Islands In The Stream

Hi readers,
it’s been a while. Apologies again for the lack of posting lately, but my webhosting was maxed out until I was able to move it to this newerer fasterer plan. Plus you haven’t exactly missed much. Let me sum up the last few months:

work
sleep
drama at work with an overheating server room
work
sleep
relationship breakup *sigh*
started growing my beard back for winter
work
sleep
more drama at work
sleep

In more positive news, I’ve been spending a lot of time focusing on my Ukulele studies, and I’m at the point now where I’m starting to record myself playing in order to snowball the improvements made through practice. I did miss out on the Winter Workshops being held by the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra though

Either way, I might be popping some videos up on Youtube – embarrassing! But I’ll try to focus on some kiwi tunes at least. Also, Ukulele Acquisition Syndrome is in full swing, I want at least 3 more ukes:
1) an upgraded gig uke, likely selling off my Oscar Schmidt
2) a D-tuned makala dolphin, keeping my options open
3) another makala dolphin to hack, I’m hoping to make a resonator

On the technology front, I have sold my main PC and downgraded to an Eee PC and an Eee Box. I have yet to upgrade both in the memory and hdd stakes, so they’re both performing fairly averagely for me at the moment. Subjectively, the PC is better than the Box.

I experimented with the uke recording using the webcam in my eee pc, but the software (cheese webcam booth) doesn’t allow you to specify your output formats, so it defaults to .ogv, something the Atom cpu seems to grind with at 640×480. Also, getting the mic levels right is difficult, and there’s a bit too much background hiss.

So I got one of these gorillapod things for $30 at Harvey Norman. There was a similar product that appeared to be rebranded (Samsung?) for $15, so I got both and surprise – they appear to be exactly the same, so there you go. I’ve fixed this to my Canon A560 and the improvement was instant:

me playing my makala dolphin

In other news, I’ve lost almost 9kg in the last few months. I don’t know why, but my appetite just isn’t what it used to be, and I’m paying attention to my body now: if I feel full, I simply stop eating. Not shoveling fast food down my throat every other day probably helps too, plus having breakfast every day would be having an effect on the metabolism… either way, that’s almost 30kg down from when I first got back from France, that’s huge!

signing off, hopefully the next update won’t be months away