Late-Night Video Conferencing

One of the downsides of working for Sony is that it is a global company. Don't worry, that is also a bonus but it means that sometimes I am up early for calls with Europe and other times I have to stay up late for calls with Japan. Yesterday I got hit with one of those rare days where I met with our Brussels Lab in Europe early in the morning. Then later in the day I received an invitation for a 9pm meeting with Japan. Don't worry, I took time out for lunch, exercise and dinner so I wasn't working that whole time but it did make for a long day.

When I received the invitation for the 9pm video conference call, it came with an apology for being so late in the day. I responded that I normally practice guitar nightly at that time but would move my schedule around to accommodate the meeting. My boss, who is Japanese but based in Los Angeles, responded that he too practices guitar daily at that time and that we should have a jam session during our meeting. I thought it was an interesting coincidence that we both practice guitar at the same time daily.

The meeting organizer thanked us for adjusting our schedules so we could join the very important meeting. My boss responded by telling him to bring drums. I thought that was a great response and it got me thinking. 

Guitar players can be kind of eccentric with their long hair and wearing sunglasses even in dark rooms. I should show up for the meeting dressed like a rock star and get a few laughs before the meeting started. So my wife went and found a long-haired wig that I use for Halloween and I found a pair of cheap wayfarer sunglasses. Then I threw on a dress shirt over my Snowbird t-shirt but left it unbuttoned. Finally I set my guitar on my lap and joined the meeting.

My boss and the meeting organizer had already arrived when I logged on but didn't have their cameras turned on. They greeted me with silence and then my boss realized why I wore my costume and immediately grabbed his guitar to join me while we waited for about a half-dozen others to join. Everybody laughed and thought it funny. I pulled off the wig and sunglasses before buttoning up my shirt and we started the meeting. My boss tried to get serious and began talking but had trouble keeping a straight face for a solid 5 minutes.

At the end of the meeting we got a lot accomplished but we also had a good laugh that everyone commented on before closing. I figure if we are going to have a late meeting, we should at least have some fun. All attendees agreed.

Learning Requires Practice

Last night I sat down to practice guitar and I once again reminded myself how important it is to practice when learning any skill. Playing my guitar is not the only thing I practiced yesterday and I realized that I spent most of my day practicing.

I woke up in the morning and spent an hour skiing before work. My wife joined me and we had a fairly relaxed morning until we headed up the Little Cloud chairlift at Snowbird. Then we got caught in a snowstorm that reduced visibility to about 10 feet. White snow in a white cloud on a white slope made it impossible to see anything but my skis in front of me. While I normally ski that run at 50 miles per hour or faster, I came down at a gingerly 15. Once we descended below the cloud, I remarked to my wife that I practiced skiing blind. She agreed.

Next I practiced my computer skills at work. I am hosting a technology workshop for the department next month and we will be using a new whiteboarding-collaboration tool that I spent time exploring. Any time I learn a new tool, it can be considered practice. I practice with computer software a lot.

When my workday ended, I needed to wax a couple pairs of skis. While I have done a fair amount of ski tuning, every time I pull out the waxing iron I learn something new. Sometimes it is just how hot the waxing iron gets. Last night I learned that if I turn the iron up 5 degrees warmer than recommended, the wax spreads so much easier. You do run the risk of burning the wax but the job takes about 20% less time.

Then I sat down with my guitar. I've been practicing the guitar for quite a few years but there is a lot to learn. One thing the guitar reminded me is that I don't need to practice stuff I know well. Instead I should practice things that are difficult. Last night I worked on some specific chords along with different fingering styles. I sort of felt like a beginner all over again. Fortunately that just means I learned something.

When you sit down in front of your computer and things don't seem to make sense, don't get frustrated. Instead look at it as an opportunity to learn something. What are you missing? Is there a step you skipped over? Is the answer somewhere else on the screen and you just keep looking in the wrong place? Fortunately someone has probably already had the same question and it is just a matter of doing an Internet search and you shouldn't be stuck too long.

Friday Night Air Travel

In my last post, I talked about how my dad is resisting new guitar music notation. This evening I am resisting a usual change in my schedule. Normally I fly from the Bay Area home on Thursday evenings. This week I am flying home tonight (a Friday) because of meetings during the week. I needed to stick around until today and take the last possible flight home. My work obligations went well and I am glad I stuck around for today.

When I first started flying every week between Salt Lake and the Bay Area, I used to come out on Monday mornings and fly home on Friday nights. I also used to take this late Friday night flight. I did not like it but that was a choice I made for my career. After proving myself as a reliable employee, my company gave me the chance to work from home one day a week. I loved that change as it gave me more time at home with my family. I guess that means I don't always resist change.

So what is it about a change in technology that has us resisting it? I have to admit that I didn't immediately jump on the bandwagon when the original iPhone came out even though that change had the potential to make my life better. I think we would all have a tough time getting rid of our smartphones and going back to simple mobile phones. When I think about it, the increase in mobile phone costs could have been the reason. Perhaps that is a valid reason, perhaps not.

One change I am resisting right now relating to my mobile phone is getting a new one. Yes it is a pain to transfer all of my information from one phone to another, but realistically it shouldn't take that long. No, I actually have a number of problems with the new iPhone and it has me holding onto my old one even though it is memory constrained and should be upgraded. First is that I miss having a headphone jack. I have a set of wireless earphones that I love. I also carry a set of wired earbuds and I use them all the time. Wireless earphones don't have unlimited battery power and so the wired ones come in handy while batteries recharge.

I also don't like the form factor of the new phones. They are too large. My current iPhone is an SE and what I deem to be the perfect size. I have compared it with some of new choices from Apple and the smallest of the latest models are still much larger than my current one. I don't want a bigger one.

Finally I don't want to spend a lot of money on a new phone. It used to be that an expensive phone came in at around $300. Now that price has skyrocketed to around $1000. I once took my entire family to Disneyland for that price. I'd rather have the trip to Disneyland.

Perhaps I should look at a smartphone from another manufacturer. But then there is a technology change I have to deal with. Oh well.

Advances in Music Notation

Nobody likes to see their parents get old and start forgetting things. One activity that helps keep the mind young is playing a musical instrument, especially one that you learned to play as a child. To help combat my own father's failing memory I worked with my son and got him an electric bass. Then I picked up a copy of Rocksmith. In addition to teaching you how to play guitar, it can also teach you how to play the bass.

My dad played bass in high school and even played with the local symphony. Then he got married, had kids, and never really picked it up again. Once in my youth, my dad borrowed a bass and tried to play it at a talent show but that was it. I have had a lot of fun learning how to play the guitar and hoped that my father would enjoy it as much as I do. What I didn't realize is how something as simple as advances in music notation would cause problems for him.

Guitar chords have been appearing on sheet music as long as I can remember. Then in the late 1980's and early 1990's a new guitar music notation started gaining favor. Instead of the usual 5 lines on the treble clef, guitar tabs have 6, one for each string. Instead of music notes, numbers represent which fret should be held to create the correct note. It is very intuitive for someone that does not have much music training. For someone like my dad that grew up playing the bass as well as the piano, it created a learning hurdle. Instead of embracing this new music notation, my dad ridicules it and belittles guitar players for not knowing how to "read music."

Fortunately I know enough about traditional music notations and guitar tabs to be able to explain the merits of the later. One thing you lose with tabs is timing information.There is no distinction between whole, half, quarter, or eighth notes. This is fixed by showing the treble clef notes above the space for lyrics and guitar tabs below them (often where the bass clef can be found in regular piano music).

The guitar is somewhat unique in that you can play the same note many different ways. If you hold the low-E string (the thickest one) at the 5th fret, it is an A note. That is the same note as the 2nd thickest string without any frets pressing. On a piano, each key represents a unique note and there are not any duplicates like there are on a guitar. Sometimes guitar music is written so that you will play the same note on 2 different strings. This is the way the introduction to "Wake me up When September Ends" by Green Day is written. The only way to indicate that with traditional music notation is to create a footnote that is impossible to figure out when sight reading the music. With guitar tabs, it is very intuitive and can easily be sight read.

There are technological advances happening around us constantly and it is important to embrace these advances even when they seem different and foreign. A lot of older people shy away from technological advances simply because they find it difficult to learn a new way of doing something. While it is easy to see the flaw in my own father, I too suffer from the same reluctance to embrace certain advancements. Naturally my kids are the ones that point it out to me.

Video Game Widows

Today is one of my department admin's birthday and I asked here if she had any special plans this evening. She said that she didn't and so I told her to tell her boyfriend to take her out somewhere nice. She responded that he is dating one of the recent video game releases and doesn't have much time for her. It made me think of my own video game playing and if I neglect my wife.

That is sort of a loaded question because I leave my wife every Monday morning, catch a flight to the Bay Area, work at a video game company until Thursday evening, and then catch a flight back home. While I may not play any video games when I am home, other than for guitar practice, I do leave for 4 days each week to work in the video game industry. I guess you could say that my wife is a video game widow along with the admin mentioned previously.

So are there any video game widowers whose wife's neglect him to play games? Unfortunately I don't have any statistics I can cite, just anecdotal evidence. Most of the women I know that play games, do so with their husbands or boyfriends. One of the project managers I work with loves the puzzle solving part of video games while her husband likes the shooting part. When they play, they play together and this is common among most of the video-game couples I know.

Fortunately I get all the video game time I need at work or during the evenings when I am away from home. Unfortunately that doesn't help my department admin who won't do anything special on her birthday because her boyfriend is too involved in a video game. In his defense, it is a pretty good video game with a lot of positive reviews.

Great Courses

New Year's is a time were most people think about bettering themselves and so it makes sense that my wife and I received a catalog in the mail from The Great Courses. They had a sale going on where you could pick up 2 or 3 hundred dollar courses for less than $50. So my wife and I went through and found several classes that we thought would be interesting. We spent less than $100 and have our evenings planned for the next several months.

Every night we are home together, we watch one or two lessons from "Wonders of the National Parks." Each video lasts 30 minutes and includes all sorts of interesting facts about the National Parks in the United States. There are also some parks mentioned outside the US, like several in Mexico. We have finished the first of 5 DVD's and are thoroughly enjoying them.

I also picked up a beginning guitar course. Yes I have been playing guitar for about 2 years now and probably qualify as a solid intermediate. I learned from RockSmith but wanted to see how an instructor would teach vs. a video game. So far I have been through the first 2 30-minute lessons but have learned something from each one. It is interesting that a friend who plays the guitar gave me a warm-up exercise when I first started playing. The 2nd lesson from the DVD course gave a similar exercise. This is something I wouldn't have gotten from RockSmith. I have to confess that the course is well worth the $35 I paid for it. I just looked online and it is now $235. I need to run through a few more lessons before I can confirm if it is worth that price.

I like to learn new things and so having in-depth courses about topics I am interested in learning about is a lot of fun. Yes, I probably could just watch the Discovery channel every night. But then I am at the mercy of their programming and I don't really want to be a crab fisherman.

The Excitement of a New Year

I know that calendars are relatively arbitrary in the sense that our new year is not the same as other parts of the world. However there is something refreshing about the changing of the year. It is like a blank canvas ready for a new painting. What adventures will the year have in store for you and me?

People often look at January as a time to make resolutions. Perhaps they will drop a few pounds or learn a new skill. Last year I took up the guitar and have enjoyed it since. This is also the time for the consumer electronics show (CES) in Las Vegas. One of my colleagues who attended remarked about how large it seemed this year as he got to see what new electronic gadgets will be available in the near future. In the United States, we will have a new President. The press and media think that will shake things up a bit.

Yes we have a new year and so it is time to anticipate what the year has in store for us. My hope is that there is some exciting new technologies that actually make our lives better.

Keeping the Dog Company

It is a Saturday evening and I find myself alone at home in Utah with the dog. My wife is at her sister's visiting with her family and so I can do whatever I want. I find my list of choices almost endless. There is a large library of video games still in the shrink-wrapped plastic. I could also sit down and watch a movie without having to get consensus from the family. I have a $20 bill in my wallet and can even go out to see a movie if I wanted.

When I left the family gathering this afternoon to bring my daughter home so she could go to work, the first thing I did was pull out my guitar and practice it for 2 hours. I have never been musically inclined but thought that if I could play an instrument, I would play all the time. Now that I have taken up the guitar, thanks to Rocksmith, I do play all of the time and it is very rewarding. I only stopped to make myself dinner but that may be something I continue later this evening.

I also have a PlayStation VR that I have not really spent much time using. My youngest son enjoys it and often invites his college friends over to play. They love Until Dawn: Rush of Blood. One person will play the game while everyone watches. It is set up in small 15-minute mini games that work for a  group of friends. The person playing will get startled and jump, causing everyone to laugh. They can play for hours on end. I told my coworkers about this and they suggested I get Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. It is a party game that runs on Windows and Mac as well as the PlayStation VR. I have yet to purchase it, but it does sound like fun. In the mean time, I have about 6 or 7 other VR games I could play. Yes, some of them are still in the shrink wrap.

When you think about it, most of our lives today are amazing. It is a Saturday evening and my biggest concern is how to keep myself and the dog entertained. I am not sitting in a fox hole helping to fight some war. My next meal is already in the fridge and so I am not out hunting it or plucking it from the ground. When the house gets a little cold, a thermostat senses it and turns on the heat so I don't have to chop wood or keep a fire burning. Oh the choices I have for the evening and how I am glad I am not having to take care of one of the basic necessities of life.

How to Keep your Mind Active

While at work last week I had one of my coworkers come up to me and tell me that I am doing a good job of keeping my mind young. She was listening to a podcast about how to keep you mind young and active and the first piece of advice they gave included learning a musical instrument. She knows I practice my guitar daily and wanted to congratulate me on doing something to keep my brain active. Naturally I thanked her.

She then went on to say that another thing to do is to play video games. Since we both work for a video game company, we both laughed because that is part of our job. Everyone in our team thought that was funny, not because we don't believe it but because we get paid to do something we should be doing anyways. I am constantly looking for the benefits of video games because they are often thought of as a waste of time. I don't suggest dropping everything to play video games, however they do have some redeeming qualities.

Yes, I am probably doing a good job keeping my brain young and active. However if you stop to think about it, I am just a big kid. Let's hope that is a good thing.

Free Guitar Lessons

Recently I purchased a left-handed electric guitar to keep on my boat in California. If you are going to learn how to play the guitar you need to practice daily and so I wanted something very inexpensive. If you talk to anyone that knows anything about guitars they will recommend spending a bit more money. However the marine environment is very harsh on things and so I wanted something so inexpensive I wouldn't cry when it gets destroyed. My threshold is around $100. As I play left-handed, I did a quick search on the Internet and found the guitar guide on LeftyFretz. Then I found something inexpensive that met my needs.

Interestingly enough, one of the selling points of the guitar that didn't really matter to me is that it comes with "Free Guitar Lessons." I had decided to use Rocksmith to learn the guitar but am open minded enough to see what the guitar lessons entailed. When the guitar arrived, there wasn't any CD or DVD included. Just a single piece of paper that included a website to visit. There they had a number of online videos teaching various aspects of beginning guitar. In all fairness the sheet of paper included with the guitar resembled one of the best thought-out guitar cheat sheets ever created and the online videos covered most of the basics even if some of them were from other sources than this particular guitar manufacturer. However I have to ask myself if they really needed to advertise "Free Guitar Lessons."

This got me thinking about how other products could advertise free lessons. Musical instrument tutorials can be found everywhere. Shouldn't they all come with free lessons? What about power tools and sports equipment? There wouldn't even need to be a special web page devoted to the tutorials. The instructions could simple just say, "Use your favorite search engine to look for free screwdriver lessons."

A Tale of Two Rocksmiths

We were cleaning out the storage closets at work today and I managed to pick up a number of old PlayStation 3 games. One of them happened to be the original version of Rocksmith. I have the 2014 version for both the PS3 and the PS4. Why both copies? Well one is for my house where I have an acoustic guitar retrofitted with a pick-up. The other is for my boat where I have a super inexpensive electric guitar. Fortunately the copy I picked up today runs on the PS3 which is the console I have on my boat and where I am this evening. So tonight I loaded it up to see how it plays.

I have only been playing Rocksmith for the past month and am not very good at the guitar yet. My method of learning is to spend at least an hour a day with Rocksmith as my teacher. I am also sure to do scales as that has been instrumental in helping with my technique. While some may argue that you shouldn't use Rocksmith as your only teacher, I don't have the luxury of a regular schedule that would allow me to take lessons. It is a video game or nothing and I want to learn to play the guitar and so my options are somewhat limited.

While the interface between Rocksmith on the PS3 and PS4 is exactly the same, there is one difference: the PS4 version feels more accurate. While that may be a function of the different guitars I am using, the PS4 version just feels smoother, faster, and a bit more polished.

My only complaint with Rocksmith 2014 is that it doesn't provide enough direction for a beginning guitar player. After playing the original Rocksmith this evening, I now know why: there was only one path to follow and that got fixed in the 2014 version. With the original Rocksmith, the game assumes that you are a beginning guitar player and the instruction is very linear. This can be incredibly boring if you already know how to play the guitar and just want to improve. In fact, my hope was that there would be a larger catalog of songs to chose from and that I would be able to switch between the two games. Nope, Original Rocksmith starts with a single Rolling Stones song that you have to play correctly enough before you are presented with a 2nd song. Rocksmith 2014 starts off with about 70 songs to choose from, many of which are recognizable. Of course there is a huge catalog of other songs that you can purchase and add to your music library.

One nice thing about going back to the beginning of the Original Rocksmith is that I was able to see how well an hour a day of practice is helping my guitar-playing skill. I played with over 95% accuracy of the first song and that was a huge ego boost. While the calluses on my fingers tell me I am getting better, it is difficult to see until I went back and compared myself to when I was a true beginner. I guess the video game is doing its job and I am actually learning to play the guitar.

On that note, I think I am done typing this evening and plan to play one or two more songs on my guitar before heading to bed. Success really helps motivate one to practice.

No Instant Experts

What do playing the guitar and skiing have in common? Both require many hours of practice to become proficient. This is something I didn't understand growing up. Fortunately being a beginner skier can still be a lot of fun. When I would take guitar lessons as a child or teenager, I would practice for about a month or two and then get frustrated that I didn't know very much. This time I am making the process of learning the guitar a lot of fun and I look forward to practice every day.

So what does any of that have to do with computers and technology? The same rule of practice applies. If you want to get good, then you need to spend some time with the technology. The trick is how to make it fun. Each of us is different and so one solution might not work for everyone.

I once read about someone that wanted to learn how to program computers with a new language. He loaded his computer into his camper and headed into the woods for a week. He then spent one uninterrupted week of running through Donald Knuth's Fundamental Algorithms and turning out computer programs. My wife would never let me get away with that but I always thought that would be the perfect way to learn a new programming language.

I find that the right motivation helps people learn new things as well. I often try to marry learning tasks with something something I really want to do. Back in 2004 I had wanted to learn more about the PostgreSQL database system. I was also part owner in a restaurant and heard a great presentation about customer loyalty systems. I thought it would be fun to use PostgreSQL to help me write a web-based customer loyalty program. So I sat down and designed a system to keep track of customers and reward them with points every time they made a purchase. My program never got used but I did learn a lot about PostgreSQL and made a career of it for quite a while.

If you find yourself frustrated with your computer, just remember that there are no instant experts. It takes time to learn a lot of this stuff. Search engines are your friend and there may be someone who has already solved the problem you are having. If that doesn't work, post your question on a forum and a number of experts may be able to help you out. Who knows. One of them may have learned how to solve your problem by spending a week camping in the woods.

Learning to Play Guitar

Several years ago I recommended RockSmith as a Christmas gift. This year I finally got tired of waiting to receive it and went to get it after Christmas. First I had to acquire a pickup or microphone for my acoustic guitar. Then I purchased the game from the local Gamestop. The key part of the game is the cable that interfaces between the guitar and video game console. Unfortunately both connections were one-quarter inch male headphone plugs and so I had to return to the guitar store to buy a coupler. I searched for it at 3 different Radio Shacks but they have stopped stocking useful items like that in favor of cheap electronic toys. After such an experience, I vowed never to return to that chain again.

I got everything home and set it all up on my PlayStation 4. The first thing to do is calibrate the guitar which I did painlessly. Then I used RockSmith to tune my guitar. I have an electronic tuner, but RockSmith does a much better job and is infinitely easier to use. Then I ran through a few lessons.

In my lifetime I have taken several sets of guitar lessons but never really learned much. While I enjoyed going to the lessons, I never really got into the practicing part. RockSmith has a number of games to play to make practice fun and interesting. Furthermore the game is very patient. When I couldn't quite hit the right notes during one lesson, it never got upset. When I finally figured it out, it provided some encouragement. A human instructor would have been incredibly frustrated and less than supportive by the time I got it right.

Naturally the first day I played the game, I worked at the guitar until my fingers could no longer touch the guitar strings without hurting. I made sure to try again the next day and went as long as I could again. It was important to make sure to tune the guitar again before playing. The sensitivity is such that if your guitar is out of tune, it is difficult to play the correct notes. A simple tune fixes the problem and doesn't take very long.

I have always wanted to learn to play the guitar well and RockSmith from Ubisoft is the perfect way to do that. I paid full price for the game at around $60 and think it is well worth the money. While I work in the video game industry and probably could have gotten a discount, this was one game I felt like paying for and recommend it for anyone looking to increase their guitar playing abilities.