Fingernails 101
By Doug Young |
Acoustic
Guitar Magazine
Whether
you favor natural or synthetic nails, here are the key points to keep in mind
about using and maintaining them.
Guitarist gatherings are probably the only
place you’re likely to encounter a group of guys comparing their fingernails.
And with good reason: For both male and female fingerstylists, nails play a
key role in the character and caliber of the instrument’s sound. Fingernails
can help you generate more volume and a brighter, more consistent tone. Of
course, it’s possible to play with bare fingers or with fingerpicks, but most
guitarists who want to play in this style will use nails.
Some fingerstylists, including many
professional guitarists, take the step of applying artificial nails, finding
that they are stronger (and therefore last longer) and allow for more
aggressive attack on the strings than even the best-kept natural nails do.
Here we’ll examine the options for and care of both natural and artificial
fingernails.
Read the rest of the article
here
Posted Mon
Jul 31st, 2006 - 7:12am by CPC
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Fretboard Journal Vol
3 on sale
The
new issue of Fretboard Journal (Vol 3) is out and it is full of taut-stringed
goodness.
Singer-songwriter Guy Clark is the cover story.
Inside are interviews with Bill Collings of Collings Guitars, Bob Taylor (on
his new R. Taylor guitars), banjo legend Wade Mainer and much, much more.
It’ll show up in most stores around the first
week of August.
Link
Posted Sun
Jul 30th, 2006 - 7:48pm by CPC
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Tomato with human
face
This
mutant tomato has become a celebrity in the Japanese city of Yawata, Kyoto.
From MSN-Mainichi Daily News: The tomato, which is about 10 centimeters in
diameter and weighs about 150 grams, is of the regular "Momotaro" variety, but
is about three times the normal size. It was harvested in Yawata from a field
owned by 61-year-old farmer Kiyoshi Ueda.
Link
Posted Sat
Jul 29th, 2006 - 9:22am by CPC
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The Heyday of the
Dead
New York Times
YES, it’s July. The sun’s shining. People
are heading to the beach or just out, to catch some UV, drink some Mountain
Dew and indulge in some good clean summer fun.
WHY
WAIT? WEAR IT NOW A watch with a pavé diamond face by Lucien Pellat-Finet and
Jacob Arabo reminds wearers that it is later than they think. But what is that
little black cloud drifting across the sun? Will it ruin our picnic, like ants
or a motorcycle gang? Heaven protect us ... a skull? Not one, but a sea of
them! Ah, but ere it comes near, it is clear: it will barely cast a pall.
If it was not clear a year or two ago, when
the skull motif cropped up on battered Herman-Melville-meets-Edgar-Allan-Poe
T-shirts made by Rogues Gallery, on costly cashmere sweaters by Lucien
Pellat-Finet, on the perforated uppers of the wingtips made by the men’s wear
line Barker Black, it is now. What only recently seemed clever and stylish —
I’m wearing a skull! I’m baaaaad! — has shifted into overdrive, if not
overkill.
Beyond the sea of skull wear — belts,
T-shirts, ties — there are umbrellas, sneakers, swimsuits, packing tape, party
lights, even a skull-branded line of hand tools. One company has made a skull
toilet brush and caddy (with a molded-plastic femur bone for a handle). This
summer Damien Hirst announced that he will make a life-size skull, cast in
platinum and adorned with 8,000 diamonds.
If it seems harmless, well, there you have
it. With the full force of the American consumer marketing establishment
behind it, the skull has lost virtually all of its fearsome outsider meaning.
It has become the Happy Face of the 2000’s. When the mid-1980’s proto-Goth
group the Ministry sang “Every Day Is Halloween,” this was not quite what they
had in mind. ...
Read the rest of the article
here
Posted Fri
Jul 28th, 2006 - 7:33am by CPC
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Pay phones suffer as cell
phone use rises
By SAMANTHA GROSS |
Associated Press
NEW
YORK - A stroll along Ninth Avenue in Manhattan reveals an ugly picture of
the state of the pay phone these days. The phones are sticky, beat up and
scarred, and some don't work at all. A child's change purse is stuffed on one
phone ledge, along with a large wad of wrapping plastic. On a nearby ledge, an
empty bottle of tequila sits in front of a hole that once held a phone. Empty
cans of malt liquor sheathed in brown paper bags are a frequent sight.
With rising cell phone use and vandalism and
neglect taking their toll, pay phones are disappearing around the nation.
Consumer activists and advocates for the poor have protested the drop in
numbers — saying that public phones are necessary in emergencies and represent
a lifeline for those who can't afford a cell phone or even a landline.
"If you have a cell phone, you hardly look
for the pay phones," said 25-year-old Sayed Mizan, listening to his iPod on a
subway platform. "Besides, most of the time if you see the pay phones, they're
either out of order or they're too filthy to touch."
Public phone operators insist that the bad
reputation of pay phones is undeserved — though they do concede that they have
removed many stands in recent years due to falling use...
Read the rest of the article
here
Posted Thu
Jul 27th, 2006 - 7:38pm by CPC
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A disaster to take everyone's breath away
By Geoffrey Lean |
New Zealand Herald
MANAUS - Deep in the heart of the world's
greatest rainforest, a nine-day journey by boat from the sea, Otavio Luz
Castello is anxiously watching the soft waters of the Amazon drain away.
Every
day they recede further, like water running slowly out of an immense bathtub,
threatening a worldwide catastrophe.
Standing on an island in a quiet channel of
the giant river, he points out what is happening. A month ago, the island was
under water. Now, it juts 5m above it.
It is a sign that severe drought is
returning to the Amazon for a second successive year. And that would be
ominous. New research suggests that one further dry year beyond that could tip
the whole vast forest into a cycle of destruction.
The day before, top scientists delivered
much the same message at a remarkable floating symposium on the Rio Negro, on
the strange black waters beside which Manaus, the capital city of the Amazon,
stands.
They told the meeting - convened on a
flotilla of boats by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of the Greek Orthodox
Church, dubbed the "green Pope" for his environmental activism - that global
warming and deforestation were pushing the entire enormous area towards a
"tipping point", where it would start to die.
The consequences would be awesome. The wet
Amazon Basin would turn to dry savannah at best, desert at worst. This would
cause much of the world to become hotter and drier.
In the long term, it could send global
warming out of control, eventually making the world uninhabitable...
Read the rest of the article
here
Posted Mon
Jul 24th, 2006 - 7:38pm by CPC
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Chimeric animal
photoshopping contest
Today
on the Worth 1000 photoshopping contest: animal chimeras.
Link
Posted Sun
Jul 23rd, 2006 - 8:13am by CPC
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Monopoly
replaces play-money with fake credit-cards
The
new UK edition of Monopoly dispenses with paper play-money in favor of
play-credit-cards with their own card-reader. Players will instead use a Visa
mock debit card to keep track of how much they win or lose. It is inserted
into an electronic machine where the banker taps in cardholders' earnings and
payments.
Parker said replacing of cash with plastic
showed the game was moving with the times.
Link
Posted Sat
Jul 22nd, 2006 - 7:38pm by CPC
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HOWTO build a fax out of salmon tins
From
the June 1932 issue of Modern Mechanics, this recipe for building a fax
machine ("electric picture transmitter") out of two salmon tins:
A COUPLE of sardine and salmon cans, a few bits
of brass and several pieces of wood are all the materials that are needed to
assemble an experimental but very practical picture transmitter and receiver.
Two of each of the cans will be needed. The salmon cans should be of the small
or half can size and the end that has been opened should be replaced by
soldering in water tight, a new disc of tin.
Link
Posted Fri
Jul 21sth, 2006 - 8:13am by CPC
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Price of virtual
living: Patience, privacy
By Peggy Mihelich |
CNN
The
virtual worlds depicted in the movies "The Matrix" and "Minority Report" can
often seem far too real in today's world of computers, e-mail, instant
messaging, MP3 players, cell phones, laptops, Wi-Fi and RFID.
Many of us can't get through a day without
scanning, dialing or logging into a digital world so deeply embedded that
living without 1s and 0s seems almost unthinkable -- and maybe impossible.
"We now live in an era where the technology
is becoming mandatory instead of a choice. ...We have found ourselves tethered
to our technology in a way that has really changed our lifestyle," said Larry
Rosen, co-author of the book "TechnoStress: Coping with Technology @Work @Home
@Play."
In 2004 the Census Bureau estimated that 62
percent of the U.S. population owned and used a cell phone. The IT consulting
firm Yankee Group estimates that figure will reach about 82 percent by 2009.
About 73 percent of Americans age 18 or
older use the Internet, up from 66 percent in January 2005, according to an
April 2006 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
The Department of Commerce estimates
e-commerce sales at $25.2 billion for the first quarter of 2006, an estimated
increase of 25.6 percent from the first quarter of 2005.
"The Internet's become a mass phenomenon in
this country. It really has had an impact on how people get information and
stay in touch with other folks," Pew researcher John Horrigan said.
The virtual world also has given millions of
people a place to express opinions and ideas they are often too afraid to
voice in the real world.
"When you are sitting and communicating in
the virtual world nobody sees you." Rosen said. "Tons of research shows that
when you are not visible you feel more inclined to say things that you would
never say face to face."
Read the rest of the article
here
Posted Wed
Jul 19th, 2006 - 8:13am by CPC
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New HP
Wireless Chip Connects The Digital And Real Worlds
The tiny chips can be attached to objects
from photos to prescription bottles.
By Thomas Claburn |
InformationWeek
In
an effort to strengthen the connection between the digital and physical
worlds, HP today said that its researchers have created a tiny wireless
microchip called the Memory Spot that can be used to affix digital content to
tangible objects.
The chip—about the size of half a grain of
rice—might be attached to a photo print, where it could provide access to the
original digital photo file to anyone who wanted to make a copy. Howard Taub,
VP and Associate Director of Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, said he hopes to
see chip reading electronics, costing perhaps a few dollars, built into cell
phones, PDAs, Flash drives, and other devices, including printers.
Taub said HP's aim was to make potential
partners aware of the technology so they can begin discussing how it might be
developed and deployed. He estimated it could take several years before it's
commercially useful, with an eco-system of readers and product uses that make
the chips practical.
Taub also showed how the chip might be used
to attach an audio file of a physician reading a prescription to a pill
bottle. Another demonstration included a postcard that contained a version of
the classic arcade game PacMan that Taub scanned with a reader device into a
PC and played. While such digital files can easily be stored and made
accessible online, the Memory Spot allows computer files to be associated with
actual objects, where they remain accessible whether or not there's Internet
connectivity.
Current versions of the Memory Spot can hold
from 256 kilobits to 4 megabits, enough for dozens of pages of text, a few
photos, several minutes of audio, or a very short video clip, depending on the
quality of the video encoding.
The HP Memory Spot is similar to a
radio-frequency identification chip in many respects. The primary difference
is that RFID chips store a pointer or reference to a database entry. The HP
Memory Spot stores the data itself.
Read the rest of the article
here
See also:
Tiny Chips Could Change Our Lives @
CBS.com
Posted Tue
Jul 18th, 2006 - 7:38pm by CPC
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"Tourist Remover"
removes people from photographs
FutureLab
has a nifty service that erases people, cars, etc. from photographs. It works
by comparing several photos of a scene, and getting rid of the stuff that's
different from the other photos. Check out the gallery of "ghost town" photos!
Link
Posted Sat
Jul 15th, 2006 - 7:38pm by CPC
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How to "gain flesh"
"A
SKINNY man hasn't a chance." A chance to what? To make it with the delectably
curvy woman shown here? On the contrary! She's says "I'll tell you how to gain
pounds quick!" See, this woman digs skinny guys. She likes to help them become
big and strong.
The moral of the story: no matter your
phenotype, there's someone out there ready to love you for who you are (or for
what they might be able to mold you into becoming).
From the archives of Modern Mechanix blog.
Posted Fri
Jul 14th, 2006 - 8:13am by CPC
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Monty Python: Plush Holy Hand
Grenade
From the StarStore website:
-
A Specialty Market Exclusive! A plush, farting copy of that most holy of
instruments, the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, that destroyed the foul rabbit
that bit off the head of Sir Gawain; that defeated the wicked witch of Endor;
that molted the... (edited due to length). This plush comes in the original
box*, which includes full instructions. Note that when squeezed, this grenade
makes a loud farting noise, similar to that of a whoopie cushion. (* due to
there only being one original box, all boxes actually shipped are full-color
copies made of cardboard).
Holy Hand Grenade
Posted Thu
Jul 13th, 2006 - 7:38pm by CPC
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Birthday.
Posted Wed
Jul 12th, 2006 - 8:13am by CPC
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Tampon gun
TamponCrafts
has published a HOWTO for building a paintball-style gun for firing tampons:
Inspired by marshmallow shooters, this air-powered tampon gun turns your
feminine hygiene products into high-flying projectiles. Have a shootout
between rival tampon brands, or use it as a fun alternative to paintball. The
tampon shooter has a range of 10 to 20 feet depending on your ammo and lung
capacity. The matching bandolier lets you carry a full “clip” (i.e., box) of
20 tampons, so you’ll never be caught short in the heat of battle.
Link
Posted Sun
Jul 9th, 2006 - 7:38pm by CPC
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Vintage psych drug
ads
Here's
a gallery of (mostly unsettling) Japanese advertisements (1956-2003) for
psychiatric drugs. (Previous post about vintage pharma ads here.) This is an
ad for Serenace (haloperidol), an anti-psychotic, from a 1970 issue of
Psychiatria et Neurologia Japonica.
Link (via
Mind Hacks)
Posted Thu
Jul 6th, 2006 - 7:38pm by CPC
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Open call for Eyebeam research fellows
The terrific Eyebeam art/science/tech atelier
in New York City is holding its second open call for research fellows. All
work created as part of the program will be free under open licenses, without
patents, released under GPL, Creative Commons, and documented in the form of
DIY guides. This is an amazing opportunity for makers/hackers.
From
the R&D Fellows Program page:
Join the OpenLab and Make Your Mark on the
Public Domain Eyebeam is now accepting applications for the next round of R&D
Fellows in the R&D OpenLab. We are looking for hardware and software hackers,
techno arts-and-craftsters, and new types of open source makers to come to New
York City and develop experimental creative technologies and media. The
OpenLab represents an opportunity for selected individuals to work in a
state-of-the-art digital fabrication laboratory, to collaborate with a range
of talented technologists and artists from diverse and hybrid backgrounds, to
gain international exposure for innovative work and to directly enrich the
global DIY community, free culture and the public domain. Join past OpenLab
Fellows and projects like MintyBoost, OGLE (OpenGLExtractor), SlashLinks, LED
Throwies, Contagious Media and FundRace and make your mark on the Public
Domain.
Link
Posted Wed
Jul 5th, 2006 - 8:13am by CPC
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Soviet joke-telling
Here's
a wonderful article on the history of joke-telling under Soviet communism;
from the earliest jokes after the October Revolution to the jokes that led up
to the fall of Wall. Yet there is an obvious problem with the idea that
communist jokes represented an act of revolt: it wasn't just opponents of the
regime who told them. Stalin himself cracked them, including this one about a
visit from a Georgian delegation: They come, they talk to Stalin, and then
they go, heading off down the Kremlin's corridors. Stalin starts looking for
his pipe. He can't find it. He calls in Beria, the dreaded head of his secret
police. "Go after the delegation, and find out which one took my pipe," he
says. Beria scuttles off down the corridor. Five minutes later Stalin finds
his pipe under a pile of papers. He calls Beria—"Look, I've found my pipe."
"It's too late," Beria says, "half the delegation admitted they took your
pipe, and the other half died during questioning."
Link
Posted Tue
Jul 4th, 2006 - 7:38pm by CPC
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Rock Paper Scissors with
25 hand-gestures
RPS25 is a rock-paper-scissors variant with 25
hand-gestures that combine to make 300 possible outcomes. The chart is a hoot!
Link
Posted Sun
Jul 2nd, 2006 - 6:55am by CPC
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1974 Chevy Vega
OK. Of all the occasionally recurring dreams,
the one about my ’74 Vega ranks fairly low on the excitement scale. Except,
that’s not how it plays out in the dream itself.
The dream is always set in present day, and it
involves me remembering that my Vega is not long since scrapped, but stored in
some long-forgotten garage or barn. After 10 minutes and a fresh battery, the
car starts and I drive away.
Last night, it involved me breaking to the
front of the line at a repair shop, where I’ve made instant respect karma with
the shop-owner – who has fixed a problem with my Vega. Oh, it still has a hole
in the gas tank, one bad spring, a door that does not match, a cracked
windshield, and leaves a sickly sweet cloud of smoke every time I press the
accelerator… but it RUNS.
Posted Sat
Jul 1st, 2006 - 8:45am by CPC
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