High Risk/High Reward: Stories from my Life in Technology

An exciting topic: Edge Computing, an emerging market. IoT, microcontrollers, and other digital or analog sensors that collect, preprocess, and deliver data to feed the multitudes of systems hungry for real world data. Explores the maker culture and gives props to leaders like Adafruit for thought and social leadership producing and promoting tools to create the next generation of product developers. Art, science, math, movement, and magic come together at the workstations of unconventional engineers who are understand more than just had to wrangle bits, but also to create performance art and purpose-built tools. Power management, alternative energy sources and low energy designs are being explored and mastered. A new generation of geeky artistic scientist/engineer/makers are preparing to let their presence be known. Inside these communities are wonderful virtues of tolerance, acceptance, love, peace and the sharing of knowledge.

Also covered are my typical rants and pleas around IoT and edge computing device security and privacy. I provide a really cute anecdote that connects a fledgling early prototype of the Jibo robot with none other than the Beatles (should be subtitled: tales from the Pool House).

I tried new recording techniques on vocal and musical content. All music/noise is my own except for 8 seconds or so of a rare Beatles song, and a background electric guitar/drums riff that sounds a tad like electrified Angie by the Stones. Opens with a few seconds of my new Taylor AD12e over a drumbeat, then goes into background levels and plays out a psychotic hour long electric guitar jam with some new audio equipment that explores many tones and textures. At the end is a select clip from that jam at foreground audio levels to play out the episode. As usual, the music is bizarre and includes some really good stuff and some misses. When I "stream of consciousness jam", I don't think. I just feel and play. Occasionally, failure to think can hurt. More often, it creates something interesting and oddly compelling (so says the writer/performer). Episode image is a portion of my office #2 where I do my hardware work just piled with components where I make edge computing devices--primarily artsy things.That desk is piled 4X high with active p

A new episode may March 17, 2021 with typical potpourri of inter-tangled subjects including software development, music, quantum physics, and dogs. At the end it includes a new song composed, performed, and produced within one hour same day. This is another electronica song built 100% from digital samples, loops, and synthesizers/software instruments. I make a provocative comment that I tease throughout the episode of why software and music are THE SAME THING. I connect the dots to this but still leave it somewhat as a thought experiment.

"Dogs are the best invention ever" is a comment I made to my partner Sue that day. I clarify that software and music are the same thing, but dogs, software and music are not all the same thing. I think if you listen to the episode and stick with it the full hour you should come away agreeing with my proclamation that "software and music are the same thing."

Image for this episode is just a picture of me at my desk taken by Mac's Photo Booth app this week. I like this picture because it replaced all the ridiculous pictures I was using a profile pics of me in a suit and tie. I happen to love to get dressed up and had two weddings (Sue's son Spencer and his wife Bri, and my daughter Jackie and her husband Drew). This new photo is a more accurate picture of what I typically look like. However, even in this pic I am a bit more dressed up than my typical Levis and rock and roll t-shirts.

I urge us all to do more "sciencing". We must search forever for more information and insight into our cosmic circumstance. I'm a little Mars crazed right now and highlight the rock formation referred to as "the harbor seal" as one of the amazing images coming in from the rover Percy.

Short, quick, loud, and sciency. Art, science, research, experiment, learn, strive to understand. Think. Ask.

Songs are both from Pandemic Richie and the Quarantined. Opener is End of Times (aka Closing of an Error), end sound is The Observer, my bizarre musical celebration of quantum physics. All is just saying: "Get out there and do some science(ing)."

A pure celebration of geekdom and nerd squads. As I said to my daughter just before recording this: "I'm like a super geekazoid, huh?" Her answer: "Yeah you are." Aha! Someone agrees with me! This episode stays in the technical domain. There's a lot to talk about in the world of computers and the components that enable them. We will be going from a discussion of Raspberry Pi to the Apple M1 creating a mighty hunger for some Apple Pie.

I received a parcel from across the pond today. It contained a Raspberry Pi Pico, the new $4 programmable microprocessor, arriving from the England. The Pi Pico intrigues me because I have already thought of some cool projects to use them for. One of the projects is a sweet Valentine's oriented couple's project: to merge my sweetie Sue's hobby (arts and crafts) with my geeky creations to create something interesting and fun. Now I just have to implement at least part of it by Valentine's day because I think this is a clever, unique, interesting way to bring our leisure hobbies together. How much more (super geek) romantic could something be? I am not joking about this either.

I had already been in the middle of several Raspberry Pi projects using Pi Zero W, several Pi 3bs, and a Pi 4/4GB RAM. The image for this episode shows some of the Pi boards, my soldering workstation, and peripheral components such as a hi quality camera, sound cards and synthesizers, a breadboard and other cool nerd toys. If you look closely, there's a yellow CD case from Symantec C++, a product I worked on while working at Symantec in the early 1990s. It's there as a reminder and behind it are some Jibo robots. I "stage" my work areas to always include something inspirational whether a book, product, picture, guitar, piece of some product from my 40 years as a maker, or pictures of puppies.

Many products are mentioned. None paid or asked for placement. This remains an non-monetized, unbiased, rant-oriented podcast series. But at the end I hint that one of the companies should consider sponsoring me in some way based on the plans I have to do business with them.

Music is just some pre-Super Bowl snippets from a 45 minute, high gain, loud, experimental jam. It was like driving a Mustang Cobra with 600 Horsepower on the verge of losing its grip on the pavement. This is why we love tubes. The responsiveness and added harmonic content is delicious and oh so satisfying. Apologies to Ms Sue. I played super duper loud pushing all 4 tubes in the recording chain to their limits and letting the Tele bridge pickup work it’s magic. Played on Liz The Firecracker (2020 Squier by Fender Affinity Tele with special upgrades) through Blackstar Studio 10 KT88 with new Genalex Gold Lion tubes for both the 12AX7 preamp and KT88 power amp. Another Gold Lion in the SM57’s signal chain pointed two inches off center of the Celestion, and an Electro Harmonix 12AX7 LPS in the Rode NT5 room mics signal chain. All tubes hand selected and modern Russian-made reissues of the classic British tubes.

Blah, blah, blah. My intros are longer than the episodes!

Partially a political rant, but some interesting technology advice and life enhancing practices. This is my longest to date. Rather than edit it down, I decided that even the tangental subjects all contributed to the message. It's a message of hope, a call for accountability, a sincere question how we break the political gridlock, sprinkled with life stories that somehow, in my head at least, relate.

Because of some of the political/social commentary, I think I swear at about 3X the usual amount. The content isn't dirty or otherwise inappropriate. I just had a case of potty mouth. Recorded into the wee hours of the morning. I did almost no processing on the audio. I clipped two loose recordings of a song I am working on acoustic guitar. The recording quality is fine and the acoustic sounds nice, but the performance of the song (which is really 2 sections for a 10 minute suite of songs, is not yet production quality. Nor is the song done. The actual title of the original piece is "Things We Can't Say" but I renamed the sections in light of the topics here. I had an insanely busy week and barely touched a guitar, keyboard, or microphone. That might explain the anger that seeps into this episode.

DJT fans may not enjoy this episode, unless they are the type who seek all points of view (if such a person exists). I even talk about hearing the same news story on ABC News followed by hearing it on Fox News while waiting for takeout Thai food.

January is the month of my daughter's wedding and for that reason it is always a month to remember. The title Formember is a mash up of forget/remember. Although her birthday is not much of a topic, I will share a lovely picture of her, her husband, my sweetheart Sue and I. I believe I mention how I fell for Sue at age 16 and the experience of meeting 22 years after our last in person meeting. What's a political rant without a little bit of classic romance?

A shorter form episode discussing my befuddling fascination with Raspberry Pi devices, the small single board computers and microcontrollers. Today I was smitten with the new Pi Pico. Joanne, my robot overlord, introduces the podcast and we close out with a brief jam called Fuzzmi (a combination of Fuzz and Jimi).

A very short and extra strange podcast. It features my first guest speaker. After a minute or two talking it goes directly into a song written especially for today January 20, 2021. The episode is called "The End of an Error" and the song is "End of Times". Rich had a little too much fun with geek toys. The podcast is spoken by a simply Python program using Joanne's voice, an AWS robotic voice, followed by a minute of the meat puppet before the synthesizers and 808 drum machines steal the show.

Never fear brave rockers. I have not abandoned neither my distorted maniacal guitar tones nor foregone the docile sounds of the acoustic. I was just feeling a tad discordant and wanted to make something nasty. The song fails at nasty and ends up with an uplifting lilt. I am still displaying the nervous tick from the extreme time signature tight rope I walked. Listen to the way the little riff slides in twice before disappearing into the half nothingland. My goal when writing the piece was to take all the rules of music composition I knew and toss them out the window. The song groves with a pure and perfect inner metronome bearing no resemblance to other devices of its ilk. For some reason I really like the tune. Warning: may cause you to convulse for the duration of the piece. Recorded entirely using Akai MPK Mini and assorted software instruments under a jazz shuffle played on electronic drums.

A short episode to kick off 2021. Subjects include luck and what I found simply by looking down.

The image for this episode shows examples of quartz including a piece with two garnets found right here in my yard.

There's a track at the end that I call "Cruel Year Blues (rough mix)". It's the Telecaster known as "Liz the Firecracker" solo through several warm tube amps over a rock drum beat recorded New Year's Eve (Dec 31, 2020). The beginning has a solo acoustic snippet from the song "The Art of Harmonic Negotiation" from about a minute and twenty seconds into the song (full version on SoundCloud at https://soundcloud.com/rich-sadowsky-468824781/the-art-of-harmonious-negotiation). The SoundCloud track includes an explanation of the title. Here we use just a few seconds. The full song is rather interesting and well recording.

All recordings done between Dec 31, 2020 and Jan 2, 2021 with final production, editing and publishing done on Jan 3, 2021. All tracks and voice recorded in Sturbridge, MA. You might notice how loud and full voice for podcast is. Used some new recording techniques and mastering tools. Also as is my practice there are two microphones into different tube preamps and each is hard panned to one channel. This creates a fuller, more interesting tone.

Please note: in the voice portion of podcast I mention guitar parts inspired by John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. However, the clip I included did not sample that portion of the song. So you might not hear any influence there. The end clip is inspired by the classic Booker T and the MGs song Green Onions raised to the G key with some modern fuzz and tube saturation added.

Some strong statements about software development and choosing it as a lifestyle. It's all good fun until someone squelches your creativity. Or stuffs you in box with too many walls and obstructions. You've probably done this to someone yourself. We all do. But we shouldn't. There's a real cost to the lost innovation. The grind yields 1X of the capacity of a team. A disruptive creation could be a game changer. Not just could be, it is likely to be. People innovate and solve for their biggest absorbed pain, or for the customers, or their coworkers. Give me a 1X return with 0% breakthrough bet and I'll pass. Give me a 90% grind output plus 10% chaos theory running amok, any day. You won't beat 1X return every roll of the dice, but imagine the outcome of it coming up once every 3.5 rolls on average or even every 6. In a year you can blow the lid off the norm. IMO you have to do this. Because the grind never wins. Anyone can do it. And the human cost is toxic and counter-productive. Vote a little chaos in 2021 to experience some growth.

There's a strange snippet of a protest song called "Depleted Optimism". It's about how we take people, get them excited, and then stuff them unceremoniously in a box that all but assures low quality results. It's a really rampant problem. I have some ideas on how to solve it.

Later we visit a new song and an old song both written by Dennis DeYoung, formerly of Styx. One is Dennis' hard hitting "With All Due Respect", also a protest song, that rages at the media (and more--the top of the food chain). This is probably Dennis' greatest rock song ever. Performed and video made through the pandemic with home made video. Long live rock and roll. I utilize "Fair Use" doctrine to sample a very short segment just to make you hip to the song and go consume it fully and legally on youtube. Legality ends there when I play one of my favorite songs to play/sing on acoustic guitar, and one of my all around favorite songs: Suite Madame Blue. Not Dennis. Me. But a different take and only one minute long. Takes you from a room into a cavern as it builds from the farce about the song being about a woman and lets loose on the true subject: America.

The overall audio quality is good. I have been building new signal chains, mastering techniques, getting better equipment and using Apple Logic Pro to produce. Rode NT5 AND Shure SM57 used on all takes on guitar and vocals. Both ran through high quality Russian-made 12AX7 preamp tubes (a Genalex Gold Lion and Electro Harmonix 12AX7s). Acoustic Seagull Maritime SWS Mahogany HG. Three tracks vocals achieving space effect and double track reinforcement. Also used a little audio crack (addictive little tricks) to make every sound exciting and happening.

The image in this episode is in lieu of a magazine cover. I need to get good photos of the magazine covers I've had with tech articles. This is the last version of a product I co-created originally with an early toolkit of asynchronous networking, telecom, serial, networking stacks and other essential tools to communicate in real time with clients and servers alike while at Turbo Power Software. The connection will unravel in the episode (or will it?).

The songs "Society for the Free Mind" (not in the episode) and the full "Depleted Optimism" are on SoundClould in Pandemic Richie and the Quarantined Profile. https://soundcloud.com/rich-sadowsky-468824781/society-for-the-free-mind

Labeled (take 2) because I pulled an earlier version that I decided was not the right message. After producing this episode I had technical difficulties uploading the Apple Lossless Encoded version. Typically that works fine. Too big for a wav, so I tried high def AAC. Bingo! Success. More proof of the importance of experimentation.

A long podcast catching you up on many topics including my unemployment, job seeking strategy, learnings, and the joy and challenges of watching your daughter get married in a beautiful ceremony despite the difficult times we live in. There might be some political ramblings in there.

A little rock guitar before and after the talking/ranting. The song at the end is clipped out of newly written "Virtually Impossible Reality". If you choose to interpret that title as the occupant of the White House's frame of mind I can't stop you.