Links and Miscellania

 

 

Briken   sent me some pics of the guitar ready for the top to be attached.  

  Briken of Istanbul has started making me a baritone guitar.  This baritone guitar will be tuned BEADF#B  

Take a look at Mr. Bacciagalupe's t-shirt.    Now, that's a sharp looking shirt.   I was a kid in the 1950's, and it was common for t-shirts to have horizontal stripes.   After the 1950's, though, God must have decided that t-shirts would not have horizontal stripes anymore. 

After 6 months of being listened to by a small, wild bird, that roosts in my heater box on the roof, it's had it's effects on me, and the bird, too.  I don't think this situation is sustainable due to the plus 100 degree days we have here, during July and August.   Listening to music full time, as this bird wants, is something I've never done before.   Very soon, the music that I liked was either listened to again and again, or I had to try new music, which I've done, so this is what's been happening for  6 months....every day.  Expanding my horizons, musically, is something I wanted to do as a retiree, and the bird has been a positive force in my current living environs.     How does a bird listen to music?   I've read that birds listen to music differently than humans, and that must be true.   And it's probably the case that other species of birds listen differently, if they listen to music at all.  Does a bird remem...

Fat people avoid exercise Fat people eat sugar Fat people wolf their food.   I fasted for 3 days, once, when I was in junior college.   On that 3rd day, I stopped being tired and hungry, and I felt full of energy. What happened was my digestive system stopped drawing energy to digest because there was nothing left to digest.  It was a eye-opening lesson in how much energy it takes to digest food.  Eating slower means the food is chewed more thoroughly.  It's the opposite of wolfing down your food.  Unchewed food takes more energy, and stomach acid, to digest.    I think it's the usual cause of sluggishness.  During 20013-14 when I lost weight,  I experimented with chewing food until there was nothing left to chew.   It takes quite a long time.   Surprisingly, there is flavor in the tiniest of morsels left in the mouth during chewing.   After a while I get bored with chewing and become ...

I'm just a regular guy from somewhere on the fat part of the bell curve asking a question to the YouTube geeks about Cosmic Microwave Background . And here is what I posted in the comments: "Why is it that this earliest of light, or microwave background, still in our neighborhood? What's it been doing all this time? Shouldn't it have sped off into uncharted space long ago, leaving matter, like galaxies, suns and planets, such as Earth, in it's wake? Surely microwaves travel faster than galaxies."

I'd taken photographs before, but always at the thoroughly ignorant beginner level, and only with film cameras. My decision to go digital, I thought, was subject to pitfalls and hard lessons. After hours of research of the review s of camera s on the net, I chose the Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W150. I bought it just before leaving on a trip to Easter Island. I made certain to take the instruction booklet with me, in order to learn how to use it. Well, I was able to read some of the instructions, but I was very busy, and reading on a South Sea island is not easy. Anyways, almost all of my pics turned out clear, and certainly beyond my expectations. Here's 9 examples. Click on the pics to enlarge, and then right click on the pic and choose "view pic" and enlarge even more. They lose some clarity transferred from my computer via this blog program, which resizes them. I'll be sure next time to make the pics not so big.

In the following article , the author discusses the lost art of reading aloud. Well, not 'lost' but 'diminishing'. I decided to read  the Lord of the Rings trilogy aloud in order to increase my reading aloud skill. It worked.  Not only is it easier now to read aloud, comprehension seems to be equal to that of reading silently. However, listening to books on tape or CD is a different thing altogether. Much more difficult. One has to be ready to rewind to re-listen because the mind sometimes wonders. It seems the very act of reading the words off a page helps the mind to focus, while pure listening sparks other avenues of thought. For an extra special treat, try listening to "The Code of the Woosters" as read by Jonathon Cecil.  Cecil is the only reader of P.G. Wodehouse that I would recommend. The above link is this: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/16/opinion/16sat4.html?hpw April 16, 2011 - As a change of pace to reading aloud, here is ...

My memory is so bad. It sputters, coughs & wheezes up surprising stuff, appearing out of a fog, or washed up on the beach like they were messages in a bottle. It occured to me that my ol' dad told me, probably 40 years ago, an easy formula for converting between Fahrenheit and Centigrade. I got depressed because I knew wouldn't ever remember it, but then it came to me within a minute or two, after I stopped straining my brain. Here it is: Whatever temp you have, in either Centigrade or Fahrenheit, add 40 to the number. (I recalled the number 32 at first, incorrectly, and found that value generated had an error of a few degrees.) After adding 40, multiply by either 5/9 or 9/5. If you want to convert Fahrenheit into Centigrade, multiply by 5/9. Then subtract that same 40. That will be your converted temperature. [(F + 40) 5/9] - 40 = C is the formula for converting F into C. [(C + 40) 9/5] - 40 = F is the formula for converting C into F. For ea...

What if you're a classical guitarist wanting steel strings with a wide neck?  The best way to go with that is the Takamine F-312 s (see pic), which is out of  production. It's not cheap either, but well worth the price. Actually, once  a person owns this guitar, it's unlikely that they would ever sell it. You can't  go wrong with that guitar and well worth the effort to shop around for it,  including using eBay.   The old Martin 0-16 , which the F312 s copies, cost  a minimum upwards of 2 grand.  It's essentially a classical guitar made for  steel strings.   If you have 2 grand to spend, consider the Takamine EF740F S . But what if you want a big bodied guitar or even an electric guitar with a  wide neck for less than $2,000? I experimented by stringing just 6 strings on an old, cheap Guild 12 string guitar. It panned out to be a successful procedure yielding a wide neck guitar with steel strings, wh...

Do you know how long your index finger is? When you don't have a ruler or measuring tape, you can measure lengths, widths, diameters, and thicknesses by using your index finger as a ruler. It's amazingly quick and surprisingly accurate. Look at your index finger with the palm of your hand open and facing towards you. It turns out that from your index fingertip to the first joint is about one inch. Measure between the first and second joint, from one crease in the skin, or line, to the next. Again, it's almost exactly one inch. It turns out that the finger is about  3 inches long.  But you'll have to measure your own fingers to find out the precise measurement between each line on your finger. Discover where the lines on your  finger are exactly at inch intervals. Why do this? It's extremley 'handy' to know these dimensions to be able to measure objects when you're in a hurry and you don't have a tape measure or ruler, for example,...

Ben Franklin wrote of felicity, as in the enjoyment of life. With that same goal in mind, let me address one little dimension in the felicity of relationships. That would be music criticism among friends and relatives. This goes for all kinds of arts. Experiencing art is one of the graces in life. It involves active esthetic and intellectual, as well as cultural elements in the individual. That's quite a complex formula for anyone, in any locale or age. So, because all folks are different, they will appreciate art and music differently. If we're to live a life with the aim of promoting felicity, then we must tolerate other people's tastes and preferences. One of the qualities of being an acquaintance, or friend, or relative, is that the things we say to each other are stored in our memories. There's no controlling that. We remember. And because of this, we should try to limit our criticisms of art and music to positive statements...

Normal guitar strings (Low E, A, D, G) are wound with bronze. However, there are occasionally on the market, gold wound strings. Not pure gold, but gold alloy. Pure gold is too soft, and way too expensive. Gold alloy does the trick. Gold wound strings offer benefits over bronze. First is that they bring a fuller, richer sound to the lower strings. You'll notice it immediately. It's pronounced and beautiful. It improves the sound of an acoustic guitar, and any guitarist would want that. Second, they're impervious to the corrosive action of the oils, dirt, and acids present on the guitarist's fingertips, which react with the bronze, causing them to corrode. By avoiding this corrosion, gold strings stay fresher and continue to deliver a rich sound for a much longer time. The fingers don't have that disgusting bronze stench after a session. And your fingertips won't turn black. As I glance over at my Takamine F312S, I'm reminded that the gold...

The technique for lighting cigars is different from cigarettes due to the difference from in diameter between the two distinctly different types of smokes, and the burning properties of their wrappers. The wrapper for a cigarette is bone dry paper. It burns immediately. The wrapper for a cigar is a tobacco leaf, that hopefully, isn't too dry. The diameter of cigars are larger than cigarettes, and although some cigars are very thin, the genuine cigars aren't. The diameter of a cigar, or ring size, is larger that the flame of your match. Cigars can be improperly lit, meaning usually, that some portion of the end of the cigar lights, and burns, while other portions are yet to be lit. This leads to a malformed coal, affecting the flavor, and could lead to runs or tunneling. You don't want that on a smoke that cost you from 3 to 15 dollars. God knows how poor a showing it is to light a perfectly good cigar in front of your friends, or at the smoke shop, and mes...

Clean your sharpening stone. Sharpening stone clogged up, black with grinding dust and grime? Melt the blackness away with ordinary waterless hand sanitizer, sold in almost any supermarket, and a paper towel to de-clog your stone. This revives your stone with little effort, and is also effective for your ceramic rods.

For my first blog 'entree' (is that's how it's called?), I'd like to offer up simple directions on how to drink from a can. Yes, you read that correctly: How to drink from a can. You say, that's insane, anyone knows that without being told. It's a skill learned practically in the highchair. But, if we go back a few decades, back to a time when anything ~new~ went unquestioned, folks drank from the can differently. I know by experience right out of the starting gate, that there are high brows out there who scoff at the very idea of considering such a thing, having evolved beyond the can to the bottle for their alcoholic or sweetened beverage requirements. You wouldn't catch them in the lower class activity of drinking from a common can. But there are still some of us who occasionally buy a 12 or 18 pac of beer or sodas on sale at the drug store, if it's a tolerable brand. Mexican, Euro, Cana...