Two of my main reasons for living

Coffee drinkers, save the rain forest, please

I was told about a serious malpractice today at work by a colleague. He watched a television programme that showed rain forest canopies being cut off to provide coffee plantations with more sunlight. This increases yield, and decreases costs dramatically. Instead of having to hand-pick beans off natural winding coffee plants, bushy, short plants are easier to harvest, and grow faster in the direct sunlight.

My immediate response was than I would no longer drink coffee then. The environment is important to me. More important than coffee, in fact.



Luckily there is an alternative. Rainforest Alliance certifies coffee beans grown sustainably. Don't settle for anything less. For more information see here.

Don't take your coffee too seriously

Found this on FurtherAfield: Six months in jail for complaining about coffee. And then see this blog entry on El Rancho Relaxo: Epic - Disappointing.

I need a few spare dollars...

I am drooling. Saw this Brubaker bass on the Ed Roman Guitar site.

Webcast now available

Well, not really my webcast. Spotted it at a service station in Carlisle. Yeah, baby!

The end of Easter - back to the salt mines

I spent last week in London on business. The Singapore London leg was nice, since I was upgraded to first class on Qantas. But I also wanted to get back home a day early, and all SAA could offer me, a Qantas customer, was economy class. It sucked. Not to mention that they broke my guitar, and stole a trinket that was supposed to be a present for my wife. That really sucked.

Sorry, all my RSA friends and family, but the short visit to RSA just reaffirmed my conviction to never return if I can avoid doing so. Harsh words, speaking about my motherland like that. Since in any population group, there is a normal distribution of people. Most people are average, some are really good, some are really bad.

One bad apple spoils the whole basket? Well, it certainly spoilt the moment I unpacked everything.

Hmmm, I did mention salt mines earlier. So what is the deal with calling going back to work going back to the salt mines? In Western Australia, there are two main salt mines, one at Dampier, and one at Port Headland.

Mining comprises letting water into a flat pond, sitting back and watching the water evaporate, leaving salt behind, and scooping up the salt with a front-end loader.

Hardly back-breaking work, if you ask me. I have a friend who used to manage both operations, and she always heard the same joke about watching salt dry. Even though it kept her very busy...

Rotosound and Elite - which is best?

I purchased a set of Bass Central Stadium Series Stainless Steel Elites strings today. We will see how they fare. The last set of Rotosound 666LD's are wearing out very fast.

In other news, guitar tablature is becoming legal. See the New York Times for details.

My son at three months

Some copy machines remember you

Interesting read. Truth or fiction?

What makes a band?

Take some musicians, let them play together week after week for many months, and suddenly, one day, it feels like we are a true team. Working together in perfect harmony. Andrew, Geoff and myself ending on a strange chord, together, without having discussed it beforehand. It just happened. Or did it?

Feel the music. Feel the leading of the Holy Spirit. In my view, it is all the same in the end.

Sunday was classic. Both Geoff and I made the same mistake, in anticipation starting to play the bridge of the song, and we had to do another chorus. D'Oh! It was very funny.

By the way, all my links have disappeared. I will redo them soon.

Scientists break the speed of light

And all you non-believers thought it could not be done. By the way, Einstein's laws were not broken in this experiment.

George Michael MegaMix

If you have not seen it yet, view it here. Great piece of work.

More Arnold pics

Due to numerous requests, here's one at 27 days of age:

James Webb Space Telescope to view Big Bang

Able to collect light nine times faster than the Hubble telescope, and mirrors more high-tech than the one you use in the morning, this looks very interesting.

The mirrors for the telescope have now been finished.

More info on the NASA site.

RSS feed available for this blog

I knew it was here somewhere, but I kept forgetting to look. If you point your RSS aggregator to http://paulinperth.blogspot.com/atom.xml, you will get every new post as it appears (depending on your RSS aggregator settings, of course). I put a logo on the side.

For more info on RSS, perform a search using Google, or go here.

Breadwinner and housewife

Mom and bub are back at home, both well. I have decided that it is a great privilege to be the breadwinner in the family. I get paid good money to do half the work in a day that my wife has to do. Dishes, laundry, mopping the floor, feeding the cat and fish, making beds, cleaning up after playing, the list goes on. And all the time spent on the road driving to shops, shops that are laid out like a horse's behind.

And my wife gets paid nothing to do all this work on a daily basis. Nice to get a bit of perspective every now and then...

A son is born

Unto me a son was born on 3 January 2007. He shall be known as Arnold, for he is strong as an Eagle. 2.38 kg (5 pounds 4 ounces), 44 cm tall, both he and mom healthy.

Matrox TripleHead2Go

It all began in October 2005. I visited South Africa, and saw Armand had a 19 inch LCD monitor at home. It was so much better than my 17 inch CRT...

At work I was running two 15 inch Dell LCDs, and with people joining, and everyone wanting to also have two monitors (great productivity enhancer in my line of work), I passed on my two 15 inchers, and had two new Dell 1907FP monitors on my desk at work.

This was just too much, of course, and thanks to eBay, I purchased one for home at a greatly reduced price.

Today that monitor lost its place of pride as my only monitor, and became monitor number 3. I have just received my two new 1907FPs, as well as the box of magic from Matrox.

Was it worth it? Oh yes. The immersive quality of having three screens full of VC view, with no impact on framerates, I am hooked. In fact, I am off to fly again now.

Oh , the top picture is me flying the FFS Van's RV7 over YPPH, and the bottom one the Aeroworx King Air B200 with most of the sub-panels permanently displayed in 2D mode. Cool.

All the things I did not write about

It has been some time. Good day to you all.

I have purchased a Line6 LD150 bass guitar amp. I can not use it to its full potential at home. On a setting of 3.5 I rattle the windows as well as the nearest brick wall, and thus I have never gone louder. I am very happy. Line6 makes the coolest gear.

Microsoft Flight Simulator X has been released. Since the shelf life is typically three years, versus most other games a few months at most, the software has to be designed for next-generation hardware. Meaning that current hardware battle to maintain good framerates. And old hardware (like what I have at home) get very bad framerates if you want too much detail out of the sim. But soaring simulation is magnificent, and since it happens away from busy commercial airports, I get mid-teen framerates. Very good. But if you really want good framerates, consider purchasing this Alienware machine.

I also purchased Need for Speed Underground 2 on eBay for AUD20 delivered, and am having a lot of fun with that.

I have been travelling a lot recently, and when I am home, my family, music, and flying comes before blogging.

Strangely enough, as I write this I am sitting in a hotel room, with lots of spare time on my hands for the evening. Ironic, is it not?

Paul the Chameleon

Last Monday morning I shaved off my moustache and goatee, and of course my hair has been growing for some time now. So I get to Perth airport this morning, and the lady refuses to give me my boarding pass. Because, according to her, I do not look anything like my passport photo.

Asks me if I have my driver's licence handy. Yes, and I present it. Inwardly laughing, as it will not help. I have had the same short hair and moustache for the last seven years. Eventually she decides that it is me, and I get my boarding pass.

Had a good chuckle about it in the lounge, and eventually arrived at Shanghai Pudong airport tonight. And lo and behold, they would not let me in to the country. Looked at me, looked at my passport, looked at me, looked at my passport. Asked how old the passport photograph was. Asked for some Australian ID. So I presented my driver's licence again. ANd both officers burst out laughing, as the licence and the passport look the same. But both look different to me.

Eventually they did let me in.

So, here's the deal: I decided to grow my hair into a pony tail again, which will be a three year project. And I decided that I will not care what the customers think or say about my hair. But having all this hassle getting in and out of countries is another story.

So, as my colleague said today, grow the moustache again...