iBanjo

A lot changes in four years: people arrive and people leave.

I keep having this dream over and over — it’s not so much a dream that I have at night, but a recurring sort of daydream, some sort of metaphorical interpretation of reality that keeps popping into my head.

I imagine my whole life as a long movie, complete with interesting characters, plot twists, adventures, and so on. The movie is wrapping up and preparing for a sequel. My wife and I are in a big grassy field, and my parents approach to say good-bye. “You’re leaving now?” I ask dumbfoundedly. “You don’t need us anymore, and our work here is done” they say, and then give me big hugs. I hear the distant giggles of two small boys coming over the hill towards us. “Be sure to pass on the love,” they say, “and remember everything we’ve taught you.” And then they romantically mosey off into the sunset. As I watch them vanish, my two sons crash into my legs giggling, asking for attention. And then we cut to credits with happy music.

Maybe the human mind really does store all experience in the form of stories. Or maybe I’ve just watched too much Hollywood.

My buddy Andre is getting married today, and in classic Andre-style he asked a few of his buddies (just 5 days ago!) to gather into a last-minute motley band to cover Neil Young’s Harvest Moon as his bride walks down the aisle. Andre is playing guitar along with his soon-to-be brother-in-law, another guy is playing glockenspiel, someone else on percussion, a few female singers. Did he ask me to play banjo? Of course not… certainly not for that song. The band needed an electric bass, so he asked me to fill in.

No problem. I mean, I’ve played a bunch of bluegrass guitar and banjo, and a bass is just an oversized guitar, right? What could possibly go wrong?

It turns out I do have an electric bass already, sitting in my closet unused. I bought it at a garage sale in 1997 for $25, and it was in almost-new condition: it had already been sitting unused in a box for 30 years. It was in fine condition except that all the electronics had rusted and become static-ey. Well, I brought it over to good old Dr. Fretgood this week and they replaced the jack and pot-knobs completely, put new strings on… voila! Works great!

It’s a pretty cheap piece of junk, though. It’s a beginner-level bass made by Kay (who is known for excellent upright basses), but made cheap-o basses in the late 60’s. They were all clones of the famous Gibson SG models. As others have said on the net, this bass was the proverbial Sears-Roebuck catalog bass, easily affordable by every 12 year old who wanted to get into rock and roll. Interestingly, these 40 year old basses are now starting to sell for high prices in internet auctions, just because they’re kitchey and some people get a kick out of the retro sound!

We had a simple practice session late last night, and things went great. The band sounds fine, and I managed to bounce simple 1-5 notes on all four chords in the song. I did have an unexepected revelation, however: I never realized how incredibly long the sustain is on a bass. You pluck a note, and it just rings for 10 seconds! So while my guitar skills transferred over okay, I suddenly found myself having to deliberately mute every note I played at some specific time after I plucked it. After a while, it became clear that the muting actions are just as important to the ‘rhythm’ of the bass as the plucking actions. What a strange new thing to have to pay attention to!

I fooled around a bit more today, and figured out how to play the bassline to Zepplin’s Ramble On, one of my most favorite basslines ever. Wow. This could be… really fun. Must resist, I don’t have time for new instruments.

I need to sit down with a real bass player, however, and learn right-hand picking technique. Right now my instinct is to pluck every darn note with my thumb, because the strings are so huge. I’m sure that’s not right.

Time for geeky gadget reviews! My first review is of the Solio solar charger. My employer (Google) handed some of these out as “Earth Day gifts” to engineers in Chicago, and it’s pretty cool.

The idea is simple: spread the solar panels, put it in bright sun all day long. The sun charges up its internal battery. Then at night, plug in your cellphone or usb device, and it transfers all of the energy into your gadget. This allows you to walk around saying glib things like “yo, my phone is running on pure solar energy.” OK, maybe not literally… but spiritually. This thing is conceivably awesome for camping too.

So does it work?

Yes and no. It works for me, but not exactly as promised. The instructions say that 8 hours of direct sun should charge the battery to 100% (at which point it’s ready to charge your gadgets). But over a month of testing, I’ve concluded that this must only hold true if you live in Florida or somewhere near the equator. It takes at least two days of Chicago sunlight to charge it up. For example, today it was 80 degrees and *intensely* sunny — not a cloud in the sky. I had the thing sitting in a part of the garden that gets direct sun from 8am to 5pm. After 9 hours, it’s only 50% charged.

My other setback is that while it charges my Android G1 phone just perfectly, it doesn’t work on my Kindle. The Kindle sorta acts weird when I plug its usb cable into the Solio: instead of a solid charging light, the light goes on for 5 seconds, then off for 2, then on for 5, and so on. After an hour of this, the Kindle’s battery gets *drained* down to nothing!

But heck, I still like saying that at least my phone is running on solar energy… every other day.