family mattersApril 28th, 2011
Wind chimes are not just pretty decorations to hang up around the house or garden which happen to create noise from time to time.
They have actually been used in real music, from high-brow modern music to popular everyday fare such as videogame soundtracks.
The French composer Oliver Messiaen has written for glass, wood, and seashell chimes in his opera according to Saint Francis of Assisi, while David Sitek of the American rock band TV on the Radio often hangs a wind chime at the end of his guitar for texture.
Possibly the most well-known unknown use of wind chimes in the world was made by Koji Kondo, lead musician at Nintendo, the Japanese videogaming giant.
He is accountable for the music in such bestsellers as Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, and has incorporated chiming sounds throughout his work, such as the theme for the “Vanilla Dome” world (or stage – that is, game level) in the sequel Super Mario World.
However, it should be noted that musical instruments already can be found which employ chimes or chime-like hardware.
Indeed, one such device, a mark tree, is also frequently known as a chime tree or a set of bar chimes.
It is played out by sweeping a finger or stick through the length of hanging cylinders, typically made of metal though of varying lengths.
These cylinders are hung from a bar and attached in pitch order.
Equivalent instruments include tubular bells and the bell tree.
Like wind chimes proper, they are usually thought of as percussion instruments, generally employed for musical color.
Tubular bells, however, can produce harmonic spectra
and so are capable of melodies.
But these are usually very simple, and few solos are written for tubular bells.
One noteworthy use of the instrument is made by the animated television series Futurama, for its theme.
In the 1980s, the well known children’s show Sesame Street also featured tubular bells throughout part of its closing credits.
DC electric motor repair is typically built for industrial equipment such as generator turbines etc, though the most essential principles are known to the home hobbyist and his or her electronics science kit.
Needless to say, with regards to power plants and other large-scale applications, the quantitative difference becomes a qualitative one too.
Yet there is a lot about commercial DC electric motor repair which children with an interest in fixing broken toys, perhaps strictly mechanical ones employing no electricity, will quickly grasp, the first of which regards the very meaning of an engine, the very physical features of a motor.
Today’s curious, scientifically minded child can easily almost comprehend about as much of electricity as the polymath Ben Franklin ever did.
With respect to the age, generally speaking, they can rather adroitely indulge in a fit of DC electric motor repair somewhat in the way of a prodigious young Anakin Skywalker in the Stars Wars prequel “The Phantom Menace.”
From exotic gravity-defying vehicles to incredibly intelligent robots, Anakin manages to repair them all.
While today’s youngsters are hardly so versatile, it’s arguable that they are generally smarter somehow than their own parents were at similar ages.
So is that in fact the situation?
Has technology itself – its presence, its use – shaped our young in ways that render them somehow more intellectually capable than we ourselves had been in youth?
It isn’t simple speculation, idle or otherwise.
Research into how modern tools has impacted children’s cognitive development makes headlines periodically with some startling recommendation or other.
In addition, millions have been spent by private industry in the hope of gleaning some critical market insight that will result in dramatically big profits.
And, once more, it’s arguable that kids today are subtly smarter, at least in the sense of being savvier.
family mattersApril 26th, 2011
China, China, China – what’s the big deal?
Why is everyone going on and on about China on a regular basis?
Okay, so they own billions (or is that trillions) in American securities, currency, whatever.
And they make lotsa stuff.
Like NFL beach towels and stuff.
Yeah.
Okay.
It’s not like most people want to work on an assembly line anyways, making trinkets and curios for Walmart.
But whatever.
All right, so it’s not just NFL beach towels that they make.
It’s that they are also climbing up the food chain, making stuff that’s more and more high-value, such that good-paying jobs may be the next to go.
They’re hardly making textiles any more – notice that many of the clothing nowadays come from even more amazing locales – like Indonesia and Sri Lanka?
In fact, to be fair, it isn’t NFL beach towels that anyone’s upset over.
It’s the fear that aircraft manufacturing could be next!
Already the Chinese government is on record as gunning for leadership in green energy products including wind mills and solar panels, and undoubtedly they are well on their way towards dominating those industries.
But does it need to be a zero-sum game?
Does China’s rise equate to everyone else’s loss?
Put another way, are they basically gobbling up ever more slices of the pie – or could Chinese ascendancy grow that pie for everyone involved?
Well, speaking of the NFL, it’s interesting to compare and contrast that sporting league’s business decisions with the ones from the NBA.
Basketball keeps growing in popularity over there while years ago an organized exhibition game of American football was canceled practically at the last minute.
If this serves as any suggestion, it may be that being engaged surpasses staying on the sidelines!
Many Blu Ray releases are but the latest embodiment of the notion captured by the familiar French proverb that notes how “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” As with the case of DVD ten years before, many releases failed to live up to what is possible with the Blu-ray format. Clearer images? Digital audio delivered across more than seven discrete channels, including the subwoofer? Not always, even with the twenty-five gigabytes of storage available on conventional single-layer discs. While an improvement over what happened with DVD, when VHS resolutions were just copied and pasted to disc, some Blu-ray releases have been barely distinguishable from their prior incarnations!
family mattersApril 23rd, 2011
Just about the most surprising uses of wind chimes has been as musical instruments in their own right.
This looks quite out of the question at first glance, as common varieties seem to consist of just tinkling cylinders, with the sound only slightly different depending on whether stone, wood, metal, or glass is used.
And so it is that [wind chimes] do indeed possess only a very limited set of musical abilities, whether melodic or percussive, but that has not stop some ingenious musicians from deploying them in their work.
And in fact, probably the most famous uses of one has been in probably the most popular videogames of all time.
That’s right, in a videogame.
Koji Kondo is a long-time sound director at Nintendo, responsible for scoring some of the company’s biggest hits, standard-setting bestsellers such as Super Mario Bros. as well as the Legend of Zelda.
In the follow up Super Mario World, wind chimes figure rather conspicuously in the theme for the “Vanilla Dome” game level (or “world,” in the parlance of the Mario games).
Chimes have also been featured in the works of musicians as different as modern composer Oliver Messiaen and rock guitarist David Sitek.
Perhaps what’s most amazing about their use is the fact there are currently a handful of chime-like instruments available – the mark tree is even occasionally mistaken for one!
Tubular bells are another such instrument that are often mistaken for wind chimes.
Yet these misconceptions by casual observers can be simply forgiven, given that one cylinder can only so different from another, even when on an altogether different instrument – and, arguably, none of this class of instruments look different!
Tubular bells, however, are much more widely used out of all the chime-like instruments.
The theme for the well-known animated television series “Futurama” is played with tubular bells, as was that during section of the closing credits for the famous children’s television show “Sesame Street” during the 1980s.
As an Internet Marketer, you recognize precisely how much work is needed to ensure that your business succeeds. In addition to building merchandise, you need to market those products and solutions and build buzz for those products. You must record the sales you make, the e-mail addresses you attain and client information. You have to work to take care of client relationships and talk on a regular basis with existing buyers and potential buyers. You will in addition really need to invest time on setting up a good reputation for yourself too. There are only a limited quantity of hours in the day; how are you supposed to get the whole thing done? Keep reading to understand some time management suggestions that you can use to make every day a lot more productive.
You really need quick and lasting pursuits. This will involve building a list of everything that you want to have transpire from making lots of money to writing the e-mail you’ve been putting off or forgetting for a while. Write down each thing that you want or need to get completed and then separate that list into the kinds of long term goals, short term goals and what you can do immediately. Do every one of the things that you should do at this time and then map out a schedule of things that can be done over longer periods of time.
Each day needs its own to-do list. This can either be written at the conclusion of one work day for your upcoming work day or you can write it in the morning as you sit down to get to work. Write out every one of the items you need to get done before you quit work for the day. Then, after those, jot down one of the short term tasks that you need to put work into and then one of the long term projects that you need to work on. You shouldn’t work on the end of the list until you have finished the beginning of the list. If you find that you finish everything-both the “right now” stuff and the short and long term project work, you can choose either continue working or reward yourself with some time doing something fun!
Don’t forget to let yourself take breaks. It’s easy to think that your productivity will depend on your forcing yourself to stay at your desk for hours on end each day and not ever getting up to do anything except use the bathroom. The fact is that people are the most productive when they begin working. So-allow yourself a few breaks during the day. A quick morning break, a quick afternoon break and a long lunch break are good breaks to make yourself take each day. Some people enjoy taking a couple of minutes just to relax after they finish bigger projects on their to-do lists.
There are lots of techniques you can use to increase your productivity. The best way to ensure that you get enough done each day is to know what, exactly; it is that you need to do. If you know what has to get done you will be more likely to stay on track and actually get it done!
This text is presented to you by Cellification.com your number one source for Unlocked Cell Phones and Smartphones. Remember properly marketing your company can be even easier when you benefit from a proper cellular phone.
family mattersApril 20th, 2011
AC electric motor repair is commonly done these days, typically for generator turbines and stuff like that, whether for power plants or ship and aircraft engines.
Nothing unusual about any of that.
But once upon a time, just a little over a century ago, AC, or alternating current, and DC, or direct current, were quite controversial matters – especially for the two men bitterly locked in what would become identified to history as the great War of the Currents.
Sure, AC electric motor repair is frequent enough these days, but back then, AC was new, and initially appeared unsafe – ironic considering that it won out over DC in lots of applications due to its superior safety.
But before this came about, there were the most acrimonious protests, right down to court battles, not forgetting personal smearing strategies in the court of public opinion, against AC, the newer technology.
While it’s arguable that the superior AC standard would have finally been adopted, it’s almost certain that the campaign against it, and its most recognized proponent, delayed its widespread use for quite a few years.
While something similar to AC electric motor repair is still rather expert work, it isn’t the revoluntionary thing it was back when engines running on AC were regarded as exotic and, as mentioned before, dangerous.
Thomas Edison, the fantastic inventor, used AC’s initial faults as a way of personally attacking his one-time assistant Nikola Tesla, another brilliant mind.
Likely as a result of qualified jealousy (though a lot of money have also been at stake, as numerous patent royalties were involved), Edison went to great measures to discredit not only the technology but its most prominent proponent – to the point of macabre demonstrations electrocuting animals and also a condemned prisoner in order to get the public agitated against AC!
family mattersApril 18th, 2011
It’s a tough exam, but that’s possibly for the best since a whole life of continuing professional education awaits the publicly certified accountant.
Referred to as CPE for CPAs, these courses ensure that bean-counters stay on top of the newest changes in the law so that last year’s legal loopholes are used if only still applicable!
But technical matters are not the only concern of such lessons.
A big component of modern CPE for CPAs is ethics.
Yes, that’s right – plain old right and wrong!
Somewhere along the line it’s been forgotten big time, ethics.
Then again, unethical dealings have been part and parcel of the occupation ever since the Middle Ages, when its Italian founder noted common accounting frauds already prevalent even back then!
All the same, ethics CPE for CPAs is surely a good thing – especially for course authors!
For they are likely to ever run out of fascinating topics to talk about.
Many a former white-collar criminal still shakes his head at the lax practices still so prevalent in the industry, almost assuring another round of scandal, scandal such as what had brought them down once.
Take the case of Sammy Antar of Crazy Eddie’s fame.
A CPA and former CFO of his cousin’s legendary retail electronics business, Sam now rails against accounting fraud of the sort which he used to practice for above a decade.
The truth is, he is now a speaker who gives seminars on how to catch white-collar criminals.
Moreover, folks can actually earn CPE and CLE credits for attending his talks!
But the very fact that he should still have something to say – something for which audiences still gather to hear – underlines the unlucky currency of accounting fraud.
Obviously, ethics deal with morality and not mere legality.
It may be hard for numbers-crunchers to think in deeply philosophical , but that’s exactly why continuing education is a necessity!
The affiliate marketing successes just keep pouring in: the most recent situation history concerns one Ashley Qualls, a seventeen year-old who’s become a millionaire by simply giving away totally free MySpace layouts.
Yes.
It is no joke.
A teenage girl in high school makes seventy thousand dollars a month by giving stuff away for free.
Chalk another one up to the magic of affiliate marketing and its dramatic power.
Ashley Qualls created a website that’s only a repository of her layouts for MySpace profile pages which anyone can download totally free.
Her site attracts seven million visitors each month and sixty million page views.
That’s gold to advertisers.
And it’s become gold for Ashley Qualls.
Affiliate marketing works.
The actual challenge lies in coming up with something that lots and lots of people will go crazy for.
Another great internet riches success story concerns an Arnold Kim, who as a professional blogger now makes income in the same six-figure range he used to as a medical doctor, only he gets to stay home with his four year-old daughter.
He happened upon his financial destiny whilst still in school, having started up a site dedicated to rumors about Apple products.
As one of the first, he quickly developed quite the captive audience and, with all those eyeballs, advertisers came calling in equally quick succession.
That’s all it takes to make money online – traffic.
Eyeballs.
Visitors, repeat and unique (first-time).
It’s basically monetized like any other medium, whether print or broadcast.
Important differences do exist, but where fundamentals are concerned you need to have numbers; you will need people.
So how to get all those people?
Yet again, providing something of great interest to a vast amount of people.
Essentially, the same first principle of any business.
Discover a need and fulfill it!
family mattersApril 15th, 2011
Are wedding favors going out of style as society becomes ever more informal?
Not if the ladies have anything to do with it!
The practice of giving gifts to matrimonial guests may not be the cultural institution it once was, but weddings are still one of the biggest dynamos within any economy.
While wedding favors may not be the first thing or two that delighted couples think about when planning their special day, it is something that is still expected and few ceremonies would likely feel complete without some souvenir for the guests.
Obviously, were marriage itself to continue to decline, then there may well be a day when wedding favors go extinct — as nuptials themselves do!
This type of situation is less likely, and outright impossible for the foreseeable future.
The wedding industry is and will remain to be healthy for decades to come.
To play the futurist for a moment, however, let us envision a world centuries ahead where human civilization has evolved substantially, a Star Trek future where money itself is no longer used, a society as significantly different from our own as ours is from that of the neanderthal.
Forget about sickeness, incredibly long life spans if not immortality plain and simple.
Could marriage still make any type of sense in such a world?
Might people truly be monogramous “forever and ever” when there is no death to do them part?
Maybe not forever, but it does appear that as naturally social creatures there will always be a pairing off of human beings, even if just for a period of time, and it’s not inconceivable that some couples would wish to publicly proclaim their arrangements: that is, to get married.
This could mean that guests would certainly be receiving favors, or gifts, in appreciation of their attendance, even in an otherwise totally changed world!
family mattersApril 12th, 2011
The recent Japanese catastrophe has shone a spotlight on the country’s relatively unique social structure.
Unlike many other situations of natural disaster elsewhere, no looting or rioting has followed to compound the misfortune — and this has tremendously impressed many a non-Japanese observer.
From the patient orderly lines to the return of valuables, “yamoto-damashii,” or the Japanese spirit, has elicited admiration and more sympathy from the world.
As can be imagined, articles have shown up trying to reveal the phenomenon of people who continue being law-abiding citizens regardless of being deprived of not only creature comforts but everything they own and even of loved ones.
Police stations all along the coast are stuffed to capacity together with the personal household safes of persons which have washed back to ground or been recovered from the rubble by rescue workers.
Then there is the seemingly suicidal heroism and self-sacrifice of many nuclear power plant employees.
Even animals have displayed yamoto-damashii: a dog made worldwide headlines for standing by another dog trapped under rubble, neglecting to leave!
Much has been written both for and against the “Japanese-spirit interpretation” of events.
On one side, people observe that the country is a wealthy one, a computer advanced one, and one that is perhaps uniquely homogenous among the leading industrialized societies of which it is a member.
Obviously household safes and other belongings have been returned or at least remaining unmolested!
It figures, argue such people, because there is no incentive to loot and riot when the country all together offers so many resources to provide succor.
Others note that the spirit of Japan is such that rules are noticed given that they are rules – Japanese rules – and one is Japanese.
Safes are not broken into because that is not what a Japanese person does, basically.
This side of the debate notes that no matter how rich the society, individual victims always suffer – yet they generally do so patiently, in a manner uniquely Japanese.
I came across On Off Digital World some time ago and and I was gripped by some powerful flashbacks. You see, the store looked like them “mom-and-pop” type of places from my youth, back in the days of the best-selling Commodore 64. I can still see the ad for one of those C-64 system packages in computer magazines back then, offers that provided both peripherals and software. Those were the days! Big five-inch-plus floppy diskettes, big disk drives, clunky box-like CRTs that weighed about forty pounds at least with small fifteen-inch screens! Really entertaining software in the past, too — and I mean truly great, considering all the programmers had to work with was a mere 64KB! The ’80s were honestly something in every way, but especially in matters of personal computing!