Roller Derby

JWise Photo of the Day

Roller Derby babe Hate'cha Face from the Schoolyard Scrappers out of Phoenix, Arizona

The first match of the season for the Arizona Derby Dames was held tonight at the Arizona Veterans Coliseum in Phoenix and we were there for all the action. We’d never been to roller derby, a matter of fact, Caroline had not even seen it on TV. With VIP tickets we took our seats not far from the girls’ new banked track that was promised to deliver faster skating and way more fun than last year’s flat track play. We weren’t disappointed but deciding if I should watch more of the derby or of the audience was at times a difficult choice. As pierced and tattooed as the teams are, their audience ranges from the young and old to the screaming enthusiasts, moms, dads, and their kids, to nerds, Asians, blacks, whites, and Hispanics and all those young men infatuated with their favorite skater such as this derby dame from the team Schoolyard Scrappers, Hate’cha Face.

Killer Rainbow

JWise Photo of the Day

Double rainbow as seen from the parking lot of Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix, Arizona

Yesterday saw some heavy rains, even a small bit of hail. While this double rainbow should have been a highlight, it in fact turned out to harbor evil leprechauns with a pot of nasty electronics. After pulling over to grab this photo and admire the refracted sunlight in the rain to the east, we left the parking lot of our local community college, and not 100 feet down the road it felt like we ran over an old coyote. We even turned around to look for something on the road, well in slowing down and turning around I figured out what happened – our transmission was broken by those leprechauns that moments before were darting in and out of the rainbow. Our car was stuck in 3rd gear which made for some slow acceleration from a stop. Over the next week, I heard all methods and diagnoses of how my transmission was going to put back together again. Twelve garages offered twelve different solutions ranging in price from expensive to painfully expensive. Turns out that the last person I wanted to trust, my dealer, correctly identified the problem and quickly fixed the tranny by replacing a malfunctioning computer unit, that was covered by our warranty. So maybe the clouds did hold a silver lining and the pot of gold wasn’t so far out of reach.

Surrender, Dorothy!

JWise Photo of the Day

Caroline Wise learning to setup and weave on a Dorothy loom

Knitting, spinning fiber into yarn, dyeing wool and cotton, drop spindle yarn, charkha, inkle loom, Navajo loom, tapestry loom, hand-knit socks, carding fiber, I suppose it was only a matter of time before Caroline took an interest in yet another fiber art, this time it would be the more traditional weaving loom. A private lesson with Bernie Goodrich out in Apache Junction, Arizona was scheduled and early today we drove out for Caroline to learn how to dress a Dorothy 8-shaft loom followed by a weaving lesson. Bernie has quite a few years of experience and was more than happy to share her knowledge with my wife. I learned long ago not to turn away from the opportunity to see how something I may know little about works. How many of us take for granted that our machine-woven Chinese underwear is using the same basic weaving technique that has been used for thousands of years? The guild Bernie belongs to rented the loom to Caroline for the next two months, I’m looking forward to my hand-woven wool boxers that should be done in time for summer.

The Farm Video

JWise Photo of the Day

Less than two weeks ago I semi-retired my old Canon Rebel XSI with an upgrade to the new T2i that shoots 1080p digital video. Yesterday I went out to Tonopah Rob’s Vegetable Farm and started recording the flowers, bees, turkeys, chickens, the windmill, and a little bit of anything else that looked kind of interesting. After about four hours of unscripted shooting, I left for home and transferred the footage to my hard drive, and start importing it into Adobe Premiere. Don’t do something for 15 years and you are sure to get rusty and more certain than that, the software you may have once known to some degree has probably undergone some radical changes. I struggled some, watched more than a few tutorials on YouTube about editing video with Premiere, and by midnight I had a rough cut. Looking at my cut footage this morning there was some obvious need for further massaging of the video. But by the middle of the day, I felt that this was the best I was going to do after introducing myself to Hi-Def video and reacquainting myself with editing and so less than 36 hours after I embarked on this experiment, I am done. Here is the result with music by Joe Hisaishi.