Archive for the ‘Entertainment’ Category
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
Every now and then I talk a walk around the neighborhood to get some exercise. The fresh air helps a bit as well. I was curious as to how long the walk is in distance. It occured to me that I could probably use a GPS device to track a trek. I have a Garmon eTrex that I used to use for Geocaching a few years back. I discovered it’s whereabouts the other day when going through a few boxes in the back room.
The trip worked out to be 1.16 miles in length. It took me 24 minutes with a moving average of 2.9 miles per hour. Even my wife was a bit surprised at the distance. The two of us thought it was much shorter. It worked out that the back half of the trip turned out to be a greater distance then the first part.
The accuracy of the signals turned out to be between 18 and 32 feet due to the clouds covering the area. I wonder how much of an effect this has on the reported distance. The maximum speed reported was 10.6. On foot, I doubt I was moving this fast. I was casually walking the whole time. The big hill in the back half slowed me down even more.
Maybe I’ll start up my hunt again soon. I see a few new caches near my home. My geocache profile could use a little bit of updating. I still have a few bugs that I need to release into the wild. It would be something I could log into my Wii Fit as well.
Tags: , Exercise, Fitness, Geocaching, GPS, Measurements, Outdoors, Walking
Posted in Entertainment, Hobbies | Comments Off
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
I am still on a hunt to find useful programs to help guide me to learning how to play the guitar. Today I started going through open-source software for Guitars on SourceForge. I haven’t tried them all out, but these are the ones that interested me.
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Absolute Guitar Trainer: Absolute Guitar Trainer (agtrainer) is the first interactive electric guitar trainer capable of recognizing the sound from the user’s music instrument (basically an electric guitar) and use it to estimate the user’s advancement.
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CP Guitar Effect Proccessor: CP-GFX is simply a Cross Platform Guitar Effect Processor. The aim of the project is to create an extensible and easy to use program which is easy to port to different platforms an operating systems.
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GNUitarra/Guitar helper: GNUitarra is a light-fast all-in-one helper for the guitar player. Has more than +4000 scale types, +60 chord types, +60 string instruments (i.e bass). Can automake solos, learning excersises, etc. Works even in a 386!
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DGuitar: a Guitar Pro viewer, player: DGuitar is a Guitar Pro (*.GP4,*.GP3,GTP) viewer and player that works under Linux, MacOs, Solaris, BSD, Windows, or any other operating system with Java Runtime 1.4.X.
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GNUitar: GNUitar is guitar effects software that allows you to use your PC as guitar processor. It includes the following effects: wah-wah, sustain, distortion, reverberator, echo, delay, tremolo, vibrato, and chorus/flanger.
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Guitar Scale Assistant: Guitar Scale Assistant is a java based guitar application. This application allows guitarists to display, create, hear, and search for scales based on chords, progressions, note sequences, or names. A useful tool for guitarists at all levels.
Tags: Electric Guitar, Guitar, Guitar Lessons, Guitar Software, Guitar Training, Guitarware, Learning Guitar, Open-Source, Software
Posted in Entertainment, Hobbies | Comments Off
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
In my search to find computer programs that are interactive with “real” guitars (Guitarware?), I have found Guitar Rising, and GuitarGames.net. Today I just found another one that is free (for personal use) and available rite now called Little Big Star.
I downloaded the beta and quickly discovered that it wouldn’t run on a 64 bit operating system. The fix is simple and I left instructions with the author in how to fix the problem. Hopefully the next release will have the fix in place. As for everyone else who runs the application, I keep seeing good feedback. The visuals are starting to look like the actual Guitar Hero and Rock Band interfaces of the popular video game consoles. In fact, the software states that you can even hook up one of the video game guitar controllers and play with that instead of a real guitar if you like.
The software has a few problems with chords. This isn’t surprising since Guitar Rising has been delayed until 2009 for the same issues. (This is cutting-edge technology). One trick that the author is experimenting with is to dampen the guitar using a sock at the base of the strings so that the notes do not interfere with each other. It appears a bit odd to me, but then again – I don’t know much about guitars in general.
Hopefully Little Big Star and Guitar Rising will really help a lot of folks (including myself) to learn guitar. The author of Little Big Star is learning guitar as well and has identified some interesting techniques to help people learn songs. One mode is to wait for someone to play a note before advancing to the next note. Both games offer the ability to slow down the speed of the songs. This is really going to be an exciting time watching the technology jump from video game simulation to real-world teaching tools that are fun. Guitar Rising comes with songs, but LittleBigStar does not (to avoid copyright issues).
Tags: Guitar, Guitar Games, Guitar Hero, Guitar Rising, Guitarware, Learn Guitar, Little Big Star, LittleBigStar, Rock Band
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Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
I met my brother over at Guitar Center. We saw a few guitar kits. The website seems to have more choices then what we had seen on the site. Some kits appeared to have the same guitars as others. We saw slight differences in the guitar itself, but the price tag between two kits was over 100 dollars. I assume that it had something to do with the amp included. The expensive one had drums and loops built in so you could play along. It reminded me of how a lot of keyboards have similar features to start up a tune with a beat while you can play along.
I didn’t buy anything, but I have a better idea of what I am going to get. Fender appears to be the popular brand with these kits with their strat. It’s a pretty popular model in general. The only real options between them appear to be more of the amp included in the kits rather than features on the guitars themselves. I saw one with an extra coil pickup, and another had the same number, but laid out differently. That appears to be the physical difference that I could see. I’m leaning towards a metallic blue body.
Lucas came with an interest in keyboards but started leaning towards getting a guitar at the end. He’s been getting an education on guitars from a friend of his in regards to model shapes, materials, quality, etc.
We looked around and found a few other nick-knacks. The two of us left without any new guitars, but we now have a few plans and a better idea of how much to budget for a guitar.
Tags: Electric Guitar, Fender, Fender Strat, Guitar, Guitar Center, Guitar Shopping, Instrument, Music, Starter Kit, Stratocaster
Posted in Entertainment, Friends and Family | Comments Off
Sunday, November 30th, 2008
I had an acoustic guitar a good many years ago. I didn’t play it much because it simply made too much noise. I plucked it with my fingers to keep the sound down, but hey … ouch. I still want to play around as a hobby (not a rock star or anything). So I’ve been thinking about getting an electric guitar every now and then. Since the body is solid, the strings hardly make any sound. The popularity of these video games “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” has really started to spark my interest as well. I avoided the games simply because they are not real. I feel I would end up learning the wrong thing or some odd fingering techniques. So I started looking into a few things. For one, an electric guitar and an amp runs about 100 dollars on ebay. I’ll dig deeper to find something cheaper, but that looks like a starting point. The other thing that I found was something called Guitar Rising. Rather then using a plastic video game guitar controller, you plug in your electric guitar to the computer (or a microphone) and strum away. It looks like the same concept of the regular video games, except that you can actually learn something form it. Unfortunately, it’s not available yet. Go figure. However, it gives hope into learning how to play a guitar well, and having fun at the same time. Nice way to measure accuracy and stuffs. I also found a site, GuitarGames.net that helps with some simple guitar games.
Tags: Accoustic Guitar, Controller, Electric Guitar, Guitar, Guitar Hero, Guitar Rising, Music, Rock Band, Video Games
Posted in Entertainment | 1 Comment »
Friday, October 24th, 2008
I started digging around in a few boxes hoping that I could find my CD case of software. I knew that my ACID loops were in there. If I could find them, Then I could start playing with the trial version of ACID Music Studio 7.0. The trial comes with no sounds at all to play with. It is practically useless. I found the software and even better – I found my old ACID 2.0 Music software. Woo Hoo! I spent forever and a day trying to figure out how to register it since the original developer had sold the software to Sony. The codes that I had turned out to be bogus when I tried to register with Sony. I finally found out that I could associate my old email account to reclaim the codes. It’s a good thing I reactivated that email address a few months ago. The thing keeps paying for itself over and over again. It sent an email out to my old email and then I was able to reclaim the old Acid software code. Woo Hoo! So now I get to start playing with loops and see if my interest is involved enough to actually upgrade to version 7 or not. At least this way I don’t have to worry about time limits and I can actually produce something too.
Tags: Acid, Audio, Loops, Music, Software, Sonic Foundry, Sony
Posted in Entertainment | Comments Off
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008
Today I discovered what the rest of the LBP fans probably know already. The game has been delayed not by the developers, but by the distributor – Sony. The problem boils down to one of the songs played in the background of the third planet. It refers to the Qur’an quoting passages from religious literature. I visited the songwriters myspace site and listened to the song in question, Tapha Niang. It begins with a peaceful instrumental. When it does get around to the lyrics, it sounded to me like something from Africa. In fact, the world with the song has a Safari theme to it and is called “Swingin Safari”.
I am not offended by the idea that the lyrics are there. However, Sony pulled the plug to avoid any legal issues with offending Muslims. There have been a few arguments from different viewpoints. Some people say that they would rather choose not to buy the game rather then to restrict the freedom of expression. However, business is business. The game is delayed until at least the 28th of October, and I’m seeing chatter that it may be delayed until the first week of November.
I just wanna have fun already.
Tags: LBP, Little Big Planet, Muslim, Myspace, PS3, Qur'an, Religion, Safari, Sony, Tapha Niang
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Friday, March 9th, 2007
Second Life looks like it is really starting to pay off. After a year of experimenting, playing around, building stuff, and meeting new people, I appear to have an impressive cash flow income. I’ve recently started to sell off my lindens each day. I used to store them all into a ginko bank account, but the interest was getting pretty low that it really wasn’t worth the risk. I pulled my lindens out and sold them all off at once (about 800 US$ worth). Now mind you, I’m still buying lots of junk in-world as well as renting stores, sponsoring classes, and paying for advertising. I’ve made 260.11 US$ since the 23rd of last month. 15 days with an average of 17.34 per day. I believe that I’m getting roughly 500 US$ per month from a game. A GAME!
My success has encouraged my family to start paying a little more attention to this game as well. A few of them have already been playing, but this latest trend of me selling rather then hoarding L$ has really opened there eyes to what this game is capable of.
Well, If you want to see more of what second life is about, I have another blog with lots of pictures almost every day. Or you can just go ahead and sign up for a free account.
| Order Id |
Order Type |
Quantity Ordered |
Quantity Filled |
Limit Rate |
Time Opened |
Time Closed |
Closure Method |
Gross US$ |
Net US$ |
|
|
| 177#### |
Limit Sell |
L$1,225 |
L$1,225 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-03-07 22:50:34 |
2007-03-08 04:11:54 |
fill |
US$4.61 |
US$4.44 |
|
|
| 177#### |
Limit Sell |
L$4,500 |
L$4,500 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-03-07 06:20:21 |
2007-03-07 07:09:45 |
fill |
US$16.92 |
US$16.32 |
|
|
| 176#### |
Limit Sell |
L$1,500 |
L$1,500 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-03-06 21:54:14 |
2007-03-07 02:50:31 |
fill |
US$5.64 |
US$5.43 |
|
|
| 176#### |
Limit Sell |
L$5,500 |
L$5,500 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-03-06 05:55:35 |
2007-03-06 12:37:33 |
fill |
US$20.69 |
US$19.94 |
|
|
| 175#### |
Limit Sell |
L$1,750 |
L$1,750 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-03-04 23:24:02 |
2007-03-05 08:26:55 |
fill |
US$6.58 |
US$6.34 |
|
|
| 174#### |
Limit Sell |
L$1,500 |
L$1,500 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-03-04 18:08:42 |
2007-03-05 05:01:15 |
fill |
US$5.64 |
US$5.44 |
|
|
| 174#### |
Limit Sell |
L$3,500 |
L$3,500 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-03-04 00:22:25 |
2007-03-04 08:52:15 |
fill |
US$13.17 |
US$12.70 |
|
|
| 173#### |
Limit Sell |
L$4,000 |
L$4,000 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-03-03 09:28:36 |
2007-03-03 10:40:48 |
fill |
US$15.04 |
US$14.51 |
|
|
| 171#### |
Limit Sell |
L$2,500 |
L$2,500 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-03-01 22:26:22 |
2007-03-02 01:07:24 |
fill |
US$9.40 |
US$9.07 |
|
|
| 171#### |
Limit Sell |
L$7,000 |
L$7,000 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-03-01 06:11:49 |
2007-03-01 10:37:43 |
fill |
US$26.32 |
US$25.39 |
|
|
| 170#### |
Limit Sell |
L$1,750 |
L$1,750 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-02-28 06:29:39 |
2007-02-28 12:58:07 |
fill |
US$6.58 |
US$6.34 |
|
|
| 169#### |
Limit Sell |
L$3,000 |
L$3,000 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-02-27 17:16:50 |
2007-02-27 18:31:10 |
fill |
US$11.28 |
US$10.88 |
|
|
| 169#### |
Limit Sell |
L$2,000 |
L$2,000 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-02-27 06:21:01 |
2007-02-27 12:59:58 |
fill |
US$7.52 |
US$7.25 |
|
|
| 168#### |
Limit Sell |
L$3,000 |
L$3,000 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-02-26 21:12:32 |
2007-02-27 09:10:51 |
fill |
US$11.28 |
US$10.87 |
|
|
| 168#### |
Limit Sell |
L$2,500 |
L$2,500 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-02-26 16:14:41 |
2007-02-27 06:00:14 |
fill |
US$9.40 |
US$9.06 |
|
|
| 168#### |
Limit Sell |
L$1,000 |
L$1,000 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-02-26 06:25:35 |
2007-02-26 15:12:17 |
fill |
US$3.76 |
US$3.62 |
|
|
| 167#### |
Limit Sell |
L$6,000 |
L$6,000 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-02-25 18:11:37 |
2007-02-26 09:38:19 |
fill |
US$22.57 |
US$21.77 |
|
|
| 166#### |
Limit Sell |
L$1,500 |
L$1,500 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-02-24 15:26:07 |
2007-02-24 15:33:11 |
fill |
US$5.64 |
US$5.44 |
|
|
| 166#### |
Limit Sell |
L$9,000 |
L$9,000 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-02-24 14:27:01 |
2007-02-24 14:55:17 |
fill |
US$33.85 |
US$32.65 |
|
|
| 165#### |
Limit Sell |
L$2,000 |
L$2,000 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-02-23 15:09:34 |
2007-02-23 18:14:34 |
fill |
US$7.52 |
US$7.25 |
|
|
| 165#### |
Limit Sell |
L$7,000 |
L$7,000 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-02-23 10:49:16 |
2007-02-23 12:22:31 |
fill |
US$26.33 |
US$25.40 |
|
|
| 165#### |
Limit Sell |
L$220,000 |
L$220,000 |
L$266 / US$1.00 |
2007-02-23 05:24:34 |
2007-02-23 08:52:25 |
fill |
US$827.18 |
US$798.08 |
Posted in Entertainment, Finances | 2 Comments »
Thursday, December 14th, 2006
I’ve been having probs with my iPod for such a long time now. The white head-phones died out pretty quick. Speakers don’t work in either bud. Click wheel seems not to work, but is easily solved by rebooting the iPods operating system.
I don’t know if it was iTunes via upgrades, or the iPod, but i’ve lost 66% of my music collection some how.
Lately, the iPod has been corrupted. It gives me errors complaining that it can’t write to disk, or that it can’t read. It prompts me to revert back to factory settings. Even then, it has trouble reading and asks me to revert again.
I am starting to have doubts about getting another iPod. For the price, it just isn’t worth 1 1/2 years of service. Would you pay 16 $US per month for a device that plays music, but gives you such problems until it finally goes bad? I’m just glad I didn’t pay for the thing to begin with.
On top of all this, a coworker had problems with his click wheel on a different model iPod. Rebooting didn’t help and he ended up getting it replaced free since he had only purchased it a few months before it started happening. He also had the same problems with the ear buds too.
Posted in Entertainment, Life | 1 Comment »
Monday, October 23rd, 2006
Just heard about a game comming out called Spore. Perhaps one of the most ultimate sim games to come out. Check out this spore gameplay video to see what I’m talking about. Here is a spore demonstration video from E3. Game comes out in about a year.
Posted in Entertainment | Comments Off
