You Can Play Guitar!

Six months ago, I bought a guitar and a DVD set called "You Can Play Guitar!" from Homespun Tapes. And almost every night since then I've been playing the guitar, going over the different exercises and songs from the DVD. It has been a rewarding way to learn!

I stopped watching the DVDs a few months ago, concentrating on the finger picking exercises from memory. On these DVDs, Happy Traum performs two songs called "The Fox" and "Shenandoah" that seemed outrageously difficult when I first watched them, but now I'm able to play both songs without too much problem.

I've cut MP3s of me playing these two songs in case you want to listen:

The Fox - 387K (24 seconds)
Shenandoah - 745K (46 seconds)

It's time to climb up the learning (playing?) curve some more. I just bought Easy Steps to Guitar Finger Picking. Let's see what I'll be able to play in December!

The Longest Match

Wimbledon had an historic tennis match this morning.

Venus Williams and Lindsay Davenport battled one another in the longest ladies final in Wimbledon history. As I played with my daughter in our yard, I stepped into the house to check the progress of the tennis match. I was rooting for Venus. My wife thought Venus had been eliminted in an earlier round. She was surprised to see her in the final!

After Davenport's first set win, I thought "Oh well. Better luck next time Venus!" Then as the second set progressed, and Venus began to turn up the heat, I got drawn back into the match. When she won the tie breaker to extend the match to a third set, I jumped up. Venus and Davenport are going to a third set! This was exciting!

There were some strange moments during this match. Davenport ranted to the umpire over a blown call (Davenport is typically silent during a match). Venus doing "shadow strokes" to warm up on the sideline, as Davenport received off-court medical attention for her back.

There were some incredible rallies, including a 25 stroke epic that ended with a Venus point, both competitors doubled over with exhaustion. There were spectacular passing shots. It was scintillating tennis for the spectator!

Venus somehow battled back from a Davenport championship point, but Davenport never gave up. I felt that it was anyone's match to win. But when Venus poured in the unanswered points after coming back from the jaws of defeat, I felt she could do it.

Venus beat Davenport, 4-6, 7-6, 9-7, and I was glad to have watched it!

He Changed the World

What I like about the story behind the invention of the integrated circuit (IC) is that Jack Kilby did it as a first-year employee at Texas Instruments (TI), during a two-week period in the Summer when most of the company took vacation. Since he was new at TI, he couldn't take vacation! Alone with his thoughts, pondering the impracticalness (physically and financially) of mass producing miniature circuits, he began to sketch out the ideas that led to the integrated circuit. When his boss, Willis Adcock, returned from vacation, he asked Jack to "prove it." So Jack built these early ICs. And a year later, TI announced that they had a "significant development."

Slowly, but surely, the entire world shifted with this development. Integrated circuits (better known as microchips) allowed all electronics to shrink dramatically. Nearly every miniature medical device uses an IC. They're inside virtually every electronic device. And microchips eventually led to general computers. (Robert Noyce, a co-founder of Intel, is credited with inventing the IC in parallel with Jack Kilby.)

Jack built the IC in 1958. He died two days ago at the age of 82.

Photo courtesy of Texas Instruments.

Go Daddy

Last Saturday, I took Mia to the park. Some boys were playing basketball, and while Mia went up and down the slide, I cast a look at those boys. All tough. Slam dunking the eight foot rim. I was a boy once, but sometimes it's so hard to remember. I used to spend whole days playing, pausing only to eat.

"Look at me!" Mia will yell. I'll turn to her. She's walking up the slide. Did I ever do that? Now she comes back down. Over and over again. My mind hovers between distraction and attentiveness.

"Let's run, Daddy!" And there she goes, running to the other slide, across the empty parking lot. "You'll never catch me, Daddy!" she shouts.

I slow jog after her, saying the lines that she knows I will say. "I will catch you, Mia!" She laughs and runs. I will catch you.