I'll just tell everyone up front that, if you have never had to restring a guitar, it is a pain in the butt. Just one little mistake can ruin an enitire set of strings, and then you're out the money for the strings and the fifteen minutes that it took to string them. And then the worst part is when the strings are put on wrong, and they mess up the neck, creating buzzing spots and an uneven fretboard.
If you're a famous musician who has roadies to do all of this for you, I guess you visited my blog for nothing. On the other hand, if you are like me and have to do all of this yourself, I've come up with a short list of steps that can be a big help.
1. Always buy good quality strings. Not the cheapo dollar kind that you can get at Walmart. Usually a major name brand like Ernie Ball or GHS will do the trick.
2. Have a good work area to begin restringing. An area where you have to get in an uncomfortable position ( like the kitchen table, especially when your mom is trying to cook dinner, and yelling at you for getting your guitar in the potatoes) is not the best place to work, causing you to rush and maybe make a costly mistake.
3. Leave enough string on, so if you mess up you can do a retry. The companies who made these strings knew what they were doing when they made the strings. A good rule my guitar teacher told me to follow is to go about three to four tuners up and that should be good.
4. When stringing, give the string a little slack and keep a firm hold on it to keep the string from winding to quick. The more times the tuners go around the better the string will sound due to resonance and tension. No one wants loose strings right?
5. Safety first. You, as the reader may be thinking, "Man, how could restringing a guitar be so dangerous?" Well, sharp fine wire, a lot of tension, and bending over the area where you are stringing and cutting, could turn from a easy project to learning to wear an eye patch. You may look more like a pirate after, if that's what you want, but I think if God put something on our bodies, it needs to stay there. Wearing safety glasses can help with this.
6. Make sure your guitar is in tune. This is one of the most redundant statements I will make, but is the most important. Just stringing the guitar is only half the battle. Then the fun of trying to get the guitar in tune begins. If you have to play a concert and need new strings, I would suggest putting them on at least a week before (unless you are at the gig and a string breaks; in that case just slap on the new ones and go).
These simple rules have served me well and hopefully you too. Until I get my fame and fortune from music, I'll be stuck doing all this to, so just know you are not alone. Also be sure to remember to tell everyone in several years that the legendary Chris Elms taught you via blog how to string a guitar. Hey, it could happen.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Book review for Mutation
"Somehow she would have to face this last demon child, and with Joe's help, end forever the nightmare that her husband had begun."
These were the words of Marsha Frank, thinking of the experiment that her husband, Frank, had done at his laboratory, that had caused her son, along with several other children to become geniuses. Unfortunately, this also caused them to become so smart that the children were able to realize how much they could accomplish, and they would take out anybody who tried to get in their way. Mutation is the story of what happens to the Franks when they bring home their new baby, whom they call VJ, after his father Victor Sr., and the events that happen during the next few years. After the death of the Frank's first child, David, and their maid, the Frank's life seems to settle down for a time, until many seemingly unconnected events begin occurring. Mutation captivated me with its realism and also scared me as I thought about how, with all the advancements in technology, this story could actually happen.
In Mutation, the characters are easily one of the best parts of the book. Each character has their own unique personality, and the way they interact with each other is extremely believable. VJ has all of the air of an evil genius around him, his father acts like the proud father that every father would act like if his son was a genius, and his mother is uncomfortable with certain aspects of VJ's behavior, just the way he acts and how he seems to have no emotion. All of these aspects give the reader clues often times to the way the story may be going or what may happen next. The way the author has the reader watching the parents as they find out more about VJ, and the different ways they react to what they discover, gives the book an air of mystery. I found myself not liking VJ and being a little creeped out by him and his plans for science. An author who can actually elicit emotional responses from the reader shows a good author, in my opinion.
A theme from this book that I interpreted was that, even though we may have the ability to alter and modify the human body to how we think it should be, should we? This issue has affected the lawmaking system many times and this book shows how doing this could affect the humanity of a person. This book could very well come true, and unlike the sci fi stories people read and then go and report seeing aliens in their backyard, the situation in Mutation could very well happen. It really makes the reader think, and some people may disagree with me but I think that some of the best books that I've ever read have made me think other than the time that I've been reading the book.
In conclusion, if you like a well written book that will make you think or if you are a biology nerd like me who wants to read an entertaining book, Mutation is a good choice. This book will keep the reader interested and entertained throughout the book. As the saying goes, "This will keep the midnight oil burning", or electricity or whatever you may use to make light to read by. If Mutation is put on your to read list, I doubt that you will be disappointed by it.
These were the words of Marsha Frank, thinking of the experiment that her husband, Frank, had done at his laboratory, that had caused her son, along with several other children to become geniuses. Unfortunately, this also caused them to become so smart that the children were able to realize how much they could accomplish, and they would take out anybody who tried to get in their way. Mutation is the story of what happens to the Franks when they bring home their new baby, whom they call VJ, after his father Victor Sr., and the events that happen during the next few years. After the death of the Frank's first child, David, and their maid, the Frank's life seems to settle down for a time, until many seemingly unconnected events begin occurring. Mutation captivated me with its realism and also scared me as I thought about how, with all the advancements in technology, this story could actually happen.
In Mutation, the characters are easily one of the best parts of the book. Each character has their own unique personality, and the way they interact with each other is extremely believable. VJ has all of the air of an evil genius around him, his father acts like the proud father that every father would act like if his son was a genius, and his mother is uncomfortable with certain aspects of VJ's behavior, just the way he acts and how he seems to have no emotion. All of these aspects give the reader clues often times to the way the story may be going or what may happen next. The way the author has the reader watching the parents as they find out more about VJ, and the different ways they react to what they discover, gives the book an air of mystery. I found myself not liking VJ and being a little creeped out by him and his plans for science. An author who can actually elicit emotional responses from the reader shows a good author, in my opinion.
A theme from this book that I interpreted was that, even though we may have the ability to alter and modify the human body to how we think it should be, should we? This issue has affected the lawmaking system many times and this book shows how doing this could affect the humanity of a person. This book could very well come true, and unlike the sci fi stories people read and then go and report seeing aliens in their backyard, the situation in Mutation could very well happen. It really makes the reader think, and some people may disagree with me but I think that some of the best books that I've ever read have made me think other than the time that I've been reading the book.
In conclusion, if you like a well written book that will make you think or if you are a biology nerd like me who wants to read an entertaining book, Mutation is a good choice. This book will keep the reader interested and entertained throughout the book. As the saying goes, "This will keep the midnight oil burning", or electricity or whatever you may use to make light to read by. If Mutation is put on your to read list, I doubt that you will be disappointed by it.
338 pages
Monday, October 5, 2009
Book Review for The Mark
"But Nicolae Carpathia was evil personified, and the next day Buck would be in the line of fire when the battle of the ages between good and evil for the very souls of men and women would burst from the heavens, and all hell would break lose on Earth."
These are the thoughts of Buck Williams as he is in Jerusalem during the Great Tribulation after the Rapture, told in the book of Revelations in the Bible. Buck is one of the believers who is in hiding from the forces of the Antichrist, and is in Jerusalem waiting to witness the desecration of the temple in Jerusalem by the Antichrist. Buck, along with Rayford Steele and his daughter, and Buck's wife, Chloe, are the leaders of an underground organization called the Tribulation Force, who work to help other believers and do as much damage to Nicolae Carpathia's, also known as the Antichrist, regime. The Mark begins shortly after Carpathia is resurrected and is indwelt with the devil, and deals with many of the events that come to pass after he is resurrected and decrees that every citizen of the Global Community, the world order set up by Carpathia, must receive a mark of loyalty, like it says in the Bible. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins' The Mark is a very good book, painting an extremely realistic picture of how the world would be in the time after the Rapture. The situations the characters go through could easily happen tomorrow and will make the reader wonder what they would do in a situation like this.
The setting is a major factor of the book, and helps the book to become very believable. From the safe house of the Tribulation Force in war ravaged Chicago to the eerie details of the Global Community mark application sites, the environment is always very well thought out and fits the time and location in history perfectly. One page of the book may be at the Global Community headquarters in New Babylon and a couple of pages over, the view will switch to the safe house in Chicago. The authors did a great job of showing the reader how the actions of someone in one corner of the world may affect someone else in a completely different location. The setting helps to tie the whole book together and show how the world will be during this period of history.
The characters are also another aspect of book that I thought the authors did a great job on. Carpathia just makes you disgusted with the way he rules the world, especially during his speeches when he tells the public what he wants them to hear, but the reader knows that he actually caused the disaster to happen. As the main characters in the Tribulation Force go about on their missions, the reader just can't help but root for them to succeed and get home safely. The character dramatics are what help to make this book just so realistic, like actually reading the real account of someone who went through this. The way the characters contrast and still have everyday problems, like uncertainty and fear, that people go through everyday, even without a mission from God, and how they manage to get through them, shows how deeply the authors thought about the characters before creating them. Poor character choices or uninteresting characters are often why books lose the readers interest, but The Mark has plenty of characters to entertain the reader.
Number eight in the Left Behind series, The Mark is another great book in a series that seems to get better with each book. Full of terrifying realism, apocalyptic scenes, and an engaging storyline, The Mark will keep the reader hooked on the book and wanting more. My only advice though is to read the first seven books first. This one won't make as much sense as it should if you choose not to read them beforehand. Other than this one hitch, this is a good read.
These are the thoughts of Buck Williams as he is in Jerusalem during the Great Tribulation after the Rapture, told in the book of Revelations in the Bible. Buck is one of the believers who is in hiding from the forces of the Antichrist, and is in Jerusalem waiting to witness the desecration of the temple in Jerusalem by the Antichrist. Buck, along with Rayford Steele and his daughter, and Buck's wife, Chloe, are the leaders of an underground organization called the Tribulation Force, who work to help other believers and do as much damage to Nicolae Carpathia's, also known as the Antichrist, regime. The Mark begins shortly after Carpathia is resurrected and is indwelt with the devil, and deals with many of the events that come to pass after he is resurrected and decrees that every citizen of the Global Community, the world order set up by Carpathia, must receive a mark of loyalty, like it says in the Bible. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins' The Mark is a very good book, painting an extremely realistic picture of how the world would be in the time after the Rapture. The situations the characters go through could easily happen tomorrow and will make the reader wonder what they would do in a situation like this.
The setting is a major factor of the book, and helps the book to become very believable. From the safe house of the Tribulation Force in war ravaged Chicago to the eerie details of the Global Community mark application sites, the environment is always very well thought out and fits the time and location in history perfectly. One page of the book may be at the Global Community headquarters in New Babylon and a couple of pages over, the view will switch to the safe house in Chicago. The authors did a great job of showing the reader how the actions of someone in one corner of the world may affect someone else in a completely different location. The setting helps to tie the whole book together and show how the world will be during this period of history.
The characters are also another aspect of book that I thought the authors did a great job on. Carpathia just makes you disgusted with the way he rules the world, especially during his speeches when he tells the public what he wants them to hear, but the reader knows that he actually caused the disaster to happen. As the main characters in the Tribulation Force go about on their missions, the reader just can't help but root for them to succeed and get home safely. The character dramatics are what help to make this book just so realistic, like actually reading the real account of someone who went through this. The way the characters contrast and still have everyday problems, like uncertainty and fear, that people go through everyday, even without a mission from God, and how they manage to get through them, shows how deeply the authors thought about the characters before creating them. Poor character choices or uninteresting characters are often why books lose the readers interest, but The Mark has plenty of characters to entertain the reader.
Number eight in the Left Behind series, The Mark is another great book in a series that seems to get better with each book. Full of terrifying realism, apocalyptic scenes, and an engaging storyline, The Mark will keep the reader hooked on the book and wanting more. My only advice though is to read the first seven books first. This one won't make as much sense as it should if you choose not to read them beforehand. Other than this one hitch, this is a good read.
381 pages
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Book review for The Time Machine
"Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless."
This was the time traveller's assessment of the people of the future, the Eloi. He was describing how the Eloi seemed to have lost all of their intelligence as time went on and are now ignorant and dependent on the Morlock people for their needs. This book describes the time traveller's visit to the year 802,701 A.D., but, unlike most stories about a character visiting the future, I found the time machine an extremely uneventful book. This book is a good read, full of great descriptions of the future world, but most of the book was spent with the time traveller just marvelling at the scenery. H.G. Wells The Time Machine may be considered a classic, and it is still a good book, just, as advice, don't go into the book expecting cliffhanging action.
Throughout The Time Machine, a major theme of the book is the time traveller's desire to get home and the plans he comes up with to return home. Shortly after the time traveller arrives in 802, 701 A.D., his time machine is placed into a large compartment in the pedestal underneath a statue of a sphinx, and he discovers that he can not get into the pedestal. This sends him on a crazed, determined spiral to try to get into the pedestal. Once he discovers he can't get into the pedestal, he decides to go and find the Morlocks, who he believes put his machine in there, to have them get it back out. He travels to several places, including an ancient museum, looking for something to use against the Morlocks, but he only finds matches and cephalocor. The time traveller uses the matches and cephalocor to start a fire to protect himself and his companion, Weena, from the Morlocks, but only succeeds in starting a forest fire. The threat of the fire though does get the Morlocks to open the pedestal, revealing the time machine, but it is only a trick to get the time traveller alone, in the dark, where the Morlocks will be able to capture him. The time traveller manages to escape them, though, and makes his way back to his own time. I just really don't understand though why the time traveller went to all of the trouble to make a time machine if when he travelled time, all he wanted to do as soon as he got there was to want to come back. Maybe it's the fear of the unknown, but I'm not sure.
The one aspect of the book that I found that the author did an extremely good job on was the setting of the story. As the author describes a building, it's almost like looking at the building through the author's eyes. Vivid descriptive words describe the landscape of the book, allowing a picture of the author's world to be painted in the mind. The people, from the small, diminutive Eloi to the near blind, apelike Morlocks, are also very diverse and each have their own specific personalities and traits that make them similar to people today and, at the same time, different from them. H.G. Wells' ability to provide a descriptive, vivid landscape and characters is second to none, and, in my opinion, is one of the highlights of the book.
The characters of The Time Machine are very diverse, with the stereotypical characters such as the skeptical doctor and the newspaper editor always looking for a big story, all the way to the people of the future, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi and the Morlocks symbolized the social and economical status of England during the time of Wells's life, with the Eloi symbolizing the rich,who live above ground and benefit from the working class, and the Morlocks symbolizing the workers, living underground, forced to provide for the Eloi. This showed how Wells tried to alert people about the unfairness of this system and showed how people were never going to be able to escape from it, even in a seemingly perfect society. This aspect of the characters hints that Wells was a very observant thinker and was trying to combat this way of life for society, showing them how the Eloi eventually began to fear the Morlocks and loocked themselves inside their shelters at night, scared of an attack. The way Well's described the Eloi's fear and by allowing the time traveller to discover why they feared them, showing how society had crumble was almost like a warning to them. Only good characters make you think about a subject like this, in this deep of a level.
Considered a literary classic, The Time Machine is one of the books that nearly everyone has read, and I expected a very well written book, full of action and adventure. A well written book was what I discovered, but the book was lacking eventful action and wasn't as entertaining as I expected. Maybe I interpreted the book a different way than other readers have usually interpreted it, or I'm just hard to impress, but The Time Machine was not as good as I thought it would be. Nevertheless, this is still a good book, and an interesting look at what the future may have in store for humanity.
This was the time traveller's assessment of the people of the future, the Eloi. He was describing how the Eloi seemed to have lost all of their intelligence as time went on and are now ignorant and dependent on the Morlock people for their needs. This book describes the time traveller's visit to the year 802,701 A.D., but, unlike most stories about a character visiting the future, I found the time machine an extremely uneventful book. This book is a good read, full of great descriptions of the future world, but most of the book was spent with the time traveller just marvelling at the scenery. H.G. Wells The Time Machine may be considered a classic, and it is still a good book, just, as advice, don't go into the book expecting cliffhanging action.
Throughout The Time Machine, a major theme of the book is the time traveller's desire to get home and the plans he comes up with to return home. Shortly after the time traveller arrives in 802, 701 A.D., his time machine is placed into a large compartment in the pedestal underneath a statue of a sphinx, and he discovers that he can not get into the pedestal. This sends him on a crazed, determined spiral to try to get into the pedestal. Once he discovers he can't get into the pedestal, he decides to go and find the Morlocks, who he believes put his machine in there, to have them get it back out. He travels to several places, including an ancient museum, looking for something to use against the Morlocks, but he only finds matches and cephalocor. The time traveller uses the matches and cephalocor to start a fire to protect himself and his companion, Weena, from the Morlocks, but only succeeds in starting a forest fire. The threat of the fire though does get the Morlocks to open the pedestal, revealing the time machine, but it is only a trick to get the time traveller alone, in the dark, where the Morlocks will be able to capture him. The time traveller manages to escape them, though, and makes his way back to his own time. I just really don't understand though why the time traveller went to all of the trouble to make a time machine if when he travelled time, all he wanted to do as soon as he got there was to want to come back. Maybe it's the fear of the unknown, but I'm not sure.
The one aspect of the book that I found that the author did an extremely good job on was the setting of the story. As the author describes a building, it's almost like looking at the building through the author's eyes. Vivid descriptive words describe the landscape of the book, allowing a picture of the author's world to be painted in the mind. The people, from the small, diminutive Eloi to the near blind, apelike Morlocks, are also very diverse and each have their own specific personalities and traits that make them similar to people today and, at the same time, different from them. H.G. Wells' ability to provide a descriptive, vivid landscape and characters is second to none, and, in my opinion, is one of the highlights of the book.
The characters of The Time Machine are very diverse, with the stereotypical characters such as the skeptical doctor and the newspaper editor always looking for a big story, all the way to the people of the future, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi and the Morlocks symbolized the social and economical status of England during the time of Wells's life, with the Eloi symbolizing the rich,who live above ground and benefit from the working class, and the Morlocks symbolizing the workers, living underground, forced to provide for the Eloi. This showed how Wells tried to alert people about the unfairness of this system and showed how people were never going to be able to escape from it, even in a seemingly perfect society. This aspect of the characters hints that Wells was a very observant thinker and was trying to combat this way of life for society, showing them how the Eloi eventually began to fear the Morlocks and loocked themselves inside their shelters at night, scared of an attack. The way Well's described the Eloi's fear and by allowing the time traveller to discover why they feared them, showing how society had crumble was almost like a warning to them. Only good characters make you think about a subject like this, in this deep of a level.
Considered a literary classic, The Time Machine is one of the books that nearly everyone has read, and I expected a very well written book, full of action and adventure. A well written book was what I discovered, but the book was lacking eventful action and wasn't as entertaining as I expected. Maybe I interpreted the book a different way than other readers have usually interpreted it, or I'm just hard to impress, but The Time Machine was not as good as I thought it would be. Nevertheless, this is still a good book, and an interesting look at what the future may have in store for humanity.
83 pages
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