to:
http://irritatedinfidel.wordpress.com/
k-praat will go sayonara soon...
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Lets see if this thing works or not
Ah... finally able to enter text again.
Great. Could not for the love of the great turd in the sky get any text
input the other day. Made me go to WordPress.
But... I don't want to start from scratch again. So; I'll stick with this spot
until it gives me problems again.
Great. Could not for the love of the great turd in the sky get any text
input the other day. Made me go to WordPress.
But... I don't want to start from scratch again. So; I'll stick with this spot
until it gives me problems again.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Atheist manifesto, rewritten
While scanning some of my hoarded internet loot I saw a text document labeled 'atheist.txt'. In it I found a nice (if somewhat verbose) Atheist's manifesto of sorts.
For those of you who don't know me that well, I've been an atheist or at least a non faith-head for about 12 years or so now.
I realised some time ago it is better to have simple, short 'mission statement' of the atheist lifestyle instead of having to play the 'disprove the existence of god' game the whole time (which we really don't have to take part in; Google 'burden of proof') .
I think the original version of this Atheist manifesto comes from the American Atheists' website (http://www.atheists.org/).
Here is my version of the Atheist Manifesto:
- Atheists live life to the full through knowledge of ourselves, our fellow creatures and our universe.
- Atheists love our fellow creatures and ourselves instead of gods.
- Atheists work to create heaven and live in it right here right now instead of waiting to die for it.
For those of you who don't know me that well, I've been an atheist or at least a non faith-head for about 12 years or so now.
I realised some time ago it is better to have simple, short 'mission statement' of the atheist lifestyle instead of having to play the 'disprove the existence of god' game the whole time (which we really don't have to take part in; Google 'burden of proof') .
I think the original version of this Atheist manifesto comes from the American Atheists' website (http://www.atheists.org/).
Here is my version of the Atheist Manifesto:
- Atheists live life to the full through knowledge of ourselves, our fellow creatures and our universe.
- Atheists love our fellow creatures and ourselves instead of gods.
- Atheists work to create heaven and live in it right here right now instead of waiting to die for it.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Is summer here?
I really hope so. This winter has been too long. As in really.
I used to consider myself a winter's person... no more! Guess all the summer outdoor
trance parties finally got to me ;).
The only thing(s) I dislike about summer are mozzies; but that's about it.
Went for a nice mountain bike ride to Jonkershoek today. I don't know if it was the Polaroid lenses on my shades but the trees had this awesome bright green colour.
Btw. for my invisible foreign readers; today was Heritage Day public holiday in South Africa. Basically it boils down to eating and drinking a lot of whatever the tradition in your particular culture demands. Me; I'm too bastardised to bother with anything in particular.
End random brain dump for today.
I used to consider myself a winter's person... no more! Guess all the summer outdoor
trance parties finally got to me ;).
The only thing(s) I dislike about summer are mozzies; but that's about it.
Went for a nice mountain bike ride to Jonkershoek today. I don't know if it was the Polaroid lenses on my shades but the trees had this awesome bright green colour.
Btw. for my invisible foreign readers; today was Heritage Day public holiday in South Africa. Basically it boils down to eating and drinking a lot of whatever the tradition in your particular culture demands. Me; I'm too bastardised to bother with anything in particular.
End random brain dump for today.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Jamming the Axe
Recently I experienced a (perceived) surge in my electric guitar playing abilities. For years my guitar playing would consist of a brief random noise generation experiment on a cheap-ass electric guitar, with the distortion gain set to max :D. Until this year...
One evening me and my best bud (Jacques, who is a master guitar player...) decided to jam a bit of guitar. Jacques has been able to play a number of Metallica songs to perfection for some time now. Me; well, I've only gathered bits and pieces of some of the songs over the years (and not always correctly). Anyway, on this fateful (nah; that sounds ominous) evening we played just this one acoustic riff from Welcome Home (Sanitarium), by Metallica (who else?). Anyway, just this little acoustic riff was played in perfect synch. It was there that we decided to both focus a lot more on our guitar playing in the coming weeks.
For years, I couldn't play one complete song to save my bacon. After about a month or two of more constructive practicing I can play 3 complete Metallica songs... give or take on misplaced note or two. Not too shabby; considering I had years of non-constructive practicing habits to get rid of.
The final bit of motivation was the purchase of this sexy little number; my new axe, an Ibanez Prestige RG1570:
My current equipment setup consists of the following:
Ibanez RG Prestige 1570 (main guitar)
Cort something or the other (old backup guitar with surprisingly low action and good sound!)
60W Roland Cube amplifier
For practice sessions I take the headphone output of the Cube into the line-in of my PC soundcard. I use the PC to play the tracks I'm practicing along with and monitor myself and the 'master' track via headphones plugged into the PC soundcard.
The most important 'discovery' I made was when I started to record my guitar playing during my practice sessions. I use the excellent free audio editing tool Audacity to record the line-in input during my playing. This allows me to review my playing after the fact. I noted an interesting effect: When I'm practicing along with an mp3 or whatever; I think I play much better than what I'm actually doing. It seems like the brain does a number on me in making me believe I'm actually more in time/accurate than I actually am! This is clearly revealed when listening to the recording of my playing in isolation. One can clearly hear timing errors, inaccurate / lazy picking and other blunders. Instead of causing despair; this actually clearly shows me which areas of my technique and which parts of the particular song I need to focus on.
Today's lesson is for free :D
One evening me and my best bud (Jacques, who is a master guitar player...) decided to jam a bit of guitar. Jacques has been able to play a number of Metallica songs to perfection for some time now. Me; well, I've only gathered bits and pieces of some of the songs over the years (and not always correctly). Anyway, on this fateful (nah; that sounds ominous) evening we played just this one acoustic riff from Welcome Home (Sanitarium), by Metallica (who else?). Anyway, just this little acoustic riff was played in perfect synch. It was there that we decided to both focus a lot more on our guitar playing in the coming weeks.
For years, I couldn't play one complete song to save my bacon. After about a month or two of more constructive practicing I can play 3 complete Metallica songs... give or take on misplaced note or two. Not too shabby; considering I had years of non-constructive practicing habits to get rid of.
The final bit of motivation was the purchase of this sexy little number; my new axe, an Ibanez Prestige RG1570:
My current equipment setup consists of the following:
Ibanez RG Prestige 1570 (main guitar)
Cort something or the other (old backup guitar with surprisingly low action and good sound!)
60W Roland Cube amplifier
For practice sessions I take the headphone output of the Cube into the line-in of my PC soundcard. I use the PC to play the tracks I'm practicing along with and monitor myself and the 'master' track via headphones plugged into the PC soundcard.
The most important 'discovery' I made was when I started to record my guitar playing during my practice sessions. I use the excellent free audio editing tool Audacity to record the line-in input during my playing. This allows me to review my playing after the fact. I noted an interesting effect: When I'm practicing along with an mp3 or whatever; I think I play much better than what I'm actually doing. It seems like the brain does a number on me in making me believe I'm actually more in time/accurate than I actually am! This is clearly revealed when listening to the recording of my playing in isolation. One can clearly hear timing errors, inaccurate / lazy picking and other blunders. Instead of causing despair; this actually clearly shows me which areas of my technique and which parts of the particular song I need to focus on.
Today's lesson is for free :D
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