Blog from the Swamp

Sending love from San Francisco to Boston

2013-04-16T18:12:00.001-07:00

America!

2012-06-29T19:09:00.001-07:00

cruising through some really cool songs at the Alameda County Fair....magic

Ludwig Supraphonic: Pt. 1

2012-06-25T20:24:00.000-07:00

In my last post I wrote about seeing the Hunter Heritage Tour, and then previous I wrote about my drum-set. When I wrote about my kit I failed to take about one of the most critical components...my 12 lug Ludwig Supraphonic snare.

This is an awesome snare drum and to give it the respect it deserves I am going to make a special post just about it. This Wednesday I will be playing at ColorBlind studios in Concord,CA and I will take some photos, record a video and then do a good write up. I have had this snare for a while now and the only thing bad about it all is that I wish I had another one.

Hunter Heritage Tour

2012-05-02T22:08:00.006-07:00

Here is the review I posted for Ticketmaster for the Opeth, Mastodon, Ghost show at the Fox Theater in Oakland, CA.
I gave the show 5 out of 5 stars.

This was a show that I bought tickets for as soon as I could get them, total chance. I went to the Fox Theater website one day and there was Opeth staring right at me. I was almost in disbelief. So I jumped on it and I did it...BAM...I am going to that...I am buying two tickets and someone is going with me.
Well....time marches on and I barely made it and no one went with me, but going solo has it pluses too :) This was an awesome show, best i have been too in a while. Regrettably I missed Ghost, but I saw Mastodon and Opeth both at their best. I went to see to Opeth but Mastodon totally blowed me away with pure energy, spirit, and massive power...they were awesome. I will be at their next show asap.
For me to see Opeth finally was like a kid in a candy store, or a birthday present...when Mikael and the band walked out on stage, that was just a really special moment for me. They played so awesome. First two off Heritage and then get this...right into Windowpane...it was so good to hear.

I have to talk about something Opeth did that was SWEET. So they are shredding along playing The Devil's Orchard and all the lights and strobes are going off in blues and greens, you know it is almost like a rapture, the crowd is taken away. Then all of a sudden, all the lights go black except for Mikael being lit up in red, and him flashing horns with his right hand...it was epic. Then wham, right back in to the song. It was totally awesome.
I have to say that the staff at the Fox Theater is the best in the business...always helpful, into music, kind, and you know, cool.

Start with Drums

2012-05-01T16:38:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder what to do with a blog. What to write about? Those questions seem to be an obvious sign that the blog is about to die or close to it...like walking the plank.

Well before I take a dive off the proverbial deep-end I am going to just blog about music, art, writing and poetry.

I am going to start with drums because I love them.

Here is a photo of my Pearl drum set. This is at ColorBlind Studios in Concord,CA

I have had this set for a long time and it still sounds awesome. I use Remo coated Ambassadors on the toms and the snare with clears on the bottom. 15" & 17" Zildjian K Dark Crashes, 1 one Sabian 6" splash right by the Hi-hat, one 10" A Splash on the kick drum, a 22" Zildjian Medium Ride, a 22" Zildjian Oriental Trash with a 6" Zildjian EFX #1 Splash above it. Hi-hat are 13" Bellotti's. Super tight and cut really well. Not for metal though. All the hardware on this setup in Pearl except for a few Gibraltar pieces to various percussion instruments. Which are, a 7" LP Cowbell, LP brass chimes, and a rack mount tambourine.
I have played with a lot of sticks over the years and I settled on Vater for a long time. The Manhattan 7A are excellent sticks for fast and intricate work. But now I back with Vic Firth. Love 'em. I know it is easy to

I know it is easy to get sucked into playing this or that brand, and I obviously have my preferences too, but what really matters is playing and continuing to learn and develop so music can be lived and shared.

Honestly I would rather be playing tin cans with pencils than not playing at all.

On the left here is a top down photo of my set. Here you can see the 12" Vater Chop Builder I use, which is mounted on a cymbal stand. This is a totally required piece of kit. It excellent for daily rudiment practice, and good to warm-up before a show. Warm and relaxed hands are good!

Here is me in action

What do I do about Flickr?

2012-01-30T14:51:00.000-08:00

I re-upped my Flickr account again this year but it made me think...WHY?

I don't even have a digital camera anymore! Well I do, I have an old Pentax M3 and a Nikon 6006...and of course I have the camera on my Motorola DroidX

What to do with Flickr? Do I get into film photography again which is so wonderfully creative? It would be very cool to make a little dark room and go for year in black and white with a 50mm. Classic. And really dodging and really burning. Drip drying goodness.
The cost is ongoing and getting higher, but the photos can be very precious.

Or do I go and buy another digital camera? There is so much excellent gear available. I do enjoy aviation photography so much, and also hiking and beach day shoots. Motorcycle racing. Lot's of good things to capture, but it all requires some good glass.

Third option is my camera that has a phone...or is it a phone with a camera...it's a phamera!

Google + Blogger

2012-01-26T14:32:00.001-08:00

Trying out the integration of Google Plus and Blogger. The interface sure has changed. I like it though, nice and clean.

YouTube player UI enchancements

2011-07-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

YouTube has updated the player UI on all videos and it looks good. It is a darker design that helps to keep the controls out of the way for good video viewing.

Screenshot of YouTube player controls

If you use the Chrome web browser, there is an excellent add-on called Turn Off The Lights that effective adds a gray overlay to your whole browser except for the playing video. Good stuff.

Screenshot of Turn Off The Lights in action

Ocean Beach needs help!

2011-07-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

Today, this Wednesday July 13th there is California Coastal Commission (CCC) meeting in San Rafael, CA regarding the rock revetments (retaining walls) being permitted and constructed at South Ocean Beach in San Francisco, CA. This is very damaging for the beach and should be stopped, and at the very least should be postponed until for further review.

Here is a photo of the erosion. This has to be fixed!

I cannot go to the meeting, but Surf Rider Foundation and savethewaves.org have provided an easy way to submitted a letter to the CCC Commisioners stating that the beach and the community it supports deserve long term solutions, not short-sight damage control.

You can read more information, see more photos and find out how you can help at: http://www.savethewaves.org/news/save-sloat-action-alert

Shark Life

2011-07-11T21:44:00.000-07:00

Peter Benchley. You may have heard of him because he authored the extremely famous book Jaws, which was made so famous with help from the classic movie of the same name directed by Steven Spielberg, and produced by Richard Zanuck and David Brown. But I do not want to write about Steven Spielberg and the Jaws crew, or Peter Benchley in regards to his book Jaws.

What I want to let you all know is how excellent his last book; Shark Life: True Stories about Sharks and the Sea really is.

This non-fiction book is written so well, and moves at an appetite inducing pace you may feel like you are the shark. If you are even mildly interested in sharks, the ocean, diving, surfing or are just intrigued by things voracious this is the book for you. This is true to life tales of Mr. Benchley's happenings in the ocean of sharks. In cages and out of cages, in deep water and shallow, in rivers and within his memories.

One of my favorite chapters is #7 titled Six Dangerous Sharks. In this chapter Peter goes on to name and describe the certain sharks and their characteristics, and then also with a real world examples. This is thrilling reading and I ate it up.
A very important part of this book is that the overall tenure is not Jaws. That is, it is not about the monster from the deep sinking fishing boats, closing beaches, and disrupting economy. Some of the stories are very scary and heart pounding indeed, but this book is about real sharks, what they are, where they are; and how we as human beings relate to them in their environment, and more importantly how we can ensure they remain the alpha predators they need to be.

And to the salient motions that we humans aspire, one of which is that we are the caretakers of all things because we are conscious. I found reading this book showed me that we are not. It made me (said) conscious of the fact that humans have their place. We have an impact yes, but we a merely a piece of the fleece. The perfection of humanity is willful change, we can make a difference because we want to. A shark does not want, a shark is, and its being is extremely different and perpetually thrilling.

This is a great read and I highly recommend it.

I use a Kindle so I get my digital stuff from Amazon. For real books I shop locally between Half Price Books and Barnes and Noble. Sad to see Bay Books leave Concord, I liked that store.

Links to buy this book:
Amazon • Barnes and Noble • Random House

Blogger fonts

2011-07-01T12:45:00.001-07:00

Copying and pasting text into Blogger makes for some odd font behavior. I tried new font settings but it didn't take effect.

Linux Mint Plug (not a review)

2011-07-01T10:06:00.000-07:00

First I have to Rant! I tried using Gnome 3 with Ubuntu 11.04 and it was a total disaster and I am hoping they are going to change a lot of their thinking, but seriously; no right-click, or desktop icons in Gnome 3? That is totally stupid design philosophy. Talk about counter intuitive. And counter to Open Software ethics in giving the user full control.

I believe if a design team is going to take away entrenched user methodology it must provide an alternative that makes the previous usage seem old, and worse; as in "how could ever have wanted to right-click before?"

I have always loved Gnome and the whole push to create and develop the best open source user interfaces, but they have really crashed the car with 3.0.

Thankfully there is LINUX MINT which goes out of it's way to make computing a pleasure coming with a very good user interface and an excellent set of default applications.

For office you have the fantastic LibreOffice, Graphic design is Gimp, music is handled by the up and coming Banshee media player. Default browser is Firefox (so I replaced that with Google Chrome, which blows all other browser so far out of the weeds it is barely a competetion). I really think Pidgin is a great chat client as it works with practically every chat service out there. Setting up is still very discreet with settings, but Facebook for example has a very good help page.

I highly recommend Linux Mint for your desktop. I am going to go make some wallpapers now.

Postings

2011-06-22T10:16:00.000-07:00

I have been horrible at keeping this blog current and therefore relevant. What I think makes a blog good is purpose. I need to think about what this blog should be besides random posting about random topics. And if I do decide on randomness, the timeliness of the postings will need to be important.

I like the new Blogger interface, very clean and does not get in the way.

123RF and Spiderpic

2011-02-18T10:54:00.000-08:00

This is a great stockphotography site with decent pricing.
Stock Photos from 123RF

Also great is spiderpic.com which is a stock photography search engine.

Woohoo! Chrome 9!!

2011-02-04T19:51:00.000-08:00

Google Webstore!

2011-02-04T19:39:00.000-08:00

This is so awesome! Check it out now!

Reddhelm

2011-02-04T10:38:00.000-08:00

Hard at work on Reddhlem!
Check out www.reddhelm.com

Mobile Templates!

2010-12-18T06:55:00.000-08:00

Blogger has released mobile templates and I think it looks great.
So if you go to this blog site on a smartphone it will automatically display formatted content.
Good stuff, thank you Blogger.

David Ziser Seminar

2010-11-20T08:20:00.000-08:00

I had a great time at the David Zizer Seminar in Sacramento a couple weeks ago. The title was 'Captured by the Light'. It was a lot of information but it was so informative to hear Mr. Zizer talk and share his techniques and talents. I really learned a lot, especially in regards to off camera flash placement for lighting styles, such as loop lighting. David talked a lot about underexposing the background and lighting the subjects up with diffused flash for some really dramatic images.

I learned about some new software of which the best I think was Foto Fusion by LumaPix. Just really excellent collage and photo collection software. I think it would save a lot of time in making books and contact sheets. I wish I could have bought it that night because of the discount.

I hadn't been to Sacramento in a long time and it was cool to be downtown. Kind of reminds of Portland. I did happen upon a really good deli called Tony's Delicatessen and I highly recommend them.

Links:
David Ziser http://www.davidziser.com/index.asp
David Zizer's Blog http://digitalprotalk.blogspot.com/
Luma Pix http://www.lumapix.com/index.shtml
Tony's Delicatessen http://www.tonysdelicatessen.com/

Verizon Droid X Wifi connection issues...solved!

2010-09-28T23:10:00.000-07:00

D R O I D

I was stoked to get a brand spanking new Verizon Droid X today but when I got home I quickly found that WIFI was not working and I was really frustrated and disappointed. I of course scoured the net in search of the solution, but it was all a dead-end with hapless people like me wanting a quick fix. And as is so common with technology the personal response to the lack of perfection can be that "I got screwed' or "I made a wrong choice, I should have gone with...."

Well after spending some time trying to figure this out I thankfully found a solution and now it seems very trivial but I hope this help you out.

1) Be sure you are updated to 2.3.15 (Android 2.2)
a) Settings > About Phone > System Update

2) Go to Settings > Location & Security

3) Ensure that 'Use Wireless Networks' is turned on. It is turned off by default (yes an apparent oversight)

4) Also turn on 'Use GPS satellites' and 'Enable Assisted GPS' while you are in there.

5) Droid Army

Stress Does not Kill Us - But it makes everything that does much worse.

2010-09-11T23:13:00.000-07:00

Inside the search for a cure... for Stress.

I have to reiterate, and am so compelled to evangelize an immensely important article written by Jonah Lehrer in the latest WIRED (August 2010 page 131). Lehrer writes very engaging prose that provides excellent backstory to the issue at hand being dealt with on the front lines by Professor Robert Sapolsky, the man with the mind to see things in baboons that others did not, and are ever present in we humans being.

I highly recommend the reading of this article by everyone, whether you have anxiety, are depressed, or have concerns for other friends and family suffering from stress. There are so many factors that can lead to life being overbearing and we must control ourselves before it is too late to make a difference.

The main points from the article in controlling stress are:
1) Confront Your Fears. 2) Make Friends 3) Drink in Moderation 4) Get enough Sleep
5) Don't Fight 6) Meditate 7) Don't Force Yourself to Exercise.

These points are all gone over in detail both in the story that leads up to this, and then what the future holds for the way medical science presents itself as a solution.

Less is always so much more.

Book Report: Deep Storm by Lincoln Child

2010-09-08T19:30:00.000-07:00

Lincoln Child is best known for his co-authorship of 'The Relic' with author Douglas Preston. They have a shared website with all their shared and solo work.

So, Deep Storm. Wow! this is a really fun read. It is fast, really fast. I am a pretty slow reader and I read this in 3 days. I just could not put it down because I HAD to find out what was going to happen because the character development was so engaging right off the bat. This is important because the characters are not fully, or detailed in their development as some readers may like, but they are extremely engaging.

A quick synopsis of the story. The novels protagonist is named Peter Crane and he is naval doctor summoned to investigate and explain an outbreak of disease on an oil rig. Well there is more to the disease, and the oil rig staffed by military personnel. There is a lot of unknowns and it builds and builds. Child does a great job of keeping the reader wanting more with sharp, or I should say crisp writing. This book feels like a movie though, sometimes even like it was written to be a movie. That is not necessarily bad as this would make a killer movie, it is just apparent.

This is great book for a flight to the other coast, or for a couple days of commuting, or if you just like a exciting thriller. I highly recommend it.

Rating: 7.5/10

Fear Itself

2010-08-17T20:52:00.000-07:00

Have you ever seen this show?! These are some very well written stories with excellent direction, acting and photography. Some shows are really, really scary, man they really pack some punch in 40 minutes. The show has been canceled unfortunately but 13 episodes remain available on DVD, and I am streaming them on Netflix.
More info: NBC Website , Wikipedia

Book Report: Anthem by Ayn Rand

2010-08-14T20:30:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be fun to write about the books I am reading, or rather books I have finished reading. Then I give a report on the book, a review if you will. I did write 'books' because I typically have a few going at the same time, especially with devices like the Kindle. I just love having books with me wherever I go, so I tend to be reading something different at night versus what I am reading in the day, at work, commuting or whatever.

These book reports will be really short and to the point. For real heavy duty book reviews by professionals on current new books it is best to read something by the NY Times. What I want to do is have something short that people can consume really quick. I will also tweet a link to the report when it's on Blogger.

On with the first review!

Anthem by Ayn Rand

I really did not know much about Ayn Rand when I picked this up at Half-Price books in Concord other than my Uncle Clark really liked her writing, that she was the proponent, even the protagonist if you will; for a movement called Objectivisim and that she had a cool looking first name. I saw Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged but they looked so long that I opted for the old Signet paperback of Anthem (pictured), and wow and I glad I did. This little book is just a wonderful testament to the individual, to the person who is beaten down, or subjugated, or corned into a certain way of thinking. This book provides a lot of relief for disbelief. A lot of hope for knowing that what we feel inside is real, not matter what other people are telling you, especially groups of people, and even more at governments; as in 'we the people' has been replaced by "we the decider's" leaving the freedom to the brave, those courageous enough to keep the light burning in the darkest of tunnels. And that is what this little book is about. Burning a light in darkness, against all the odds, and all the fear, and all the unknowing to find that from a small light can burn a mighty flame, the flame of personal freedom. To know that "I AM" is okay. And then if I am okay, so can you. Equality.

I will not go into any details of the plot or summarize any of the story because it must be read first hand and consumed like a coal on your tongue. Let it burn and let the water of your body cool your mind as you enjoy a really great story.

Rating: 9/10

Pentax P3!

2010-07-29T20:55:00.000-07:00

I am so excited! I helped a friend move last week and she gave me a Pentax P3 (pictured) she no longer needed. I used to shoot some film with my Mamiya-Seko MSX 500 but it degraded to the point that repairs placed it in "the museum".

Having this "new" camera has me inspired to shoot film again and there is nothing like it. Knowing I only have 36 shots before I load another role makes a huge difference in composition, and then knowing (or rather hoping) that what I see will appear on the print makes a much more creative way to capture a moment or a scene. And then to that, when the moment is captured on film, there is a very special feeling, or communication rather, that means a lot.

When I received the camera I took it right down to my favorite camera shop which is Camera West in Walnut Creek, CA. Ben and Dan checked it all out and all was good. The camera came with a Vivitar, and Albinar-ADG zoom lenses so we discussed it and the shop found and ordered me a used Pentax 50mm f/1.7 smc-m which I am picking up this weekend.

What it also very cool is that if I decide to buy a Pentax K7, these lenses will all work. Thank you Pentax.

When I get some photos developed I will post them to my Flickr