How Much Have I Been Playing?

With Kingfisher I'm starting to need to think about how many gigs I should accept, which is good and bad! I like playing a lot, but since I also work full time, have three kids, etc. I need to be careful not to say yes to too many things. It would be helpful to know how much I've been playing, so I went back over my booking calendar to figure that out:

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Replacing the Water Heater's Anode

We installed a new water heater 8 years ago, and since then I've ignored it. It's an indirect model, heated by the same gas boiler that heats our house, and it has done its job well. When I was thinking about heat pumps, however, I reread the manuals for our existing system and noticed that the manufacturer recommends checking the anode annually. The idea is that water will corrode metal, but prefers some metals to others, so if you put in a chunk of tasty sacrificial metal you lose that instead of the tank walls.

Once every eight years is not annual, but better late than never!

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MA E-ZPass Without a Car?

I recently drove to DC and back playing dances in a rental. I paid cash tolls when available, but that often wasn't an option, so I ended up paying $40 in PlatePass charges in addition to the $63 in tolls. Time to get an E-ZPass!

What makes this tricky is that I don't own a car. Well, I have half a car, which does have an E-ZPass, but that stays with that car. If you go to sign up online you'll get through to step 5 of 7 and then:

Please add at least one vehicle to your account. If you do not have a vehicle please call the customer service center to open your account. You may not request more transponders than you have vehicles on your account.

Then you call customer service, and when you follow the prompts to tell the automated system that you want to open an E-ZPass account they tell you this must be done online and don't offer any other options.

If you do get through to a person, for example by pressing 2-2-9 to tell them that you have a question about your account but have forgotten your number, they'll tell you to go online to their Document Library, fill out a PDF application, and fax it in. The only difference, as far as I can tell, is that the PDF form isn't capable of complaining when you don't enter a license plate number.

Which worked! Now I have a transponder, and when I want to rent a car I can follow their instructions to add it to my account as a short-term rental.

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Boston's Line 1

Over on r/mbta people were speculating: if Boston's rapid transit lines were numbered, like some other cities, which line would get the honor of being first? The Orange Line, as the main line of the historical Boston Elevated Railway? The Red Line, with the highest (pre-covid) ridership? The Green Line, as the oldest line (and the oldest subway in North America)? The Blue Line, as, uh, the only line to run cars that switch between catenary and third rail?

It turns out there's an actual answer! From 1964 to 1966, before switching to colors in 1967, the MTA (and then the MBTA) used numbers. Here's the 1966 system map:

The lines were:

  1. Harvard to Ashmont (Red Line, Ashmont Branch)
  2. Everett to Forest Hills (Orange Line)
  3. Bowdoin to Wonderland (Blue Line)
  4. Lechmere to Riverside (Green Line, D)

(I originally noticed the claim that they used to be numbered on Wikipedia, but then when I went looking for maps I couldn't find any examples and marked it as citation needed. Then I found that the parallel claim on the Blue Line cited the (incredible!) Changes to Transit Service in the MBTA district, which has this on p8. I realized that I'd been looking at maps that were too early, and when I checked the years immediately preceding the introduction of the colors I found it. I've now updated the page with a citation to the 1966 map.)

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Attending Sold-Out Beantown Stomp

Beantown Stomp, the Boston contra dance weekend I helped start in 2018, is two weeks out. It sold out a month ago, which is good and bad: it's great that lots of people are coming, but not that there are many more who won't be able to. Someone in the latter category wrote to me, which got me thinking about two options for people who still want to attend:

  • The Saturday morning, 9:15-10:30, there will be a family dance with an open band, open to all ($3 for kids, $5-$20 for adults) even if you're not registered for the weekend. If you do come for the family dance, you're welcome to stay for the 10:45-noon contra set with Will Mentor calling to the Figments. (more)

  • BIDA's regular Sunday evening dance is the Sunday of Beantown Stomp, with Will Mentor calling to the Mean Lids. Unlike the dance weekend itself, this event is mask-required (which I expect is a plus for some people and a minus for others). (more)

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Ugo Conti's Whistle-Controlled Synthesizer

Whistling is very nearly a pure sound wave, and a high one at that, which can sound thin and obnoxious. A few years ago I got excited about making whistling sound better by bringing it down a few octaves and synthesizing overtones, and built something that I now use when playing live for dancing. And then, sitting in on a Principles of Electronic Music Interfaces class, I saw a fascinating video:

This is a very configurable whistle-controlled synthesizer that Ugo Conti patented in 1986:

The present invention utilizes the oft-overlooked music-making capability possessed by most people, namely the ability to whistle. Although there are some whistlers who possess astounding technique, and perform publicly, the whistle is generally not a shared form of musical entertainment. The reason is simple—the whistle is too pure in tonal color and too high in pitch to be pleasant to anyone other than the whistler. The whistle tone has none of the rich characteristics displayed by conventional musical instruments or the human singing voice. The result is that most people who whistle do so in the privacy of the shower or while working outdoors.

The present invention exploits the whistle's first-mentioned weakness, namely excess purity, as a virtue, in that a whistle is capable of having its fundamental frequency determined very reliably and very quickly. The invention overcomes the second weakness, namely the high pitch, by frequency division.

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