The Big Issue

The Big Issue is aimed at helping homeless people get back on their feet, by giving them a legitimate means of earning income from sales of this magazine. Each copy of the magazine costs £2.50, and sellers keep £1.25.

Today I met a friendly fellow near where I am taking my piano lessons, and resolved to ask him a bit more about how he finds selling this magazine, and if it helps.

According to this seller, who was once homeless, selling The Big Issue has changed his life from being once homeless to someone who now has a roof over his head.

He sells seemingly 80 to 100 copies a week, and on a good week, perhaps a dozen more.

He says that it was difficult when starting out. New sellers are simply not sure how this would work out for them, and they have no confidence that this would actually really help them. People totally ignoring them is also a major bash against their self esteem. (He also mentions that it would help ALOT even if we were to smile and greet The Big Issue sellers, even if we do not purchase a magazine.)

For this gent I was speaking to, it turned out well for him. Most of his sales are on weekdays, with the working crowd passing to and fro the train stations and their offices. Saturday is a quiet day, and he takes Sunday as his day off.

In the future when I meet more big issue sellers, I'll be sure to spare them a moment to acknowledge them, even if I'd already picked up my weekly copy. I truly hope that after this gets them off the street, that they will be able to build an even better future for themselves.

Sick and depressed, or is it depressed and sick?

Have you ever had one of those stretches where you know you are sick, but well enough to head to work? Well I'm having one of them and it is annoying my toenails off. Ok, maybe not my toenails but I am just. Not. Feeling. Good.

I feel tired and have low energy. Heck, it feels like after a swim session at the gym, whole body aching.

Argh, need some downtime this weekend.

It's also affecting my mood, I think I'm feeling alot of down 'cause of this. The best part is, I'm feeling worst *after* work. Like my fingers are somewhat numb as I type this. I'll bet it'll be as usual - I wake up bright and cheery (I love the early sunshine btw, it's like nice and bright 7-ish), feeling all good, then it all starts to go downhill late afternoon :( Tired tired tired. Ack.

Days like this I wish I can just take off and sleep.

Death

Short piece I arranged for the ocremix FF6: Balance and Ruin compo. This is the piece of music that plays when the party gets KO'd, and I've titled it "Lied für die Toten"("Song For The Dead" in German).

I finished 22nd of 28. Very pleased with my progress over the last half a year. :)

Prometheus

Friggin' awesome effects. Like really friggin awesome. There was nothing not perfect in the entire show. For some reason, this flick reminds me of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. TSW was groundbreaking on many levels, and Prometheus takes cg worlds even further.

It's like FF7, then comparing the original against the FF7's PS3 tech demo.

One thing I'm really glad about this show is that it is more sci-fi than horror. I didn't watch any of the trailers, only knew this was sort of a prequal to Alien or something. Truth be told, I was cowering behind my jacket for many of the scenes, but it was more the gore factor versus the pop-up horror I was expecting.

Whew.

-- spoilers ahead --

Lots of odd things that I want answered though, like the geologist, why was he still alive and kicking butt? And why was there no super friggin' awesome cannon mounted on the prometheus? And why didn't tony stark come to save the day? Ok nevermind.

Congrats to all the artists that worked on it, this is just totally stunning.

New macs drop features, but will we miss them?

New macbooks evidently have been announced, and for us who use our macs for audio work, several things have been dropped from their newer "Retina" macs. I'm not directly affected by it, but computers will be upgraded when time moves on, and there are some features I would miss.

First, there is no firewire port. Many audio interfaces and external drives run off firewire, and whilst there is a thunderbolt -> FW dongle, that's another piece of equipment to keep track of. One also questions any side effects on latency when running FW equipment through thunderbolt.

Next: Lack of a cd drive. I mean, come on, if I buy CDs from a live show, how am I supposed to convert it? And even though I rarely burn disks or watch dvds, I still do. I was also thinking of getting one of those optibays to stuff an extra hdd/sdd into my mac. Can't do that with the new ones. Mainly, I use my DVD drive to install sample libraries. EastWest/Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra comes on more than 10 dvds for goodness sake. Just bought some VSL stuff, don't know how many dvds those will come on.

Damn you apple for OSX's Core Audio that works so well :P

Crummy weather

Last week we had pretty awesome weather here in London. Blue skies, nice and warm, perfect T-shirt weather.

And this week. This, feels like Autumn! In the first week of June! It is 12 degrees C outside, I'm thankful I brought out my winter jacket - and the skies are a uniform patch of grey. Boo! What's worst is I'm at work and the sims are taking awhile on the farm. Bwa.

To Zanarkand

Due a big music competition, I didn't do any arrangements for saxophone, but I'm still practising and all! Here's me on keys doing "To Zanarkand"

Ok recable time

Grados are now like definitely in need for recabling. Found this guide here.... do I want to DIY?

Thames Path

Walked at least 15km today. Pooped....

Grados dying... again >.>

I own a pair of Grados SR80 headphones, since about about 2004,2005 thereabouts, and oh my god open cans are definitely my personal favourite.

A year or so ago though, the cabling on those SR80s died, and I had them replaced. Once again, they have failed >.>

The casing of the cabling probably doesn't deal to well with the UK's dry weather - the SR80s have travelled with me to the US and Oz with the bulk of its time in Singapore, only to fail here in the UK. Twice. Bleh.

Question is, do I want to get them re-cabled, or do I sell them off and get another pair of AKG 240 MKIIs?

Pro for AKG240 MKII: I will use them both at work and at home, and I can get "used" to the sonic signature of the AKGs. I am also somewhat weary of how over-detailed and fatiguing the SR80s are.

Pro for re-cabling SR80: Cheaper, and the SR80s are highly portable, unlike the AKGs that I will definitely have to leave in the office. SR80s also don't need an amp.

In either case, the SR80s are kind of working, so I'll decide when they give up the ghost.

Sucky weather this year

It's already the first week of May here in London, and the weather is utterly crappy this year. According to my weather applet, it's 7 degrees C out there, and I was hit by a slight drizzle on my way home. It's May, supposed to be all pretty blue skies and nice warm weather but what we have now is a pseudo winter weather.

Bleh, I say, Bleh!

I only hope it gets better; the last two years here were very beautiful during this period.

Work your butt off

Came across this thread on the ConceptArt forums. Bottom line: Work your arse off if you have a dream.

Saxophone Log, April 2012

Another month, another blog! My music related blog will have more details.

Tolerance Maneuver @ The Mucky Pup

 Here's 3 of my fellow students from my life drawing class. Talented they are!

D300, 24mm/2.8D + 50/1.8D. Light was waay low, and I started out shooting at 1600, but took it to 3200 in the end. I'm still quite surprised at how good it is at iso 3200, the loss of dynamic range and contrast is keenly felt, but it's worth the shutter speed.

Its times like these I wish I owned a D700 + 24-70/2.8, would cover this situation perfectly. Apart from the fact I feel the D700 has a crappy AF layout.

Nerd

Me: "What was your first impression of me?"
Friend: "Nerd."

LOL!

Jamestown: Judgement Difficulty

Re-downloaded Jamestown to my mac before heading home for hols, and by a stroke of extreme luck I managed to complete all the difficulty levels to unlock Judgement difficulty. Whilst I manage to get through the previous difficulty level with... some difficulty, in Judgement, I used up all my continues and didn't even dent the boss! Getting old, I think :D

Wiresolver Noodles

One of my esteemed colleagues sent me this delightful link today. First thought was "Holy frak! That's awesome" and the next thought was "how could this be done in Houdini?"

A quick setup later (one of the shots I'm working on deals with using the wiresolver to drive twigs and sticks, so...), tada!

Sadly it's only 35 frames long, cut the sim short as I have an appointment this evening. But in any case, it answers the question, yes, Houdini 12's wiresolver can definitely do something like that. If you watch the last few frames the fork's mesh is just arriving on-camera. Earlier tests indicate that the fork interacts with the wires - whether they can twirl like the Blender sim remains to be seen, but I can't see why not. The friction settings will definitely need to be tweaked for that to work but yeah.

Blender is really up and coming (sadly I can't get used to the interface, else I'd go for that vs Cheetah 3D), and I wonder how much stress it is giving to the big vfx software developers.

Reflecting on life

Today might be the 1st of April, but this post isn't a joke. Already it is April, a third of the new year has passed.

Time... such a precious concept.

It was only yesterday I remember school, hating PT, dealing with studies, then bam.

Work. A new life. The winds of change.

I guess even though I'm halfway to my deathbed, I'm still discovering who I am.

Pensive, the day is, so the pseudo poet writes.

Go with the flow I guess. 

The Wind, The Stars

Thought I'd lay it in my main blog. This is my first original composition, very pleased with how it turned out.

RANT

Very sick of people generalizing stuff. Seriously. Things do not "SUCK" because you have zero use for it.

Also, it does not make sense to put down things because they are not good.... BASED ON A REVIEW OR BLOG POST of some frakkin' website!!!!

I always roll my eyes in cases like these, especially if it's with things I've used for years! e.g.

NIKON SUCKS (Yeah totally. Check out that shitty non stablized 300/4 AF-S. That I happen to own. Yeah, utterly sucky. So sucky, it is more sucky than chewing gum in hair).

MAC SUCKS (Yeah, totally. Utter trash.)

HOUDINI SUCKS (Oh yeah, utter suck. Raydream Studio is much better.)

LINUX SUCKS (Uh yeah. It sucks, totally. So much I use it at home. Yeah, linux sucks sooo bad.)

(INSERT PRODUCT NAME) SUCKS (sigh)

Am I being a hypocrite? At times, I am very much a bloody hypocrite. But you know what? That's because I suck. I make mistakes, I learn from them. And I try to be better, and try my best to find out more about stuff and try not to put things down. Heck, do you know why I bought my first macbook? Because I was convinced that macs.... suck!

And you know what, after years of using them, I discovered a world of applications that simply do not exist on linux, or that their open source equivalents are just not up to it. Do you seriously think there would be an open source package that can rival Houdini? Naiad? Nuke? Get real!

And you know what. By championing only open source software and refusing to look into commercial products, one limits oneself to the availability of good things. Or even simply, things that simply do not exist in the open source side of things.

Even in terms of DOING things. I don't believe there are fixed ways of doing things, like to do X you must do Y. No. Is there a single way to draw a portrait? Is there a best way to paint? Are acrylics better than oils? If there was, EVERY SINGLE ARTIST will be using it. There is not. There is a best way, for you. For me.

Like Glen Vilppu says, "There are no rules, only tools."

Me, I try stuff. I know how I approach drawing and music is far different from people I speak with. Because I don't limit myself to "oh, this guy's way is the best". THERE IS NO BEST. Only the best tool/technique for that particular job.

I like to explore multiple ideas, different ways to create a hybrid that works best for me.

In addition, I do not have a need to become "An Artist" or "A Musician" because I DON'T WANT TO! Why are you obsessing about me! Me! I'm don't even know you in person! Don't ask me to me something I do not want to be.

I learn these things and more, because I am curious. I like learning. I am also single and have too much free time, and there is massive lack of wolves in my studio apartment. Hence, with no wolves to hug, what can one do? I learn, create and iterate. Is that not enough?

I don't want to draw the next Van Gough or whatever amazing art piece it is. It is a personal journey, a journey of exploration, learning and more. My "art" sucks. I know it very well. But it is not about the art. It is about breaking limits. I don't want to become "amazing artist X".

Art is about conquering my fear of drawing. It is the sweet, sweet feeling when I improve, and I know in my heart that if I can conquer this drawing thing, which I have feared for years, then I know that there is nothing that can stop me from learning and conquering new things if I so wish.

Plus, learning is awesome. That, is what I feel is the best use for my free time. You like gaming? Go for it. Enjoy flame wars? Flame on. I do not want to spend my time in such ways. I want to learn, create, and do stuff. Not argue over which paper type is best for water colors. My god. If my results suck? I learn from experience, try again.

Ok I think this rant has gone long enough, I am going to head out to the gym and do some nice long lengths down the pool.

And for the people that do not understand sarcasm, here's a wiki page. A healthy bit of sarcasm is mixed in up there.