14 year old playing Paganini_Caprice_no_24 on an acoustic guitar

Amazing..

Interesting modern art

Some amazing art work.  Most of my favorites are toward the bottom

Can you difuse the bomb in under 15 minutes?

I had 3:30 minutes left.  How fast can you do it, the first time?

Need a synthesized voice?

I got a new cell phone, the Treo 700wx.  You’ll be hearing more about it, but for now, I thought you might get a kick out of playing with AT&Ts natural voice synth.  select the voce you want, and type in a short message.

Get your stuff fixed nearly for free..

Great article on how to possibly get things that are broke fixed for free. It’s a good read.

Homestead update

We spent this weekend working on our garage.  Since moving in, it’s been a disaster because there was absolutely no storage.  Sat morning we drove south to pick up a free trailer load full of cabinets.  These cabinets were from AB (coincidence) and were heavily constructed.  We spent Sunday rearranging and installing them, and added some sanded 1/2″ floorboard for countertop.  These cabinets at 30″ deep and will make a great work surface.

Mouse Game

self explanatory..

 

http://www.notdoppler.com/files/pointer_0109.swf

John Meyer and Sheryl Crow concert..

Pamela and I went to the first concert I’ve paid for in years.  Having worked in the business for years, it’s hard for me to actually pay to see a show, but after seeing John Mayer on Soundstage on PBS I was willing to pay the $35 a ticket to see John.  You can subscribe to Soundstage to get alerts on shows. 

We arrived right as doors opened and got a great place on the lawn in the center where we had a great view of the stage, and I hoped the sound would be the best.  I have to say, they’ve done a wonderful job upgrading the sound system.  I was impressed how crystal clear everything sounded, and you could still feel the kick drum in your chest.  I can’t say enough how impressed I was with John’s performance, he’s one of the best guitarists I’ve seen live and that’s saying something with all the shows I’ve seen.  The mix was flawless – I certainly would have been challenged to do as good a job.  John is also “good people”: he’s a modest intellectual who plays guitar like it is an extension of his soul.

Then Sheryl came on stage.  The mix was a little rough. The vocals were excruciatingly loud. I mean LOUD!  Frequently when she sang, it made my teeth grit from my built-in 120db alarm (my ears are sensitive to whenever a 1K-5KHz signal passes 118db – Pain.)  Not to mention her vocal was so much louder than the music –  I was unable to hear what the band was playing. We were treated to a song where John joined Sheryl for a song, and THAT was incredible, but the loud vocals ruined the overall experience.   It was the first time I left a concert early in my life.    By the time we left, the stringed instruments on stage were too loud too.  I know I could have mixed this one much better than it was, but alas all I could do was during a lull I screamed ” for the love of God please turn down the vocals.”   No one around me argued..

As I was walking to the car from the show, it occurred to me that I couldn’t imagine a professional sound person would ever mix that poorly unless they were told to do so by the talent.  I just doesn’t makes sense. If I can track down who mixed the show, they will be getting an email from me about it.  If I get a response I’ll post it here.

Cheers!

Apollo 16 Image Library .. moon shots

NASA has posted an astonishing amount of photos from the Apollo 16 mission to the moon.  The photos are very high resolution

For those of you who don’t faint at the smell of Physics..

I saw this interesting article about Quantum Mechanics called “Why Quantum Mechanics Is Not So Weird after All”

Retro Games

A blast from the past for you old time gamers out there..    they have several games to play..