Ralford’s Ramblings

Chad Becks raises the dilemma that many genres of guitar including the jazz and classical varieties are experiencing a lack of growth in comparison to other more popular genres. Though I’ve not observed an actual decline of interest in classical or jazz guitar within the musical community, I can certainly relate his observation to the acceptance and support of musical creativity. Becks’ observation between pop music and jazz or classical guitar differentiates between two vastly different levels of creative complexity within written music, and is analogous to the continually growing popularity of cover-bands versus lesser-supported original music at the local level.

Having lived in Centre County now for eight years, I can certainly say that musical interest among the general public favors popular music over original music – or at least the typical downtown band line-ups selected by our venues make it appear this way.

With State College holding a large population of the county, it’s common to hear local musicians blame the venues and their student patrons for this lack of variety. True or not, many naturally relate the demand for sing-along bands to the thirsty student patrons that stimulate the borough’s night life economy. On the contrary, bluegrass – an example far from sing-along pop music – has much local support not only from musicians but more importantly the community. So it is not truly fair to say that State College night life only caters to popular music. Though bluegrass’ local popularity may be largely attributed to its American roots, other roots genres such as blues and jazz do not share the same steady niche that bluegrass holds in and around State College.

Again using bluegrass as our example – there is another reason for why it is a more successful contender than jazz in a community where pop seems to flourish. Centre County already has numerous popularized gathering circles for bluegrass music. They are hosted on a regular basis by local churches and cafes and offer a free open-to-any-skill-level environment to learn how to play bluegrass music. The circles provide a unique opportunity for musicians to collaborate and meet each other, and it’s my belief that these circles have created an unintended movement over time. The result is a stronger community foundation for bluegrass to thrive in the county. American root genres or not, the same cannot be said for jazz, blues, jamband, and funk, though, some intimate downtown atmospheres such as Zeno’s Pub (and occasionally Bar Bleu) show that there is a consistent interest in such creative music styles.

For whatever reason, there are not many gatherings in Centre County to bring attention to jazz guitar and much more generally, original music. I too agree with Becks, and generally speaking, I believe that it is up to our musical community to establish localized “cells” of musicians to hold playing circles that encourage growth of original music in the community. Numerous local organizations and venues already exist to thrive on the music and musical relationships generated at such creative music circles. Though, much like the circles that assist the interest in bluegrass among the public and local musicians alike, I believe the original music circles must occur regularly and encourage participation at every skill level to successfully increase awareness that original music is indeed a community interest.

ralford music, philosophy Bar Bleu, bluegrass, blues, community, funk, jazz, music, original music, philosophy, State College, Zeno's

Part I of the Ralford.net overhaul really happened when I transitioned to Wordpress, so consider this post ‘Part II’. If you haven’t noticed, I made the decision way back then to keep my home-brewed PHP weblog at the root of Ralford.net, and I installed Wordpress to its own dedicated subfolder that would be free from all of the unorganized files that live on my domain.

Though this was a good organizational move, the original reasoning for this was to keep any bookmarked URLs to my site from breaking. If I replaced the home-brewed weblog at the root with the new Wordpress weblog, the old URLs wouldn’t work. I moved forward with the decision to place Wordpress in a subfolder, and dealt with the fact that any new visitors would need to be sent to “http://www.ralford.net/wordpress/”. I updated all of my social webpages to tell the world that my webpage was now at the subfolder, and crossed my fingers that no new vistors would go directly to the root of Ralford.net and see old posts I wrote back in 2004.

Today, I updated the .htaccess file at the root to redirect all old home-brewed weblog URLs to an archive subfolder – and the attempt was a success!

The first great thing this accomplishes is that it preserves a link to the content bookmarked by any of my home-brewed weblog visitors. If they bookmarked my old wiki entry on guitar maintenance (notice the link doesn’t have an ‘archive’ subfolder), they will now gracefully get redirected to the new location!

Secondly, if our search engine friends take ages to update URLs of my old posts to their new ‘archive’ location, a non-updated search engine result will redirect the user to the new location instead of it sending them to a dead link with an ugly 404 error message (I know I know, after 5+ years I still haven’t created a custom 404 page).

And finally, archiving the old content allows me to update content of the root. That will happen soon, but is still in progress (heck it took me nearly a year to take care of the archive redirects). My game plan is to turn it into a page for myself as a musician, and display a dynamically-updated list of dates for events my music projects are scheduled to play (you can see some of this code in action over at the Dirty Superb homepage, where our dates are pulled automagically from our MySpace page).

And so, the Ralford.net saga continues…

ralford Ralford.net, Wordpress PHP, Ralford.net, Wordpress

This past weekend took me through one of my favorite local hiking destinations – Detweiler Run. I figured this may be my last chance this year getting out in reasonable hammock weather, so I saddled up for a night at Penn Roosevelt State Park.

I waited for the rain to quit on Saturday then made my way toward the parking area at Bear Meadows. On the way were clear signs that the woods weren’t done draining from the storm. I parked, and wandered down John Wert Path. A few hundred feet down the trail, a flooded valley formed a temporary pond, and the trail lead into the middle of it. It was towards 4:00pm, so I looked at my map for an alternate route.

I drove just over the ridge (with many downed bushy tree branches leading the way), and parked at the gate entrance to Detweiler Run Road. No sooner did I get out of the car and I could hear raging water. I knew today’s hike would be up the service road, but I had to check out the creek.

I reached the MST’s intersection at Greenwood Spur, and saw quite a bit of water running down the MST. Just two hundred feet up the MST and I saw the primitive campsite completely flooded by running water. The swift water rushing through the mountain laurel was gorgeous indeed! I made my way another few hundred yards up the MST, and found the trail submersed in swift water. I worked my away around through some thick mountain laurel and found more of the trail submersed. After reconsidering the time, my safety, and the goal of reaching Penn Roosevelt by nightfall, I made my way back up the hillside, and followed Detweiler Run Road up the valley. I changed my course at Shingle Path, and paused where it intersected the MST and crossed Detweiler Run. An unusual amount of water this far upstream made for an entertaining crossing, and I crested over the ridge, making my way down into Penn Roosevelt for the night.

On my way back out of the woods yesterday morning, reaching the MST at Detweiler Run was visible proof I could follow the orange blazes downstream (instead of taking the service road, as I did on my way in). The lack of roaring as I descended the ridge lead me to suspect this reasonable water level. As I made my way down the MST, clumps of fallen leaves and branches showed every turn the water had carved out. I entered the region thick with mountain laurel and found myself hopping from rock to fallen branch, using downed trees as bridges to keep me out of water but on the trail. Finally downstream, I reached the camping area that was flooded the previous day. The stone fire ring was now out of the water, and the area looked a lot closer as it had during my other hikes.

Hiking along Detweiler Run after the rainstorm proved to be an exhilarating experience. I highly recommend taking a look at the area after a large rainstorm to see some local geography in action. Though take caution to dangerous situations. If you are interested in other pictures from my hike, you can find them in my Picasa photo album.

ralford backpacking backpacking, Bear Meadows, Detweiler Run, Penn Roosevelt State Park

I recently read Jacob Haqq-Misra’s Planetary Messenger, and highly recommend it to anyone interested in the philosophies behind our existence.   Here’s a review I wrote for Jacob’s book:

Planetary Messenger, by Jacob Haqq-Misra

Planetary Messenger reminds us that it is inaccurate to view Homo Sapiens as the single most important species in the universe, and that just because we as humans walk upright in what we consider to be a technologically advanced society, that not all forms of life behave the same. Modern cultures assume that for non-human life to exist as a civilized colony, it must first appear and operate similarly to ourselves.

During Shane’s travels to The Planet Finder convention in Washington D.C., Haqq-Misra unravels the flaws behind this unlogical means of comparison, and introduces unique theories to challenge the conflicts between science and religion. Shane learns that the success of human kind is largely attributed to chance, and that the facts behind our existence – whether acquired through historical records, scientific fact, religious scripture or personal belief – will continue to evolve. Though it may not be easy, we must allow culture and religion to incorporate new and understood viewpoints if we want to comprehend the bounds of life.

ralford philosophy philosophy, review

Did you get the memo? Dirty Superb is staging a hostile takeover of your work weary mind. Even though the semester just started, there’s a new CEO in town: Soul Power. Come watch Dirty Superb bring their musical synergy to the stage this Friday.

Dance grooves and general merriment await you in Pleasant Gap. So make the journey and fill us in on what you did on your summer vacation. Come Monday, you’ll be sure to have some stories to share around the water cooler. But this weekend, loosen your loafers and slip into something on the funky side.

Dirty Superb will be playing at the Red Horse Tavern in Pleasant Gap this Friday, September 4th. The show is from 9 to 12pm, with no cover charge. Hope to see you there!

ralford music Dirty Superb, funk, music, Red Horse Tavern

On Sunday I got together with Vitamin Funk to do some jamming and recording before Chris and Mike headed back to college. We had some room-mic recordings of most of our tunes prior to the weekend, but wanted new takes on some of them with a sax player we recently met.

In about two hours we ended up laying down five tunes (bear in mind the goal wasn’t a professionally isolated studio recording).

Three were previously written, and the other two were an upbeat blues song and a reggae beat – both ideas that came up while fooling around earlier in the summer. They were both on file as well, but we wanted a more formal shot at them with more than one mic in the room. The three originals were Off the Wall, Jammy Moe, and Keeping it Funky.

Sunday was a great time, and I look forward to the next Vitamin Funk show whenever that may be. We’re toying with the idea of setting up a show or two in State College around Thanksgiving. I’ll let you know if that comes to fruition.

ralford music funk, music, recording, Vitamin Funk

Among the many things to accomplish before leaving State College, one that a beer taster should seek is to get their name on a plaque in one of the bars downtown. Zeno’s Pub offers this opportunity as a reward for savoring 80 different beers. To take the challenge, all you need is a dollar which gets you the famous Zeno’s passport. I’ve been here for almost seven years now, and decided on July 4th that it was time to start the quest.

The majority of pages in the passport list beers from the United States, Canada, England, Germany, and Belgium to name a few. There’s also a healthy list of beers from Pennsylvania breweries. A number of the beers throughout are common to most Pennsylvania bars (Molson, Guiness, and Yuengling for example), but the list is full of bottled surprises that – at least in this town – can only be purchase at Zeno’s.

Some of the beers on the list are seasonal, and may not make it back to the Zeno’s tap for some time as they are known for their selective and broad tap rotation. This won’t stop you from completing your 80 because the back of the passport has a few blank pages for tasty craft brews like Bell’s Expedition Stout and Dogfish Head’s Palo Santo.

Upon completion of the passport and getting your name on a plaque, you also get a Zeno’s tshirt. If you really want some name recognition, I’ve heard you can get your name on a red plaque by drinking 80 beers in 48 hours.

Since starting my passport, I’ve completed 16 out of 80 beers. Listed in approximate drinking order, they are:

1. Dogfish Head Aprihop
2. Newcastle Brown (bottled)
3. Anchor Steam (bottled)
4. Troeg’s Dreamweaver
5. Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout (bottled)
6. Yuengling Porter
7. Victory Pils
8. Samuel Smith Nut Brown (bottled)
9. Troeg’s Rugged Trail
10. Shiner Bock
11. Dogfish Head Palo Santo
12. Stone Smoked Porter
13. Molson Canadian
14. Chimay White
15. Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA
16. Red Hook’s ESB (bottled)

Any on the list above not specified as bottled was on draft. Stay tuned through the year as I continue down through Zeno’s beer selection. Any beer suggestions you have for my passport are welcome, so long as they are actually available at Zeno’s.

ralford beer tasting beer, State College, Zeno's

Last week I encountered a limitation with using externals in SVN. It shows up when you are using the svn:externals property to bring a folder into your working copy, and when the folder you are bringing in uses the svn:externals property to bring in another folder whose path is no longer valid. In my case, the problem was caused by the second external referring to a path with an absolute link instead of a relative link – the absolute link was no longer valid.

Here’s an example.

Let’s say you have a project called Pizza which has the svn:externals property set to bring in a folder Pepperoni from revision 4500. The property looks like this:

-r 4500 http://server_name/meals/pizza/toppings/peperroni Pepperoni

And let’s say you want revision 4500, because the head of the trunk is at 4900, and features that were added to Pepperoni between 4500 and 4900 do not apply to the new Pizza project. The unique thing about the Pepperoni project is that it has subfolders for different spices and flavors: Salt, Pepper, and Smoke. The Smoke folder happens to be using the svn:externals property, and it looks like this:

-r 3222 http://server_name_old/meals/pepperoni/spices/smoke Smoke

Again, you want revision 3222, because features that were changed between 3222 and the 4900 (the top revision of the trunk) do not apply to your Pizza project.

If you noticed the difference in paths, you’ll see the external for the Smoke folder is using an old name of the server. Sometime between version 3222 and 4500, the server’s name changed from ’server_name_old’ to ’server_name’. Because of this, when you commit your Pizza project (with the svn:externals property set to bring in Pepperoni), the subfolder of Pepperoni, Smoke, which is being externalled in at a second level, will not see the old server name.

Because the svn:externals property applied to Pepperoni occurred back in time (at revision 3222), you can only correct the invalid absolute path by copying revision 3222 of Pepperoni to a branch, and adjusting the externals property to use the new server name. You wouldn’t want to keep it in the trunk as you’d lose the changes made between 3222 and 4900 (the head).

The URLs I show in the svn:externals above are absolute. In Subversion 1.5, relative externals were introduced, which allow you to external in a folder without naming the server. Here is the correct external, which uses a relative path to the repository root (without the server name):

-r 3222 ^/meals/pizza/toppings/peperroni Smoke

Using relative links with the svn:externals property will prevent broken external properties that happen as a result of dead (invalid) paths.

ralford hardware design software, SVN

This Thursday night at 7:30pm State College’s funk, soul and Motown band Hounds of Soul will be performing live for the first time at Tussey Mountain WingFest. We’ll be playing tunes of the 60s and 70s, and covering songs by Tower of Power, Blood Sweat and Tears, Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan and James Brown to name a few.

The nine piece band features a four piece horn section and includes members who have performed in State College and Altoona area bands such as Cliff Turner and the Afterburners, Cootie Brown, and SouthWEST.

If you are into funky music and like wings, come out to Boalsburg to see State College’s funkiest horn section. More information for the event can be found at the Tussey Mountain webpage. The band will also be performing at 8:00pm this Friday night at the Bellefonte Arts and Crafts Fair.

ralford music funk, Hounds of Soul, Motown, music, soul, WingFest

This has been an exciting summer of music…

On July 4th, Cootie Brown played at Central PA’s 4th Fest, which, come to think of it, was probably the biggest stage I’ve played to date. YouTube has some brief footage of us in front of Beaver Stadium.

A few weeks ago, I played my first wedding reception with Vitamin Funk. Towards the end of our set, a trombone and sax stood in with us, and we started into a blues instrumental. Also at the reception was The Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian. During the blues jam, he hopped on stage with us and wailed on the harmonica! I saw him play for the first time last year with David Grisman at the State Theatre, and have been listening to their folk recordings ever since. To say the least, playing music with him was surreal.

Throughout the summer, Dirty Superb has been playing about once a month at Pleasant Gap’s Red Horse Tavern, and we are going to be doing our first gig at Bar Bleu this week in State College. We are also now playing as backing musicians for Gina Riggio, and will be joining her for a set at the Bar Bleu show.

And finally, State College’s funk/soul/Motown band, the Hounds of Soul, will be making their debut this week at Tussey Mountain WingFest. If you enjoy the music of the 60’s and 70’s, and are into the powerful horn lines of Tower of Power and Blood Sweat and Tears come check us out!

Here’s August’s schedule so far:

• Dirty Superb and Gina Riggio: Monday 8/10 – at Bar Bleu (10:00pm)
• Hounds of Soul: Thursday 8/13 – Tussey Mountain WingFest (7:30pm)
• Hounds of Soul: Friday 8/14 – Bellefonte Arts and Crafts Fair (8:00pm)
• Hounds of Soul: Monday 8/17 – 2009 New York-Penn League All-Star Mountain Bash (7:30pm)

ralford music Bar Bleu, Cootie Brown, Dirty Superb, Hounds of Soul, music, Vitamin Funk