9 and 11 string bass guitar? Pachelbel’s Canon in D on Electric Guitar?

I basically play the piano/keyboards and has a good understanding of how to play the guitar, but I do not consider myself an excellent player like some other friends I have. But still this is also one of the things I like doing. So my interest was drawn to two videos I found online.

9 and 11 String Bass Guitar Player Jean Baudin Plays Mario

I found this video of Jean Baudin. He plays the bass guitar, and one thing unusual with his bass is it has more than 4 strings. To me it looks like a lead guitar with some extra bass strings. He plays it so proficiently that it looks like he is not using a bass guitar at all and all his fingers are all plucking away. Below is a video of him playing Mario.



Not everything he plays sounds like that. Actually he has some pretty cool guitar bass solos on his MySpace account. The bass solos Vanishing and Frosty Acres are really cool. Jeff Baudin’s official website is on JeffBaudin.com.

Classical Music Canon in D of Pachelbel – Rock Version by JerryC

Being a piano player, I really like Canon in D by Pachelbel. Not everyone knows classical music, but Canon in D is used often in many TV commercials I have seen. I remember one commercial of a Bank and many commercials of baby related products like milk and diapers. I remember some popular flash animation that circulated the Internet one time that was about the 7-day creation of the Christian belief that also used the same music. And it is my first time to see a version on the electric guitar by some dude named JerryC. Canon in D is one of my favorites and this JerryC guy did a good job in giving it a touch of rock.



JerryC’s is from Taiwan and his official website is JerryC.tw

Related Links

About Pachelbel’s Canon on Wikipedia

Treo, no graffiti but their is a solution!

I had an old blog posting somewhere here about my Treo on what I liked and what I do not like.

The PalmOne Treo 600 has no Graffiti. Graffiti, aside from what it really means, this is also the name of the writing system software in most Palm PDAs. You learn how to write their way to digitally input real text that can be editable. It is somewhat like a character recognition software to converts what you write into real font letters but you have to follow their proper way of writing.

Being a Palm m100, Palm xeIII, Palm Zire 71 user… the graffiti system was into my way of writing already. For me, it was way faster than the on-screen keyboard or any type of keypad. When I got the PalmOne Treo 600, I was dissapointed they took out the Graffiti software from the whole system and it had a tiny qwerty keyboard instead. That sucked for me. I had my Treo for several months now and just adapted to the qwerty keyboard system.

But I decided to get MobileWrite 3.5, mobile handwriting recognition software. Finally I can run Graffiti again on a Treo! I found this in a promotial PalmGear mailing list I am a member of and decided to get Sudoku and Kakuro since I got addicted to playing Sudoku already.

What’s Wrong with Phenylpropanolamine and Paracetamol?

Where is Paracetamol?

When I was in the Philippines last December, I caught a fever, colds and cough. Commonly for anything related to fever and pain relief, Paracetamol is one of the generic drugs that would come to mind for the common Filipino since these are commonly found in the Phillipines. Some of the popular brands are Biogesicâ„¢ and Tempraâ„¢. I still remember old TV commercials of Biogesicâ„¢ promoting that Paracetamol is safe for pregnant women, people with heart ailments and asthma.

But here in the US, after a visit at the drug store… I went through each pain killer of the shelf and of course the most popular known is Aspirin which is like an everyday word. And this is Acetamenophen having one of the most popular brands as Tylenol. Another popular brand is Advil. But I noticed all of the off-the-shelf pain killers were either Acetamenophen or Ibuprofen. I wonder why there is no Paracetamol based pain killers in the US off-the-shelf drugs? Is it because of some policy the US Food and Drug Authority (FDA) that did not allow this but such ruledoes not exist in the policies of the Philippines’ Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFAD)? In extreme pain, in the Philippines you can also buy Mefanemic Acid pain killers like the popular Ponstan 250.

Phenylpropanolamine

I know Phenylpropanolamine has been banned in large doses since it is used in some rapid weight loss drugs and has several bad side-effects. But in small doses, it is used in medicines for the common colds in the Philippines. Nearly every cold tablet in the Philippines is Phenylpropanolamine, from Neozep to Decolgen, to Ornex to Dimetapp.

And here in the US, not a single cold tablet or syrup uses Phenylpropanolamine. All use Pseudoephedrine. I wonder if the US FDA does not allow to use Phenylpropanolamine even in small amounts why uses that is allowed by the Philippines’ BFAD.

I am a Chemist by profession, but I am not Pharmacist. Generic names are actually nicknames and are not the actual scientific compound names. In chemistry, standardization of naming conventions was done by International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and from the names of compounds, you already get to know what it is made of based on the name alone. Some compounds have very long names that pharmaceutical companies make nicknames of the compounds to make the name shorter. Phenylpropanolamine is a good IUPAC name since I know it is nothing but phenol, propanol and an amine group stuck together. Phenol is benzene with a hydroxy group attached to it and benzene is a known carcinogen. I know Phenylpropanolamine has many harmful effects in large doses, but so does anything in large doses. Menthol which is in a bunch of candies and ointments is harmful to some extent, and even the ordinary Luffa is said to be carcinogenic.

Well just wondering why…

Disclaimer

– I am not claiming to be an expert in the field of pharmacy.
– I am not stating which type of medicine is better than the other.
– I am not promoting any type of brand of medicine.
– I do not work for any pharmaceutical company.
– I am not a doctor nor pharmacist.
– You may not quote me for scientific or statistical facts. I am not even sure of the spellings I wrote. It is just how I remember them. Thus this is not a reliable source of factual data.
– All brands mentioned are trademarks of their respective owners.

I am just wondering why the predominant drug differs in the US and Philippines.

PIM Software

Way back 1996, when I started shifting to my IT career… I used no software for Personal Information Management. For email, I used Qualcomm’s Eudoraâ„¢ but this was for email alone. And the old pen and small notebook did the rest for my everyday planning. After sometime, I started using Microsoft Outlook®, since it integrates email, contacts, notes, task and the calendar very well.

Being concerned with company expenditures, I was at first against the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) since I viewed it as another company expense and the pen and paper, whiteboard and corkboard in the office works fine. But as my former partner Terence Teves was persistent in getting PDAs, I was convinced to give it a shot.

So I started with a Palm m100. And I was happy it would synchronize well with Microsoft Outlook®.

After using Palm® m100, I have used a Palm® xeIII, Palm® Zire™ 71 and now I am using a Palm® Treo™ 600. During those times, I have been jumping from Microsoft Outlook® to Palm® Desktop for my calendar, task and notes. I liked the power Microsoft Outlook® offers but seems to have trouble when it gets really filled up. And it was the email that fills up Microsoft Outlook® so much. And I have used the scanpst tool to fix the outlook.pst file many times in the past and there were times I had unrecoverable data. So those were the reasons I would go back to Palm® Desktop and use something else for my emails.

Since the late 1990’s, I would jump back and forth from Microsoft Outlook® to Qualcomm Eudoraâ„¢ and since last year, I was a Mozilla Thunderbird user. For the past year I was happy with Palm® Desktop and Mozilla Thunderbird combination totally departing Microsoft Outlook®, but recently my Mozilla Thunderbird has been very slow. After opening it up, it takes some time before I can display the email messages and it always gives this dialog box that it is still processing the folders. I guess this happens once it gets filled up too.

The new Microsoft® Office Outlook® 2003 looks very attractive and promising as I have seen the new interface on someone else’s computer, but buying Outlook is just another problem to face too. And in the past, I always had the same problem with Microsoft Outlook® that when the outlook.pst file gets so big, that is when problems come out. But then again, I think it happens to all email softwares when they get so filled up.

I guess the best solution is simply go through your emails, and do not archive them all. Delete all those sales emails from all these subscriptions, delete the mailing list emails that are already out-of-topic, and look for some nice way to archive the emails. I wish there was an easy one-click way to export all the emails in a nice way to different database formats for better archiving.

Things I wanted to talk about but did not have the time to…

It’s been a long time since my last post because I’ve been so busy lately. And bad things happen to make things even harder.

My PC Problems

As usual PC problems never go away. One time my PC kept rebooting and at first I thought it was Windows, but even before it enters Windows, it reboots just a few second after POST. So it can be a hardware problem. I check some CMOS settings and everything looked fine and the weird thing was even within the CMOS settings it was rebooting. And I checked the system health within the CMOS setup and noticed the fast climb of the temperature. Once it reaches 96o centigrade, it reboots. Imagine that, just 4o less than boiling point at STP. The processor fan was still running, but the problem was mainly it was just a bit loose and the heatsink was not sticking well to the processor.

After that was solved… there was a recent lightning storm in San Diego that woke up the whole neighborhood where I lived. There was one big strong one that lit up my room and my lights blinked even if they were off. And my PC was on during the night. What the lightning broke was one phone line splitter, one DSL line filter, one 56k intenal PCI modem and a bunch of bad sectors on my hard disk. The PC was totally unoperable. Although I had a Celeron Windows PC hanging around and a laptop, a lot of needed files were in separate places on my AMD PC that was struck by lightning and the hard disk had bad sectors everywhere.

I can use an external USB/Firewire hard disk casing but my data was in two different hard disk and I have only one external casing. Taking them in and out of the casing was a tedious task to do. Aside from that, two of the partitions on one of the drives were in NTFS and not in FAT32. And the other hard disk was all NTFS. I got a Mac Mini Recently and even if it can read the NTFS drives, it is read only. MacOS can only write to the FAT32 file system. My only hope is to do a Partition Magic, but the drive must have enough space to be able to do the non-destructive partition changes, or else, I need to copy everything to my other drives and reformat the NTFS partitions to FAT32 and put the files back. And I need to do that on my Celeron PC.

Opening and closing the PC, putting on and removing the hard disk, moving files from hard disk to hard disk all consumes time. But if not done right away, more work is going to catch up on me. So far chkdsk was already done on my 120GB hard disk and was able to retrieve most files. I can do partial work but thework files are on the NTFS partitions. My other 80GB hard disk is currently undergoing chkdsk and when that is done I need to copy my billing statements to my clients and other papers like invoices, proposals and contracts. It’s October and I need to send out October billings.

The Mac Mini

I got a Mac Mini. Only 512MB memory since I will upgrade the memory myself to 1GB. Also got a Hyundai 17″ TFT LCD Panel Monitor. Kensington Wireless RF keyboard and mouse. Mac runs fine, pretty fast and everything how a mac should be, so generally it is great. But what do I do not like?

I am a keyboard shortcut person on the Windows PC. I use the keyboard a lot in many ways that many people will use the mouse instead.

I bodies of text in anything, in word processors, spreadsheets, browser text boxes, anything with text, I use these shortcuts very often:

up
down
left
right
home
end
pgup
pgdown
ctrl-up
ctrl-down
ctrl-left
ctrl-right
ctrl-home
ctrl-end
ctrl-pgup
ctrl-pgdown
shift-up
shift-down
shift-left
shift-right
shift-home
shift-end
shift-pgup
shift-pgdown
ctrl-shift-up
ctrl-shift-down
ctrl-shift-left
ctrl-shift-right
ctrl-shift-home
ctrl-shift-end
ctrl-shift-pgup
ctrl-shift-pgdown

In the Mac, it can also be done. Like instead of Home, you use Alt-Left, and instead of End, you use Alt-Right. No problem, I can train myself with the changes, but the problem is in some applications it does not work. It works on MS Word for Mac, in the text in Adium, it wants the Home and End, and in Dreamweaver code view, it does not work at all. Yes I am trainable to new conventions, but each application in the Mac does not follow the same conventions. And I am forced to use the mouse.

Another thing… In Windows… many applications have keyboard shortcuts, but not everything has a keyboard shortcut. But everything that does not have a keyboard shortcut, I memorize the “Alt” key sequences using the menu bar underlined letters.

Common ones I use often are like

Photoshop:
Alt>I>I = Image Size
Alt>I>S = Canvass Size
Alt>I>P = Crop Selection
Alt>I>A>C = Adjust Contrast/Brightness

Excel:
Alt>O>C>A = Auto-fit column width
Alt>O>R>A = Auto-fit row height
Alt>O>C>H = Hide Column
Alt>O>R>H = Hide Row
Alt>O>C>U = Unhide Column
Alt>O>R>U = Unhide Row

Word:
Alt>F>U = Page Setup

These are just a few of them. And on the Mac, the only shortcuts I seem to be able to use are the shortcuts given and cannot activate menu items with the keyboard alone. Unless there is something I really do not know yet and I still need to figure out how to do them on the Mac. So right now, I am forced to use the mouse.

I still picture myself using the Windows PC as my main general all around computer to use. And I will use my Mac Mini for work specific things that is related to graphics, audio or video. For coding I will still use my Windows PC mainly because of the keyboard shortcut convenience and speed and for websites, the Mac will be used for view testing. And of course Linux still powers my server. Stable, economical, perfect for a server, but will not use it for general all around use.

Investor Workshop

One of my favorite books on my shelf is RIch Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Although this is not a book only for business people, most business people like it. The book mainly talks about Robert Kiyosaki’s two dads. One rich, one poor, and how he learned from both, but followed the advice of his rich dad when it came to the topics about money.

Robert Kiyosaki recently had an Investor Workshop at the LA Convention Center last October 1. Being on his mailing list, I received an email about the event. It cost $150, in Philippine Pesos that is more than P8,000, but it was really worth it. It looked like there were 2,000 people there and he was really great. His knowledge shared will really charge a lot in the way you think. He also tells you about the common pitfalls people do why they never really succeed. He talked about taxes and other problems with the government laws that you have to watch out for. Knowing the rules to take advantage of the rules and not fall into the wrong paths. He talked about 3 top investments and he had excellent speakers on every type of investment. He talked about inflation and currency and investing off-shore. And although he talks all about money and how to gain more money and get rich, methods he used himself by using real estate, gold, silver and gas. He did not promote nor was trying to sell any real estate, gold, silver or gas shares. He was just sharing his knowledge. And it is very nice to know that he also has a foundation that is helping out schools integrate into some lessons as early as grade school just to get students better equiped with financial knowledge. It is his social responsibility to help lessen poverty. Since he does believe that war, divorce, illegal aliens, and other problems are really money problems. So his foundation is to help educate the people learn more about financial knowledge to make a change in the world.

And the things I learned and changed some of my thinking was… I like gas, I am not going for a sole proprietorship and will register a corporation, I am not getting my 401k or IRA. But I still need to save up and earn more so I can invest more and make money move and work for me so I do not work for money.

Working Convenience

While working at home… I have two desktops and one laptop. All emails and PDA synchronization runs on the laptop. That way if I need to be on the go, all planning and client correspondence comes with me.

One PC is mainly for work, and the other PC runs all sorts of stuff like TV, radio, CDs, music, and other entertainment while I work.

But with the tables I got, and how they are arranges, sometimes even just opening the other PC makes me lazy since I have work to do on the work PC. So the PC that serves as my TV is just there doing nothing. My laptop… all my emails are there… I sometimes find it inconvenient twisting my body all the time since the laptop is on my left. And with my table… my legs go all the way in and my legs cannot move freely to turn to the left.

All these extra efforts I believe affects my productivity and health as well putting my body in various contortions just to reach stuff.


Now I have seen all these nice corner desk at various office furniture websites. But all of them will still require me to spend some money. So I decided why not still give it a try with whatever I have and try to make it work. So I started rearranging things and the two most time consuming parts in doing this is the bunch of wires which I often call spagetti.


I still don’t find it convenient facing my laptop at where it currently is. I rather slip out of the table to free my legs and face the left completely. But then I will need a new table. So I still spent some money… I bought a Tabletote. The Tabletote is a product of Instand, manufacturer or portable laptop tables.

This product could be taken apart and easily fit a good laptop bag. So aside from having a new table, if ever I will be on the go with my laptop, I will bring the table along as well.


Although my Tabletote has not arrived yet, and I chose the longest shipping period since that is the cheapest shipping rate, this is the result of my current setup.

Searching for the Ideal Skatepark

As I continue to look for BMX hot spots here in San Diego, I started search for skateparks online. I saw a lot, in fact there is a walking distance one from where I live right now, but are for Skateboarders only. BMX’s are not allowed.

Most of them are like that, there is one in Poway too that is very near my location, it is a good biking distance, but still BMX’s is not allowed.

After searching, I found three main skateparks I want to go to. The first one I found, was the Clairemont skatepark. When I first found it online, just by looking at the pictures, how big the ramps were with enough space to generate a lot of speed, I already knew, BMXs are allowed here. It would be impossible if they are not allowed. But just to be sure, I called them up by phone. And yes, 3pm to 8pm weekdays and 5pm to 8pm weekends are the BMX schedules.


Just look at their vert ramp! In the Philippines, all my life, I have only ridden a quarterpipe. I haven’t really catched air big time, just slightly over the coping on an 8 foot quarterpipe in Lagro, Novaliches, Quezon City and I have been to Villa Sabina in Talipapa Novaliches, Quezon City. Both of the ramps mention are demolished already. They were also narrow, like 8 to 10 feet wide, so learning was even harder. You can’t make wide arcs while learning and should really make good 180 turns or else you will fall of the ramp on the sides. Which already happened to me in the past. And in the Philippines, we never wear safety equipment.

Now look at this ramp. The last time I did quarterpipe areals was in 1989 to 1990. I am not even sure if I can still do it, but what the heck, this is a big ass super wide halfpipe. I can just go back and forth, go wide first with big arcs and progress going higher and higher. I am sure I will get the skills back that I had before. As the saying goes, once you learn how to ride a bike, you will never forget it. I hope that applies to ramp riding too.

The Clairemont Skatepark Website
The Clairemont Skatepark Photo Gallery
The Clairemont Skatepark on SoCalSkateparks.com

As I continue on searching, I found the Escondido skatepark. This looks just as exciting as Clairemont!


But, it is made of metal?!@#$% I guess that is pretty stiff, stable but it looks hot on a sunny day. It might be glaring to in some instances.


I will also give this a try, maybe who ever is cheaper, that is where I will go to more often. 😛

Escondido Skatepark Website
Escondido Skatepark BMX Photo Gallery
Escondido Skatepark on SoCalSkateparks.com

But if I have no money and is saving some money, I might just go to the cheap public parks. But most are for skateboarders only, I found one that allows BMX. Ramps are not big. No serious very ramp, but if I need to have fun and needs to save on money, I found the one in Santee.


Santee Skatepark Webpage on the City Gov’t Website
Santee Skatepark on SoCalSkateparks.com

But since I am in the US now, and the people here are pretty much sane than the people in the Philippines, that means I need to buy a helmet and some pads. Since I am not the crazy Philippines. Nyahahaha. These skateparks are also not that near, so I need a bike rack too to place on my car. Money again… Well I am not buying these right away, I got other things to work on first. If I need more money for recreation, I must not spend my money from my working income but spend it in income generating assets first and generate more money for recreation. Well I am near that already, once all these hosting sign up process is all done and my customer support system and billing system is also done already with my existing company so I can concentrate on boosting sales after that.

BMX in California

The company where I work along with a bunch of webmasters, writers and sales people had a company picnic by the beach.

I brought my BMX with me since it was by the beach and so I can go from end to end on the beach. We were at Crown Point by the side of Mission Bay.

I grew up doing BMX racing and freestyle since my highschool days until early college. I was always up to date with the news, X-Games did not even exist and it was all American BMX Association (ABA) and National BMX League (NBL) for Racing and American Freestyle Association (AFA) for freestyle. The Ron Wilkerson’s 2Hip contest came out, vert, street, dirt content. Then Matt Hoffman started doing his Bicycle Stunt contest and was getting much coverage by media with the help of ESPN and MTV. That somehow became B3 – Bike, Blades, Boards contest and I guess with the EPSN coverage, and popularity was getting better, then X-Games was born that included all sorts of extreme sports.

All these information in the early days was all from magazines. BMX Action and BMX Plus. BMX Action also published Freestylin’ and Go-The Riders Manual. Cheap magazines came out, like SnapBMX. Today’s magazines include Ride, which is a Transworld publication. I subscribed to BMX Plus for 2 or 3 years I think. There was no X-Games then, and the only BMX we see on a TV screen was from videos ordered from the US and borrowed by BMXer’s and Freestylers in the Philippines. The have the movie Rad and the oldschool Movie BMX Bandits that had Nicole Kidman. Also the Hi-Torque Publication videos 101 Freestyle Tricks, part 1 and 2. I also have the GT Demo Tape. There were actually Betamax tapes.

And whenever a new trick came out, that you read from the magazine, you really do not see it, but just read the descriptions and just imagine how is was done, like when the tailwhip airs came out, the 900s, I never really save how they were done, but I ready about them.

Then the age of X-Games came out, there we saw everything in the Philippines, how everything is done here in the US. Ever since I was in highschool, until the X-Games age… one thing in common that you will see in a lot of BMX news… a lot of it happens in California.

The BMX companies were in California, many of the freestyle pros lives in California. And when you live in the Philippines and is a hardcore BMX fan, you start thinking, BMX is really hot in California. I remember the early Playstation game that came out, called California Games that had BMX, Skateboarding, Rollerblades, Surfing.

Now I’m in San Diego for 1 year already. I got a BMX, and I see BMX nowhere. Yeah I see people biking, but just by looking at their bike, I already know, this person does not freestyle. Where the hell are these people? LOLz All that BMX sh*t I see in the magazines all in California. Well one thing I didn’t consider is California is really a big place. Bigger than the Philippines alone. If there are a lot of BMX people in California, there are more people that do not give a damn about BMX. lolz And just want to ride a bike the normal way.

My skill depleated over the years, but I do not care, I still ride for fun. I can still rockwalk, and do a smith boomerang, a simple tailwhip, wind surf, framestand, and yeah, the lawnmower nyahahaha, the balance lawnmover too. Front hops and back hops, the infinity roll. All old school tricks. I do not even have a single scuffing or rolling trick dialed in. I cannot pull off a hang five, steamroller, backyard funcky chicken, freak squeak or other similar tricks.

And when I brought my bike to the company picnic, being in San Diego, California where (Ron Wilkerson used to live for some time too) I was thinking that I would have many co-workers that would know freestyle. And would probably pull off a hang five easily and I might even ask them to teach me. And when a BMXer sees a BMXer, and we are in the same company, for sure, they will try the bike out and pull something off with it.

Everyone that approached me, I offered them to try the bike out, and I was surprised no one was really doing freestyle. Some said they used too, like Chris Jilly, but way back 1980’s. Eric Ricasa said he had he share of BMX accidents in the past. When Justin Sepulveda saw me doing simple freestyle tricks, he said: “Is that Benj? What? Is that Benj? What? That’s Benj? Get off of that bike.” LOLz

So everyone in the Philippines reading this… if you think California is all BMX because of the magazines you read. Not exactly true. I guess it is true that the good riders are here, but not true that you can easily see them everyday. California is a very big place.

Or maybe I just haven’t seen all the hot spots yet?