glaciers on steroids.

Climbing season approaches. This is someone's pano of the northern Pickets. The most remote and wild slice of the North Cascades. Incredible. Yes.

From what I've read in the past, getting into and out of the Pickets takes a few days, but a basecamp (how about down there at Lousy Lake?) can be set up and then multiple peaks can be climbed over the period of another couple days - from Fury to Luna to one of the highlights of this pocket of ice-clad iconic Cascade peaks ... Challenger.

Matthew and I met at a pub last week to chat among other things about the upcoming season. Still want to do our traverse of the Stuart range up the north face Sherpa glacier, tag the summit then onto Sherpa, Argonaut, Colchuck, Dragontail and Little Annapurna. A marathon. And the north face of Buckner. I'm in. Those are definites. We threw out possibly the Mowich Face of Rainier, something that's been on my list since about the time I first started climbing and is, well, quite intimidating (it's on the right in that photo). Let's see, what else ... oh yeah, Bonanza (which was on my list last year) and would be awesome as it requires an adventurous ferry ride up the Lady of the Lake on Lake Chelan to the town of Holden deep in the North Cascades. I'd love to run up and down Ruth Mountain too, mainly for this view of Shuksan. Spectacular.

Regardless of what we all end up climbing this season and since it is doubtful we'll make it out there this year, the Pickets will continue to lure. Like the Winds' Cirque of the Towers on glacier steroids.

mastering.

So I originally got this dual 1.0GHz PowerMac G4 I call Carbon, what ... seven years ago or something? So I could learn InDesign and Photoshop. It came pre-installed - Photoshop 7 and InDesign 2. The Apple 17" Studio LCD monitor is now the proud display for my 800MHz PowerMac G4 server I call Iridium (the minimum G4 CPU that boasts gigabit ethernet). Upgraded last year to a 23" Apple Cinema so I could have some more screen real estate for Logic (should have gotten the 30"). Done with Photoshop and InDesign. They aren't even loaded on Carbon, kept lean with minimal apps (OS 10.4.11 is enough of a resource hog) to keep Logic humming with twenty-plus instrument tracks, busses, masters and such.

And so tonight, a new art ... mastering.

The subject is that minute-forty I posted a couple weeks ago (even though I have continued working on the multi-track adding more and more music to it but have not yet bounced that down to two tracks). Brought in the two-track mixdown and then bussed in an adaptive limiter on top of a multi-band compressor to the stereo instrument track then some linear EQ on top followed up with a second adaptive limiter to eke out just a little more headroom to the master channel. Just trying to bring up the noise floor and dynamic range. Awesome. Called up the spectrum analyzer to check out the frequency range as I looped the loud intro and the quieter middle. Over and over. Add a multimeter to really check out the frequency distribution. And Logic of course lets me save all of my plug-in settings so when I ultimately finish the song I can re-apply all of them to that new mastering session. Maybe tweak them a bit more.

This G4 never fails to amaze. Neither does Logic. Seriously. I get made fun of periodically for my older Macs and my three-versions-ago software. Whatever. I keep my machines lean and mean. The fact I bought this piece of software on Ebay for something like a hundred-forty and it is seriously a recording studio inside of my Mac is incredible. This particular song is definitely taxing that very Mac, but I am making sure to run the Onyx cleanups and keeping it at peak performance. Have to go in and periodically freeze tracks but all is well.

Hmm ... now I would like some bigger monitors. Yes, definitely. The key to mastering is listening on lots of different speaker sets. Headphones. In the car. Little speakers. Big speakers. But it is decidingly difficult trying to master on little M-Audio 4" monitors. They're good, but not that good.

Soon.

just an example.

So I have been thinking a lot about stuff and the fact that I have been writing music for a while now to myself in my living room on my Bechstein and in my head and in Logic and that is all well and good except it is no longer good enough. When I was in my twenties I was writing music. Songs like Radiohead or Suede or concertos for pianofortes and orchestras. When I was in high school I was writing piano sonatas and this instrumental concept album of sorts. All of eighteen years old or so I went out and wrote a letter to the guitarist Marty Friedman to ask if he would want to collaborate with me. A year later he replied sure send him a tape. I never followed through. When I was ten I wrote my first song. Uh, yeah. And up until roughly three years or so ago I was convinced it was all crap. Well, maybe not all of it. The concertos for pianoforte and orchestra were impressive albeit incredibly daunting and I had come comfortably to the realization that they would end up being finished much later in my life when I had lived and had time to fully ingest and then reformulate into music and motifs and orchestral power larger than life all of those experiences and ideas which to me was perfectly fine.

But these songs that have been going on in my head and now transposed onto the Bechstein and in Logic have been bugging me because I am quite convinced they are actually not crap. Which is believe it or not one incredibly huge step for me. I tend to think everything I produce is crap.

But anyways this is all really just to say recently I finally stepped out from behind my walls to start networking to find other musicians that may see and understand my vision and be able to collaborate in a way that is impossible just me at my piano in my living room. It was tough posting MP3s. Not because I think they are crap. Well, partly they are because they are a fraction of what I hear in my head. But sharing does not come easily. But since it is out there ... I felt like those MP3s really did not give a glimpse at maybe what I really have been working on.

So I threw together this minute and forty seconds of sound tonight to hopefully give anyone who comes across my reaching out to get a better sense of what I mean when I say however it is that I describe this stuff in my head. 'Symphonic Rock.' Something like Muse. My often-used adjective 'furious.' I don't know.

After the intro and the time/tempo change the singer comes in. Moments of delicateness. And then it builds. And builds. And builds. Overdriven guitar arpeggios up and down. Furious piano arpeggios and those big fat chords! Drums beating harder and harder. The driving bass line comes back in. Vocal line soaring. Rising and rising. Crescendo. Crescendo. Crescendo.

It is not finished. It is still just a fraction of what I hear in my head. It is just an example.

Linked file is here.

cheers

Ne frustra vixisse videar.

I lived, because living became my Fate,
Ordained to walk the face of Mother Earth,
To sweat, toil, labour, something to create,
To love truly… for whatever ‘twas worth …
Instead of insight I collected thorns,
Clawing, tearing the fabric of my heart,
I tried planting wisdom yielding acorns,
Yet I never managed to become smart.
It will not be long before I depart
- Time will be up, with near nothing achieved -
To my Creator to return my heart
N’er my tortured soul that so often grieved.
My soul got tainted with un-wished for stain;
But let me not seem to have lived in vain.

© 2008 P.J Oszmann

The Latin phrase is generally attributed to the sixteenth century astronomer Tycho Brahe who - reputedly - uttered them to Johannes Kepler near his own death. The photo is of the Helix Nebula (and commonly referred to as the 'Eye of God' Nebula) located in the constellation Aquarius about 700 light years from Earth.

tradition.

"So are we going to make this a tradition?" Julian asked, his toes numb after crawling into sleeping bags to warm up. "Well, this is the second year in a row we've done this so I say 'yes'," I replied back. "No no not just snow camping but at this secret spot we've found?" "Of course, that's part of it."

Last year I found this little place above Reflection Lakes and the crowds, a small level spot at the bottom of a bigger hill that we planned on using to sled down. We had a great view of Rainier across the lake and Mazama Ridge and back to Castle and Pinnacle Peaks (J's first climb). It was perfect.

***

So I grew up with traditions. Trying to think of some now. Oh, Friday nights when we would order take-out pizza from Pizza Hut my dad would ask who wanted to come and if the spot wasn't already spoken for I would go just to be able to put the pizza on my lap so my jeans would get all soggy from the moisture. Opening Christmas presents. We all took a turn, opening one present at a time, so we could see what everyone else got and make the process take longer. Each Christmas Eve going around the neighborhood checking out all the other houses and their lights to vote on what we thought should win the coveted Best Display award for that year. And lots of others.

And so I have instilled the whole tradition deal with Julian. On our birthdays we go for a bikeride. The rules are a) birthday boy chooses but b) it cannot be somewhere we have already gone biking. We watch the movie Polar Express and read the book every Christmas. We go camping at a particular spot in the North Cascades every June. We take a week in summer to make memories by roadtripping somewhere (the way I traveled growing up with my family).

And apparently now we go snow camping at our secret spot under Mt. Rainier every winter.

***

This time it started out a little differently, if only because it was so nice here at home. A string of warm, sunny weather in February sealed the deal for a snow camping trip this past weekend. And so we were off around noon on Saturday, me having finished (well, mostly) packing the night before. I was excited to again pack for an overnight trip into the mountains. It had been awhile. Last October, actually. We bring a sled, which hauls our gear and that I strap to my climbing harness with some sewn runners to drag behind me on the 2-mile trip to our spot.

Much to J's delight, we stopped at Subway (for some reason it's currently his favourite place to eat) in Eatonville for lunch then headed the rest of the way to the park and where we'd leave Stuart waiting for us to return the next day. We changed in the car, then took off up the avalanche slope above Narada Falls. No need to go around when you can just go straight up, right? Except towing a sled with I don't know how many pounds of gear made it a bit more of a challenge but we were up it in about fifteen minutes probably and then on the slog along the Ohanapecosh Road towards the lake.

We passed folks heading back since it was getting to be about 3 in the afternoon. I heard Julian say 'hello' to them all in his cheery way which I think surprises some. Wow, a kid out here actually enjoying himself and not having been dragged by his parents or something I don't know. Once we reached the lake, I could apparently still pick out the spot from down below just walking along the road. A certain tree standing out against a snowy hillside behind it and we headed up. Another quick grunt with the sled in tow found us on the little ledge at the base of our hill overlooking the lake. I got to work and Julian went off to play.

After clearing a flat spot with the combination of a shovel and snow saw I was able to pitch our tent. Julian in the meantime had discovered that the snow was too hard and crusty to really sled ride. He tried it sans sled and got moving so fast I had to catch him to keep him from flying over the edge into the trees below. This week of clear weather warm days and cool nights had frozen the snow into a sheet of ice. "We'll find a hill or something to sled ride on the way back" I promised him, which seemed to work cos then he was off to build a snow cave while I prepared dinner (his favourite ... Ramen ... and I mean that seriously this kid loves it when camping).

We ate quickly while the sun started to set. I pointed east to just above the top of the hill behind us. Mars. Then we each set up our cameras on the hill looking towards Rainier mine on a tripod his little Gorilla Pod strapped to our snow shovel and we took some photos of the mountain as it turned pink with the setting sun and the shadows draped further and further across the lake and the trees along Mazama Ridge. Before it got completely dark, I took the tripod and found a spot above our tent to try to shoot it glowing from the lantern inside with Rainier in the background. Julian popped out of his snow cave to come over and see what I was doing. I showed him the settings, teaching him more about photography each time we go out. It's cool he enjoys it.

Then we sat on the snow in the dark letting our eyes adjust to the moonlight and the stars. The half-moon cast shadows on the ice. I told him how I thought it good to get out like this to remind us of all we have. A home. With a furnace. Warmth, food, comfort. It was bitingly cold outside clear and crisp this February evening. Wow. Orion. Cassiopeia. The Big Dipper. The moon washed out the Milky Way but cast an incredible glow on Rainier so we could easily make it out in the dark. Julian took off back into his snow cave and I walked off a ways to stand in the night cold freezing cold just staring at the mountain (or The Mountain as some tend to think of it though I must admit a personal affinity much more for certain peaks in the North Cascades than this one they call Rainier). I saw headlamps sparkle high up on the Kautz Glacier and shouted for Julian to see. Then some more on the Muir snowfield. There were climbers up there all right. Must be even colder another mile higher.

Then we crawled into the tent. The lantern is a comfort but it was still cold. We spent some time just warming up after I brewed us some hot chocolate by boiling snow. We changed into warm, dry clothes and settled down for a round of über-mini Uno. I can't remember who won. Around nine we were tired. I turned off the lantern and we went to sleep. It was quiet. We'd find a hill to sled ride on the way back I reminded J (we did, and it was a blast). We'd make this a tradition we both agreed (we will, and it will be a blast).

one perfect sunrise [for real].

So during a rather fantastic run one evening last week I was thinking to myself about sunrises and I remembered this one. Fortunately, I took a picture of it. J and I had taken Kathy and Annette backpacking last time they were here up to one of our favourite places. Headlight Basin underneath Mt. Stuart. In October. It is one of my favourite hikes the one to Ingalls Lake the larch at this time a bit past their prime but still glowing and nothing too terribly difficult for a couple of newcomers to the idea of hauling your stuff in a pack strapped to your back up a trail to crash on the ground in a tent in the freezing cold.

A late start to the day so we didn't get to the trailhead and start moving until something like 3 or 4 a little slower than usual up the trail patience for them me having to keep telling J to slow down, slow down it more or less dark by the time we reached Ingalls Pass so no real view to Stuart. It would have to wait for the morning. Then trying to find a place to pitch our two tents in the dark me stumbling into others' campsites asking if the place was full until we found something near the edge of where Headlight Basin drops down into the Ingalls Creek valley. We pitched our tents, giving Kathy and Annette the one on the ground and Julian and I took the one on the snow. We had done this before. We didn't mind. Hungry, I cranked up the stove and sat smiling at the sound of the whirring flame and boiling water and we huddled around a pot of piping hot ramen basking in the steaming goodness the night cold and dark but perfect around us. Afterwards, Annette crashed in the tent. Kathy, J and I sat outside awhile marveling at the Milky Way overhead picking out constellations talking about the mythology behind them a terribly crisp and cold perfect autumn night clear as could be our breaths frozen suspended in the air above us. We could see the dark shadow mass of Stuart rising just to the south of us, imposing and reassuring at the same time me excited to see it for real come morning.

And then morning came. Where we were camped was open to the east, so the sun streamed in and washed across Headlight Basin warming it more and more with each passing minute. We were up with it, J running around the granite of the basin climbing over here and over there. Bundled up I sat on a rock watching him, watching the sunrise, just gazing at Stuart. Kathy wandered over and we talked a while about this and that. We don't see each other much.

It really was one perfect sunrise.

And there have been others. I think to myself. Camped under the granite rocks of the Hidden Lake peaks above the lake the bugs just starting to stir but open to the east like Headlight the sun streaming in after another perfectly clear and crisp autumn night of putting on glasses to stare up at the Milky Way tucked away inside my down bag and bivy eating an orange and some cereal for breakfast. Perfect. Up high bivied under the summit of Sahale above the clouds clinging to the valleys and the glacier below us basking in the warmth welcoming the light of another day in the mountains. Perfect. In The Enchantments, expecting grey and clouds etching the frost off my tent's window to witness the surprise of a rising sun coming up over McLellan Peak and lighting up the larch and letting all the water come to life shimmering in its radiance and warmth. Perfect. Out in the open no tent just our sleeping bags tossed on the dusty earth another fall morning this time in the middle of the Utah desert on the edge of the Goosenecks of the San Juan River carving its way to the Pacific. Perfect. We could see the shapes of Monument Valley now far to the south jutting up into the horizon it was warm cos even though it was October it was afterall southern Utah. We had gotten there at night much like our trip to Headlight so had no sense of our surroundings except that it was flat and we could see a billion billion stars, so the sunrise welcomed us with a sense of wonder of where we were (and for whatever reason that is still one of my favourite photos I have ever taken). Another sunrise me up before it the light pale and purple and pink freezing cold winter this time to walk along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon crunching on frozen snow and watch and wait and witness as the sun came up to the east casting long shadows among all the creases and folds of the canyon incredible listening to Moby on headphones. Perfect.

There is something magical about a sunrise.

I tend to forget this, being one to more likely stay up late than wake early. But particularly magical are these memories of mine either alone or with someone else witnessing a perfect sunrise. Another day. Purpose. Intentional. Simple. Essential. What will I accomplish today?

apple and other such musings.

Okay, so to start this out I am going to throw out there I am a devoted Apple user, although in my frugalness I tend to stretch technology out rather than jumping on board and getting the latest and greatest. Currently, we have a G4 PowerMac running constantly as a server (with 17" Apple Studio LCD), a G4 PowerMac I use in the home studio running Logic Pro 7 (with a 23" Apple Cinema), Julian's G4 iMac, my G4 PowerBook, an iPod (2nd Gen) and iPod Nano (1st Gen). And I love them all. I am a devoted Apple user for two reasons:

1. First and foremost, the OS
2. For Apple's form and function - their machines are both beautiful in design and intuitive and easy to use

Okay, now let me just say there are also plenty of things that irk me to no end about Apple, including (but not limited to and not really in any particular order):

1. The fact you cannot replace the battery (which inherently will fail) in an iPod, so when it does it becomes something that must be discarded in a landfill and forces us to buy another one (well, or go without)
2. DRM
3. The way Apple controls and forces all Mac users to accept and use iTunes
4. iTunes
5. It seems for a looong time after OS X was released, Apple supported OS 9 (all the way through 10.4 I believe) - but now seems to be quickening its pace to drop support of previous OSes in an attempt to get all users to upgrade to their latest one

There is more, but those are the biggest ones. So now that I have laid out what I like and dislike about Apple (at least to some degree), let me back up and give a thirty-second spiel about "My Story."

Rewind maybe eight years or so. I had a Windows laptop for which I paid Jeff fifty bucks. I had a Windows PC that he had built from spare parts and gave to me for free. I had Netzero. I used the PC for surfing the web (albeit slowly), sending the occasional email, and writing the occasional resumé, letter or the like in Word. I had gotten a copy of InDesign 2.0 (Windows) at a garage sale for five bucks so I installed that on the laptop and started teaching myself InDesign. At work, I was just getting into graphics stuff but the Macs there were still running OS 9 and the likes of Photoshop 7, InDesign 2, (gasp) Explorer (for Mac, duh), and such.

But I never liked working on my Windows machines. Granted, they were hand-me-downs. But fast-forwarding for just a second, all the Macs in this house are hand-me-downs at least as old now as those PCs were then. But back to the PCs - the key was I just did not like or relish working on them. They just were. And I accepted that, since I did not really use a computer all that much back then.

And then things changed at work, and I started getting myself more involved with graphics stuff. And at the same time, our IT department bumped all the Macs from OS 9 to OS 10.3. The only woman working on a Mac in our department at the time did not know OS X, and so I can still remember the meeting we had all of us standing around a table my boss at the time throwing out there "So who wants to learn how to use OS X?" Expecting this to come up, I had already done my homework. I presented a couple pieces of paper from an online OS X class I had found that cost something like fifty bucks and said I did. He gave me the thumbs up, and so I did. And in a little over a year took that lady's job (she actually left to be a stay-at-home mom so it wasn't like a hostile takeover or anything).

But one word about this newfangled OS 10.3 Panther deal, at least for me: Exposé. Yes, now that probably seems lame. But when I first sat in front of a Mac running 10.3 after all those years of totally blasé PCs not being able to multi-task without freezing and discovered the new Exposé feature I was sold. Sold! Well, and OS X also just looked prettier. Much, much prettier. The fonts looked beautiful (uh, anti-aliasing - something Windows did not do). The drop shadows. The scaling and graphics were just incredible (a combination of the graphics card and engine - both of which PCs lacked unless of course you had gone out and bought a higher-end card but Windows still did not have an engine like Apple to drive it in the same way). I could navigate and browse through Finder so much easier, faster and more intuitively than I ever could after years and years of using PCs and Windows Explorer. It just fit, and I loved it.

I was sold.

So back to present day and the fact I do not go a day (unless I am climbing or out backpacking or, well, you get the point) without being on a Mac, and our myriad of (albeit slightly aged) Macs. And there is now ... the iPad. And this is the thing that actually - in reading blogs and other tech sources for reaction to Apple's latest incarnation - spurred me to write this post.

I think one word can be used to describe my reaction to the iPad: disappointment.

Disappointment for actually a lot of reasons. It is locked down. It does not run OS X or some mobile version of OS X. Only applications from the app store (and since I do not own an iPhone I am not sure how the division of profit goes for developers vs. Apple but I would suspect it favors the latter vs. developers being able to sell their software directly to consumers) can be used on it. It has virtually no interconnectivity. No USB. No SD. No eSATA. No HDMI. No nothing. No built-in camera. Seemingly, no upgradeability. The battery is 'built in' so I can only assume that when it fails, the iPad becomes a one-and-a-half pound paperweight. A $500-850 paperweight. Along with the zero interconnectivity (except for the camera accessory Apple sells that lets you plug in a USB connection to your camera or SD card, so I do wonder if that will let you connect just any old USB device - my bet says 'no') comes the lack of (well, lots of things, but an important one) connecting an external HD for expanded storage. Or really any peripheral. So no expandability, either. The keyboard dock is a good idea, but it should have a tilt function so I can watch set the screen to the right angle like I can on my PowerBook. And on and on and on.

But Tuesday is not the end of the story. It is just the beginning, and I do think that given several (yes, several) generations - the iPad could be great and quite revolutionary. It needs to come a long way. It needs to bridge the gap between what a Smart Phone and a laptop both do best (meaning, most likely, a compromise of some sort - it will never be a full-fledged laptop like a high-end MacBook Pro and also, except for possibly Skype, never be used like a phone someone would hold up to their ear if only because of its size). It may morph into a 16:9 format, or have a screen ratio like that as an option. It needs to run a real OS. It needs to be able to be expanded and have options to connect peripherals. It needs to run apps that I do not have to buy from the App store. In short, it needs to be more like a computer. And on and on and on.

But in my reading, I came across a blog from when the iPod was just being introduced back in October 2001 and it was actually really quite amusing if only because of the similarity to blogs being posted now. The comments included some gems like ~

1. Great, just what the world needs, another freaking MP3 player. Go Steve! (and you know WeezerX80 has owned several iPods since posting this)
2. Apple, are you really aiming to become a glorified consumer gimmicks firm?
3. I still can't believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player? I want something new! I want them to think differently!
4. OH NO! Just checked Apple Store - they want $399.00 for this thing ... Ouch!!!
5. $400 for an Mp3 Player! I'd call it the Cube 2.0 as it won't sell, and be killed off in a short time ... and it's not really functional. Uhh Steve, can I have a PDA now? (uh, wonder if this guy bought an iPhone? Or two)
6. All that hype for an MP3 player? Break-thru digital device? The Reality Distortion Field™ is starting to warp Steve's mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off. (I love this one)

And then some others, a little more prophetic, chimed in ~

1. No other mp3 player has a harddrive like this ... 5gigs... **** yeah. This is revolutionary ... plus it's just the beginning. This device literally beats anything on the market by about 100x.
2. Y'all are saying it sucks before you have even held it in your hand. I mean 5GB in a little tiny thing like that, it's amazing. I don't see anyone else making something like that. Do you?
3. The reason why everyone's disappointed is because we had our hopes up for this incredible device that would do everything you could possibly use the word "digital" in and most of the things you can't. The truth is that it really is revolutionary. 5 gigs? Where do you see 5 gigs in an Mp3 player? If Apple had gone with something completely and utterly new, it would probably go down the hole that the Cube and the Newton went down ... they were ahead of their time, and suffered because of it. Apple can't have another disaster like the Cube, so they decided to stay just a bit ahead of the game. As long as Apple markets it effectively, I think it's gonna do really well. (this one is good, and quite fitting IMO)
4. This thing's too cool. It's beautiful. It looks too easy to use. It has all sorts of cool features that I will never live without again. This is a home run!
5. No matter what Apple does there are always people who are NEVER happy. Give it a rest. It's a great idea and the first of many. Why don't you give it a chance.

I agree with the last one. The iPad is a good idea. And just like the iPod and the iPhone, before them there were MP3 players and PDA/Smart Phones but over time, well ...

The iPad has a lot of shortcomings, but it is just the first generation. I think it also has a lot of opportunities, more than either of its 'i' predecessors in the capabilities it could do and the change it could bring to our lifestyles (like one of the comments said, and I have heard many utter, about not being able to live without their iPhone) and the industries it impacts. In five years, all newspapers may just be gone and gotten on board with maybe something similar (who knows in five years?) to what the NYT is leading today. Maybe soon enough the eBook idea will take off because prices for the iPad and similar tablets will come down, as will the prices for books (still cheaper to go to the library - read: free - and not much less than a brand new book today). All Apple is doing I think now is laying the groundwork for something much, much better in the future.

But only time will tell. Until then, I know I won't be rushing out and buying the first generation of this thing because of all the reasons I mentioned. It needs to grow up some first. I just hope enough people do to keep Apple developing or it will go the way of the Cube and the Newton.