As you can see from my twitter updates, life has suddenly become very busy for us this year. I’m finding myself very busy at work, out several afternoons a week after work with various kids’ activities, and then out 3 nights most weeks with church stuff (our pastor is leaving and so I’m involved with searching for a new one and keeping the ship sailing in the meantime..). In the midst of all this Jennifer and I are now doing our adoption assessment, which is a series of 6 weekly 3 hour interviews with a psychologist plus extra background work and reading. And of course I’m still doing my Masters of Public Health & Tropical Medicine – only one unit this semester but still finding it quite challenging to fit in any time to study.

So there’s my excuse – I’ll keep up the Twitter updates in the short term and hopefully some time down the track will start blogging a bit more regularly again.

Over and out for now.

Obviously as far as games go they are very popular and fun for many people. But do they have any musical merit? Should musicians see them as a positive thing, negative, or indifferent? My own experience with these games began a couple of years ago with Guitar Hero II on the Xbox 360 (complete with plastic wired Gibson Explorer shaped guitar controller). I thought it was good but didn’t find it something I was motivated to come back to again and again. Recently I revisited the music game genre when Santa brought us a couple of the RockBand games for Christmas – we got Lego RockBand (which is great for kids) and The Beatles RockBand (great for me as I’m a massive Beatles fan) complete with wireless Hofner Bass controller, drums, and microphone. I’m not going to comment on these games specifically other than saying that I think the Lego game is a huge improvement to make these games more accessible to younger players. Previous games were/are just a bit too tricky for most kids below the age of around 10 to get into. This game adds a “Super Easy” mode which requires only a basic idea of rhythm and not the co-ordination skills usually involved in these games. The narrative is fun (like all the Lego computer games) and the song selection is good, truly making it a game the whole family can enjoy together. I hope future editions of RockBand and Guitar Hero will include a similar Super Easy mode for the little ones.

As for The Beatles’ game, it’s a great snapshot of the career of this great band. Musically and visually it’s excellent, though technically a little more challenging than the Lego game so not ideal for kiddies. The wireless Hofner bass controller is a beautiful thing – very high quality construction which doesn’t have the cheap plastic feel of my old guitar hero controller. And in case you were wondering it can be used for guitar and bass play – the controls are just the same.

Ok, enough about the games themselves… what about their musical merit?

My view is that these games are a good thing. If nothing else they challenge people’s timing and rhythm, improve co-ordination and possibly even their sense of pitch. The guitar play obviously doesn’t truly replicate a real guitar, with buttons instead of strings, however the finger movements, and the right-left hand co-ordination are important skills to develop in playing real guitar. You’re never going to be able to jump right from playing this game to playing a 6 string like Van Halen, but it might give you a little bit of an advantage in learning compared to a complete novice.

Drumming is probably one step even more realistic than guitar playing – it’s similar to having an electric drum kit – the physical movements of hitting the pads,  and using the kick pedal are pretty much the same as the real thing. My Beatles drum kit even came with real wooden sticks. I’m not a drummer but my feeling is that playing RockBand drums would give you a decent intro and a huge head-start for learning the real thing. Starting with the easy levels and moving through to expert would be a great way to develop pretty good rhythm skills.

And singing is well, singing. There’s nothing fake about singing into a microphone and hearing your voice back through speakers. And in many ways this is better than singing in the shower or singing along to a CD in your car because the visual cues in the game help with timing and pitch. I haven’t played any of the dedicated singing games (like Singstar or Lips) but the singing feature in RockBand itself is pretty cool. The Beatles game even allows you to sing harmonies and use multiple microphones. Not quite like having a singing teacher in your living room but still pretty good.

Beyond those technical skills I think these games offer two more things – music appreciation and inspiration. The repertoire of songs in these games is a great way of exposing younger generations to classic rock and pop music. My boys have been enjoying classic tracks from artists like Queen, Bon Jovi, Tom Petty, David Bowie, Bryan Adams and heaps more – even the Ghostbusters theme! (who knew that song had such cool guitar riffs?!? – see below) – and of course no one should be ignorant of the Beatles!

Secondly if playing these games inspires a few people to take up a real instrument themself, or gives them a bit of confidence that they might be able to, then surely that’s a good thing too!

Rock On!

Well there is – iCal allows you to subscribe to Calendars with other people have shared on the web. Apple have a big list of them on their website (within iCal go to the menu Calendar > Find Shared Calendars) There is one that lists Australian Public Holidays, and some with school holidays for other states, but I was unable to find a Western Australian school holiday calendar… so I did manually created one myself, and thought I’d share it to save others the hassle.

I couldn’t find any way of submitting my calendar to Apple’s directory, so here’s a link to the calendar here : WA School Holidays. Click on that and it should open a subscribe dialogue box within iCal. At this stage I’ve gone as far as 2013, but as time goes on I’ll update it to years beyond that one.

Hope you find it useful

Note : information for school holiday dates was obtained from the Department of Education website.

Just thought I’d take this opportunity to wish anyone who reads this a Happy and Blessed Christmas, wherever in the world you may be!

As I’ll be here in Australia, I thought it was appropriate to share this little effort from Rolf Harris – Christmas in the Sun, perhaps his best Christmas song since the classic “Six White Boomers” (not that that’s saying very much…) As I’ve said before Christmas is the one time of year it’s okay to listen to otherwise forbidden music, so I hope you can excuse the cheesiness of this… on a tangential issue, it’s been interesting following the story of the UK Christmas #1 single. Not sure where Rolf came, but I was kind pleased to see the X Factor contestant beaten by Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing in the Name Of” (cool song, but don’t think I’ll post the video here as this is generally a PG rated blog) – can still remember my year 12 maths teacher raving about that song in high school. Funny how a grass roots internet campaign can drive such an old, aggressive (and quite rude) song to the top of the chart…

Anyway, I digress – here’s Rolf Harris :

And if you survived that, check out Rolf’s version of Stairway to Heaven – can’t get much more cheesy than this!

Discovered this on the blog of Robin Parry, a UK based Christian author and publisher. His blog looks like an interesting one. I’ll be keeping an eye on it from now on.

Similar thing in yesterday’s local paper here in Rockingham… they have photos about a bunch of people they asked what they thought about Rudd’s proposed ETS – almost all didn’t have a clue, and another said she thought it would be good for “jobs and young people”

Personally if I was so ignorant about an issue I wouldn’t want my photo in the paper proclaiming my lack of knowledge.. I wonder what the paper’s editors are getting at here (because they do this every week – people showing how little they know on various issues) – are they purposely trying to demonstrate how ill-informed and indifferent our community is? Because if they are, I don’t think the message is getting through… The difference between the Palin video and Australia is that these people in the video are passionate about their ignorant opinions, whereas ignorant Aussies could care less… both are a bad thing, but I think the Palin fans are more scary…

Who knew that losing my iPhone could be this painful. I’ve not only lost my phone, but I’ve also lost my :

• diary
• address book
• shopping list
• Bible
• personal DJ
• TV guide
• weatherman
• guitar tuner
• remote control
• connection to the outside world (through FB, Twitter, email – it’s very hard not being able to instantly update from anywhere and everywhere (ie “walking down the road. stubbed my toe on a rock. ouch! here’s a picture of that stupid rock..”) I’m sure you’re missing those updates as much as me
• camera for taking pictures of stupid rocks etc
• movie guide
• gaming console

The girl said it can take up to 6 weeks to get my phone back but that she would try and “expedite” it for me. Just wish I’d heard something by now, to let me know how it’s all going… I miss my iPhone!

There’s plenty of interesting stats in there. Some of the highlights include :

• why drunk walking may be more dangerous than drunk driving
• that child safety or booster seats for children over 2 offer no safety benefit over just wearing seatbelts alone
• a cheap and relatively easy answer to the problem of global warming by specifically targeted additional pollution (with Sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere) – now why aren’t they discussing that at Copenhagen? A few hundred million and problem solved – maybe.

Other interesting analyses include the statistical profiling of terrorists, and the economics of prostitution in Chicago. Definitely a great book to read, or give as a gift this Christmas – or try the original Freakonomics book if you haven’t read it. Or if you don’t want to buy a book, just check out the Freakonomics blog for more on these, and other interesting issues.

Finally, for your listening (not viewing) pleasure, here’s the Super Freak (as a child of the 80s/90s I can’t help thinking of MC Hammer…)

Drinking coffee (and tea) significantly lowers your risk of developing Type II diabetes. No one knows why, but it does.
So now I can say drinking coffee is an important part of my daily health regimen

Check out the story here : Coffee, tea cuts diabetes risk

Anyway, before I got jump in the pool it’s time for another pedal board update. Non guitarists can tune out now… I’ve made a couple of alterations – adding in an EQ pedal so I can shape or boost my tone when necessary. The other is the addition of the Digitech Jam-man looper, with another Boss volume pedal to control the volume. I currently have this running completely separate to the rest of my chain, with an output going into the direct line-in on the amp. The reason I’m running this separate loop is because I’m using some of Karl’s ambient guitar pads (see here for more info) to provide backing for some of the songs. They sound awesome and free the keyboard player to do some different stuff. We’ve had some nice ambient jams through communion.

So there it is. Click on the photo for a bigger version. I’d write more but this laptop is starting to burn a hole in my lap… (did I mention it’s crazy hot here today?) Cheers.

Anyway, before I got jump in the pool it’s time for another pedal board update. Non guitarists can tune out now… I’ve made a couple of alterations – adding in an EQ pedal so I can shape or boost my tone when necessary. The other is the addition of the Digitech Jam-man looper, with another Boss volume pedal to control the volume. I currently have this running completely separate to the rest of my chain, with an output going into the direct line-in on the amp. The reason I’m running this separate loop is because I’m using some of Karl’s ambient guitar pads (see here for more info) to provide backing for some of the songs. They sound awesome and free the keyboard player to do some different stuff. We’ve had some nice ambient jams through communion.

So there it is. Click on the photo for a bigger version. I’d write more but this laptop is starting to burn a hole in my lap… (did I mention it’s crazy hot here today?) Cheers.

It goes without saying that Bing, Frank, Dean, Nat, and Elvis are essentials. I also love country styled Christmas music (I’m a big Brad Paisley fan and his Christmas album is tops!) And old style rock Christmas – Beach Boys, Jackson 5 of course! Not forgetting all the big pop music Christmas hits – John Lennon, David Bowie, Band Aid (which features one of the stupidest lyrics in history “there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time” – like that’s the reason we should feel sorry for them? Hello! Most of the world won’t have snow for Christmas. If we ever have snow here I’ll be seriously worried about climate change!)

The other day I was trying to explain to my kids how this is the only time of the year where it’s okay to enjoy Neil Diamond (the rest of the year he is verboten) – and the same goes for David Hasselhoff (his Christmas album is one of my many guilty pleasures). I’m afraid I can’t stretch that rule to include Streisand – her music is still taboo all the year round.

I won’t delve into the massive topic of Christmas novelty albums other than to mention Christmas in the Stars – the Star Wars Christmas album from 1980. I can only force myself to listen to this once each festive season it is so awful. It mostly features C3PO, Chewie, and R2D2 but on one of the songs you can hear a young Jon Bongiovi in his first recorded appearance. It’s bad, although not quite as horrible as the Star Wars Holiday Special TV show (which words cannot describe just how execrable it is).

Anyone else have any suggestions of Christmas music – good, bad or otherwise??

Finally, while we’re on the topic of Christmas, here’s a cool video we had in church yesterday – SC vs JC

It surely is a sad time for doctors throughout Australia, except of course for those losers who brought this fate upon us – the pedantic, paternalistic, killjoy #!#@ (insert your own expletive here) who feel that doctors are so naieve and easily corruptible that we need heavy handed protection agaist the wiles of the evil pharmaceutical companies. Why is it that other industries (including pharmacy) don’t need this sort of protection? Why are we poor doctors so bad that we need to be singled out?

I still deny that these pens etc make any difference in my prescribing – I will pick which drug I think is the best for my patient and with which I am familiar with. I do believe that drug company visits are a most valuable thing though, as there is no way I have the time to keep up with all the different new medicines that are being released. Maybe those aforementioned loser doctors have nothing better to do than read medical journals in every spare moment of their free time, but unlike them I actually have a life that does not involve medicine! As I’ve often said being a doctor is what I do, it does not define who I am…. so the drug rep visits do provide me with a valuable educational service (and yes I listen to them with a skeptical ear, not blindly trusting everything they say!). And even the pens etc are useful, and not just for writing (they are actually pretty useless at that – the average one lasts less than a week I think) – I find the “brand reminders” helpful. Recently I wanted to prescribe a new diabetes drug but couldn’t recall the name of it … if I had a Januvia pen handy it would have been less of a problem (half kidding)

So as I write this post and pull a Caduet™ pen out of my Rulide™300mg container and drink my coffee from my Karvea™ mug off my Alevsco™ USB cup warmer while saving guitar pad files onto my Somac™ 2 Gig USB thumb drive and scribble a note on a Vytorin™ post-it, I sadly look back at better days….

Wonder what kind of lunch the drug rep will bring today??     (alas even the food quality seems to be deteriorating lately)

PS – none of those drugs I listed above are ones I prescribe very regularly at all. Most times I use alternate brands, despite the fact that I have these brands in view of me and have no products advertising the other ones visible… guess I’m not that much of a sucker after all

Here’s my 2c worth.

1. Malcolm Turnbull lost my remaining respect for him when he publicly sabotaged Joe Hockey on the weekend. It’s clear Turnbull has virtually no chance of remaining leader so why pre-emptively criticise the one person who might be a succesful leader who actually agrees somewhat with Turnbull’s position on the ETS? Turnbull’s loyalty only seems to be to himself rather than the good of his party.

2. Joe Hockey is my favourite person in the Liberals. He seems like a nice, smart guy with sensible opinions on things and he’s a Christian as well. I do feel sorry for him though because he’ll be coming to the leadership in a difficult time with virtually zero chance of winning the next election. I see him as being a bit similar to Kim Beazley – hopefully the Liberals won’t assasinate him as well and over the next 4 years he can rebuild the party and maybe go one better than Beazley did.

3. The Liberals must take some sort of action on climate change. I can see their points about wanting to wait and see what the rest of the world does and that really whatever we in Australia do will make no difference compared to big economies like China, India, USA etc so we shoudln’t put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage. But to do nothing is political suicide – Hockey (if he becomes leader) will have a massive challenge soothing the climate sceptics in his party but still remaining true to his own impulse to construct an ETS.  Turnbull’s crash through strategy was a disaster but I don’t know if taking a softer approach will work much better with these hard right wing types. A huge challenge, but if he can somehow get through it and get something passed so the next election is not fought over climate, then Hockey might have a slightly better chance of beating Rudd.

Will be interesting to watch.

A New Zealand dollar, midway in size between our Aussie one and two dollar coins – very misleading… heaps deceptive bru!

However I’d like to see more study on the issue – specifically does playing Guitar Hero make you a better guitar player? I’m sure there’d be no shortage of volunteers to take part in this sort of research…

“Don’t invest in things; invest in experiences”

This quote, or something similar, was mentioned by Mark in his message this morning. And what a great piece of advice! In fact I would say this principle is one of the key ideas in how I try and live my life and bring up my kids.

I’m currently reading a great book by Donald Miller, the author of Blue Like Jazz. That book is one of my all time favourites – a book that presents Christianity in a real, down-to-earth, imperfect, not knowing all the answers kind of way. Don has written a few other books since then, but non have come close to catching the vibe of Blue Like Jazz until his newest, called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. A major premise of this book is that we should lives our lives as a story, not just moving aimlessly from one day to the next, but being intentional about the plot of our life and our character development. The chapter I was just reading fits perfectly with the quote above – Great Stories Have Memorable Scenes. We better remember things that happen to us if there is an interesting backdrop, or an unusual experience to go along with it. Making our lives “interesting” in this way requires intentionality, thinking about how we can invest our time and resources to move out of the mundane and construct a meaningful story out of our lives.

I want to make sure that when I get to the end of each year I can look back and say that that year has advanced the story of my life in some way – decisions made, journeys or adventures embarked upon, lessons learned. Life is a gift, and it’s too short to waste it.

Anyway, I’ve hardly done it justice but check out that book – it’s fantastic. And also do yourself a favour and read Blue Like Jazz if you haven’t already done so. Some of the best Christian books this century!

Right, now that we’ve got rid of those non-Mac and non-Gaming console people we can continue with Rivet. This program basically enables your connected games console to access your music, video, and photo libraries on your mac. These consoles talk nicely to Windows out of the box but unfortunately they are not designed with Mac OS in mind. Rivet takes care of this smoothly and easily. Set it to load when your Mac starts-up and it just sits in the menu bar. There are no extra steps – right away I was able to browse and play my media content from my Mac on the Xbox 360 and PS3**. It’s very handy if you have a large collection of video files (home movies, TV shows, movies, whatever) as they can be immediately accessed and played on the console. Podcasts (video and audio) are handled as well, and all your iTunes playlists show up too. This last feature is very useful at this time of the year so I can pump my gigabytes of Christmas Mp3s ‘all through the house’

So if you have a Mac and a console download the trial version of Rivet and give it a go.. there’s a good chance that, like me, you’ll soon be going back for the full version too.

** Yes, I now have both consoles. I was in the market for a Bluray player and was soon convinced (despite my initial hesitation) that a PS3 was the way to go.. As far as gaming consoles go I still like the Xbox better – the interface is nicer and easier to navigate, and there is a better and easier to find selection of downloadable demos which the kids like playing. The Xbox360 interface has been hugely improved over the last year or so and the new avatar section is really good. I believe it’s due for another big update any day now as well…

I can’t really contrast the actual games though as I haven’t played much on the Ps-3 – my feeling is that the graphics and games are comparable. I did enjoy stuffing around with this funny game called Little Big Planet on the Ps3 last night. Oh and it has this interesting feature called Playstation Home which is similar to Second Life.. something to explore when I’m bored… but mostly the PS3 has become our home theatre media hub – great for playing Blurays, DVDs, and streaming videos and music (via Rivet). One big plus is it’s a lot quieter than the Xbox which makes it better for that application.  So there’s my haphazrd initial review of the PS3

*** Hey, and if you know me and have an xbox 360 or  PS3 let me know who you are and maybe we can add each other as ‘friends’ Presently I have no PS3 friends and only some random people on Xbox that I played a game against like once a few years ago, so having some people that I actually know would be cool. (here ends the pathetic appeal for friends..lol)