Greetings from Newark, Delaware

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Jim Kirby

Posts: 149
Joined: Jul. 14 2011
From: Newark, DE, USA

Greetings from Newark, Delaware

Hi to everyone. I've been participating for a while but most of my posts are sporadic so they probably seem like random blasts from space ships passing over.

I'm a professor of Ocean Engineering and Physical Oceanography at the University of Delaware, where I was a PhD student from 1979-1983 and then, after a sojourn to other shores, a faculty member since 1989. My professional career has been good to me, and anyone who is interested in seeing details may look at http://chinacat.coastal.udel.edu/
, which also definitively reveals my self-ID as a Dead-head. Newark, DE itself is a mid-sized college town housing a mid-sized state university of about 20,000 students. My own interests mainly involve me in a graduate program training people in various ocean sciences topics.

I've never been much of a musician, more adept at woodworking really, and my listening historically has taken me through a range of very intense phases including Indian classical, the Son Jarocho from the Veracruz region of Mexico, near and middle eastern Oud playing, and most recently, the center of our interests here.

Flamenco really became central to me during a sabbatical spent in Granada in 2010, and in a sense it feels like the music that touches my soul that I have always been waiting to find. (Much the way that the standard American blues does for my wife).
At the time that flamenco grabbed me, I had already been spending time as an amateur (with no real available time) luthier, building first steel-string and then classical guitars, and so the urge to build flamenco guitars was an obvious outcome.
During my first stay in Granada, I also had the pleasure of meeting Antonio Raya Pardo and John Ray, so I felt a little connection to the luthier community there.
So far, I have built two guitars following Tom Blackshear's notes and plans for the Reyes style (I've probably already doomed myself in some cases here), and more recently I'm working on a Barbero-style guitar. (Related to questions I had asked here about whether self-bound blancas would look OK - see attached picture). This guitar is not yet done, waiting for another Romanillos-style classical to go out the door, so I can't comment on how it sounds, and neither do I have the skills to do so to a level that would inform anyone really.

I enjoy the foro and definitely plan on hanging around.

(for some reason I didn't have permission to upload a file displaying my handiwork.)

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Sep. 8 2012 20:09:46

Escribano

Posts: 6417
Joined: Jul. 6 2003
From: England, living in Italy

RE: Greetings from Newark, Delaware (in reply to Jim Kirby)

quote:

I'm a professor of Ocean Engineering and Physical Oceanography

Welcome Jim. Cool job, by the way. No uploads in Intros, just to keep it on the topic in hand.

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Foro Flamenco founder and Admin

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Sep. 8 2012 20:22:48

Kevin James Shanahan

Posts: 407
Joined: Oct. 10 2010
From: Wooli, NSW Australia

RE: Greetings from Newark, Delaware (in reply to Jim Kirby)

Hey jim , Ocean engineering wow . Here in Australia our surf breaks are getting increasingly crowded , in some places surf rage is common . Is there any chance that building artificial surfing reefs could become common practice . Personaly I love the idea more surf breaks and marine habitats . Anyway I will look out for your instrument creations .

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Peace.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Sep. 8 2012 20:23:18

Jim Kirby

Posts: 149
Joined: Jul. 14 2011
From: Newark, DE, USA

RE: Greetings from Newark, Delaware (in reply to Jim Kirby)

Kevin,

I've never had direct contact with the artificial surf break reef crowd although one of the programs I wrote is widely in use to do simulations based on conceptual designs.
The group in Perth (Pattiarachi and colleagues) has used our stuff extensively. I've never been to Australia, and would love to see it and all the LOTR scenery of NZ, but my back locks up pretty badly after 5 hour plane flights, so I'd have to do Philadelphia, LA, Honolulu, Fiji, etc. Gets expensive.

I'm not a surfer myself despite my avocation for surface waves and the nearshore. I have enough trouble not tripping over sidewalk cracks. I do love body surfing though, and have an aggrevated rotator cuff injury to show for it this summer. All of our East Coast beaches are nourished these days, and tend to have steep shore faces that aren't friendly to body surfing.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Sep. 8 2012 20:32:55