crew said attendance had been light so far; and just after I got there, Steve showed up as well. I started my tour at 1:59 with the 20-odd people who were ready, and Steve stayed back to pick up stragglers.

I must not have been as interesting as usual (though I didn’t do anything different) because half the 20 had dropped off by the end — although the ten remaining seemed really interested. Then I went back to sit in on the last stop of Steve’s tour. He had a group of a dozen who’d showed up after 2pm. I liked how he finished his tour, more formally and clearly than I do. I think I’ll shadow his tour sometime and see what else he does differently.

Back home I reviewed a couple more groups of slides. I should be able to wrap that review task up this weekend, and then it will be on to scanning and keywording the 150-odd slides I’ll have set aside by then. Keywording is adding keywords to the metadata of each image file so that I can do a search and turn up, for example, all the slides that relate to “Marian” or to “bridge” or “vehicle” or “London”. Or Boolean combinations of those, “Marian AND London” etc. This is an absolutely essential step in managing a collection of digital images. Without it, you just have a mass of hundreds (thousands?) of images and the only way to find anything is to scroll through a sea of thumbnails trying to spot what you want. (Which is exactly what I observed Jean doing yesterday when she was looking for a shot she wanted to show me.)

Anyway, scanning slides involves (1) the actual scan, which deposits the image as a file; (2) looking at it in Photoshop, possibly cropping, straightening, or adjusting color; (3) storing it in its appropriate folder (the folder for its group) with a correct filename (like g201p043 Mt Shasta from I5); (4) going over a group in Adobe Bridge or Lightroom and adding the keywords; (5) uploading the group to our online collection. Then it’s accessible and searchable. Here for example is the result of searching the collection for “Ireland Marian”.

And when that’s all done, hopefully before the end of March, there will be a day when all eleven boxes of slides get dumped into the black garbage can.

Day 78, busy Saturday

Saturday, 2/16/2019

A busier Saturday than it had to be, as it turned out. The Museum is preparing to open its new Education Center, and I am signed up for two events related to that. The first was for docents only, today, from 11:30 to 2pm. And I was signed up to lead a tour at 2pm. The other event is for the public, next Saturday, starting with a brunch at 10am. Somehow I had mixed up these two events and thought today’s started at 10, so I arrived at the Museum at 10, and spent a while searching all the conference rooms etc. for the meeting until I got myself straightened out and had an hour to kill. Anyway…

The Education Center is going to be a very interesting experiment. It’s a cleverly designed space that can be put to all sorts of uses. We’ll see how it goes.

There was a biggish crowd — probably 35 or so — for the 2pm tour, and I managed to keep at least 25 of them to the end. I’m getting better at ending my talk cleanly, so the audience knows it was the end, and will start clapping. Often before I just kind of wound down and nobody realized I was finished; they would kind of stand around waiting for what I’ll say next, and I don’t have anything. Today there was a definite end and a nice hand.

Then home for a one-hour turnaround before heading out to Chuck and Suzanne’s place for a concert. They are music teachers and I expected student work, but in fact the star was Hanna Huang whom Suzanne introduced as “a professional musician who happens to still be in high school” and this was not overstatement. She ripped through a Beethoven Sonata with the skill and authority of a much older musician. After that I wanted to jump up and yell “Brava” but the rest of the audience of 40 or so — mostly parents and relatives, I would guess — didn’t stand, so I didn’t. Hanna also accompanied a young baritone, Austin Thompson, singing two Schubert leider, and then she was joined by a high-school-age cellist and violinist to do a Brahms trio. They played that very competently but I kind of lost the thread in that long and complex piece and my mind was wandering. Kudos to the kids for just being able to play it.

During the snacking and hospitality period after the music I managed to get some time with Chuck, to ask him if he would represent me in selling the house, and was glad when he said he’d love to. He was our agent back in the 80s, first selling an apartment house in Menlo Park, and then buying a rental complex in Seattle. Those deals were the real foundation of our fortune, such as it is. We came back from our years in England with a surplus of cash, which we put into the Menlo Park place; then (with Chuck’s help) did a tax-deferred trade-up for a larger place North of Seattle. I’m trying now to remember when we sold that; it must have been late in the 90s. Anyway the appreciation on those properties left us comfortably fixed. So I am confident Chuck can help getting the best value out of the house here.