Tag Archives: Project

My two RPM projects are both now available on CD

Unnatural Disasters (front cover)Technetium (front cover)In a rare bout of overabundant creativity (or inadequate self-restraint), I have finished not one but two CDs for the RPM Challenge. They’re available now on CD from Kunaki.

The first project, Unnatural Disasters, is a more traditional album of 9 tracks in styles running from straight-ahead rock to prog rock to Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis electric jazz to electronica, and running a little over 36 minutes. The music could serve as a soundtrack for a world tour of the strange places I’ve written about in my blog.

Also unnatural but less of a disaster, the second project, a single 38-minute track, is a piece of minimalist electronica with a structure based on the composition of a technetium atom. It is, appropriately enough, entitled Technetium. Up close, the music is ever-changing, yet on a large scale it is completely static; it doesn’t really go anywhere, but it also never precisely repeats in its entire 936 measures. It went from concept to completed album in about 6 hours, which is the half-life of technetium’s least-stable isotope.

You can learn more about the two projects, and listen to streaming versions of all tracks from the albums, by clicking on their respective covers to the right.

Have we learned nothing?

Before I was even in elementary school, I learned from Mr. Rogers to “take my time and do it right.” In short, it’s better to take a bit longer to do something, and do it well, than to rush through just to get it done.

And yet, based on this Washington Post article, MnDOT seems not to have learned a similar lesson.

Teams of designers and builders are racing to meet a dawn Wednesday deadline for showing they are qualified to bid on the bridge replacement project, which the state has put on a fast track.

I can understand putting the project on the “fast track,” but to me that simply means giving it priority over other projects, not adding undue haste to the project itself.

State transportation officials hope to award contracts next month, with the goal of having a new bridge standing at the end of 2008….

Erecting such a bridge would ordinarily take about three years, even if the design and building phases were overlapped to save time, said Bill Cox, owner of Corman Construction Inc. in Annapolis Junction, Md., a road and bridge construction firm.

So not only are we moving so fast as to have a “dawn” deadline, less than a week after the collapse, to get initial proposals in, but we plan to have the bridge up and operational in less than half the time an accelerated schedule would normally require. (Oh, and correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t overlapping the design and build phases necessarily mean that they’d start building it before it was completely designed?)

I hate to say it, but I’m already reluctant to drive on that new bridge.

MNDOT’s secret to reining in highway construction costs: Photoshop

I was just reading, in the StarTribune online edition, an article about the lane addition project that was recently completed on Hwy. 100 in St. Louis Park.

The article includes a map and “Before” and “Now” photos, which I found very interesting. Especially when I noticed that the exact same cars were in both pictures, just in slightly different positions (all, that is, except for the red truck that appears to have been parked on the overpass for the entire duration of the construction project).

Imagine the coincidence, taking pictures both before and after the project, and timing it perfectly that the same cars would be traveling that stretch. Man, some people’s daily routines really are rigid! (Also, the weather was exactly the same, the photo was taken at the same time of day, the autumn leaves on the trees were at the same stage of coloration, etc.)

Of course, I think what’s really going on here is that the “Now” photo is actually a Photoshop mock-up produced by MNDOT during the proposal phase of the project. Anyone with an eye for Photoshop techniques can clearly see what’s been done to the photo. Still, it’s rather amusing that the Strib — intentionally or not — is passing this off as an actual photo of the road as it appears today.

Addendum (October 27, 2006; 9:15 PM): I figure since I took this opportunity to call attention to the Strib’s gaffe, I also owe it to them to share with my reader [sic] the fact that I also emailed the Strib about this, and in less than 12 hours I’ve received two emails from them — including one from the Director of Photography — apologizing for the mistake, and they say they’ll be posting a correction tomorrow. (Therefore, I’ll also refrain from capturing the erroneous version to post here.)

Addendum (November 7, 2006; 11:35 PM): Since I’m not a crackpot, I will not be pursuing this any further. However, I feel it’s worth at least noting here that I’ve just checked the page and no correction was ever made.