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2022 year-end greeting

19 December, 2022 by sky

What a year!

From frost on rooftops out our windows (San Francisco – frost?) to the vivid red maple blooming in front of our home, we continue to appreciate life and beauty!

Kathryn: I am still leading the Feldenkrais program for adults with severe neuro-motor challenges at Bay Area Ability Now and also co-leading a weekly meditation practice group for Tergar International on Sunday mornings, with my colleague Cristian Lotito—something I’ve done weekly since April 2020, and monthly in person before that. The photo shows me with Cristian and Mingyur Rinpoche, Tergar’s Founding Teacher.

Kathryn: This year I began my studies with Upaya Zen Center in a unique 2-year chaplaincy training program that serves not only individuals, but also communities and the world. It is based in caring about the value of Buddhist principles for living, systems perspectives regarding social change, and intentions to nourish healthy community and society. For years my books and professional work have focused on creating healthy organizations for a healthy world: This brings a new community and new approaches.

I was drawn to the work of Roshi Joan Halifax (photo left) several years ago, and I am delighted to be able to study with her “in person” on zoom. (You can see my small face on the zoom insert above her head.)

My study of the chaplaincy grows out of all my previous work with organizations, leadership, and meditation. To get a sense of what I wish to nourish in the world, enjoy reading my most recent article “How generative mindfulness can contribute to inclusive workplaces”, published in the Humanistic Management Journal last December (read the article). As my co-authors and I wrote, “Humanistic management and mindfulness practices can potentiate one another to foster an inclusive society. By moving beyond a limited instrumental understanding of mindfulness practice to a generative mindfulness that incorporates a recognition of the rich nature of the human mind, awareness of cultural practices, and deeply rooted ethical foundations, managers can create organizational cultures that honor the sacred in every human being.”

Jim/Sky: It’s been mostly-sunny days this week on the ski slopes near Lake Tahoe, and we’re happy that we’re both skiing — at least on the fair-weather days. (Temp 36°F day and 18°F night)

Despite a ski injury last January, Kathryn has continued skiing and loves it — as she has for many years. These photos of us were taken yesterday!

Jim/Sky: Kathryn also got to visit with her sister Susan Amber Gordon on the East Coast, despite our lessened eagerness to travel since the start of the pandemic.

Play It Again

Jim/Sky: In 2022 I started producing my feature-length film Play It Again about “Coming home to music.” I’m personally an extreme example of this. For me the coming back started in 2014, then accelerated to full tilt in 2015-2016 at The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where I completed a full-time post-graduate year in Technology and Applied Composition. At that time, I had already been thinking about making a film about the experience, but there just wasn’t time to complete the coursework and do a film at the same time. So in February, 2022 I finally started filming. An intermediate full-length cut of the film is completed now (December, 2022) and with the filming of one more scene in January, we will have it all “in the can.”

When I went back to music in 2015 I said that “software had caught up with us” and was finally enabling a new breed of composer and compositional process — with sampled instruments it had become possible to compose and play back in real time at good quality — a new cyclical compositional process much like software development. Well by 2022 it was obvious that iPhone hardware and software were advanced enough that “filming” could be similarly streamlined and available to far more would-be producers. So I became one of those. The film is almost entirely shot on iPhone with wireless sound recording right into the camera as well. Sign up for more film info!

Play It Again — Coming home to music and how it changed my life; filmed in 2022, and scheduled for release in February, 2023.
New audio albums are in the works for Q1:2023 augmenting the existing albums.
Amateur Music Network; I’m on the board of directors of this org that promotes “the love of music” including upcoming workshops and a library of video of many past workshops.
Joined the board of the Ross McKee Foundation, which promotes piano performance.
We had a private showing and panel discussion of The Third Harmony, a film I scored in 2020.
CDs of my albums are available now via special order. Just ask me.

My film will be available in February, 2023, and if you visit the Play It Again web site, you can sign up there for email notification.

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Gandhi Action Figure

20 January, 2016 by sky Leave a Comment

My friends at The Metta Center, which focuses on nonviolence education, sent me a holiday card. The card is more like a Mahatma Gandhi action figure. Gandi was, of course, a cornerstone of the peaceful action which resulted in India’s independence from Britain in 1947.

The cutout cards are produced by the Unemployed Philosophers’ Guild and they stand up on four legs. There are philosophers, writers, activists, scientists, composers, and many others. The (Unemployed) Philosophers’ Guild sells its cards and other products online. (The online store was broken when I tried it today, but they’re also sold in many stores.) It’s worth a visit to see the promotional videos. Cute.

[Read more…]

Where’s your external brain?

5 February, 2014 by sky Leave a Comment

For years I’ve kept snippets of code in a file that I refer to when I need a cookbook of sorts to perform some magic incantation I only need to invoke once or twice a year. I just don’t need to keep this kind of stuff in my head. I call the file Gems of Wisdom.

You know, in programming (which I do a lot of), there are often little gotchas that require hours or days to figure out. And once you’ve figured them out, it’s easy to forget them if you immediately move on to the next challenge. Working at the level I do, which often requires typing command-line stuff, I’d never remember this stuff character by character unless I used it every day. [Read more…]

As the mouse turns – Are you twisted or are you straight?

7 December, 2013 by sky Leave a Comment

Are you “straight” or are you “twisted?”

You’ve probably never thought about this, but if you are currently using a mouse, take a look at how the mouse is positioned with respect to your screen. Is the mouse pointing straight away from your body, or is it twisted around to point directly at your screen?

I constantly find that I’m unconsciously twisting the mouse to point toward the screen (first illustration), even though this makes no difference whatsoever in how it functions. It doesn’t get smoother—it doesn’t get faster—it doesn’t gain precision. Sweeping it leftward in an arc still moves the cursor to the left across the screen. Pushing it toward the screen still moves the cursor upward.

[Read more…]

Finding your way

20 May, 2013 by sky Leave a Comment

I was watching Charlie Rose interview Paul Farmer tonight and I thought, “gee I was going to become an M.D. when I was an undergraduate in college, and it would have been so nice to have that M.D. and then be able to go do other things if I wanted to.” But then I did a double-take and realized that I was truly fortunate to realize while an undergraduate that what I really wanted to do is become part of the “core” of those working on Computer Science in its early days.

Compared to today, 1963 really was the early days. It was pre-Internet. It was pre-Ted Nelson. It was pre-Doug Engelbart. And so forth. And getting a PhD in computer science back then was really an adventure in the unknown. Most of what we regard as Computer Science was unmapped in those days.

So some unaskedfor advice to my readers. When you find yourself saying ”I think I should do X but I really like Y” please pay attention to what your intuition is telling you. Don’t waste your time doing what someone else thinks you should be doing. Above all, be realistic, but give great weight to what your intuition is telling you, because it’s very likely right about it.

That old Steve Jobs advice again (see also)

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

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P.S.: In 2015 I decided to augment my computer science career by studying (music) composition for a year at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. [Read more]