I am late in posting this, but this week is the third Capoeira Gerais batizado in Boston.

Events are Thursday and Saturday in Marlboro and Friday night in Chinatown. See the poster for all details. You should not miss this. To paraphrase a friend who came to last year’s: “I spent two hours alternately saying HOLY SHIT and WHOA. Those guys were unbelievable”

crossposted from The Hydrogen Project

fs1rgen

I have mostly completed the XML document that describes the FS1r data model, at least enough to start writing code to parse it. Because spending 30 minutes at a time reading Xerces-C is almost useless, I have abstracted away the XML parser so that I can write a Xerces-C driver later and a RapidXML driver now. Since the RapidXML driver was, well, rapid, I am now onto writing a very basic test XML so I can build the genetic algorithm component using GALib. A lot of my ideas about the data model have had to change to adapt to the GALib environment; I’m awfully glad I started reading the manual before I wrote all that code.

For fs1rgen I am using git. I made a public repository on github for it, but since I’m always in a hurry to get off the train when I check stuff in, and I haven’t really figured out git anyway, there’s not much there.

LoopCollector

I have abandoned the C++ command-line version and I am now thinking of writing a third prototype in Perl before implementing the VST version. I have started the VST version but the VST scaffolding is a little tough to figure out a half hour at a time. I may implement a prototype in ChucK, Pd, or CSound, whichever I can figure out the quickest.

eyeCalendar

I have taken eyeCalendar off my sidebar here after some performance problems. It’s a low priority now that I’m not actively tracking Boston music events since the whole baby thing keeps me craving sleep more often!

Blogging

I have been offered a spot as a contributor at Way of the Spatula. In addition, I am spinning any non-DJ type musical content into a separate blog: The Republic of Nynex. There’s no content there, yet. I need to finish my software projects first!

If anyone has a suggestion on a Linux RSS reader that can handle HTTP authentication or cookies, let me know. I would like to stop using LiveJournal as my feed reader. I tried RSSOwl but I do not like it.

crossposted from The Hydrogen Project

Assorted small updates, since it’s been a while:

- Picked up some stuff at the Salem Record Exchange: Mr. G, Nitzer Ebb, King Crimson, Stewart Copeland, CTR, David Sylvian and Holger Czukay, SAW, Baby Ford, and DAF. Going through all the records strewn about my office. If I know what it sounds like, it goes back in the boxes, otherwise it gets played. Not all of my records are surviving this process. I will be selling some records on Craigslist soon, and for cheep.

- If you’re a WZBC person reading this, I am still looking for people to do Test Pattern this summer. Contact me for more information. You can just leave a comment below if you like.

- Tomorrow is another grand cooking day. I have a 5 pound pork loin that will turn into pork chops and the magnificent apple-sausage stuffed pork loin, possibly on the grill if it doesn’t rain. I am also making baked beans from scratch using the recipe from Peace, Love, and BBQ (minus the bacon). Although I would like the rain so I don’t have to water the lawn (I won’t bore you) I would love to finally get the chance to do some BBQ this summer for the first time since October!

- Baby is coming any day now. We’ve had a number of false alarms, but no actual baby yet, or there would have been an announcement.

- The next capoeira batizado is the weekend of September 24th.

crossposted from The Hydrogen Project

Yesterday was my birthday. I ended up sleeping poorly Tuesday night and had a long day planned Wednesday. After work was to be the capoeira open house followed by dinner out with my wife and then on to see Dietrich Schonemann and Miro Pajic at the Phoenix Landing in Cambridge.

Apparently it is a Brazilian tradition that on your birthday you have fight everybody. So, after we trained a number of difficult movements for the first time (aù macaco, aù compasso, and queda de rins) Coreba taught us all how to sing Happy Birthday in Portuguese, then we started the roda. I don’t think quite everyone played with me, because we had some arrivals for the following class who weren’t warmed up, and a few brand new people. I played better than I have in a long time, and I think this is due to the new physical therapy regime I’ve been following. I don’t have the pain I was experiencing after class and I have a lot more stamina as a result. Unfortunately I smacked poor Chinesinha in the nose with my foot!

Dinner was at the East Coast Grill. I would like to say that everything was delicious, but unfortunately I decided to try their “Extremely Hot Crispy Hell Bone.” This is a dry-rubbed smoked pork spare rib treated with some brutal ungodly compound. It completely scoured my taste buds and sinuses. I think my brisket sandwich was tasty, but I actually could not taste the baked beans served with it, nor the watermelon! All they had was texture.

The Phoenix was kind of empty, possibly because the Crystal Method was playing last night. (ick) Schoenemann was good. We didn’t stay for much of Miro’s set because we were too tired and old! It took us an hour to get home because all roads out of Boston close at midnight, apparently, and the clerk at the convenience store decided to take a half hour to harangue the girl in front of us to not accidentally touch his hand while taking her change or something.

Other things that happened on my birthday:

• Maine legalizes gay marriage: hurray!
• 3DRealms, developer of the running joke Duke Nukem Forever, goes under: meh

crossposted from The Hydrogen Project

Have you ever wanted to try Capoeira? Maybe you’ve never even heard of it. Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art that has a long history among African slaves. It was illegalized and disguised as a dance for many years, and bears this influence today, as capoeira is played in a circle accompanied by musical instruments and songs. Maybe you’ve seen capoeiristas playing in public. You’d recognize them by the kicks, flips, handstands, and other acrobatic movements.

Capoeira Gerais is having a free demonstration and Open House Wednesday, May 6, in Boston at Boston Ultimate Fitness (aka Nam Pai Academy) at 6:00 PM. Contra-Mestre Marquinho Coreba is originally from Brazil and previously taught capoeira in Spain and Switzerland.

Boston Ultimate Fitness is located in Chinatown at 33 Harrison Ave, on the 7th Floor, upstairs from Nick the Tailor (but take the elevator).

If you can’t come to the open house but would still like to take a class, you can come any Monday or Wednesday at 6:00 PM. Classes are an hour in length. Or, check Contra-Mestre Coreba’s schedule on http://www.capoeirageraisboston.com

If you are participating, make sure to wear or bring comfortable clothing and sneakers. A TOWEL and WATER strongly recommended, because you are going to sweat! (if you forget the water, there are vending machines and a water fountain at the gym)

crossposted from The Hydrogen Project

On the weekend of April 24th-26th, I will be volunteering at the Megapolis Audio Festival, in and around Harvard Square and the Elks Lodge in Central Square in Cambridge. This event features live performances, audio art installations, and workshops on such topics as circuit-bending, making your own contact mic. Weekend passes are $45 ($30 for students) with some workshops requiring RSVPs and/or materials fees. There are also tours of a mysterious nature (!) and an all-night audio slumber party (!!!)

On Friday May 8th, Contra Mestre Marquinho Coreba of Capoeira Gerais, my capoeira instructor will be performing a demonstration along with Instructor Morcego, Coehlo, and Fantama of Capoeira Luanda as part of a late addition to the program of the Voidstar Productions 2009 Multimedia Circus. (click for flyer).

My amber ale is delicious!

My dad gave me most of a cut-up cherry tree and a pile of red oak! IT’S SMOKING SEASON as soon as I re-season the grates on my smoker.

I will post the final Octave One interview soon. I have been in total information chaos since that weekend and the CD with the final version has been in my desk at work for quite some time.

crossposted from The Hydrogen Project

The capoeira event mentioned earlier will also include a demonstration of Hung Gar style Kung Fu by the students of Nam Pai Academy

crossposted from The Hydrogen Project

Have you ever wanted to try Capoeira? Maybe you’ve never even heard of it. Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art that has a long history among African slaves. It was illegalized and disguised as a dance for many years, and bears this influence today, as capoeira is played in a circle accompanied by musical instruments and songs. Maybe you’ve seen capoeiristas playing in public. You’d recognize them by the kicks, flips, handstands, and other acrobatic movements.

Capoeira Gerais is having a free demonstration and Open House Saturday, February 21st, in Boston at Boston Ultimate Fitness (aka Nam Pai Academy) at 3:00 PM. Contra-Mestre Marquinho Coreba is originally from Brazil and previously taught capoeira in Spain and Switzerland.

Boston Ultimate Fitness is located in Chinatown at 33 Harrison Ave, on the 7th Floor, upstairs from Nick the Tailor (but take the elevator): http://www.yelp.com/biz/boston-ultimate-fitness-boston

If you can’t come to the open house but would still like to take a class, you can come any Monday or Wednesday at 6:00 PM. Classes are an hour in length. Or, check Contra-Mestre Coreba’s schedule on http://www.capoeirageraisboston.com

If you are participating, make sure to wear or bring comfortable clothing and sneakers. A TOWEL and WATER strongly recommended, because you are going to sweat! (if you forget the water, there are vending machines and a water fountain at the gym)

crossposted from The Hydrogen Project

Capoeira Open House January 5th at 6PM in Chinatown. You know want to be there!

33 Harrison Ave
Boston MA

Yesterday was the Batizado! I am sore after 4 straight days of capoeira. Here is a short rundown of the week:

• Monday - Class as usual, review for the things on the test, some folks showed up for the first time ever.
• Wednesday - The test! Coreba took us one at a time and asked questions on the history of capoeira. The students going for the first cordao had to go through individual kicks and defenses. I was made to do combinations thereof. I also had to play the pandeiro and sing. Unfortunately I only know the choruses. Got to work on that! There was another new student who came from Serbia. He now lives in Boston and will be training with us.
• Thursday - Rented a ZipCar and drove out to Marlborough with one other student from my class for the first workshop with Contra Mestre Ze Com Fome. Because traffic was so bad we were late and missed most of the workshop, but we were able to play in the roda after. Chocolate was not able to attend the weekend so she received her first cordao and her apellido! Got to meet some members of Capoeira Sul da Bahia in Quebec City.
• Friday - this workshop was conveniently in Chinatown at our usual space. Those of you who have seen Boston Ultimate Fitness know how big it is. It was FULL. (Well, full of capoeiristas. They take up a lot of space). Joao de Deus was the presenter. He is also from Sul da Bahia in Quebec, and there more people who had arrived from SdB in Washington, plus people from Connecticut, NYC, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara. m0xiee and I went to Taiwan Cafe after.
• Saturday - Started with a decent breakfast, late enough that I wouldn't be too hungry during the say. Coreba called me in the morning and asked me to pick up two more guys from Grupo Ginga who were coming into Boston on the bus. I also stopped in Chinatown to pick up some things that had been left behind the previous night. We drove out to Marlborough Middle School, getting lost a couple times while talking about babies. The weather was warm and brutally muggy, so the middle school gym resembled a sauna at times. Mao Branca's workshop was a lot easier to get through this year. It was mostly composed of work we had done in class, as opposed to last year's grueling angola workshop. (Much respect to angoleiros with joints of handling that stuff!)

  The Batizado itself came on the occasion of Coreba's 20th anniversary of studying Capoeira, so Mao Branca presented him with a certificate. There were quite a few kids receiving their first belts, possibly some as young as three years old! They have no fear of muscular dudes twice their height waving their arms and legs all over the place, but they do need to be coaxed to go forth and kick.

  Afterwards, dinner was the Old Station Steak House. Standard Brazilian BBQ fare, and super cheap! $10 a person on a Saturday night! Much better than the restaurant last year. We didn't stay for the big dance party since we were completely exhausted.

Congratulations to incontango, hereafter known as Xis (pronounced sheess), sixpixee, Chocolate, Cebolla, Linguiça (heheh), and everyone else whose names I forgot.

Originally published at Hydrogen Economy. You can comment here or there.

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve updated this site. Over a month! For that I am sorry. I have a number of good excuses though.

The first is that I spent a lot of time in October trying to find a new job. I started this past Monday at Akamai Technologies, where I will be working on log processing. That may sound boring, but think about what Akamai does, and how much traffic they handle every day (6 million hits per second!) That results in some ridiculous number of terabytes of log data per day!

The second is that I have been preparing for my second batizado. I have never actually talked about capoeira on this site before, but I have been training in capoeira for the past two years, and I aim to keep going until I need to get joints replaced. A batizado is an annual event for a capoeira group where students who qualify move up in rank. I received my second cordao, which meant that I had to fight seven masters of capoeira until one of them finally got me on the floor. Maybe it wasn’t seven; I lost count. :) I am spending today recovering my strength.

Anyway, I will be posting some old playlists here. I will also be writing more about computers and capoeira, since I don’t actually write so well about music.

If anyone would like to come to the batizado tomorrow and see a ridiculous demonstration of amazing technique (and also me and incontango and sixpixee who are not quite so amazing), it is at the Marlboro Middle School, 25 Union St, Marlboro, MA. It's $5, and it would make me very happy if you would attend. After the batizado, there is a party at the Old Station Steak House in Framingham, which is, in fact, a rodizio-style Brazilian BBQ with meat on swords. Yum.

- The game system debate is settled. TUMIKI Fighters for the Wii was released in June!
- I had to buy a new shirt on the way into work after spilling coffee all over myself on the train.
- I remembered this morning that I've had a towel hanging up in the company shower for months.
- The presenter for the Friday workshop at next weekend's batizado has been announced: Contra Mestre Joao de Deus!

Here's as much of the schedule as I remember. I don't know the prices for all the events individually, but as soon as I know I will post that here, on www.capoeirageraisusa.com, and on the links below!

November 13, 7PM at 194 Main St, Marlborough, MA (Marlboro Villari's): workshop with Contra Mestre Ze Com Fome
November 14, 7PM at 33 Harrison Ave, 7th Floor, Boston MA (Boston Ultimate Fitness/Nam Pai Kung Fu) Workshop with presenter TBA and open roda thereafter
November 15, 1PM - 3PM at Marlborough Middle School, 25 Union St., Marlborough MA: Workshop with Mestre Mão Branca.
3PM - 6:30PM - Batizado

Tickets to the Batizado are $5 and are available from your nearest capoeira student. Start and end times are in Capoeira Time and are thus APPROXIMATE.

FACEBOOK LINKS:
Thursday
Friday
Saturday

UPCOMING.ORG LINKS:
Thursday
Friday
Saturday

YELP LINKS:
Thursday
Friday
Saturday

+ Yesterday picked up almost two full cases of 16oz bottles for free on Craigslist!
+ Made a freaking awesome beef roast last night. Carnivores, pick up this book, from one of the guys behind the East Coast Grill. Enough for sandwiches this entire week.
+ Made enough pumpkin pancakes for a whole week, too! Thanks to trunkbutt for the recipe.
- Got hit with $750 of unexpected doctor bills!
+ Went homebrew shopping with father-in-law.
+ Enemies spanked by judicial system!
- GreenCine sent the bonus disc for a movie before the movie itself! And now they won't send me anything!
+ Back from London to my wife's embrace without too much jet lag.
+ Real ale and English pub food. Even in the airport.
- London prices on anything.
- Working on shortstaffed project.
- Not having enough time to see everyone in London I wanted to see.
+ Going to a capoeira class in a strange land with lots of people.
- Crossing the street in London.
+ Gastropubs.

this is somewhat random.

if you attend or hang around a boston-area college, can you tell me the best places to paste up flyers? my capoeira instructor wants to do another open house once school starts up and possibly offer a discount to college students. obviously that only works if we can get the word out.

this really only makes sense if the school is within a reasonable distance from chinatown.

capoeirablog and mandingueira

i am playing sept 5th at the gulu gulu cafe in SALEM! I happens to have an excellent BEER LIST. more info to come

EDIT: more info here!

radioscotvoid plays the first Friday of every month at the Gulu. I emailed him after hearing him play last Friday, and he immediately swarmed over every music type website we used in common, offering me a slot at his night in a comment on one of my playlists for WZBC. The whole night is like 5 hours or something ridiculous; he starts at 8:30. The crowd seems into it and he's got some VJ action too.

I just acquired some new records from Forced Exposure and Dance Records. They are:
Wareika - Impulse (Connaisseur)
Miss Fitz - Drifting On (Contexterrior)
Brett Johnson - The Pop Up (Cynosure)
Kevin Saunderson - History Elevate 4 (remixes by Luciano and Jesse Rose
Kevin Saunderson - History Elevate 3 (rmx by Mathew Jonson and John Tejada)
Mathew Jonson - Symphony for the Apocalypse (Wagon Repair)
Kakaka (Kagami) - Kakaka first (Reel Musiq)
Glimpse - Elephant Skins (rmx by Jay Haze) (Leftroom)
Introvert - Lemon Days (Nightvision)

PLUS, we found a good deal on a Dyson vacuum. Our old vacuum burned its motor out and the handle kept falling off :\

(capoeira below)
IN ADDITION, tonight was a street roda out in Marlboro. It was mostly Marcus's students in Marlboro, plus Tarzan and Morcego and Ze Com Fome and a few of their students. I managed to get a nasty blood blister on the sole of my foot last night in class, so I was not planning to play. I didn't even bring my uniform with me. Of course, after some egging on by Marcus and Tarzan I jumped in and got schooled :)

1.) If you want something done right, do it yourself, or at least get the source code.
2.) Have a backup plan
3.) Schedule QA in time that you actually have time to fix problems

Ugh, because Marcus had us doing all manner of crazy arm exercises in capoeira class last week, I put off week 3 of the Hundred Pushups plan until today. It shows; I had a much tougher time today than even the first week, oof.

Some nice fellow is reviewing my eyeCalendar project, and a dev from MIT has joined on the project. Good, I haven't been working on it for a while.

kungfupolarbear paid us a visit on Saturday to deliver her bread machine that we bought. Walking around downtown led us to discover how early most of Salem closes up. The Old Spot, our preferred drinking place, was closed on vacation, so we ended up at Spirits (which was nicely decorated but expensive and also devoid of anyone except staff and us) and then Fresh Taste of Asia (which is a little upscale for the dance club night they were attempting). The Gulu Gulu Cafe apparently has electronic nights, and the DJ was playing some neat chiptune-type stuff. Beats the heck out of the usual cafe mix. I will be returning for this guy's next night out.