Sunday, October 28, 2007

New engineering feat

As you all know, I have an acuarium (see the link on the right-hand menu). What you don't all know is that it had bee mistreated... I mean, used as a terrarium. It doesn't sound too bad, but ut implies the lid had been cut, ripped, the fluo tube supports eliminated, broken, etc.

It generally means I had to do fixes to be able to use it. Also, the lid only allowed me access to the front part of the acuarium, which meant I couldn't clean the back, etc.

Well, thanks to my pal El Prenda we designed a lid that would permit total access to the acuarium, that maintained the tubes in the propper position, etc etc.

So here's the result. A solid lid made from microfiber wood, aluminum adhesive tape, aluminum profiles, ... and a fair amount of time!



Friday, October 26, 2007

Soundbites

Every now and then, like me, you need, for your compositions, to add some sounds of things (soundpainting). And let's face it. It's not always easy to put everything up to record the ticking sound of a clock or the birdsong of a limping red african pelican. In these cases, some source where to get this things from can be really useful.

This morning, though inadvertedly, a friend of mine, Jvader has brought light to a little problem I had with a particular piece. He showed me a website specialised in just that: soundbites. The best part is that it's FREE (no registry necessary, either!!).

Up 'till now, I'd been using another one that, although also free, demands you register in order to download the soundbites. Here are both:



(reg required)




Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Hope

Saturday, whilst visiting a friend, I suggested we go out for a stroll and do some window shopping on a nearby CashConverters. As usual, as soon as I got in I headed for the musical instruments section. Almost immediately I saw a guitar with a distinctive shape (I already knew well) and, imagining it would be ridiculously expensive, I picked it up. The price, more than reasonable for this guitar, just 299€, was justified by a crack near the base, although after inspecting it, I saw it had been fixed. I decided to try it out to see if the sound was affected and (plugged or unplugged) it was unaffected.
It was covered with girlie sparkling stars and hearts stickers and there was a magazine cutout of some flowers showing through the center hole.

Even though, deciding it was a good investment (I always wanted one), I bought it. My friend, C, quite apropriately named her "Hope". Apropriately because, besides her own reasons, I was hoping it really was as OK as I saw it.

Took it home, re-strung it, corrected the neck truss rod,removed all the tacky stickers, cleaned it and dicovered that under the flower paper cutting was another cutting of a girl in B/W. Both cuttings were stuck with isolating tape. Worst of all, under them, the previous owner, in a supreme expression of stupidity and inneptitude, had ripped the original maker's sticker.

I am still to confirm it, but I think it's this one [LINK].

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Hope:



Friday, October 05, 2007

The quote of the week, month,...

I am a fan of the show Medium. I was watching the episode "Joe day afternoon", episode 17 of the third season. It was a good episode, but what really got at me was the following quote, right at the end:

"Hope, like dread, it often comes unannounced and then thankfully intoxicates us and inoculates our feelings with an irrational sense of joy and optimism. Hope is the high. Dread is the low. I guess life is the stuff in-between."

For some reason, it struck a resonant chord inside of me. I will not spoil it by using it in a signature or anything like it, but it deffinitely deserves an entry.

... adendum requested by the audicence... From yesterday's IT crowd:

"Well, put some mustard on those words because you will have to eat them along with this piece of humble pie I have just taken out of the oven set on egg on your face" (Moss)

Monday, October 01, 2007

The power of Google

Some days ago I was remembering, not for the first time, some friends I had a long time ago. Friends that, for reasons that don't belong here, I lost. And I thought to myself "Let's see what Google can find of them" and googled their names. It is amazing the results I got back. Even data that should be protected!

Sometimes the "power" of Google frightens me. At least my intentions were honourable.

Long story short. I found a piece of text I believe my friend wrote. I read it and was struck by it's profoundness and by how close it struck, from afar. It is lost in the immensity of the cyberspace and, in all honesty, it does it no justice.

So, even if not many people read this personal blog, I will reproduce it for its own merits which are not mine and I'll honour this discovery to it's own author (Translation mistakes are my own. It's originally written in Spanish):

Discovery



Discoveries are born on the threshold of exhaustion, on the most depressing tiredness, lies and a flavour of vinegar. We discover this new element and we quickly tell everyone, proud and blessed by the mysterious saint of happiness. We bore all known and unknown with the details of our fortuitous encounter with truth, we smile proudly at our own sapiency and, why not, our luck. And we flirt with the beauty of the eternal. Then comes the phase where we investigate this discovery, we understand its inner workings and discover all its mechanisms and nooks and crannies. We analyze, experiment, evaluate, compare and, in a word, we submit it to a cruel and desperate measure in our effort to prove we are the unique, inimitable and perfect discoverers. We lose track of time and space. We don't eat nor sleep and if we sleep, we do it keeping an eye open and our brain overchurning ideas and concepts related to our undefined marvel, both complex and irrational. We dream of our discovery and intimately tie ourselves to it. We are obsessed by it. Until one day, without warning, our discovery is stolen. Someone better, more intelligent, powerful. Someone who has something we don't have even though we may not admit it. So we fight to preserve our patent. Just to keep enjoying the pure and simple investigation, to stay in science's insanity. We fail. And our heart seeks another discovery. One for a lifetime, if possible.

David