general – Page 50

July 18, 2006

The best way to string a steel-stringed guitar

I remember downloading a document on the Taylor method of re-stringing guitars. I thought I should share this information for those of you who don’t know it yet.

When it comes to changing guitar strings, of course there are a lot of ways to skin a cat – but I really think Taylor has a winner with their particular method. To quote from the document:

Indeed, there are as many variations on the process of changing steel strings as there are players, and not all methods are equally effective. Some interfere with tuning (too many wraps) and others make strings susceptible to breakage (too few wraps). Developed over decades of experience, the current Taylor Guitars method has proven to provide outstanding results for all steel-string guitars.

As I tested using a set of strings from my newly purchased bulk-pack, I re-strung my Ovation Celebrity. It never ceases to amaze me how consistent and flawless this method of re-stringing is.

July 17, 2006

New guitar stuff

The stuff I had Pia buy from the US finally arrived. Which is perfect since I was contemplating on recording some shit once again.

I think I’m beginning to become a Planet Waves whore. The sheer practicality of the stuff they make reminds me of those Japanese inventions for practical living. They don’t look so good, but the concepts are very useful for living. Planet Waves‘ stuff on the other hand do not suffer from that dilemma as their products both have function and form.

July 15, 2006

Remembering last Christmas

Thought I would just share these photoshopped pics I did for the marketing of our group’s Christmas party. It would’ve been such a waste to just throw these away – so I’ll use them to test the lightbox grouping method. When viewing with a browser, click on any one of the pictures to engage the lightbox, then it should should tell you whether you can click to an “adjacent” picture when you mouseover to either side of the image.

Don’t be surprised if it breaks once in a while, after modifying the script to accommodate my dynamic Flickr linkbacks, I wouldn’t be surprised if it messes up some functions… I just hope they’re only cosmetic issues – so I can fix them with simple CSS.

July 13, 2006

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

If you haven’t seen this movie… I suggest you get your asses of your computer monitors and watch it. I absolutely loved this movie. In fact, regardless of what other critics may say, I think so far, of the movies I’ve watched this topped my list of “most enjoyable” movies of the first half of 2006.

The way the battle scenes were kinda over-the-top was absolutely brilliant for that type of film. It was like watching a cartoon. Which isn’t surprising since it was a Disney story. But nonetheless, it was so much fun to watch.

The effects of course were great. I didn’t really pay much attention to effects nowadays since as long as what I see seems believable, then I really don’t give a rat’s ass how much effort they put into pulling it off. As one of the effects people of the Lord of the Rings said: “the goal is to not let people think you were using computers, etc.”

The story was interesting enough, and the ending was superb! Seldom have I experienced an excited “whoa” moment when watching an ending. And the clever part is, while it does leave you wanting to see the third installment, it still actually finishes the current movie.

July 11, 2006

AllofMP3 – did you know?

After watching Lewis Blacks’ “gay banditos” skit on YouTube, I decided to buy his albums. Hahaha, don’t you just hate it that I can now use the word buy without batting an eyelash? Anyways, the variable pricing scheme AllofMP3 has on its encodes made me realize something when I was comparing them with one another.

You see, when it comes to simple audio (as against music) I tend to pick the lower bit-rate to save on money. Because lets face it. A live performance by someone who simply talks doesn’t need much fidelity to be appreciated. Since I love comic acts so much, the process of analyzing a good price-quality ratio seemed very relevant to my predicament.