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Categories

Viewing category "Music"

First motorcycle driving lesson!
2009-01-15 18:19:13

Hi all!

I'm very aware that it's been quite some time since my last post, but I just don't feel like blogging about every day stuff all the time. Sorry for that... Winking icon

Anyway, today has been quite interesting since I took my first motorcycle lesson and I very much liked it! So I'm definitely going to continue with it and hopefully have my license soon. For those interested, I've driven a Honda CBF 500, but obviously I can't really put up an opinion about it since I've nothing to compare it with... Razz icon

On the more computer side of things, there are some nice things too. Mostly related to QtMPC though. Roeland has been working on integrating last.fm support (context information and scrobbling) into QtMPC and I've been working to get KDE support in. KDE 4 support that is... Winking icon I must say, everything is turning out quite nicely. If you want to see what it looks like, grab the latest svn checkout, since the screenshots on the website are heavily outdated.

I could talk about Qt being available under LGPL and all that stuff, but other people have already done that, so I'll leave it at this Winking icon

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My first *real* guitar lesson
2007-10-25 19:58:52

For some time now I'm starting to ask myself whether there is any purpose in learning to play guitar using an online course and thus mostly by myself. So last week I looked up some teachers who live in the neighbourhood and made an appointment with one of them. I can only say that I should have done this way earlier. I mean, the guy could tell that I've been practicing by myself for some time but when you follow a lesson from someone face to face you'll learn in half an hour what takes you 2 weeks to figure out by yourself...

So basically I'm quite happy I went there and it's even better considering the teacher is a very nice person. From now on, Thursday is guitar lesson day. Winking icon

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Dream Theater
2007-10-11 16:18:29

Last Tuesday I went to the Dream Theater concert in Ahoy (Rotterdam). Unfortunately cameras weren't allowed and I had to leave my camera behind at the entrance, but I still took some pictures with my phone. They're not quite good though... Apart from that, the concert was absolutely great! Razz icon They made practically no mistakes, at least as far as I can tell and they simply rocked big time. They mostly played songs from their 3 latest albums but also some older songs from the "Scenes From A Memory" album for instance. Jordan Rudess also had a portable mini keyboard which he used for some solos, which is good because usually only John Petrucci shows off big time... Winking icon Anyway, I guess I don't have to tell you all that I enjoyed it very much. Let's hope they come again soon.

As for Octave, I've been able to compile it but the dependencies it has really are impossible to figure out. They have their own buildsystem which really doesn't make sense to me and quite frankly I don't feel the need to spend that much time on it. Especially now I have the linux version of matlab... Razz icon

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Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos
2007-06-06 19:45:35

As you may or may not know, I'm a huge Dream Theater fan. So when I heard the new album was released I ordered it right away. Yesterday I received it in the mailbox and after several listening rounds I can say that I really like this album.

On the bonus DVD with the documentary on making the album they state that they want the album to be aggressive and powerful throughout the whole album. Well, I can only say that they did a great job. Even the more balad songs like "The Ministry Of Lost Souls" have some sort of tension which you can feel in the music, as if you can feel something is coming up later on in the song. Anyway, I'm really happy with their latest album, it was worth waiting for. The 5.1 surround sound mix of the entire album on the DVD is a very nice bonus.

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A guitar
2007-03-19 18:17:49

Something I've thought about earlier, but never really did because of lame excuses like "I'll never have time to practice" or "I'm too old" and so on. Finally I did it tough, last week I bought an electric guitar. It's a Stratocaster, though not a real Fender. I can always buy an expensive guitar later if I still like to play, I'm just keeping it simple and cheap for now... Winking icon

So, I can hear you think: "you can't play?!". No, I can't. I'm following an online course consisting of text material and short films which demonstrate the excercises. So I can play open D, G, A and C chords now. I can play the intro of Nothing Else Matters a bit and I've been trying Smoke On The Water, but that involves too much relocating of the left hand for now. I mean, I can do it, but not smoothly... Winking icon

I'll take some pictures of the guitar when I receive the standard, it stands against the box it was delivered in for now... Which isn't good for a picture.

I'll keep you all informed about how things go. For now, my fingers just hurt... Biggrin icon

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New mp3 player
2007-01-07 17:00:00

Unfortunately my iPod mini started to produce a very bad sound quality with a lot of noise and it got worse every day. It turned out that the headphone connector of the iPod somehow managed to get a bit loose and thus causing a lot of trouble.

So I looked around a bit, see if I could get something better. Not necessarily an iPod again. Finally I came up with the Cowon iAudio M5 after thinking about an X5 of the same brand for some time. The only difference is that the X5 has a color display and the M5 does not. I quickly came to realize that I really don't wanna play movies or view pictures on my mp3 player and the 50 Euros saved by choosing the M5 are earned pretty easily... So the M5 it is. Here's a link with some more info about the player.

As with everything, the new player has some advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are very good sound quality, it really sounds a lot better than the iPod used to and it's fully supported by Linux. Even upgrading the firmware is as easy as copying the new firmware file into a folder of the player, restart the player and you're done. Whereas with the iPod I had to go to a Windows computer and download the updater (executable).

The main disadvantage is the menu, in particular how the songs are ordered and categorized. The iPod had a database where the iAudio simply has a "file browser" in which the files are sorted in alphabetical order, not in the order in which they appear on the album. So you have to create playlists, which I really don't like, but what can you do... Anyway, the sound really makes up for it.

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Spock's Beard
2006-12-06 16:35:08

Just received the latest album of Spock's Beard, which is also called "Spock's Beard". I really enjoyed it. It's a little calmer than the music I usually listen to (mostly Dream Theater and other prog. metal) but that doesn't make it less good. I guess Spock's Beard is pretty well-known and doesn't need any promotion, but who cares, I'm still going to tell you that you should buy it.. Winking icon

Some other albums I bought and came in today:

  • Angra - Temple of shadows (already know this one, wanted to buy it for a long time)
  • Angra - Aurora Consurgens (obviously I know the band as stated above, don't know this album though. It's their latest)
  • Thessera - Fooled eyes (this will be a complete surprise, never listened to anything of them before)
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Muse - Black holes & Revelations
2006-08-30 16:52:17
Just to let you know, the new album of Muse - Black holes & revelations - kicks ass big time! Razz icon
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