Miscellaneous October 17, 2024

Table of Contents

Patents

Patents For Which I Am Sole Inventor

A Team Patent

My Old Blog

For more than 20 years my blog was hosted by TypePad, and it’s still there, with many posts and comments from readers over the years. See https://garyrob.blogs.com/weblog/.

I wanted a better way to organize my personal information and noticed that I don’t post often enough to need TypePad’s post management features. And I also noticed that TypePad is no longer allowing new blogs to be made there, so I suspect it may stop serving them before too long. I wanted to move before it became an emergency.

And I’m a software guy, so I know how to use an open-source template to make a site and deploy it to a service like Netlify. That gives me complete control to do what I want with my own site rather than live within the constraints of a hand-holding service like TypePad (or an alterntive like WordPress).

My current blog only retains a few of my favorite old posts (and the ones most commonly reached through links of search). I didn’t feel a lot of need to retain the others, and in any case, they’re still available (at least for the time being) on the TypePad (blogs.com) site.

Just For Fun: Music

My All-Time Favorite Albums

I hope to find some time to write about each one, but for now I’ll just list them. Music is super-important to me, and I love talking about it with those who feel similarly. And I’m list-oriented. So, in no particular order…

  • The Beatles: Abbey Road
  • The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
  • The Beatles: Revolver
  • John Coltrane: Giant Steps
  • John Coltrane: A Love Supreme
  • Miles Davis: In A Silent Way
  • Miles Davis: Bitches Brew
  • Miles Davis: Kind Of Blue
  • Bob Dylan: New Morning
  • Bob Dylan: Bringing It All Back Home
  • Bob Dylan: Blood On The Tracks
  • Bob Dylan: Rough And Rowdy Ways
  • Leonard Cohen: Songs Of Leonard Cohen
  • Mahavishnu Orchestra with John McLaughlin: Inner Mounting Flame
  • John McLaughlin: Belo Horizonte
  • Shakti: Shakti With John McLaughlin
  • Rudolf Serkin: Beethoven: Piano Sonatas No. 29, Op. 106 “Hammerklavier” & No. 31, Op. 110

A Song Of Mine

My main hobby has always been writing music. Occasionally I write lyrics. I hope to put more things on this page over time, but for now, I’ll link to a song I wrote and recorded back in the 1980’s. At the time, I frequented a weekly Monday night songwriting workshop in NYC called Songwriter’s Exchange, at the Cornelia Street Cafe, where people like Suzanne Vega and Shawn Colvin introduced their early songs before they had recording contracts. It was a really great time; there was so much creativity and spirit. I miss those days!

I first played this song there (I can’t resist mentioning that Suzanne liked it!) and I was invited to record it for a Fast Folk album. I sang and played all the guitars, with help from the late, great Jack Hardy on keyboard and Mark Dann on bass.

Smithsonian Folkways took over the Fast Folk catalogue and has allowed YouTube to keep the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjng3UoKkGk