Archive for March, 2008
Videos from St Patrick’s Day
I’ve uploaded some short clips of street entertainers at this year’s St Patrick’s Day celebrations in Downpatrick. I’ve uploaded them to my page at You Tube.
Photos from St Patrick’s Day Parade, Downpatrick
I’ve uploaded some photos from the St Patrick’s Day Parade, Downpatrick. It was a gorgeous day – bright sunshine most of the time but rather cold in the shade. There was a lot of variety – old and new – people dressed in very bright costumes to traditional marching bands. Lots of music and drummers. Some were even drumming whilst walking on stilts. I find it hard enough to keep a good rhythm sometimes when I’m just sitting down!
For me the best part was the sideshows. A duo called the Grundy Brothers were hilarious. My face ached from laughing so much!! Liked it so much we went and saw them twice.
See the photos in my Photos page or on my Flickr pages.
New Page – Audio Loops & Samples
I’ve just added a whole new section of audio loops and samples. To start with these will be free loops and samples but I may charge a small fee for downloading more complex ones in future. These are original recordings of instruments that I own (or may be recordings of natural sounds) for you to use in your own musical compositions, videos, films etc. I hope to add more soon as time allows.
I have recorded these in WAV file format as it is the most commonly used format in Digital Audio Workstations and computerized music. I have recorded them using an AKG D80 microphone onto a PC using Adobe Audition at a sampling rate of 44Khz (CD quality). I have tried to do as little cleaning up of them or add effects so that you have the raw material and add whatever effects to them in your own way.
Please use as you will in accordance with the Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 license under which they are licensed for your use. See the Audio Loops & Samples page in the menu above to download them.
If you do download them I would really like to hear how you use them. Just leave a comment below and a URL if you have any of your music online.
3 Mobile Broadband
A few months ago I moved house. Really great place but the one thing I forgot to ask before I rented it was “is there a phone line?”. I guess I assumed that there would be one but to my horror I discovered that there isn’t one! Doh! Anyway, I had gotten used to using the mobile for a while so it was no big deal, until I thought ‘where am I going to plug the modem in for Broadband???’
But then I discovered that several mobile phone companies, including Vodafone and T-Mobile are now offering Mobile Broadband. After considering the options I went for the Pay As You Go broadband from Three. Check it out here.
What’s great about it is that now I can take my broadband connection with me wherever I go! Being pay as you go there is no commitment to an 18-24 month contract. Costs £10 per month for 1GB data transfer, £15 for 3 GB and £25 for 7GB. I go for the 3GB and I don’t use it all.
Seems pretty good so far as long as you get a good signal of course.
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If you are using it I would really like to know how you find it, especially if you live in Northern Ireland as I’d really like to know how good the coverage is here. Please leave your comments at the end of this post.
Quote of the Week
Whilst watching the England v France rugby game a couple of weeks ago one of the commentators, Eddie Butler, came out with a classic. I can’t even remember which team he was referring to but he was suggesting that they should be trying new tactics. He said:
“One of the definitions of insanity is doing the same things all the time and expecting a different result”.
Wow! What a pearl of wisdom! Ok, so you won’t find the definition in the dictionary but it really got me thinking about a situation that I am personally stuck with in my life. How many times do we keep going round and round in circles trying what we know doesn’t work and expect something different??
Hope this may help someone else who’s feeling stuck in life.
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