2026-07-11 21:00:00
I've lately ended up calling a bunch of parties and I've been happy with calling mostly longways whole-set dances. These are ones that are shaped like a contra dance in terms of having two lines facing each other, each person across from their partner, but your role doesn't matter and you're not grouped into hands-fours ("minor sets"). I want to be able to teach it in a single fast-paced walkthrough, match it tightly to the musical phrase, and be able to drop out after a few times through. This means I need most of the figures to be very simple, and a low piece count.
On the other hand, if I build every dance out of the same small number of building blocks (ex: reshuffles of Galopede), dancers will start to feel "haven't we done this one before"? So I also like dances that have a "hook": an interesting figure that we don't do in the other dances. Some examples:
Other hooks I like include lines weaving between arches and the whole set casting to the bottom ("peel the banana").
I was looking for more dances like this, especially ones that fit in small spaces (no down the hall) and aren't too picky about the number of couples (5 - 8). I asked the Trad Callers mailing list for ideas, and got back a bunch. After looking through them I added two to my repertoire:
Of the ones I didn't add, I think the zig-zag poussette figure in Wee Willie II would be fun to adapt, but the dance as written takes more space than I often have. I'll probably look for another dance with that figure (or write one).
I also saved two simple duple minors where roles don't matter, for when the crowd is ready for something slightly more complex:
2026-07-10 21:00:00
In 1992 Tony Parkes, one of the best-known New England contra dance callers, wrote a book: Contra Dance Calling: a Basic Text. In 2010 he published an updated second edition. I found used copies of each and read through them, interested in both what he thought, and what he thought to change.
I read the whole 1992 first edition, then skimmed the 2010 second edition with the older one open at the same time, looking for changes. My notes:
I'm mostly interested in it for what it tells us about the community and practice over time, but as what it intends to be—a thorough introduction to the practice of contra dance calling—it succeeds very well.
I'm sad I didn't read it a few years earlier so I could ask him questions about it!
Parkes' tempos are high: "[120bpm] is the tempo adopted by the army for comfortable long-term marching, and it has been standard in contra dancing for several generations. The tempo can be varied during an evening, to provide contrasts in energy or excitement level, but should probably not be altered by more than about eight beats per minute either way (down to 112 or up to 128)." Parkes was a piano player in addition to a caller, very into musical theater, and knew what he was talking about, so I would take his numbers literally.
I usually tell people (ex) 108-122, and I expect if I played even 126 today I'd have some people pretty grumpy with me. I know several bands that like to hang out at 110, and I've had folks tell me never to play over 120bpm. I don't know if this represents a change over the years (though he keeps the same numbers in the 2010 edition) or was somewhat idiosyncratic all along?
Parkes preferred dances on the longer end: "My feeling is that ten minutes is about right for experienced dancers. For beginners or people beyond retirement age, you may want to reduce your sets to five or six minutes. Most square and contra dance records run between three and four minutes; if you're calling contras to recorded music, you can play a record twice or use two different records for each dance. Traditionally, contras were danced "all the way down and all the way back"; that is, until the original head couple had worked their way to the foot of the line and then up to the head again. This was necessary to ensure everyone received an equal amount of dancing, because prior to the 1950s, most contra routines resulted in at least half the couples standing still for significant portions of the time" I think of 8-9 minutes as typical. This does feed into a theory of mine that part of what contra dance kept live music might have been that recordings (and 45s) were too short for everyone to get a turn to be actives.
Parkes doesn't describe a "four potato" start: "Most bands prefer to start each number with a four-beat introduction. This typically takes one of two forms: a shuffle on the fiddle ('dah-didi-dah-didi-dah-didi-dah') or a piano vamp consisting of four 'oom-pahs'." I think of this as something that had mostly ended by 1992 in favor of four potatoes, though he did keep this in the 2010 revision.
He has a bit on recordings vs live music:
Someone once said "Good records are better than a bad band." This is a half-truth at best. The finest records available, chosen with care to fit each dance and played through a top-quality sound system, are better in some ways than an unsteady or indifferent band. Some, but not all. With even the worst live band there is still that sense of immediacy that no record can match.Even so, recorded music can be a lifesaver in certain situations. A dance group newly formed, in an area where no one seems to know any dance musicians, will rejoice in the availability of good square and contra dance music on records and tapes. Some groups, such as small churches and parent-teacher organizations, that would love to try square dancing but whose budgets genuinely will not allow for live music, may have to hire a caller with records or forgo the activity altogether. Often such groups enjoy their initial taste of dancing so much that they hire the same caller again, this time with a live band!
The key to using records successfully is to take advantage of their strong points. I hesitate to term them "advantages," but recorded music does have certain strengths:...
I'd describe this as overall in favor of live music, but in a way that's more "pragmatic" than "principled".
Here's another bit that's pragmatic, and with building up beginner musicians to play for dancing as a clear goal:
The talent of the musicians you find will range from outstanding to minimal. If everyone you find seems to be at one extreme or the other, don't panic. Expert instrumentalists may welcome a steady local job. If you hold your series on a weeknight, you may be able to hire top-drawer talent for less money than they'd ask for a Saturday concert. Beginning or casual musicians, on the other hand, may be happy to play for the experience and exposure (and a little gas money). Even total beginners may be an asset to your dance: they can play for one or two numbers in an evening while you use recorded music for the rest, and work their way up to a full evening.
Comparing the two editions, the most common changes are technological: "recordings" instead of "records" or "tapes", updated listings of recommended sound equipment manufacturers. The 2010 edition predates the gypsy discourse and the mainstream shift to gender-free calling, but it does add discussion of the early days of this shift and calling gender-free for LGBT groups:
This leads to the third approach, inventing new names for the sex roles. In the past twenty years or so, this has become the prevailing method of dealing with the issue. Many different names have been tried: A few leaders have used "ones" and "twos" (in squares and contras, of course, those terms have other meanings). More common are names like "reds" and "blues," "lions" and "tigers," and "moons" and "stars." With such neutral names, it can be a challenge to remember which name refers to which role. To the dancers, it doesn't matter, but the caller must keep track of who is on the right side in each couple, and of who must do what in an adapted traditional routine. My wife Beth often uses "birdie" for "lady" and "crow" for "gent," from the traditional square dance Birdie in the Cage. This has two advantages: it's easy for the caller to remember which role is which, and the new names have the same number of syllables as the old ones and can be readily substituted when calling in rhythm.In addition to new names, dancers can be distinguished by articles of clothing such as armbands, vests, or loose cloth yokes. Typically, only one member of each couple is so equipped. In a single-sex group, it will be the person playing the "opposite" role, and in a gender-free group, it is likely to be the person playing the "lead" or "gent". Chris Ricciotti, a pioneer in the LGBT contra dance field, refers to the roles as "armbands" and "bare-arms," or "bands" and "bares" for short—although his dancers now wear short clip-on ribbons rather than full armbands. Hats are less practical than armbands or yokes because they come off easily, can muss the hair, and are sometimes suspected of carrying head lice.
The 1992 book is printed on significantly higher quality paper, and with better print quality.
2026-07-04 21:00:00
EDIT 2026-07-08: Gizmohub, despite the announcements, did not stop working on the 7th. Instead, a Verizon tech called me, and told me that they were not going to take Gizmohub down until they'd resolved these issues. They also walked me through getting set up, including getting me the 2FA code that was not coming through. Apparently delivery of 2FA codes to Google Fi has been an issue for them. After our call I saw that this 2FA code (but not the earlier codes) did actually come through under "Spam and Blocked", so if you're having issues I'd recommend looking there.
Two years ago I bought a pair of Gizmo watches for my kids (review). There's a companion app for texting and configuration ("Gizmohub"), and Verizon is moving everyone over to a new one ("Verizon Family"). But the new app doesn't work for watch-only accounts like ours yet, and they're still saying they're going to turn off the old app on July 6th. Without the app we won't be able to text back and forth, see where they are, or add new contacts (the watch blocks calls except to/from contacts).
I first got the notification that Gizmohub was going away as an email on 2026-06-10:
Since Gizmohub is not a very good app, I was initially pretty excited about this. Unfortunately, when I tried to switch over I got an error that my phone number was "ineligible":
If instead of using a Verizon login I used the "social" login (which some people online reported success with), it tried to send a text to my Google Fi account to verify me, which wouldn't show up.
On 2026-06-17 I talked with Verizon support's virtual assistant for a while, and then an associate for half an hour. They were not able to resolve the problem, and said that Verizon Family does not yet support cases where you have Gizmos as your only Verizon lines of service. They said they'd follow up with me by email when they sort this out, but I never received anything.
The associate agreed with me that they should not deprecate the old app until the new app can handle this configuration. I asked them to raise this up the chain: they need to push back the deprecation date.
I called again on 2026-06-19, and the rep said this was their third or fourth call today from someone who had a gizmo but not a Verizon smartphone. That seemed high to me, and I might have misheard. They said they're working on fixing the problem, it will be at least 4-5 business days, and they won't take down Gizmohub until Verizon Family is working.
I called again on 2026-07-02, and the rep said this was a known issue. They took my information, gave me a ticket number, and assured me that someone higher up in the Verizon support system would reach out to me within 24hr. (Later I got an email saying 48hr.) Unlike the previous two reps they wouldn't commit to this being fixed before Gizmohub would stop working.
It's now been 48hr, and I haven't heard anything. While normally I would be understanding about longer response times over a holiday weekend, here I am not. It was entirely Verizon's decision to set a deprecation date immediately following a holiday. The new app still doesn't work for me, the reps say it's still not working for many others, and on Monday morning we'll lose the ability to text our kids.
Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, r/verizon, hacker news, mastodon, bluesky
2026-06-29 21:00:00
Choux pastry (the kind used in eclairs and creampuffs) is very picky, and depends heavily on the chemical properties of eggs. Five years ago I played around with trying to make it eggless with aquafaba and xanthan gum. It didn't work, but now that we have vegan egg white protein, can we do this for real?
Nope. I gave it several tries over vacation, and wasn't able to get it to puff properly. Here's the closest I got:
As with standard choux I heated the water, milk, butter, and sugar to a boil, then added the flour. I mixed it well, let it cool a little, and then gradually added the egg (replacement) while beating will in between additions. The batter looked just right:
But when I baked it, it didn't inflate. I tried again, and this time took advantage of the AirBnB's nice oven to observe that there were little bubbles on the skin. Video:
My hypothesis for why this isn't working is that eggs normally have a range of proteins that set at different temperatures. The most common (~54%) is ovalbumin which sets at 176–183F, and this is what the precision-fermented egg white is made out of. But there's also ovotransferrin (~12%) which sets at 142–149F, and I'm guessing this early setting is why choux made from normal eggs forms a thin flexible crust in time to capture steam and inflate. Whereas in my version the steam just leaks it out.
Models think I should try either potato protein isolate (149F) or methylcellulose (gels at 140F, reverses on cooling). Thoughts?
2026-06-28 21:00:00
I keep my recipies on my website, and like most of my website it grew over time instead of being designed. A couple years ago I added some progressive enhancement that puts checkboxes on the ingredients, and today I added a rescaler:
Here's tripling it:
This is another project, like adding transposition to my solstice songbook, where I wouldn't have put in the time if I couldn't delegate to an LLM. It went very quickly, and the code seems reasonable.
Implementation notes:
As you go up and down it converts teaspoons to tablespoons to cups. Yes, I still cook volumetrically.
It handles numeric ranges, like "3-4 cups".
It handles fractions: half of 1 1/4 C is 5/8 C.
It doesn't handle everything. I wanted something simple and reviewable that handles most cases, instead of trying to make something exaustive (that would then have weird bugs). This means with complex items like "2 eggs (or 2T flax and 5T water)" only the "2 eggs" is scaled. To make these failures graceful, all scaled values are bolded, so unscaled values stick out visually.
2026-06-25 21:00:00
Our family is on vacation in North Carolina for a week, spending some time at a pool, and they're playing a (weirdly short) loop of music. Listening to She's In Love With The Boy for the fourth time I was thinking about how it's an example of a common pattern in country music: a repeating motif, recolored by the verses. In this case it's a father saying a boy isn't good enough for his daughter (verses 1 and 2) until his wife reminds him that her own father said the same thing about him (verse 3).
Some others with variations on this pattern:
Don't Take the Girl: fishing at 8yo, mugged at 18yo, potential maternal mortality at 23yo; three senses of "don't take".
Are You Gonna Kiss Me or Not: at the first kiss and then proposal the boy is shy; at their wedding he reverses it.
Five More Minutes: playing by the creek, saying good night to a girl, playing on the football team for the last time, then (big mood switch) grandpa's hospital bed; each iteration wanting a little more time.
Skin (Sarabeth): teenage girl undergoing chemo dreams of dancing with her love, wind in her hair; last chorus her hair has fallen out, her boyfriend shaved in solidarity, and they're dancing together.
Cleaning This Gun (Come On In Boy): as a teen he got a lecture from his girlfriend's dad with an implicit threat; as an adult he gives the same lecture to his daughter's boyfriend.
This pattern is definitely not limited to country (ex: Cat's in the Cradle, where he doesn't have time for his kid and then once grown up his kid doesn't have time for him). But it does seem unusually common in this genre.