Meeting Steve Klein

It's my wife Julee's spring break.  My spring break lasts for three months (followed by my summer break, fall break, etc.), so she gets to pick where we go. Yes, retirement rocks!

We came to Windsor, CA - one of Julee's favorite locales.  Whenever I go someplace, I start looking for guitar makers and vintage guitar shops.  While she went shopping in Petaluma, I visited Tall Toad Music  - arguably the coolest vintage guitar store in Northern California.  I had the awesome chance to see a 1918 Martin, fully restored.  And I got to play a 1942 Gibson L5, complete with the Varitone "top crusher".  (The Varitone is basically a barrel of brass hidden under the tailstock, which can be adjusted up and down by turning a screw to exert more or less pressure on the top of the guitar - resulting, more often than not, in some not-so-skilled guitar tech cranking down on this thing hard enough to crack the top of the guitar.  This thing never did much at all for the tone of the L5, but it has resulted in making pristine guitars extremely collectible.)

Unfortunately, the 1963 Epiphone Texan I was secretly hoping was still there (and seriously discounted) from my last visit was gone.  The owner said he knew where it was, though, and could connect me if I was really interested.  And the $8000 Les Paul Custom in a sweet deep blue stayed in the shop when I left.  Hmmm....

Julee wanted to see some consignment stores in Sonoma.  I figured that as the perfect opportunity to hunt down Steve Klein's shop.  Yes - Steve Klein, of Jerry Garcia / Joe Walsh / Leo Kottke / Joni Mitchell / most of my favorite artists have a Klein guitar fame.  Thus began an epic hunt that even Julee got into.  All I knew was he had a shop in Sonoma.  I found a newspaper article that said his shop was on Eighth Street East and it was a really cool place to visit.  So we found Eighth Street East, and rolled through every industrial building we came across.  Nothing.  We asked a guy in a cabinet shop.  He'd never heard of Steve Klein.  Julee found a consignment store.  After a quick round through the store (and finding no vintage woodworking tools) I stood near the register looking for more info about Steve's shop.  The owner of the shop asked me where I was from, and I told her.  She asked me what we were doing in Sonoma, and I said we were vacationing in Windsor, and I was trying to find this guitar maker named Steve Klein.  She started Googling and found a newspaper article about him.  It turns out she knows the author of the article, so she texted him.  He couldn't remember the address but remembered it was near the airport and he had gotten lost trying to find the shop.

Off we went to search around the airport.  After driving around a bunch of industrial buildings, several alleyways, and a couple side streets, we drove by a mechanic's shop.  Julee decided she'd ask them if they knew of Steve Klein.  I told her that if a cabinet maker didn't know Klein, the chances of a mechanic knowing him were pretty slim.  She jumped out of the car and asked one of the guys in the shop.  It turns out he did know Steve and knew exactly where his shop was.  Off we went, but even with the specific directions, Steve's shop is not easy to find.  Ultimately, Julee spied a small sign:

On the other side of the fence was a small shop in the back corner of a courtyard.  

We found Steve finishing up a sandwich, but he was extremely gracious and agreed to show me around his shop.  Fifty years of guitar building, people know things.  And Steve definitely knows things.  Things only a luthier (or someone pretending to be a luthier) would appreciate.  This doesn't happen often - but I was so enthralled with his jigs and machines, and so engaged with talking to him about his builds and techniques that I forgot to take pictures of things.  Like the special fret saw he designed to precisely cut the fret slots on his fingerboards - first used on a guitar he built for Jerry Garcia back in the '70s.  Or the special jig he uses to put the correct radius on his necks, which he then presses the fingerboards onto with a custom made press that uses spring steel, a heating blanket, and a bunch of downward pressure to laminate the fingerboards to the neck.  This is such a unique approach - but the cool design feature is that unlike most fingerboards, which are narrower in the center than they are at the edges, Steve's fingerboards are the same thickness throughout.  His feeling is that the transference of energy from the strings is better with this approach.  (All I can say is his guitars sound beautiful!).

Steve showed me several of his guitars, both electric and acoustic.  He showed me how he builds his necks, how he braces his guitars - absolutely nothing like anything I've seen (there are some pictures of his bracing in a Japanese guitar player magazine he showed me), how he designs his bridges, some incredible inlay work based on Fibonacci's series, and he showed me the most unique nut and headstock transition I've ever seen:

His guitars are incredible - and I want one.  Actually, I want two, because his electric guitars are just as incredible as his acoustics.

Hey Joe Walsh - if you're reading this, I saw your new guitar, and it's incredible!  I volunteered to deliver it to Joe, but Steve said no, he'd prefer to do it himself.  Go figure!

I could have spent the entire day haranguing Steve with questions about building guitars.  But Julee, ever more perceptive than me, picked up that Steve had a whole shipment of guitars to get ready before the end of the day to send off to Japan.  So she made me leave.

Steve Klein is a legend for a reason - he's forgotten more about guitar building than I'll ever know.  But he was gracious, open, and a real joy to meet and talk to.  And it was a great honor to have the chance to visit his shop.

 

The Scamp Gets a Heater

It's winter, and there are Scamp trips on the horizon.  Which means it's going to be cold.  Last time I slept in the Scamp in the cold was a few years ago in Flagstaff, AZ, when I spent a long weekend in the snow and sleet during the Overland Expo.  We had a small, Mr. Heater catalytic heater that ran on propane, and it actually kept the trailer nice and toasty.  Problem is, when propane combusts the by-products are carbon dioxide and water vapor.  It's the water vapor that is the problem - it condensed on every surface in the trailer, and pretty much everything was soaked by the time we left.

Not wanting to relive that experience, I hit the internet and found the Propex HS2000 heater.  The cool thing about this unit is the air for combustion is piped in from the outside of the trailer and the exhaust is routed outside the trailer so there won't be any water vapor to form condensation on the inside surfaces.  Air from inside the trailer is pushed by a fan across the heat exchanger and blown back out.  And it's all controlled by a thermostat.

We had an Atwood furnace that used a similar process in our pop-up trailer when the kids were young, and it worked great - except when it kicked on it sounded like a jetliner during takeoff.  I was a little worried about noise, but the Propex is very quiet.  There's a soft sound of blowing air when the heater is on, but that's about it.

This heater is manufactured in England, basically for vans and it's very popular here in the states in VW Westfalia builds, where it directly replaces the gas heater that these vehicles generally come with.

Basic installation is straightforward, especially after looking at how Isabelle and Antoine (foroutride.com) did theirs.  Installing it in the Scamp took a bit of thought and adapting.  The best location for the heater is inside the starboard side settee, but that's also where the water tank is located, so I built a bracket that would allow me to mount it on its side ( you can mount it on its side, but you can't mount it vertically).

Here's a better view of the bracket:

The intake and exhaust pipes are routed through the floor.  I was a bit concerned about the heat from the exhaust pipe causing problems with the plywood floor. An email to Isabelle and Antoine allayed my concerns, and after using some red Permatex sealer to keep the pipe insulated from the plywood, everything works great.  I may wrap the exhaust pipe with some hi-temp insulation in the future if it turns out that it's creating excess heat under the seat.  We'll see how it works.

With the seat back in place, things look quite good.  Testing the heater, it works really well - things heat up quickly inside the trailer, and the noise level isn't anything significant.

The thermostat mounts up higher - I placed it on the wall of the large closet.

All in all, this install came out really clean, and ultimately didn't take up any significant storage space.  Placing the heater next to the water tank just used up some space that was otherwise unusable.  Routing the heater duct to the bottom of the settee leaves the top open for a drawer (coming soon).  The Scamper is now a fully functional, all-weather, all-terrain base camp!

Moving Up In The World Of Sleep

For years, when heading off-road on an adventure, I slept in a tent.  Good tents - really good tents.  Storm proof, I could climb Everest sorts of tents.  I've used this one, my trusty North Face VE-25, for the past 8 years or so.

The problem with a tent is that pitching it requires a location that is flat and level.  Flat, meaning no big rocks, sticks, etc. can be a challenge in many locations.  Level is almost always a challenge.  Flat and level has, often, been impossible, meaning your night is spent sliding to one side with a tent.  Maybe at age 63 I'm getting old and soft, but it seems as though finding a spot that is flat and clear is getting harder and harder.  Or, maybe it's because I'm venturing farther into the backcountry.  Whatever the reason, I made the decision to go with a rooftop tent.  And it's been a great decision.  I can easily level the FJ with rocks, boards, or the plastic leveling kit I bought from Walmart.  I can also park almost anywhere - no need to find that piece of flat, clear ground for the tent, which means I can position the FJ for optimal view lines!

After spending a good amount of time researching various brands, I bought a Freespirit High Country series.  It's lighter than most other tents, very well made, and it's a four-season tent, with a soft internal lining to prevent condensation.  Setting it up is a breeze - pull on the ladder and the entire tent unfolds and it's erected.  Extend the awning, and you're done - about 2 minutes!  These tents are sold by Freespirit in Bend, Oregon.  On a trip through Bend, I stopped at the shop and they helped me install it on the FJ:

Adding the rooftop tent has been a game changer - I'm more comfortable, more flexible in my choice of campsites, and being up high, the view is awesome.  In a tent, your view is typically to the next bush - in a rooftop tent, your view is typically to the horizon!

eBooks - or not.

I've long been an advocate of e-Books.  I've pushed for us to adopt them in my district.  As an avid reader, I've dropped serious coin on books most of my life - I've got hundreds of them on shelves at home, and a couple hundred more from Kindle or the Apple Store (mostly Kindle, but I don't have a rational reason for why), and contrary to @anotherschwab's belief, I've read them all!

I've often said that books have their place.  But now I'm rethinking that.  Some.

I've bought enough eBooks to actually pay for a Kindle reader and an iPad, using the differential between the cost of an electronic copy of a book over the cost of the same book in paperback or hardback to make the calculation.  Yeah, I know - I don't actually own the book electronically, I just have a license to read the thing on my device - I can't really share it, give it away, or sell it back to a used book store.  In the end I don't care - having a hundred good books on a tablet, being able to port that wherever I go, and jump into a book (any book) whenever I want is, well, really cool.  And since I generally read multiple books at a time, it's also really convenient.

It's also convenient to know I have access to all those books on all of my devices.  Sitting in a meeting, pulling up something as a reference, and being able to search for that specific passage in that specific book is huge.  You can't do that with a book - unless you're meeting in a really good library!

The vision of empowering kids with this same vision - having all of their books on demand on a mobile device - is compelling to me.  Watching kids lug home a backpack full of textbooks is painful. Buying two copies of each textbook so they don't have to do that is unreasonable.  Let's quit killing trees, I say!

Last week I had the chance to visit an 8th grade class at a rural school I work with in northern California.  Every student there has a mobile device (a laptop), and teachers are becoming better and better at integrating them into their classrooms.  This particular 8th grade class was reading Frankenstein.  What I noticed when I visited was that some of the kids were reading on their netbooks, and some were reading a book - the teacher had given them the choice.  I just had to know what the kids thought about this - so I asked them. What I learned was interesting.

The vast majority of kids preferred reading a physical book over the same book (literally identical - everything is the same online as in the physical book) on their computer.  Their reasons were compelling.  I anticipated some nostalgic, emotional attachment to the feel, smell, and comfort of an actual book (I hear that a lot, mostly from adults).  But that wasn't their reasoning.

A number of kids said when they read online, they felt eye strain.  Some complained of getting headaches.  Many said the experience detracted from following the story - using the cursor to click an arrow and wait for the next page disrupted the flow of the story, and they didn't enjoy it as much.  Likewise, the clicking and waiting made it cumbersome to flip back a page or two to re-read a passage when they missed an element that became important to the story.  Some students worried about the effects of "blue light" and "radiation" - and I asked them to research that and see if these issues are true on modern led displays - I'm still waiting for their findings.

Now, these kids were reading from a netbook.  A good one (Acer B113), with a good screen.  But a netbook nevertheless.  And I'm not sure, if they had an eReader or a tablet that they would find the experience as detracting - I'm still leaning towards the contention that the experience is superior on a tablet to an actual book, but it appears these kids would disagree.  Some actually own Nooks, tablets, and Kindles - and they still say they prefer a book.

But the other thing that a number of kids mentioned, I wasn't anticipating.  They spend all day, every day, on their devices, using them for their assignments and schoolwork, for communicating and social networking, and for the myriad other things we do with them - making a phone call, for example.  Sometimes, they say, it's just nice to unplug and read an old-fashioned book!

As school leaders, we should take pause and listen to the kids.  Taking away their books, at least completely, may not be all that wise a decision.  Or, at least, we should be very careful about the device and the manner in which we migrate away from physical books.  After talking with the students at Grenada, I'm convinced that laptops are not a good replacement for a book.  I'm still holding out that tablets can be a viable alternative - but now, before I'd advocate that, I'd pilot it with some students.  And get their take.  Which brings up another thought - the devices themselves.  There's not a single device that meets all their needs.  I'm now thinking kids need both a laptop and a tablet (or eReader).  But that's an expensive proposition, and a thought for another post.

Will Richardson got me thinking.  Again.  How much of what we do in education is based on focusing on the needs of kids?  In a recent iteration of Will's Educating Modern Learners, he shared a couple articles related to thinking about the future of work.  Reality check - whatever we're doing in education, our kids' futures will involve employment - everyone's gotta make a livin'.  If, as educators, we're about preparing our students for the future, then we're ultimately, at least in part, preparing them to be competitive in the employment arena.  Competitive - because nobody ever interviewed for a job when they were the only candidate.  (Well, except for uncle Guido's nephew for that job at the concrete factory).  to be competitive, students need to be fully enabled learners.  And the "other part", our students' personal lives outside of work, that place where hobbies and interests and passions reside for purely personal reasons?  That involves learning as well.


We can't predict what each of our students will do in their adult life.  We can't know all of their passions, interests, and future opportunities.  Because of that, paraphrasing Seymour Papert, we might quibble over the billionth of all the information in the world that we feel is essential for our kids to know from school, or ultimately compile a list of all the questions we want to believe they might need to be able to recite a correct answer.  But we will most certainly miss things that many of them will need in their futures.  We can, however, anticipate that they will have to learn new skills, new concepts, and new ways of doing things in whatever they do.  And the better we prepare them to be learners, to be able to assimilate information and develop knowledge in unfamiliar situations, the better we help them develop into experts at becoming experts, then the better off our students will be.

Kids and Ninja Warriors

A few weeks ago, I shared a YouTube video with my wife Julee (first grade teacher).  The video showed a young kid running through a "Ninja Warrior" style obstacle course in her backyard.  Julee thought this would be fun for her students, and as we talked about it, she thought, "What better way to teach kids about some math?"  She came up with a bunch of concepts - the idea of time (how long is a minute), greater than, less than....  I suggested some ideas about data collection, and the project was on.  She designed an obstacle course around the school playground, I built a balance beam, and we set the thing up just before school.

Almost immediately, kids started asking questions.  "What's going on?"  "What's this?"  "Can I play?"  I only answered the last question.  "Sure - but don't hang on the hula hoop - you can just jump through it."  One student asked, "What do we do?"  Another answered immediately "It's an obstacle course!"  In no time at all, the students organized, figured out a path (it wasn't the path we'd designed), and they were off and running.

While watching them play, try out the obstacles, and invent ways to use the stuff we'd laid out along with the playground equipment, I was reminded about the nature of play.  We don't let kids do it much.  And they love it.  No prompting, no rules, no feedback from me or any adults, they were able to figure out a way to put into their play, in an organized fashion, all this new stuff (cones, hoops, balance beam, a few ropes, a hula hoop) that just showed up.  

When Julee brought her students out to actually run the course, it was the same thing - they had a blast, and they all cheered for each other, took data on how everyone ran through the course, and before we could prompt them for anything, were already at work analyzing the data and making some conclusions.

Kids from Julee's teaching partner's class also came out, and they made signs to cheer on those running the course.  No prompting, no cajoling, just kids getting a chance to move, think, be creative, learn some things, and have fun.

Isn't that what school is all about?

And now, the iPad Pro

I bought an iPad Pro.  Yeah, I know.... but there was something in the back of my head that said this just might be the one.  That being said, it comes on the heals of trying to come to grips with the Surface Pro 3, with it's funky Windows 10 interface, the constant querying about whether I wanted to be in tablet mode or laptop mode, the sucky keyboard...  A couple years ago I missed using a stylus so much I bought a Wacom tablet - which was OK if I didn't mind packing a big piece of plastic around that connected to the computer with a USB cable.  Not what I'd call mobile.

Ever since I fell in love with a stylus on a laptop, back in the Dell Latitude XT days, it's been really hard for me to give up on the idea that using a stylus on a computer wasn't just the best of both worlds.  If I can sketch, annotate, and even write with a pen, then turn around and type, search, and view web pages with a keyboard, I'm a seriously happy camper.  And keeping notes in Evernote or OneNote (that one piece of software that Microsoft got right) is absolutely the best thing ever.  When the XT died, OneNote did too.  Using OneNote without a stylus, on a Windows machine, was not cool. Hence, Evernote, because it works on all platforms - a true cloud-based app.  When OneNote took that big step and started working across platforms, I went back to it, because I really like the feel and layout better.  Even on the Surface, using OneNote rocks. Nothing against Evernote - it, too, is awesome, and in Chrome, using Clearly (well, Clearly is gone - strike two against Evernote), there's a struggle in me for which one to use.  I'm working on it.  I have three years of work notes in Evernote, and one year in OneNote.   This isn't the best organizational arrangement, and I'll have to port one over to the other at some point, but learning is playing, right?

I've had the iPad Pro for a few weeks.  Without the pencil - it was backordered.  I just received it today, so naturally my productivity took a dive - unless I can call this evaluation (which is, happily, part of my job description).  Without the pencil, the Pro is just a big iPad.  And big isn't necessarily a good thing, except when I couple it with a keyboard.  (I bought the Logitech keyboard, which is infinitely better in every respect over the Apple keyboard, which is about as bad a typing experience as the Surface Pro 3.  Memo to Apple - what are you guys thinking?).

Using the keyboard, the iPad can almost replace my Macbook.  Combining the tactile experience of the tablet with a nice keyboard grows on you.  I've been a fan since I got my Acer P720 Touch Chromebook - scrolling and selecting via touch is, for me, better than using the trackpad.  That being said, highlighting is not.

The pencil, though,  Oh, the pencil!  With the Apple Pencil, it's game on.  It's the closest thing I've played with yet to a, well, pencil.  The harder you press, the darker / bigger the line.  You can shade, you can draw, you can write.  You can, to a point, control the device.  Although I've been using it for just a couple hours now, it's like the old Dell XT days - OneNote once again rocks (sort of...come on, MIcrosoft - get all the features cross-platform!), and I'm back in love with the experience of mixing a keyboard and a stylus in one environment.  Evernote, too, is a better experience.  Ultimately, the OneNote / Evernote issue will be settled by which one does a better job converting my handwriting to text.   There are other apps like Paper and LiquidText and uMake, and TouchCast and Astropad that are just plain awesome.  These apps (there are tons more, but these are the ones I've played with so far) turn the iPad Pro into a true productivity machine, primarily because of how they integrate with the Apple Pencil.  They make all the difference in the world with designing, outlining, brainstorming, and talking with folks and taking notes without having a big screen between you and them.  There's a learning curve with the pencil, to be sure.  But it's not a steep or long curve, and once you get the hang of it, the iPad may just become my go-to device for everything but photo and video editing, and other higher power applications.

It's not all ideal, however.  There's still this weird split personality thing with this iPad - is it a tablet or a laptop?  Using it as a tablet, with the keyboard wrapped underneath, it is clunky.  Clunky because this thing is big - darn near as big as my Macbook.  Which makes handling it less than optimal.  For reading, I'll still reach for the iPad Mini because I can hold it in one hand.  For watching videos or browsing the web or typing, though, this thing is pretty awesome.  Instagram on this thing is a whole new experience (I'm a hugh Jimmy Chin fan...)  Did I mention the display?  Better than my Mac Retina Display.  'Nuff said.

All in all, this is more laptop than tablet, even when you want it to be a tablet.  You're going to set this on a table, or balance it on your lap - you're not going to hold this in one hand and manipulate it with the other.  You're not going to carry this around the classroom to showcase student work over an AppleTV link.  You're not going to make videos with it.  It's just too big.

All said, I'm glad I bought this thing, but I say that as a laptop guy, not a tablet guy.  As a die-hard stylus advocate, it's the best thing going - better than the Surface 3 or 4, far better than the old iPad stylus, better than the Wacom tablet world, and far better than the old, old Dell XT.  If you're not into the myriad things you can do with a stylus, this might not be the device for you, but if you've had the need to combine the sorts of things we did with a pen and paper with the power of a laptop and keyboard, this thing rocks.