March, 2005

April Fools Day Tricks

Posted by Evan at 10:12 am

It’s that time of year and I like to prank people just as much as the next guy. However, I’m a little dry in the idea department this year. Do any of you have some ideas for great tricks? Post them as comments!

Return of the Mac

Posted by Evan at 3:46 pm

I found this great article about the Return of the Mac. It’s a good read for any of you that just don’t "get" the whole Mac thing or why anyone uses Macs.

Constructing a well-rounded drum set

Posted by Evan at 10:23 am

At one time I was really into drums. I was up on what the best and worst items were, what characteristics a drum set had to have in order to be considered a good drum set and how much one could expect to pay for that set. Well, that was a long time ago. Now, I have to do research. So when one of the Sunday school classes at my church offered to purchase a drum set for use at the Anchor I started looking and making a list.

I started looking around first to see how much a top-of-the-line set costs today. Then from there I started looking at drum sets that were worth buying and of decent quality but cost around $1,000. What I found is that lots of drum manufacturers have gotten very good at making drum sets look professional, even when most of them aren’t worth buying.

I was always a fan of Tama drums because Metallica’s drummer used them. Now, I understand that he isn’t as good a drummer as I thought. The tone of most of Tama’s drums just isn’t that great. Their high-end Starclassic drums are very nice, but they’re also very pricey. That’s why I was surprised when I found their new Superstar EFX series.

They have birch and basswood shells, Die-cast hoops, the Star-cast mounting system (which allows you to mount the toms without having holes cut into the side of the drums, and the bass drum has wood hoops. These are all features of high-end drum sets and the set I liked was less than $900. I was impressed to say the least. The set comes with everything pictured except cymbals, so it’s a good base for building a well-rounded drumset. Next I started looking for cymbals and hardware.

I’ve already got a DW (Drum Workshop) hi-hat stand, which is one of the best you can buy. I’ve also got a DW bass drum pedal. However you can’t purchase a drum set without these items and it wouldn’t decrease the price much anyway. So, I moved on to cymbal stands. This set comes with two stands but in order to have a well-rounded set you need more than two cymbals. I typically like to have two crash cymbals, one crash/ride cymbal and one special effect cymbal, usually a china. I found two tama boom cymbal stands for less than $50 so I added them to my list as well. Now I had the long task of finding cymbals.

Cymbals are very hard to buy. The sound so different by themselves than they do with a band behind them and they sound different when they’re hit solo than then do when they’re hit in combination with the bass drum or the snare. So, you have to keep those things in mind when testing cymbals.

In the past the only way to buy cymbals was to either know what you wanted and buy it or go to a music store and stand there banging on cymbals until you found one you like. Things have changed. I visited Zildjian’s website and found that they had high-quality audio samples of every cymabal they make online for my review. I went through the various types of cymbals (hi-hats, crashes, rides, and then chinas) until I found the ones that I thought would work best for the music we’ll be playing at the Anchor. I eventaully decided on a 15" and 17" crash, an 18" crash/ride, an 18" china and a pair of 14" K/Z hi hats.

I had a complete list and the total came to around $1,800 for the entire set with new Zildjian cymbals. I was very impressed. A set of this quality would have cost around $4,000 back in the day. The best thing of all was that I was able to view photos, hear the sound of the cymbals and see the prices for each of them without leaving my desk. Yet another display of the wonder of the itnernet.

Why do people hate other people?

Posted by Evan at 11:11 am

I understand that there are always going to be people that are not happy no matter what happens in their life. I can even understand that sometimes people are going to be in a bad mood and say something bad about a person that has "wronged" them. What I don’t understand is why some people are filled with enough hate that they constantly run people into the ground for no good reason.

I know several people that will pick a person and then mine for dirty details about that person (and make up the dirty details when they can’t find any) and then gossip about that person to everyone they know. It’s sick. Why can’t these people get a life and learn to get along with everyone, even if they for some reason don’t like the person.

I have no resepect for a person that runs someone into the ground. We as people have no right to put down someone else because we don’t like them. We simply don’t have any room to talk. We all have faults and we all have a person out there that would just love to start all sorts of wicked rumors about us. So, what’s the difference between the people that run people into the ground and the people that remain civil and avoid gossip? It’s pretty simple, the civil person has grace and compassion for others and understands that no one is perfect.

So, to everyone out there that loves to pass on the juicy gossip just remember that those people you’re passing it along to are probably talking just as negatively about you.

Sorry to rant, but I’m sure some people need to hear this…

Some site updates

Posted by Evan at 8:24 am

I’ve been making some updates to the site that I’ve been putting off for a while. My Portfolio has been sitting untouched for far too long and I finally decided to try and get it updated. I’m very happy with it now. If you take a look you’ll notice that I’ve added lots of new items. It’s still not 100% finished, but it’s getting close.

I’ve also been working on the working demo for PhpDwGallery. Obviously my Photo Gallery is based on the saftware, but the released version is going to be just a little different. I’ve modified the version in my photo gallery to be specifically for this site, and most people won’t want those features. I’m really excited to get it out there so people can start giving me suggestions for improvements.

Be watching for more updates around the site. I’m probably going to be overhauling several of the sections soon.