88.1kg Marking is over....yeeahh

The sushi and bag of chips and weekend BBQ put back a few pounds as you can tell but I am back on  the diet again hoping to get a  few more Kilo's off before the ladies of my family invade in a couple of weeks.

Its been a few marathon late night sessions of marking this weeke and last, but I have done all the block 4 courses..barring a few errors/appeals...I am free at last. Just some CT2 retakes on Friday and we're done.

Got an uncomfortable meeting on Thursday to deal with a range of student complaints though....hopefully none serious but won't know till then. My grades are are good and feedback usually well above average, just hope my slow grading in previous blocks is not going to come back and bite me.


Looking forward to the break I can tell you.

Ahthankyew

It seems I am a singer

Another great gig, just brilliant, we made a few mistakes, but he we're not pro's and we managed to pick it up every time, it was awesome, and I had multiple people..even my boss tell me I did a geat job on my number...I am genuinely gobsmacked, I just don't have the words but I am feeling incredibly pleased with myself....so its a good time to have a treat of chips...and sushi...Back on the Diet Sunday after the BBQ which hopefully wont' be rained off.

We should be able to get some pics from the 2 gigs as there was an official photographer there taking snaps..I will poste them here and on FB when I get them.

Ahthankyew

86.7 yes I said 86..Records all round

Yesterdays nerves and squeaky bum, as well as abstaining from lunch while we set up, caused a massive big drop...yeahhhhhhhh a record drop in 1 day.

I have another gig later today, doubt I'll lose another big chunk, but  losing 5 Kg in under a month is pretty good going. I guess I am pleased with myself.


Record marking speeds....I managed to do all my PR4 Marking in 5 working days, and entered in 7....result..

 I need to be evern faster on the CT2 ones though....will be hitting the grades tonight.

Got a BBQ event lined up for tomorrow, with friends from work and poker and music all coming together ...but it looks like summer might be over already if those storm clouds gathering are any indication.


Ahthankyew

Great gig, even with the feedback

We had a slightly twitchy start as our PA was set a tad too loud for our 1st number and I had a bit of feedback on my solo which threw me off time a tad....or 2.. but once we settled we had a brilliant gig.
Our sound guy(s) kept track of the levels from then and a great time was had by all.

I'm still genuinely quite flabbergasted that people complimented me....yes I said complimented, me ..ME...on my singing...wow...I just don't know how to react to that..
Aside from mum, who is obliged to say nice things about what I do, in our "Mother:Son, what you have to do before I choose your home", agreement. I've never been complimented on my singing....ever..Even I don't much like it.

I do my 1 song pretty well, "Stuck in the Middle",  but it actually was the song that got everyone up on their feet, and then the rest of our gig kept them there. What a great experience.

We have another one tomorrow..hopefully the feedback problem won't reappear and I can nail that 1st solo, looking forward to seeing if I can get a repeat set of compliments. ;)

I'm now a ssstaaaaaahhhhrrr daaarlinks.







Ahthankyew

87.6k...almost and butterflies, sure to lose some more fom crapping myself

The display wobbled a bit on .6 and .7 before settling on .7.. I had a pee just after but didn't weigh myself again but am sure its gone down to 87.6. Really impressive.


Am sure to lose a bit more today though, since StarrCase have a performance today at the Hotel and Management Graduation ceremony. I've also been roped in to help award diplomas...quite a bit different to the way we do things at IGAD, but we're all one big happy university so am happy to help out. I'm suited and booted for the occasion.

I think this performance will go well though, we've just had a sound check and we sound pretty damn good. Even me.!!! Am sure to lose a few pounds in sweat and fear.
What a difference a proper sound/monitor set up, with an engineer, makes! Though my VoiceLive confused the hell out of them trying to work out where the harmony's were coming from. We play at 5 so am doing a bit of CT2 Marking now.

Marking for PR4 was finally finished last night at 4-30am after 4 marathon sessions since Friday...written tests sound like a good idea but trying to read handwriting worse than mine (I never thought that possible) with often poorly formed English...and get it done as quick as possible so they can get ready for a retake meant I had to finish last night no matter what...by 4-30 I'd pretty much lost the will to live but I got through it...so I'm not only nervous but vey tired, I may drop off in the middle of a slow song.

anyway.....zzzzzzzz

I'm not recording the concert but I hope someone is, if so I'll post links.



Ahthankyew

Boo yaka shaaaaa 87.9Kg

Course I had to have a pee to get it there, but I finally cracked 88kg :D

To celebrate or perhaps to punish you..here's a set of my "best" recordings....basically the ones I don't feel too ashamed of

I am really pleased that 3 people have Favorited my last effort, the live loop of Set the fire....even though some of the singing was a bit ropey and the harmonic female amplifies any pitch wobbles, it was a cracking session. I made Brenda laugh out loud with my swearing outbursts as I made mistake after mistake before getting it right.
Its been getting a lot of plays too, so it seems to be going down well in the home recording/tone deaf community.





Ahthankyew

88.1Kg...could I actually get to see 87?

Finally got a chance to play with my GR-55 hooked up to my RC300 looper...powerful tools...added to that my Voice Live 2 and a harmony setting to give me a female singer to duet with and ..boom
my version of Snow Patrols Set the Fire to the 3rd Bar.

Its not 100% and it was done after 30 takes getting my tap dancing wrong a few times and kicking in the strings at the wrong times. But overall i was pleased.. I need to try and do this as a multi track version to get more dynamics and depth to it, but as an "as Live" performance this is one of the best things I've done.

Love the GR-55 as I now get used to how to use it...it adds so much to things with so little effort..

Anyway...I've never said this before about at track I've done..but hope you like it?


Ahthankyew

88.2 but it wobbled on 1...

I seem to be losing 100-150g a day, so not bad. Might be able to put off the gym for a while longer as long as the diet itself is working.

Finally starting to setting into a period of peace now that exams and so on are done, still got some retakes to deal with but the never ending appeals from students are drying up and I will get a weekend to myself. I have a lot of marking to do but am fairly sure I can do them in 4 big sessions and still get some time to myself this weekend.

The Weather has turned spectacularly nice with sunshine and only occasional showers. So its looking good for the family visit next month. We're going to have a BBQ next weekend to kick off the summer but I need to find out where I can get gas for the BBQ, I think it must be nearly empty by now after occasional use over the last 2 years.

Also next week I have the Starrcase gigs, and will be doing a spot of practicing so I get my timing and solo's right. Sadly I am having to fill in on some Bass parts as Carlos won't be with us but am sure I won't make to  much of a mess of it since bass on my GR-55 is fairly easy..just play it on the guitar.




Ahthankyew

88.5kg and near the end

Of the academic year I mean...tomorrow my PR students do their exam...on Friday CT students hand in their assignments..I will try to gade the written exam on Thursday and get it done leaving me the weekend to worry about the CT..
There will be retakes though, hence the urgency in marking....but basically its almost done.

We also leave the Pakhuis, our home for 5 years and move into the main NHTV building next block so lots of endings in sight. A big party is planned for July 4th to celebrate our Game release party and the end of the era.


Diet is going well, more due to smaller quantities than the actual low carb/high protien concept but it is working, I am not constantly starving and snacking on roast beef or salami sausages is quite nice ;) I'd kill for a bag of chips though.

End of year also means Starrcase have our gaduation gig to perform, or in this case gigs, as its held over 2 days, and we have to do 2 sets...we're busy rehearsing and accomodating a late line up change but overall its going well. My singing is getting better so I am starting to feel less stressed about my 1st public tonsil exercises.
Wish I could get my Mustang Sally solo as good as my singing though, I seem to keep making mistakes in it...I almsot always improvise it and lose control sometimes...perhaps I should just learn something and stick to it.....but thats not really what soloing is about... :D It'll be all right on the night.
I hope!

Ahthankyew

89.1Kg :D GR-55 is still amazing and finances sorted

Weight is dropping but hard to say if its just water, though I am regulating my carb intake quite well. Trousers already starting to slip down without a belt so....

Used the GR-55 for the 1st time in anger at the StarrCase rehearsal, it was brilliant, I was able to add atmosphere and variety to our set, and the abilty to dial in some power by bringing in a Les Paul screamer on the PA while I played Margaret through the amp, made some of my solo's even better.

It was well received by the other band members but I am not so sure the Gadgets who like a more stripped down sound will like it. Cant wait to try Creams White Room with an organ backing the into riff :D

The mortgage is finally transferred, after months of faffing about with the bank, Bina and I signed the papers at the Notaris yesterday to close the old mortgage, remove her liability and transfer it all to me..That finally lets me take stock of the income/outgoing and make a few decisions.

I am sadly going to have to change my power company, I use Greenchoice, even though they are very expensive, at 190euros pm, they are 100% renewable energy, but as the new mortgage is going to cost 100-200euros per month more I need to cut costs .I expect another less green supplier will give me half price which will offset the extra costs somewhat.

Next task is to find a cheap little motor to get to and from band pactices..I am not mad keen on having a car, but given the amount of band work I am doing now I need to be able to transport my gear. I wonder if I will be able to keep my cycling up when a car is in the parking spot!!!



Ahthankyew

'kin hell..thats amazing

I am still trying to get my head round the GR-55, it is an AMAZING thing, really amazing, I updated the firmware on it today and got even more sounds which are just amazing. And the amazing thing is that these amazing sounds all sound perfectly like the instruments they say they do, amazing.

Well yeah but wow its complex. This is not a plug and play gadget by any means. I need to take a lot more time to get used to it, before I abandon my normal gear for the bands.
As is normal at the weekend I'm trying to do some school work so can't let it distract me too much.  ;)

I had a bit of a play around with creating my own patches last night using the free GR-55 floorboard software which is ermm amazing. But even so I found it hard to work out what I was doing most of the time, but I did get a cool clean pickup sound with a CTL pedal overdrive boost on it. But trying to do a drums patch worked for a while then stopped...so not quite sure how that works..

Playing drums on a guitar is freaking strange...and the pickup might need a bit more adjustment as it was triggering too many but even so...with practice this will be amazing. but trying to send the patch to the unit it went into a mad synth mode.

Hooked it up to my PA today to hear it clean and  wow. I thought my Adrenalinn III was an amazing pedal/box, especially when I got a control board for it. But this...its...just amazing!

Its going to be a while before I can post anything..It does work out of the box of course but I want to really get my head around it before I try anything recording wise.




Ahthankyew

92.1 yes...another diet

1st of the month so its a start point..Brenda, who has the most amazing dancers bod, has suddenly noticed that she's been eating a lot the last few months...mainly due to yours truly providing food. (She can burn water!!)

And she has therefore decided she has to shed the excess milligrams as soon as possible...meh

In support of her efforts which will probably succeed in about 3 days..I have agreed, to join her in a healthy low carb eating ....attempt :D

I'm going to get these excess kilo's off..about 20 of them...gulp.

sigh..here we go again..


edit I removed the orange background form Sabrina's HTML code....back to  nice white colour



Ahthankyew

Wow...thats just amazing

My GR-55 arrived today, and I have spent a few hours playing with it. In fact time has flown by and its now 4-30am I was just entranced by it.

wow...just ..just wow.. it took a little while to fix the pickup to Margaret, my Patrick Eggle which is my main giging guitar, but it wasn't a massively difficult task, I was worried I'd positioned the pickup a bit too high but I tried it...and boom it worked fine. I was playing guitar, 12 string guitar, marimaba, grand concert piano and a shed load of effects in no time

Its simple to use, though you do have to be careful to leave the strings cleanly and fret them as you pick, since even a small hammer can be detected but it quicky becomes natural.

I LOVE this gadget...still a lot of things to learn...like how to get normal pickups to go through the effects bank making it an all in one unit. But that is just a case of reading the manual.

Yes, this will be an excellent single pedal does everything box. Gimme a bit of time to practice and I'll put something up on Soundcloud this weekend.

Can't wait to use it at the next Gadgets practice, we have a new guitar player on board who is learning our bits and bobs but being able to do keyboard and other fx will make a massive difference.


Ahthankyew

See this is what I want to do...

Ignore the slightly dodgy singing, I think it was a rather impromtu session, but I am just incredibly inspired by this. Ever since I discovered loopers (Trace Bundy's Sweet Child of mine 6 or so years ago) I've been wanting to produce things like this. Its just genius.

His straight guitar playing is also pretty amazing. What makes it so full and well produced is his use of the Roland GR-55 synth to provide drums and other fill effects as well as his brilliant guitar
playing


.


As its been holiday bonus month this month, I bought myself my usual indulgence; one of these GR-55s (ebay bargain, saved 200quid) mainly to add some keyboard sounds to my band the Gadgets.


But though I knew it could do keyboard sounds better than I could with an actual keyboard, I was amazed going through youtube for some videos of the thing in action, to find this guys vids including a useful setup tutorial. It really is an entire band in his hands in real time. I really really wish I could do stuff like this. I can't ..yet!

But its made me realise I need to focus a bit more. I experiment with too many things at once. Drums, keys, software, vocal toys, pedals etc.

My guitar playing has improved a lot in the last year or so, playing with 2 bands, I may not be able to knock out a tune on demand, as I still lack the musical memory and can't sing and play at the same time (working on that though), but there are other things I want to addess in my playing.

I am locked into blues patterns too much but thats no bad thing really.

If  I have the structure of a song in front of me I'm finding I can hold my own with others and do a fair bit of improvisation in solos but I can't play along by ear.

I have also settled into a specific guitar and pedal arrangment for these which I feel is sonically "me" when I am playing in the bands. But band members are not always there when I want to play my own stuff in my own style and if I am honest I don't have my own style yet and I doubt they'd be willing to play it :D

So its time now to specialise and develop my own style. I am going to focus a lot more on looping and song structure with the GR-55 and RC300 and no other pedals or toys, I don't plan to do any solo gigs...ever!!!

 But I am going to pretend I will and see if I can come up with a set of 10 songs that work within this structure and maybe, just maybe I will risk doing a performance. Its time to Master something and be really good with it.


I'm not abandoning my recording efforts, or my bands, but I am going to spend more practice time with me, the looper and the synth....it might be fun :D I might even sell off a few gadgets....hmmm maybe not.

Ahthankyew

I am still here

The strange colour is a small side effect to the post I put for my friend Peter's daughter who needed somewhere to host her tribute to her mum. It should go at the next monthly update, if not I will make a minor change to fix it but left it for now.

My mum hit 72 this week....she's still ticking, albeit with a few creaks and a lot more groans than I remember her when I was a kid. She and her 3 adult granddaughters (my daughte Danni and my 2 nieces Steph and Kelly) are coming over to stay with me in the Summer which will probably kill her, or me...4 totally different women in the house at one time will be interesting.

Been quite busy recently with work admin, exam prep and coding some work for students to use, which has been a total pain....at least next year I won't have so much hassle, but trying to fit in serious coding time with all the other admin stuff at work can be quite challenging.

But work has been good, finally getting on top of the admin has given me a chance to work with students more and the delivery of new Vita dev kits at the office opens up new learning goals for me.

I need to update my old scratchpad.net website now that I am officially a business here in NL, it should have my company details on there but it does not..I don't like doing websites myself and the host company's builder tool is useless, so am going to get a student to produce it. I can claim the cost back in tax (oh its good to have an accountant).

Not had a chance to work on my recordings either, things have been ticking over in a work/home/work/sleep kinda way. With Brenda working like mad to prepare for end of year exams we've not had much chance to do anything fun for a while. But I have had time to play with the bands and student jams and am really enjoying the release of work stess that provides.

I do need to make some changes to the studio upstairs though, not least get rid of the old broken tymble dryer in the middle of the room But also the mega pedal board needs to be retired, I've settled down to using certain pedals for most of my playing so the others are just gathering dust.. Time to unplug them and put them in a cupboard until I need to use them, which will clear a bit more space.

Logic Pro is still proving hard to master, though since I've not had a lot of time to practice I guess thats the main reason...holidays are coming though, and I may very well escape upstairs to avoid the cackling she devils who will be taking over. :D

But summer has finally arrived, for today at least..and that gives me a chance to go do some important shopping chores, new dryer, some duvets, cups cutlery at the dreaded Saturday Ikea...and shop around for a blow up bed etc for the visitors. Holiday bonus cash makes that all a little less painful too and has allowed me to treat myself to a couple of nice ebay bargains...guitar related :D


Ahthankyew

Posting this for Sabrina

'Missing Mom'

Who Is Mum?

• Fullname : Nor Amanah
• Age : 44 years old
• Birthday : 10 December
• She was born in Malaysia
• She has lived in Malaysia for her whole life
• Job : MD in an advertising agency

Note From Aaryan

A note from aaryan to you mama, mothers may a lot and us as children just hate that, because we hate it when they are right, but we learn to live through it and love our mothers till the end of time for they are the ones who brought us to this life and did not abandon us and that is why I will always love my mother. Your son Aaryan!

Note From ME!

I have lived with you all my life with you. You took care of me, watched after me and loved me. You would always be there when I needed you. For 15 years, not only were you my mother but also my father my best friend and my teacher. You were a single parent and had to do everything on your own but you still manage to find time for me and Aaryan. You made sure that we were always taken care of. I remember how worried you would be in the office. You had your own work to do but you still had time to help me with mine. You would come home and make me and aaryan help cook in the kitchen even if you were exhausted from work and we would be complaining. You did all this because you knew one day we would have to leave you and you wanted us to be prepared.
Now, I am here half way around the world from you. Somewhere totally unknown to me and I don't have you here to hold my hand and wipe my tears. I have to use everything you taught me I have to grow up and not depend on you anymore and mama I realise it is a hard thing to do. Sometimes I feel like I still need you, to tell me it will be okay and even if we are halfway across the world you still manage to do that. You are my hero mama and if I could be half a person as you then I know that I have succeeded in life!

The Video

Just before I left you had organise a birthday/going away party. You had invited everyone important in my life. I was glad that they could all make it because they had played a big role in my life. Along with that party you had made an 11 minute short video for me. That video was beautiful and very touching. During the party was the first time I watched that video it had brought tears to my eyes. Everyone at the party was crying during the party and tissues were flying everywhere. I would like to share the video with everyone! VIDEO

Oh thats nice, but still working on it.

Its been a lovely peaceful week off work, I have chilled, and chilled a bit more. Went to see Iron Man 3 (was brill) and been doing some nice recordings while Brenda has been busy studying like cazy. I don't get why Tilburg University has different holidays from NHTV but it is a pain that we can't seem to get the same days off.

At least this week we have a couple of synced bank holiday days at the end of the week so we'll ty to do something in this wonderful summer weather that has finally arrived.

I have been working on some more recordings, and have been putting together a version of Fleetwood Mac's, Man of the World...but all acoustic. Its shaping up into one of my best efforts so far, but I have a bit more work to do on it...and sadly getting ready to go back to work takes priority.

I am going to do a full multi track version with 3 guitars, bass and drums and some fx. It will be my biggest project yet but it is also surprisingly simple with the parts being quite clear and distinct. It should be a good test of my slowly improving Logic Pro skills..(I still find it madly complex though, but it does have a lot of fantastic features)

I love that Peter Green song, so sad and melancholy but so powerful and yet so damn simple, He really was a genius in his prime, he could do more with the 4 note intro to Need your Love so Bad than most modern guitar heroes do with 100. I might start a muscal project to do all the old Peter Green era FM songs....should only take a decade or 2.

I wish there were a PG tribute band I could join...maybe start, hmm the lack of singing might be a problem...however....I am going to try and take some singing lessons..I got in contact with a local singing teacher who is clearly mad and we're going to have a test lesson...he thinks eveyone can sing to some degree...I might shake that viewpoint somewhat...but if cant hurt to at least find out what my limits are ...no comments about opening my mouth please.




Ahthankyew

urgghh

I am just starting to get the hang of Logic Pro, starting...its really complex have done a couple of tracks now, this is the best so far, though can't really find a foolproof way to do vocals yet. I do really really hate the vocal on this, I did about 20 takes but just didn't get there. I do like the basic arrangment of this though and the solo at the end, is actually the same acoustic guitar doing the ruthm but run through a crunch blues setting to great effect. Ahthankyewe

What did I miss?

3 days of feeling poorly, fever, sweats, headache, snotty nose, general crappy ness... Finally broke this morning..and fingers crossed no mega cough, just a bit of phlegm. Hopefully a quiet day in and I should be back to work tomorrow. I don't really understand why colds here seem to be so harsh, a theory some of us on Facebook were suggesting was the lack of decent cold cures to suppress the worst symptoms before they add complications. The standard cure here in Holland is...paracetamol with caffeine and Vit C.. So you'd get the same result from popping some pain killers with coffee and eating an orange. Ie not much, though the paracetamol will keep the headache and fever under control that's about it. At least in the UK we get nice Beechams with all maxxed out goodies plus decongestants to dry you up and that for me is the killer. The runny nose and chesty cough needs to be kept at bay or it results in a motherfucker of a chest infection. The last one had me coughing for 8 weeks.. I'm going to get some UK cold meds to stock up my medicine drawer. And looking forward to getting out of the house again, been cooped up snoozing most of the time. Ahthankyew

Marking causes Colds...discuss

I am getting on well with the marking, RSI is bad but manageable, but I now have a cold...only a few weeks after recovering from the last one. My friend Soeren pointed out on Facebook that there may be a correlation.

He may have a point...Marking sucks my will to live, leaving me vulnerable to cold attacks.

What other horrors await my weakened immune system!!




Ahthankyew

productive weekend

Might as well make the most of it, marking hell next week and am I determined, RSI or not to get my grading done in record time

Anyway after doing a Tom Jones number I thought I'd have a go at a classic. The singing is variable of course but I like my own arangment of this... different and certainly something I might try and do better in future.




Ahthankyew

E-Bows are great

Give you that haunting harmonic sounds...love it.



Ahthankyew

And another EBAY fraud

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/121090422532?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

not quite as vaulable this one, the source for the listing is all over the net, just paste in the 1st line of the description on google and you get a shed load of hits to other souces, in fact this one seems to be a common one, its listed on a lot of sales sites.

Again reported as fraud....but not expecting any response.


Ahthankyew

Spot the problem?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/251254477498?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649


its not a genuine ad, shill bidders are ramping up the price and if some mug tried to snipe it they might be 3 or 4K down....its one of 4 I spotted over the last few days. All high value vintage guitars and all the same MO's .

0 feedback seller,
located in the US but offering UK postage charges
very high end vintage guitar, which if you google the text you will find on other sites and the pics are also fairly easy to spot on ebay US or craigslist.


ok so we know this happens...BUT EBAY DONT CARE... I reported each one as fake, even sent an email which they responted with an auto note, and worse still their online fraud reporting system terminates in a 404 page not responding error.

Disgraceful


update
It "sold" for 4100 in the end, after being shilled up over 3500 to last minute snipers thinking they were getting a 20K guitar for a faction of the price put in big final bids.. This of course is the con.

Also to add insult to injury....ebay suspended me from their forums for pointing out the fraud on line.
Sadly I have to conclude that ebay are as corrupt and dishonest as the scammers who are doing this, by igoring faudulent activity and preventing people from reporting it they are complicit in the crime.

I can only hope the "winners" take precautions and use a cedit card if they make payment...I suspect the sellers will try some ruse to get them to use cash tansfer methods, for me that would be a warning but others do fall for this. I will keep an eye on the sellers 0 feedback to see if it drops ot -1 over the comming weeks. I'll be happy to eat my words if it goes +1

I'd love to back up my indignation by boycotting ebay but I still buy a lot of goods via them, so for now I will try to do my best to warn people by posting dodgy listings when I find them



Ahthankyew

90.4 fading away

weight loss is slow but it is loss....so hey for me..

Been a busy couple of weeks and am now happily looking forward to a nice long easter weekend followed soon by a week off....even more hey for me. So lots to catch up on..

I am having major hassles with the bank though, getting the mortgage  transferred into my name has proven to be a nightmare of a job, after 1st forcing me to clear up my credit cards which took several months, the supposedly easy process has become harder and harder each step with documents I need, then don't need then need again and legal people who want to charge for translations then don't and then do and then don't and now papers I need but don't know anything about as well as insurance I don't have but need to get, all topped off with shockingly poor response from the ban advisor who is supposed to be implementing this simple process.

arrghh

Its all becoming a total pain and my patience with the advisor at the bank is running out, one more idiotic delay is going to result in a serious complaint to her managers.


The weather here has been shocking as it has back in the UK, very unseasonal, even yesterday as we went out for an end of week drink it was snowing...this hasn't helped my cough much, though am hoping it will be gone soon...just in time for the next cold!!

Not had much chance to record or practice, finishing off the block has taken all my time and making myself available to students usually means everything gets done at the last chance....even on Thursday I had students who were warned to book my time 2 weeks ago, asking to book my time...which was all used up....crazy

But time to get the guitar and bass strapped on and do some work. Both bands are now gearing up for the summer. We have 2 Starrcase graduation performances to get ready for in June, and the Gadgets with our new drummer, Asime, well in place, are now focusing on a proper set list in the hope of doing some pub gigs this summer...so proper practice schedules are being worked out. Some of them at my new fav rehearsal place in Rijsbergen http://www.jackbasspa.nl/

I have to do a little bass playing again with Starrcase since our bass player has taken a short absence...we hope not for too long my bass playing is still quite poor.

Both set lists are shaping up well and we will be practicing the new songs over the coming weeks, I even sing in one of the Starrcase numbers....poor graduates!!


On the home front things are breaking down...the washer and dryer both died last week, I was lucky and managed to revive the washer but the dryer is kaput...The heating and vent system also need looking at, the boiler keeps reporting an A16 error...whatever that means and needs resetting...uncomfortable if you are in the shower at the time. The vent is stuck on number 2 setting even if set to 1, so it looks like a short somewhere in the control cables.. for now I have just unplugged it. I just have to be careful not to let Brenda's burnt cooking set off the alarms :D (I never understand people who eat well done steaks...let along charred to the colour of coal!!!)

All this means expense...added to the normal expenses this month of rates and taxes its proving to be a bit of a strain on the old wallet..no guitar buying for me...and of course a bunch of wonderful bargains are showing up everywhere..

summer is nearly here though, with the warm weather and the nice summer bonus....just in time to bail me out.

Ahthankyew

Getting harder and harder to post these widgets in here..

heard this today and thought the chord progression was amazing so had a go at it, once I had the main loop in my RC300 I had to play and sing over it....its not bad for 1 take.


Ahthankyew

92.1 the countdown seems to be stuck

hmmm weight loss not really working yet. I suppose I have to do that gym thing....god I hate the idea....

I've had the most horrible chest infection for 3 weeks and am still coughing a bit, that and my wrist has stopped me doing the gym thing....
But the infection has started to pass and the coughing has reduced I can breath a bit better now...but the wrist is still a problem....drugs are not working :(

Oh and I have a new laptop for work...oodles of power but the mousepad is just too damn close to the keys and I keep tapping it...its worse than the old laptop....I'll be using a new ergo keyboard at work soon so hopefully I can avoid using the keys or try to change my typing angle and prevent the tapping problem

I hate changing laptops, its never a simple process there's always something not working right and we need to have all our work software up to speed. ICT normally ask you to hand over your old laptop when you pick up, but I held my ground and asked for a transition period. But still not quite ready to hand back.


The washing machine appears to have a problem, I think there may be a blockage in the pumping system, so am going to strip it down sometime this week, if that does not work...new machine time...I suspect a reapir will cost more than a new machine and since its 5 years old now maybe its time for a new one.




Ahthankyew

92.1 the countdown restarts

I am taking the 1st of March as a new start to the diet....I've been having a lot of photo's taken of me recently and simply don't recognise the fat bastard I see in them, also during band practice I caught sight of myself playing reflected in a large window.....my guitar actually was at a 30 deg angle resting on my fat tub....enough...the fightback must continue...low cal meals from now on, and as soon as this niggly left over from the cold chest infection has cleared up back to "gulp" gym.

target weight is 70Kg, I am not going to set dates, when it hits it hits, but I am quite determined to get in decent shape for our big graduation gig in June.........So no more snacks...well except when I am at the movies, as I was tonight...but thats it, for sure.



Ahthankyew

More drugs....

Doc wants to try some anti immflamatory painkillers for a while and I have to change my typing style...this makes sense, since its typing/playing games on keys that is causing the problem.

I will go buy a wired ergo keyboard from MediaMarkt or someplace that I can take to work with me since I have ergo key boards on my home comptuers and its really the work laptop thats the problem.

Ahthankyew

Now that kind of pain is not funny.

Its surprising how much more accurate my typing is one handed and one fingered....wait for the inevitable mistakes to start dropping in .....

My wrist is now officially fucked, another session of delayed marking which I could not put off any longer hoping it would get better, has left me crying with pain as any upward movement of my fingers is attempted..this genuinely is not funny.

I did a bit of guitar practice last night and it didn't hurt at all...today I dare not even look at a guitar, or a door handle or a fridge door, or a gig bag, or indeed any damn thing that requires movement of my wrist.

This is now most certainly a case of an RSI related problem and I really don't know where it will lead.

Doctors appointment booked for the morning, time to get something done.

Ahthankyew

More Man flu

Had a nice sunday roast dinner last weekend, though our portuguese friends didn't entierly understand the concept of a 3 oclock dinner and turned up nearer 4 having already eaten lunch...hmmm Lamb was ruined as it went cold waiting.....oh well.

But the point really was to have my friends who had recently become parents round to show off thier babies, and get the lastest news on the new methods of raising babies which raised some eyebrows, but hey ho, everyone does it their own way.  No more sterilising however seems a bit strange to me but seems thats the way it is now. Brenda got quite broody, I didn't :D But its nice to see babies Martins little girl is so like her dad its scary, quite unearving holding a miniture of a 6 foot+ bald scouser. I'm sure she'll turn out to be a beauty like her mum though.

Unfortunately one of them (Martin) brought a nice cold for me to incubate for a few days and have hit mid week, with the result that half my holiday has been spent wrapped up on the couch sniffing and coughing...I have a few more days to go, lets hope the dreaded chest infections I've had the last few colds don't take root.

My wrist has not improved, in fact its got quite a bit worse, due to being ill I've not picked up a guitar for a few days, when I did today, I just couldn't play it without pain....back to the docs I fear and some tests to see if this can be fixed.

Going to get drunk now, since I've run out of Lemsips....every little helps.

Ahthankyew

Once more leaping on the tech bandwagon

We had a very impressive turn out of staff and industry bods attend our ADE 10th anniversary #ade10
We heard a good speech from our dean Daphne and a short and moving speech from our old Dean Frank who founded ADE and gave thanks and recognition to those who worked with him. I like Frank a lot, always have.

And then we had a short video presentation from David Putnam, which was impressive but video is not really the same as having the man there as many of us 1st thought.

and then....

We had a talk from Tony Bosma @tonybosma about .......well what... I dunno really, it was kinda of a warning about the dangers of technology and data and robotics and ...well lots of stuff, but I truly failed to see his point. I found myself more irritated by the wealth of images and supposed danger signs of tech than intrigued.
Also deeply annoyed at a comment made on one slide that education was simply regurgitating knowledge...not really true of modern education, in fact not really true of education generally for quite some time.

For a futurist and trendwatcher he seemed to do nothing more that point out all recent reports about the amazing new tech and tech ideas then try  to shoot them down to prevent the "sheeple" from falling from it...from what exactly?

One basic point was valid, we all generally followers, or as he put it sheeple, we conform and as such we tend to become targets for marketing hype and advertising...but thats hardly new...ask any Roman emperor about that. They used the new tech of proclimations to ensure the people fell in line. Likewise the church and its adoption, eventually, of the new fangled printing press to print bibles and papal bulls to keep the masses in comfortable lines.
Yes it put a lot of hardworking scribes out of work but hey progress is there to indoctrinate us into the new and wonderful benefits of technology.

Yes technology does indoctrinate us, we do conform to the mass view, it also however educates and expands our minds and gives us the choice to conform or rebel.

Tech does put people out of work and for them its a threat, ask the scribes, luddites and fleet street printers...
But it also gives us benefits. Google is not, as was suggested a replacement for our brains...its a replacement for libraries, which in turn were replacements for the horribly unreliable but steadily employed soothsayers and oracles they replacedm, despite their dire warnings of the dangers of these new fangled.."book stores" they tried to burn down.

The idea that Hollywood will be replaced by robots making movies, or that people will willingly remove their limbs in favour of artifical ones is so far off the mark as to be comical.
Also conspirocy tracking theories about micro chips and GPS have been around for ever...partly true perhaps, we can track people down with thier phones and facebook checkins,  but this is still some way from being a big brother world.

Tech has benefits...tech has risks....but I think blinding yourself to the benefits is a bit silly, otherwise we'd never be able to hook up our macbooks to the interwebbins with our laser pointer/clickers to be able to explain the dangers of this new fangled tech.

I could rant on and on about it, but so many points were covered that I'd lose my train of thought quickly...many of us there were very uncomfortable with this talk, it just seemed too pointless. And furthermore, aimed at a tech savvy , tech hungry and creative independant thinking audience who do understand, appreciate and use this scary tech, it was rather inappropriate.

So to control my rants to less than 140 characters.....I (re)joined twitter (you were wondering about the @ and # symbols weren't you mum?) and made my point. The talk was not very good, and I'd hate for me and my acadamy to be associated with it without some dissent, so I want to go on the record...that I didn't agree with it.

I had joined twitter in December but didn't really see the point....but for this it serves its purpose
Probably won't bother with it though, not to keen on this new fangled twitter stuff, you don't know whos watching do you!
I'm not entierly sure its safe! Think of the children.

Ahthankyew

phhhhtttttt phhhhhttttt phhhhhhhhhhtttt

Wrist is still mega painful...I have made a point of not overusing it and stopped marking the WSAD based  projects last week,  though I have had to complete them today so am basically in massive agony as I clear up the last of them...its not ideal but I can't let grades wait too long as I have done in the past, so injury or not I am slowly clearing up the last few.

Also had Starrcase band practice last night, wrist was fine while playing, holding a gutar neck does not put any undue twisting strain on it, though my solo's were terrible as I was reluctant to make big streatches,  but I did hurt it lifting cases and boxes ...strapped up right after but was in pain last night and started popping pills....ibuprofen seems ok for now.

I am now pretty sure this isn't a strain and am getting a bit worried if this is something more severe.
Fortunately once this marking is finished I have nothing much to do for work for the rest of the week and next week is Carnival hols so I'm going to push through this marking, and then keep my wrist immobile for as long as I can..including guitar :(

bugger



Ahthankyew

oww this sucks

Wrist is still painful, making typing hard. Though I was able to play guitar ok last night for band practice only to be suffering this morning.

Walk in Doctors appointment booked (how can it be walk in if you have to book...strange system but at least I get seen today), better get it checked out. can't really type well one handed and the nature of my job really needs both hands on the keyboard for testing games.



Ahthankyew

Industrial Injury

I wonder if I can sue? I bet there's a lawyer out there in daytime advertising land that can.

So many of my students games have been using the traditional WASD key control format in their projects, that my hand has been locked in a permanent claw shape for the last week during marking. I had noticed some discomfort when typing and playing guitar recently but it was not too bad.. The last few days though..owww. And this morning, its really bad.

Seriously it hurts.. Had to strap my wrist up which has restricted my typing and playing of the last few projects...fortunately not many left but its mega sore...going to have to avoid using it for a few days (and before any wags make a comment, its my left wrist...and I have a girlfriend now...so....)

No more guitar playing and a lot of 1 handed typing..which seems to be considerably less error prone than my usual 2 handed...so my left hand is the one always getting it wrong!

Last weeks snow has almost cleared up, we had temps of -9/-10 depending on where you looked, I can say it was damn cold, but some milder weather and a sunny thing in the sky resulted in a load of rain yesterday which has washed all but the thickest clumps of snow away. I bet the canals are brim full though.




Ahthankyew

But there has to be some fun?

Marking all week and decided I was going to relax this weekend, even though there are a few left to finish..I need to stop staring at screens.

So aside from doing a bit of cooking I did a bit more recording..I think I'm starting to get some tones out of my TC Helicon VoiceLiveTouch that I like now, but still need to twiddle a bit more, also hitting the floor switch for harmonies with bare feet has turned out to be a bit harder than you might think..ouch



This is also a bit cool since I was playing and singing at the same time, something I have always struggled to do. But this simple song makes it easy (ier) to do.

Still crap vocals and I can't say the guitar playing is perfect as I was concentrating hard on 2 things,  but mehhh I think back to a couple of years ago when I took up guitar seriously and I see a massive improvement.

On the subject of the VoiceLive Touch...which I do like even though I can't quite get the best out of it due to being such a crap singer...they just brought out a new one......nice timing eh!!

oh well.




Ahthankyew

Your blog post can be read in 30seconds

Still here?
Hmm personally I would clicked off at that point, since there is nothing I detest more than online info systems that insist I sit through a 30 second (or longer) advert before I get to to the content I clicked.

yes thats right the content I wanted to see, that I clicked on to look at and that I clicked away from 3-5 seconds later when I was forced to watch some annoying bloody advert.

Why do they do this? For me MSN, BBC and Youtube are the worst offenders...Especially the BBC, when I want to watch any kind of in depth report on the news site I am forced to watch some idiotic advert for Malay Airwars or Singapore development agency..NOOOO I want to watch the bloody news story.

BBC is worse for another reason, often the links are broken, and after the advert you hit refresh...and guess what...yup same bloody advert.
Also if you do manage to sit through it and get to your content and want to read something else... THE SAME ADVERT on the next click comes up, and again and again...
Time for the back button and missing the orginal point of interest due to can't be arsed syndrome.

I get that advertising is needed but c'mon it needs to be optional especially if its going to take up your precious 30 seconds...At least youtube SOMETIMES offer a click after 5 seconds option so I can just about handle that.. But so may other sites I simply stop using now however interesting the content might have been.

Site managers..take note.


Ahthankyew

Danger Will Robinsson

Just another of my friendly ebay warnings, somethings are really not what they seem, like this for example

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=281052259128

which proports to be a famous 1 off hand made guitar built and sold for Charideee last year by Gordy Bischoff..its quite famous mainly becuase it sold last November to a US based buyer for $9400

Quite impressive, you can see its story here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VNqp-AtDSqQ

So I somehow doubt a 0 feedback UK seller has this in his possession and is willing to sell it at under 200quid....16 people so far,  however seem willing to belive it.
Hell I'd have a punt at it if it were even a good copy..but I'll resist.

more fool them.


edit it went for £515...if its genuine, its a mega bargain...but c'mon....really???


Ahthankyew

Lunch time noodle

Finished my morning session of the mighty marking marathon and had a bit of a noodle.
Normally I play this on my Blueshawk with a fairly straight amp setting but this time I just picked up a strat which I was trying to practice MJ's Beat it on (and failed) and pumped in a random Adrenalinn III setting (22) and really loved the sound so...hit record and here it is..sight mistake in the bridge but still a nice improvement in my tone if not my speed compared to the version I put up a year or so back.




right..back to marking.

Ahthankyew

oh it wasn't Dance

Silly me, last nights concert was not a dance event though dance was part of it in a sense, it was a really cool show by a Canadian performance percussion band called Scrap Arts Music

It was genuinely aweseome they got a standing ovation at the end, thought he theatre was only about 3/4 full which is a shame

Quite brilliant and ingenious music making. Highly reccomended..here's a vid of them in action

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9MCDza1Q_U&list=UUDIk9Ci-ktdcSdMM0TP5Hsg&index=1

Ahthankyew

Busy busy and new most painful thing ever

Between catching up on very late grades and dealing with students getting ready for exams its been a busy couple of weeks, hence the silence.

Also getting the studio altered...which I've not quite managed to do since Starrcase had a gig to do last Friday 10th, which mean ripping out bits of my studio to take to the gig.. We need to make sure the venue has gear in future. All my carefully placed and calibrated stuff is now lying around the floor waiting to  be repositioned.
It wasn't really up to the job either, my PA is for large rooms or small quiet halls, not great big halls with several hundred people chit chatting as well...we need more power..but its not up to me to supply it.

Oh well at least once back here I got my PA hooked up the Mac output with the R24 and standard Mixer routing all my guitar stuff out.. The result is I can play live mixes to backing tracks better than ever before...So far no neighbours have complained but it has been loud a few times (for testing purposes)
We almost had another gig next month but it didn't pan out...so time to rehearse our new set for the spring street party season. My studio gear is staying put though.

Brenda got me a foot massage gift token for my Birthday last month, and we went to the Chinese massage place in town to use it...only to discover annoyingly that the price had gone up since it was bought...hmmmm so only got 45mins instead of an hour..bit of a con but still...

It was interesting and quite refreshing but my god it was painful..I have a lump/knot/something on my foot she worked away at for a few minutes...oh my....I've never felt such pain, especially when she dragged the handle of some tool over it to "break it down" a week later it still hurts....Though overall my feet are far less painful, also not using my fancy trainers every day seems to be helping.

I'm off for a bit of culture tonight, Brenda is taking me to a dance show in Tilburg tonight....since Dance is very much her thing I hope I like it...or at least I hope she will forgive me if I don't ;)




Ahthankyew

I've seen things, you people would'nt belive

Ah well everything ends.

Holidays are over, am sat here planning this week's classes for the last week of Block B and thinking back on a most enjoyable and lazy holiday, most of it at home.
I really needed that. No stress, no hassle and no end in sight to my sore feet...I really need to wear my new shoes more to see if they work.

I plan to do a recap week for students so that no one is caught out by the break so exams should be pretty straightfoward and then spend the 3 weeks before the next block revamping all my coursework in a nice easy and organised way...My new year "resolution" to get more organised is on, though I still have some backlog stuff to clear up.

Also had some great band sessions with both bands, including an all day Friday practice  for a gig next week, we have 1 more run through on Monday. Only problem is my teaching schedule clashes so I'm hoping that our fantastic scheduler Caroline can move things around so I can play with Starrcase at the Sebeliuslaan New Year Party.

Rehearsals have been going well aside from me just not being able to get my head around Adele's Rolling in the Deep..its not the chords, its the timing of the changes it totally throws me..lets hope I get it right and that the schedule accomodates me. 
I dont' normally play the rhythm guitar parts in Starrcase but Eric the main rhythm guitarist can't make it so I'm having to do more work...its good for my development of course but frustrating that I can't get what is really quite a simple number...more practice!!


I never got round to cataloguing my guitars as I intended, too many other things to do including messing with my new vocal toys...I've said before these things don't make a bad singer into a good singer but they do make me focus a bit more on my singing and it is very very slowly starting to get a bit better without too much pitch correction help...
Just have to worry about enunciation, mic technique, breathing, control, tone and all those other bits the machines cant fix.
Here's a tiny test project I am working on, partly to experiment with settings and partly to get used to Logic pro which is pretty boggling...it will take me weeks to get the hang of it..but small steps give big rewards later...I hope.


I need to redo the vocals as I messed up a couple of times and also do the drum machine and guitar as separate tracks and add bass and "cup" drums...(if you see the triggerfinger version you will understand)
It was just something to test basic editing in Pro...actually had me mystified how to make an MP3 for a while...(bounce is the method?? Yeah I know I didn't get that either)
The mic settings are not yet to my liking I have 250 or so presets but I want to find something I like for my voice this was close but not quite.




Ahthankyew

And so it begins

As with 99% of the population of Europe, its time to make fresh starts in the new year.
I don't hold much with resolutions as such, but the start of a new year does indeed mark a point where you can start to record changes in your life and follow the progress

For me...that has to be;

• Losing some weight...
• Getting better organised.
• Making more effort to enjoy the time that getting better organised will give me.
• Improve my coding skills
• Improve my guitar playing

The weight thing 1st though, its time I dealt with this properly, my half hearted attempts to lose weight last year only dropped a few kilo's which has come back easy enough. 

In this. my 50th year I have to be more aware of my upcoming and inevitable frailty....my mind is already on the way out so better start making an effort to save the bod. I'm currently around 92Kilos....maybe 94...ermm I 'll check later. But I need to drop down to at least 70 which is about right for my frame and build.. Thats a pretty massive  drop and frankly not likely..so I'm going to aim for 75Kilos as a target weight, I'll give myself 6 months.. So June 1st! I will put  not in my calander that I have to report on my progress.

Of course how I do this is the issue? Diet? Hmm probably. I can cook, so of course I can eat better so I'll have to do that but it needs to be combined with.....
Excercise...gaahh I hate gyms, but I am still paying for the membership of my local place and not using it, and annoyingly paying for it does not actually make me thinner...who knew???
So I suppose once a week is not going to kill me...2 times a week might be better..But jogging isn't going to happn till I lose at least 10k my knees will never take it.
More cycling I think, so I will invest in  better bike.

Getting better organised....this is kinda a no brainer..I have all my work courses laid out from previous years, but not in any great order, and I tend to update them as I use them, partly to alter the flow as I determine the speed of the students. But that has to stop..
I am going to pull them all into 1 collected folder, update them and add more links to research material.
From now on I plan to make use of our study/exam/retake weeks to get these properly in order, so that every single class is laid out and ready, with a Friday re-working to make sure I am up todate and flexible.


Enjoying the time....I have to cut out the drinking...so need to exclude popping to the pub more often, But I am going to socialise a bit more..Do some cultural stuff and see more movies... A Pathe monthly card will have to be arranged this month so I can see more pics more often. (btw..watched Hobbit...in 3d and HF, liked it but..it was different...don't like having to wait for the next one)

A few more trips to the theatre and some culture might be on the cards too. Brenda is a dancer and wants me to experience some dance theatre so lets see how that goes...She also wants me to take up Ballroom dancing.....hmmm well I'll give it a go, but no promises there..

Improving my coding..ok this might seem an odd one, after all I'm a highly experienced programmer,but there are things I need to improve. I've never been much of a 3D coder, it's always been a bit of a black art for me.. I know the maths involved and have used it in several project, but its never come naturually to me to think in 3D terms, I just use libs and let the magic happen...So I'm going to make an effort to do at least 1 build from the ground 3D project this year, on PSM, so that if it comes out halfway decent I can sell it.
I also need to be a better OOP coder, if systems like IOS and PSM are to be embraced I have to be better at it, even though I really don't like it, there's no point trying to hold back the tide.

I also need to make more effort to be more formal in my coding style...I generally am not very strict with my students coding methods, since to me its more important that thay try to do something clever rather than they way they do it. But my 3rd year students don't seem to be seeing the best of me when it comes to more advanced coding on consoles...So as well as my PSM project I'm going to see about starting up a PS3 project.

Improving the guitar playing...we'll it is getting better there's no doubt that I am considerably better than I was last year.. playing with the bands helps, I'm starting to feel confident in my overall ability to express myself..but I need to focus my practice more...So henceforce...I must try to do some proper regimented practice, scales, chords and riffs.....hmmm this might be harder than anything else....have to focus.


And thats it...2013 here we go.




Ahthankyew

Studio revamp

Feeling a lot better after the festive trotts, it did knock me sideways for a day or 2 but 100% back to normal now.

Next week, even though I'm still on holiday, I plan to do some work related stuff to keep myself on top of shit in the new year so I only really have this weekend for some music fun and games, and I'm probably not going to get much of those since its clear the studio needs a bit of a revamp.

New equipment and recording software has been purchased and I need to jig things around to make it a bit more effective and usable.

I'm sure there are a few people out there with really cool professional music production systems, mine is 100% amateur ebay bought crap but I still want to get the best out if it for the little money I spend on it.

A few big purchases though, the Voice Live units and a new(used..ebay bargain) Mackie Unversal control surface to control my logic pro 9software will take pride of place so must be set up to deliver the best results..The VoiceLive2 will be my "studio" unit on the fixed board (which also needs re-jigging as my Zoom unit has been untouched since getting my adrenalinn III) and the VoiceLive Touch will be used for band practice and performance stuff when I do some backing singing.
I will put the old Digitech Vocal Live 4 unit on ebay.nl or a dutch site in a few weeks

I've finally solved some of my wiring issues with a proper wireless mic I got a few months ago but couldnt' quite get in the right place, and a XLR switch to allow me to switch it between the normal mixer desk and the RC300 looper, much better than having 2 mics with different signal chains.

It does mean the super duper (but of course budger) condenser mic I have can't be used generally, since the XLR switch is not a big fan of 48v Phantom power but as anyone who has heard my recordings can testify its good that I don't try too hard to sing :D But if I do find I need to add some singing to a project it I can plug it in to one of the VL units easy enough.

We are also going to be doing a bit more band rehearsal stuff upstairs with both bands, which I love doing, though it does need wires for various intruments and  mics...fortunately my Jamhub takes care of that and I can keep the wiring mostly hidden for that ...yipeee


The ultimate aim is to keep everything contained, not have wires everywhere but sitll have a nice carpet rug sized area that will be my recording area and still have the playroom aspect with movies and emergency guest room (not that anyone ever visits me now....Mum..Danni....take note!!)


Logic pro 9 is a mega bit of software though, it is supposed to be an easy upgrade from Garage Band but the learning curve is actually pretty steep, especially trying to work though online manuals. So many options its quite painful and my now getting old, Mac Mini, is struggling just wee bit to run it, though so far only the 64track demo's have caused it to have panic fits, my few track experiments are all fine, I doubt I'll get to 64 tracks worth of anything so nothing to worry about for now.

A small Mac may be needed later in the year for some IOS conversion projects in which case I can justify the purchase of a new mac, otherwise the mini does for me just fine.


I'll post pics of the new setup when its all up and running......knowing me, sometime in 2015




Ahthankyew

So long 2012

I know, still a few days left but am not in the mood to sit in front of  tempremental computers typing things, but find myself here due to having no energy to do anything else having been hit with a dose of Diarrhea which is not nice...didn't get a lot of sleep last night , running to the bathroom every 30 mins or so and am weak as a kitten.. But I seem to be empty now so will start topping up with more water and some fruit juices. Hopefully it'll only be a day or 2 till I'm back on my feet.

Had a lovely surprise when Brenda got back from her trip to Kenya on Boxing day. I wasn't expecting to see her till Friday but she's nursing me back to health..kinda.  We'll hopefully do something fun for new year together.

So 2012...pretty shit year overall...but you can't really say that can you? While its true, 1 relationship smashed into pieces and my life was turned totally upside down resulting in some dramatic changes in lifestyle there's more to life than that.
 I've picked myself up, fixed most of my finances, and started out on a new relationship , so the positives outweight the negatives or at least balance them up. I end the year on a high..diarrhea notwithstanding.

Work has been hard...bloody hard at times, but I think thats my own doing, I need to try to be better organised and prepare things in advance...Especially I have to work out a way to do marking quicker...I've hopefully secured the aid of one of my collegues which might help next time I get snowed under.


Overall I don't think I can be too upset with 2012 like most years it had ups and downs, and we just have to muddle through them as best we can.

So...byebye  2012...it was ...interesting..but 2013 better be fun or I will want a refund!


Ahthankyew

Technology is not my friend

I've noted before that as I get older my once cutting edge tech savvy has been deserting me, so much so that pretty much anything tech based I touch these days is sure to fail, especially when needed.

I've had this recently with my home internet system, which was happily working with a ebay bought powerline router supplying a wireless router upstairs, giving me full coverage in the the house.

That is until the lounge master unit decided to blow up.. I still had internet but the loft has been intermittent and I have had trouble finding a working system to replace the old Sqeenix unit.

Enter Shitecom (yes I did spell it that way) and thier home plug system.

Its crap...utter total shite... complex, and very unreliable and needed the PC to do a troubleshoot on it to get 2 of the 3 units I bought to work...the 3rd unit hooked up to a Mac in the loft couldn't self repair so I had to resort to the Shitecom Homeplug utility....oh my god, what a crap bit of software.

Its taken me weeks, mainly becuase after my 1st attempt to get it to work wasted a day, I boxed it up ready to take it back, but fate and schedules stopped me getting back to Media Markt...

I tried again tonight using so,e new cables which did actually get a connection going a bit at a time....4 hours later. 4 FRUSTRATING FUCKING HOURS, I finally have it working...no where near the promised 200MBS (39 and 29 reporting on the utility in fact) but at lest its exceeding the interet bandwidth so I'm ok for now.

Oh and to add icing to the cake, the PC upstairs is fucked too, it refuses to display an image after completing boot up. I think its missing the 32" mega screen, it worked fine on teh 22" until today...I can't be bothered messing with it.. I'll probably be bringing it down to the office  soon anyway. Since this current PC is not a bit dated and keeps throwing up a warning I'm not using genuine windows...even though I am!!!

arrgghhh



Ahthankyew

1 take...ok so its crap...

but not really had any chance to play with my new VoiceLive touch unit so this is not that bad.





Ahthankyew

Covering ears is now optional

Something a bit different this time, I got myself a new toy for my Birthday, a TC Helicon Voice Live Touch, such a cool gadget...I heard this sung on one of the demo vids for it, and discovered the amazing version by Sinead O'Conner who wrote it. I thought I'd see what the little box could do
I don't have pitch correction on properly so I do wobble a bit but still, this took 5 or 6 takes to get right , not bad with a brand new toy I'm still playing with.



Hope you like it, I hate my voice normally but it sounds quite nice though headphones or decent speakers....
if the widget does not work here's a link.

In This Heart


Now that I am on holiday at last I will be doing a few more recordings, and probably some more singing with my new toy....god help you all. Ahthankyew

New shoes

Feeling a little flush now that Xmas bonus and invoice payments are in the works...I decided to do something about my aching sore feet...I am not one who generally buys lots of shoes, or expensive ones but the last few months wearing my expensive running shoes every day has apparently given me really really sore achy feet. I mean really sore....hobbling at times sore...not good.

Time to buy some "proper" shoes....none of your bargain bin shit..

Still painful spending more than 20quid, but let see. If it works.


Also had a bit of a splurge on my toys..not guitars but I've updated my vocal processoes, my VL4 is very good but a bit hard to use well I need something simpler, so plumped for a couple of TC-Helicon voicelive units a portable Touch and a fixed Voicelive2 Extreme, a couple of mega ebay bargains. These should help improve my backing singing in the band and home recodings....Will try to sell the VL4 locally, if not I'll put it on ebay, hoping one of my  band singers might want it, though I know Britta (the Gadgets) hates all tech so probably not for her.

Birthday tomorrow, Monday....49... Seems everyone is keen on this, except me...meh...I have a band practice to do tomorrow so no chance for a nice meal with Brenda, my new g/f but we'll do something nice on Tuesday/


Ahthankyew

PA is loud and music is fun.

Though not quite as loud as I thought, which is good. I was expecting my ears to bleed at full volume, but no just a bit of a ringing sensation!!!

I have a small Yamaha Stagepas portable PA system I bought for the bands. Between gigs (which are not often) its sits in the spare room...bit of a waste.

So I hooked it up in the studio, Although I have a decent set of studio monitors, they don't do bass well and are not that loud...and when the bands are here, we can't hear ourselves so well..but tbh we tend to use the Jamhub when there's a full set, for the neighbours benefit, but its still nice to blast things out sometimes, within reason.

The PA blows the little monitors away :D lots of volume and no problems at all with buzzy distorted bass and since I can hook up my Ipod/pad to it and play backing tracks...its my new favourite thing for practicing.
But I am going to have to buy a CD player, I find that I have many many more backing CD's than I can store on my 32GB Pod...so....a small further investment, assuming you can still buy CD players :D.
Though I am giving some thought to retiring my old Pod, due to a cracked screen, so perhaps loading it up with nothing but the backing tracks is the way to go. Its still working for now though, and damn a new 64G is expensive...not sure I want to invest that much. My Pad is also on the verge of retirement...its a 1st gen, and no longer gets updates for IOS..I suspect it might be time to put it to use as a full time Ampkit setup and buy a new one with a bit more memory...hmmm I think thats probably a better idea...use the old Pod for a while and retire the pad. I have a couple of Sony Android pads I can use for mail and websurfing, with occasional gaming, which is after all the Pad's main use now.

The Studio is undergoing a bit of a reshuffle as I now do most of my school and coding work downstairs in the boxroom office now. I've got a bit more space on the big desk for music toys which is better. I want to try to keep everything contained and tidy for when friends and band members come to play.

Still have to deal with the ever present curse of cables though..my dreams of a wireless set up, seem to be fraught with technical challenges....and the curse of short battery life.

I'm sure there has to be a solution somewhere.....that or I need to work out some way to place junction boxes at strategic points to plug in..Even quite simple band setups seem to need miles of cables, and my own wireless systems always seem to fail at key points when others are here so out come the cables again, and the inevitable tripping.

I also need to do something in the upcoming holidays...catalogue all my guitars...which is no mean feat. I might even thin the herd a bit..though I'm always reluctant to..Going to photograph and itemise them with as many secific details as I can remember.

I have found myself these last few months, more and more playing just 2 guitars, Marge my vintage Patrick Eggle Berlin and Libby, the Gibson Blueshawk. Maybe it because they are they nicest ones to practice on, easiest to play and always to hand.
I know I get different tones from my Lucille and Strats etc, when I want to do recording, but I'm finding I love the tones of these main two more and more....hmmmm decisions..I'll think on it for a year or 2. Marge does need to go in for a bit of a setup though, her high notes are buzzing ever so slightly. I'll do that after Mondays band practice, the StarrCase crew are quite taken with Marge's tone on certain songs, so don't want to be without her.

I was over in London last week for a meeting at Sony regarding our Academic status, and got a chance to discuss PSM with the chief tech guy...very interesting overall, but I have to say the St Giles 3* hotel in town was a major let down...crap tiny room, transport cafe restaurant for brekkie and overall not very nice. I did sleep well though, despite noisy party people in the streets.

But of course London means Denmark St :D. I dithered about going since I needed to use any spare cash this month to finalise the mortgage transfer, but I went, saw, played and walked away....nothing really took my fancy, apart from a very old and battered 1962 Fender Mustang for around 2K...a bargain, cos someone had painted the back of it.....but no...no no..tempted as I was, as an investment, I'm sure restored properly it would be worth double, but I decided looking was better than buying, no telling what else might be wrong with it, and sourcing vintage parts would be expensive.

Besides if I am going to buy anything that old, it needs to be a 1963..the year of my birth. I'm keeping an eye open for a flying V from that year. Then I can pretend to be Albert King. (yes I know his was a bit earlier..but...)







Ahthankyew

Done and done.

The game passed Sony approval, despite having 1 major crash bug, though since it only seems to happen at the 40th level before restarting at the 1st, they've let it slide.

strange...but still...yippee..

I can reveal the name of the project now that its done. Cosmic Clean-up. Its an old school arcadey game, hard to describe, but a simple game mechanic taken to an extreme...sometimes too much I think but hey ho.

http://www.ripstone.com/cosmic-clean-up.php

Ripstone are the UK publisher for it, and it goes on sale any time now on the Sony App store...so if you have a psm certified device, please give it a go..the crash won't worry you. I'm going to fix it and supply a new version in case they get a chance to do an update/patch, but apprently thats another submission process which no one wants to do.

There is going to be an IOS version of it in a few months, I was originally slated to do it, but I really didn't enjoy the Agile Development style of project managment by the Dutch developers and opted out as soon as I was able, I'll help out whoever is doing it but I'm not in a rush to put myself through that again. I won't bitch about it here..but its no secret I had many issues with the way the project was managed.

Its not uncommon though, I spent a lot of time learning project management in an effort to improve the production process, I was pretty good at it, none of my projects were ever late and no one ever crunched. But I didn't like the lack of acknowledgement that being good at it returned.  Its an old PM complaint, no one ever notices the PM when the jobs are going well, so it must be some kind of magic that makes it go so well, but if it goes bad...well the PM's the 1st on the line to get fired.

But equally, trying to explain to other project managers using different methods that their methods are not well suited to small projects is tilting at windmills. Agile makes no real allowance for coder fatigue, slippage, lack of others to pick up slack or re-iterrate after 1 too many iterrations. 

It frankly seems more like a constant state of panic trying to continually add new stuff and rework  old working stuff based on client feedback over and over again with no real regard to risk or planning..
Fine if you have a team of people able to pick up and redo things, but utterly useless when you have 1 coder who occasionally needs some time to figure out wtf is the problem with the code that isn't doing what its supposed to do.

I'll need to add a 3rd Brians Law of self fuckery...

Brians 1st Law of Self Fuckery: If your code is not doing what you expect it to do, you fucked up.
Brian's 2nd Law of Self Fuckery: same as the 1st.
and now.
Brian's 3rd Law of Self Fuckery: If your SDK is buggy and the client keeps changing the code requirements , 1st and 2nd laws don't apply, just try not to kill anyone.

In the end there was a lot of very unpleasent crunch, which I detest. I saw it through and now will move on, a little wiser, and a lot less interested in Agile development. So much so that if anyone ever offers me a job where they use AD, and its just me..I will walk away.

I am going to have a crack at doing a couple of small PSM projects though, I bought a couple of tablets to help me do the project, which I probably won't use for anything else, so might as well get a game or 2 out and see if I can recoup the costs.
PSM market, is currently very undersupported, and though the Vita isn't selling all that well there's still a sizable market of people out there looking for games....might as well...once I've have a chance to recover.


On a related games note.. the Wii U is out...I quite like the idea of this, I've always been a big fan of interactive controllers, and this is of course the ultimate.
Unusually for Nintendo the launch seems to be quite low key, barely any coverage on mainstream media...I suspect a lack of titles is to blame...I decided to buy one though and went shopping. Sure enough there was some available at my local game stores and I picked one off the shelf, then went looking for games.

hmmm I think I found 4....not great...but wait...€60 ...are you fucking kidding me...€60???

I put the unit back on the shelves..

Sorry..but I do know that games are expensive to produce, I do know that there are overheads, etc..
But at what point are we going to get the idea that people have a limit on how much they want to spend of a few days (at most) entertainment on a GAMES console.
I might consider 40...I could even be tempted to spend 50 on a must have title...but 60 ...sorry its too much.

I guess I no longer am that interested in console games.






Ahthankyew

Hello cruel world

Phew...what an eventful few weeks. I "think" the freelance project is out the door now, at least its gone to submission and hopefully will pass. Its not been a fun final month or so I have to say. I won't be doing that again any time soon.
I don't have an NDA or anything in place, but its normally bad form to discuss a projects title before its released so I'll wait till its on the store before I give details. Its a nice game though...a basic idea taken to an extreme that gives a good playing experience...with cute graphics, was pushing the limits a bit though, I hope it doesn't suffer on any older shitty machines.

But on the plus side I got paid (or at least I'm waiting for my invoices to be paid) to learn a new system. Thats always cool.

Playstation Mobile http://www.playstation.com/psm/index_e.html has just been launched and my title will be one of the 1st mainstream titles on the PSM store.  Sadly no royalties but it'll still be cool to see it there.

I had to work out my project list the other week for a new CV for work...this is my 72nd coding project....wow...crazy! I wonder if I can get up to 80 or 100 before I kick the bucket? Its harder to do projects now though, in the old days I chucked games out in 6-8 weeks, these days its much more involved, and I find my need to make money is not so great these days so the project needs to interest me in  some way, (like learning something new)... So maybe 1 or 2 PSM's before learning excitment dies.

There's a lot wrong with the development of PSM, but it is a new system so we must make allowances and hope the SDK developers take note of all the issues the beta users of which I was one have raised.

But there is a lot right with it too, were it not for the stress of trying to hit deadlines, theres a lot to explore in the PSM SDK that makes it fun and relatively easy to code on, bugs aside. The excellent simulator include with the development tools is super. The IDE is a custom version of Mono which is quite usable if you don't need to go too deep into it.

C# was not as painful as expected either, though in truth I really avoided most C# coding style in an effort to keep the project moving forward. I hate OOP at the best of times but in this case with a new SDK and new devices it might be been very hard to follow.

Getting things up and running is mostly pretty easy, though like many "cover all" systems the attempt to support multiple different devices is problematic, with both CPU/GPU performances to cope with and the dreaded differences in screen sizes...annoying when you spend an hour formatting a screen of credits only to be told it does not work on machine X which you don't have to test on.

But I liked it, even though I cursed it many times due to stupid and time consuming bugs,  I might have a go at doing a couple of game ideas myself in the new year once I've recovered...this time no deadlines!

Of course someone at Sony cocked it up..and it seems that Dutch developers have been excluded from the needed publisher status to sell their wares on the stores, and by extension to get licenses to run their games on devices...shocking considering so many of them contributed to the beta. I've stayed on the 0.992 release of the SDK to avoid problems, for now..but I do think someone needs to accept that such an excluson is shameful for the very large Dutch indie community who worked hard on the beta. My game thankfully is being published by a UK company, working with Sony so no problems there.

Anyway....the projects over, I don't really need to worry about publisher status just now, I hope they will fix it by the time I get round to having something worth publishing. In the meantime I can get my evenings and weekends back to myself, my bands and my school work and...my love life...yes..love life!
Amazingly despite the work and other hassles,  my love life is starting to look up...Have to say any new g/f that can tolorate me working all hours and squeezing her in when I can,  is probably a keeper....so we'll have to see what can be done about that.
Now that there's going to be more time available I'll have to try and practice that squeezing a bit more :D







Ahthankyeww

Moon on a stick

I should probably clarify, the moon on a stick comment below was something I've had in my funnies folder for years, one of my ex employees used to say it constantly whenever we asked him for something even remotely hard in a project.  I think he sent it to me one time, it makes me chuckle.. I heard he quit games development and moved into java coding......no accouting for the harm game coding can do to your phyche when you resort to java coding is there?

Some recent stress with the freelance project reminded me of it and I dug it out for a bit of levity, not as a direct comment on the freelance project though it is apt in some ways.

I have not really enjoyed the way the project has been running in the last weeks, and indeed moons on sticks were asked for...directly in one humourous exchange, probably as a result of reading this blog. Not sure yet if the joke was fully understood.

Its a pretty little game, nearly done and I look forward to signing off and moving on to something else less stressful, maybe next year I might have a go at porting some old titles to it.

The ups and downs of games relentless charge to get product out in time are hard to cope with, it puts people under pressure and causes stress and division which is not a good thing to work with when you are a creative bod needing to focus on minute details.

Playstation Mobile however has proven to be an interesting challenge, buggy yes, resticted, for sure, stupid memory limits, yup, and diversity of targets (oh god remember j2me??) but it is easier to get things up and running than Android or IOS so if they can fix the bugs, I'll give it another go sometime.
I just wonder if its worth the effort with so few target machines around.....since I'm not on a royalty I'll never know but am certainly curious to see if this is going to be a viable market.

I have a meeting with Sony next Month, to disucss PSM development issues. among other things, I might find out if its something worth continuing with seriously, or just dabbling in for fun


Ahthankyew

MRI Results

I like that they phone you here when they have important results. especially as I'd almost run out of snooze presses on the phone at 8-30am.

Had an MRI last Thursday for the odd Migraines I detailed a few weeks ago which have not returned since.
MRI results show I'm perfectly normal. Clearly something wrong with the machine then eh??

Just another getting old symptom.

Ahthankyew

Should be a standard response.

Dear client,

I am sorry to tell you your request for the Moon on a Stick is not possible, I have tried to explain this to you in various different ways, politely, simply, forcefully, aggressively and most recently,  just plain go fuck yourself. viz.That you cannot have what you ask for in the time you need, with the resources we have available.

Regardless of the way I express it, the problem still remains. It can't be done, please stop asking so I can stop refusing and we can prevent further escalation, whereupon you may find your moon stick lodged somewhere painful, but which hopefully will result in you being too distracted to ask for your unreasonable request for some time

Please advise on how you want to move forward rather than suggestions of a different type of stick the result of which has already been described.

Lots of love…

A pissed off coder.

Ahthankyew

2nd Gig

My 2nd ever gig, this time with my NHTV band StarrCase was thrust upon me this week when at very very short notice, we were asked to join in a Battle of the Bands event in Breda.

When I say short, an I mean short, 3 days, and no chance to rehearse....so bascially we did a live rehearsal..

I won't pretend it was any good, we were all over the place, especially when we could not actually hear ourselves play.. We were told amps would be there for us to use but they were not, so we had to use the PA, it worked ok for guitars kinda, but my bass just didn't come through at all and I ended up thinking my bass was not working and doing test scales I could not hear mid song, but the audience did...lol

But all things considered with the lack of rehearsal we did pretty well, in a true Rock and roll style :D

Pics to follow soon.


(oh we didn't win, but the competition was brilliant so we don't feel to bad...we had fun and money was raised for charideee so all good)





Ahthankyew

Ah Marking, how I have missed you

The deluge has started, and am expecting an overwhelming flood on Friday but will try to keep on top of it all, though I seldom do :D

Quality levels are variable this year, we've got a very mixed bag of  1st year students, some nice clever things, but also some wtf are are you doing...
Still, we get this every year. The 1st batch of, this is not really for me,  have started to drift off and the, omg this is hard, lot will probably quit soon too.

Leaving lots of lovley nice new coders for us to mess with their minds.

I had the honour yesterday to chair my 1st Graduation presentation for a student who started when I did, It was wonderful to see how much he had progressed, though he was already one of the brighter ones his graduation project was amazing.
I know I can't take much credit, since I only really do the basic stuff and he was well above that when he started but still...I felt immense pride in seeing him pass his graduation presentation and knowing he'll be getting his diploma.


The Drums saga...hmm well I'm a little bummed, my extension pack of extra tom and crash arrived, but he wasn't able to supply a dual zone cymbal as hoped and put a single in the box and refunded the extra cost, so now I have a spare single..since I don't want to use it...

More strange was rather than another 14" tom, they sent an 8" tom..Apparently I'm supposed to move my 10" top tom over and all the others as well so I now have an 8,10,12,14 tom system.

Ermm... why? I was expecting another 14 to go on the end of my current 14 but it seems they only do the 8...on the plus side it is a dual trigger so more rim shots, but I'm not too happy with it...

I don't like that its smaller...

I just got used to hitting the 10 and 12, now I have to be more accurate on the top toms hitting an 8 and 10.

Also...I hate to admit..its not very good, it triggers rim shots randomly when doing any kind of rolls...I mailed them about it but got no reply over what to do about it, ideally I want a replacment 10" and send this thing back.

Turning it the other way on the rack has improved the false triggers but still it happens, I'm not pleased....we'll have to see if Nigel at Traps is willing to deal with my complaint or just ignore it.

The final insult, the pack was missing one bracket to actually mount the now shifted 14" Tom...he did respond to a request to send that out to me at least...I am hoping...probably in vain that he will also have sent a 10" tom...though I am probably hoping for too much.

I'll persevere with the 8" for now, but in future I need to be more careful about what I am asking for. But I do think if they are going to give you an extension kit at least another 10" or a 14" makes sense.

At least the new HiHat switch was in the box and works fine...lets hope it lasts..I bought a Roland hihat pedal as well as a back up but it does not seem to work on the Traps Brain..I'll need to get a friend with a Roland kit to try it for me to make sure its not faulty then sell it on.

Now if I can just get some time to play it..the freelance project is in its final stages and taking up a lot of my spare time, I find I'm now banging drums to relax rather than any concentrated learning but still its progressing, I bought a beginers dumrs course on DVD/Book and will start on it soon.


Ahthankyew