Friday, 30th of May, 2008
Here's a piece of trivia: Liberia (the west African country that was almost decimated these last two decades with civil war) has the second most number of merchant ships registered in the world. This is due to the practice of ships flying a Flag of Convenience. "As of 2000, half the world's tonnage of merchant ships were registered under flags of convenience. Some reasons for this include the avoidance of heavy taxes, the ability to hire crews from lower-wage countries, avoidance of environmental regulations, and an overall reduction in the cost of transportation."
Thursday, 29th of May, 2008
Recorded a couple more hymns today - this time playing with 4 tracks, but using only the 5-string violin still:
Holy, Holy, Holy (1.8MB MP3) - With a 5-string, I can conveniently play on 3 different octaves. For a full sound, I wanted to place at least one voice on each octave. Here, I tried melody on the top octave, inner voices in the middle octave, and I doubled the melody on a bottom octave.
Crown Him With Many Crowns (1.6MB MP3) - This hymn requires the bass voice. I worked it out even though E major on a C string is well beyond what I'm used to since I'm a violin player. I kept the melody on the middle octave because I saved the high octave to invent an obligato part!
I have definitely run out of space on my 32MB SD card now. I'll have to go out and get a 1GB because it sounds like I'll fill up the 128MB card really quickly too.
Wednesday, 28th of May, 2008
I think I didn't fully realize how much the price of gas has gone up until I filled up the Cadillac over the weekend. The last time I had gotten gas for it was February 16th. I enter the fillup into MPG and noticed that the last time I put gas in the car, I bought it for $2.889/gallon. That's almost a whole dollar less than this time around! I guess this is the first time I've realized that gas has gone up almost $1 per gallon in just 3 months.
Some people are at a point now where they are saying, "This is unreasonable, I've gotta do something about this!" But in the U.S., it's mostly just talk - we're not at that point yet.
If you want to see where the true breaking point is, let's take a look at Europe. Truckers parked on the A40 in London yesterday, wrecking the whole traffic situation. Average diesel price there is $9.56 - regular unleaded $8.61. Now that's a protest.
The Samson MRS-8 recording studio I ordered from Audiolines.com finally came in today! After reading a few pages of the manual, it was easy to get going. For versatility, I plugged in the 5-string violin and started going nuts.
Amazing Grace (1.1MB MP3) - Two tracks, played with some basic stereo mastering. Started with someone easy so I could do both tracks on the first take, and spend most of my time playing with the tool.
Blessed Be Your Name (1.0MB MP3) - Of course since it can record 8 tracks, I immediately plunged into something more complicated. I still need to generate a real drum beat, but for now I just went nuts with track after track here. Plucked out the bass line on the 5-string violin, and then went from there! The distortion effects on this are better than the big distortion pedal I have - I'd say it's pretty much obsolete now that I have the MRS-8! There is tons more to do on this song (including re-recording the out of tune tracks) - this is such a fun toy!
Tuesday, 20th of May, 2008
I have worked for a company that has evaluated their staff based on their level of social connection with other employees in the company. It's an excellent evaluation tool, and this article definitely outlines the 4 good questions to send out in the survey to gather the data:
- Who do you go to for advice or information when assessing a difficult problem or discussing ideas?
- Who do you depend on to get your job done?
- Who do you communicate with most frequently?
- Who is your most valued contact within IT Operations?
The article points out another benefit in gathering this information, outside of performance evaluations - if a person leaves the company, you are in a better position to plan the overall impact of the person leaving because you know exactly what role that person plays in the team.
Monday, 5th of May, 2008
Friday, 2nd of May, 2008
Do you use a free web-based mail account? Of course you do. There are some implications to having your personal information (potentially years worth) stored on someone else's computer (server). These include privacy, security, and reliability. Have you thought about it?