Christmas Break Begins

Today I finished up work for the week and don't have to go back to work until January 2nd. I know that kids in school have a week more than I do and that those like my daughter only get one or two days off. I consider myself fortunate to have a week of free time. For me, this is time to relax and take care of some personal projects. The question I have to answer is how many of them are computer related or technical.

Several years ago I purchased a ham-radio antenna. It has sat in my office for 2 winters now and I really should put it together and set it up. Then I can play around with talking to people around the world by bouncing radio waves off the ionosphere. Almost all of my ham radio experience has been using short-distance and line-of-sight frequencies. That is what I use when I help with the Salt Flats Endurance run and the Wastach 100. It would be good to gain some practical knowledge in other areas of the hobby.

There are also quite a few video games I own that I would like to play. Not having to go to work frees up a lot of time and would allow me to at least start one of them. Perhaps I could finish my Spider-Man game and then justify owning Spider-Man 2. I also have the new God of War game that I have yet to take the plastic off. That could be fun. Then there are countless games I own simply by being a member of PlayStation Plus. While most look like a waste of time, there are quite a few that look very interesting.

With Christmas just around the corner, I have finished most of my 3D printing projects. I have printed up quite a few nativity scenes and Christmas-tree ornaments. I suppose I could take on a new project and perhaps print up the model of a battleship I found when I discovered the silver filament I have is really gray. It really would bring my skills up a level as the attention to detail requires me to up my game considerably.

I also wouldn't mind taking some time to do a bit of reading. I have a stack of technical reading that I have been putting off due to other pressing matters. While some might consider the subject matter an extension of work, I find it entertaining and wouldn't mind using my break to increase my technical skills.

Thinking about self improvement, I have really enjoyed learning to play the guitar using the video game RockSmith. I have thought about doing the same thing with drums and getting a copy of Rock Band. The only problem is they don't sell the game with the drum kits any more. Instead you have to purchase an electronic drum set with a MIDI interface and connect it to the game. That would be fun and I could involve my other family members.

Finally there is one last project I think would be a lot of fun. I am in the midst of coming up with a space-ship cockpit. I am thinking it would be fun for my grand kids to have a control panel with illuminated switches, lights, and dials that mimic a fictitious space craft's instrument panel. I have some of it designed but just need to order the parts and assemble it. I think my 6-year-old grandson would have a blast letting it fuel his imagination of flying across the galaxy.

Yes I have a lot I can do during the next week or so. I won't be able to get to all of it especially since I have family visiting and a healthy amount of skiing planned. I still look forward to starting one or two projects listed above. 

No Internet for an Evening

I got home from work yesterday and while eating dinner with my wife I received a text message from my Internet provider. They apologized that my service was down but were doing everything they could to restore it. They had an estimated time of the problem being resolved in an hour. I finished eating, did the dishes, and then wondered how best to use my time.

Lately I have been playing Horizon: Forbidden West on my PlayStation 5. I have the game downloaded to my console and so I thought I would try to see if I could play it. Nope because before the game will start, the PS5 checks the entitlement database to make sure I have permission. Without the Internet connection, that information couldn't be verified. If I had a physical disk for the game, I could have played it but I was given the electronic version for free. I will be sure to purchase physical copies of games in the future for this reason.

I thought about watching a movie as I have a huge DVD and Blu-ray library and it is impossible to stream a movie without an Internet connection. Ultimately that would have just been filling time and so I looked at other activities. I thought about practicing guitar, which is something I do every evening. Sometimes I use Rocksmith on my PS4 and I have a physical disk for that game. Instead I decided to go for a walk with my wife. That is something else I do every evening and last night I did it a bit earlier than usual. The only downside being the warmer temperature as I like to wait for the sun to go down a bit more during the summer months.

My wife and I returned from our walk and our Internet was working again. By then, I had no interest in the activities that required me being online. I practiced guitar and then watched broadcast news before turning in for the night.

This morning I woke up and didn't really think much of the lack of Internet last night. At the time though I felt myself scrambling for worthwhile activities. Truth be told, the walk I took was probably more worthwhile than anything else I could have done online.

An Evening Without Internet

Last night I lost my Internet service at the house. I first noticed it when my wife tried to look up an address on her smartphone so she could go get us a Christmas ham. Her phone had been having problems all day and so she thought it related to the mobile device. Fortunately my daughter mentioned that she also had connection problems on her laptop. I suggested that my wife turn WiFi off on her phone and see if she could get directions. Sure enough it worked and we now have a massive ham to celebrate the birth of someone that wouldn't have eaten ham. Anyways . . .

Spending an evening without Internet service is a bit tough in today's day and age. It really surprised me at how much I rely on my computers being able to connect to many others out there. I started with my PlayStation 5. I finished all of the tasks in Astro's Playroom and wanted to see what trophies I still needed to complete. PlayStation's trophy service requires being able to access the Internet.

Next I wanted to look up some potential investments. I have decided that it is time for me to get back into the stock market. For the past decade or so, I have relied on the expert of others to manage my investments. Back in my 30's I really enjoyed following individual companies and have opened an online trading account. I'll keep you posted if I do well or not but ultimately I couldn't do any research last night because of the lack of Internet. Too bad I don't get a copy the Wall Street Journal as I could have looked through that.

I thought about watching a Christmas movie but this year I have already seen the ones I have on DVD and Blu-ray. No Internet means no streaming video services and so I looked for other ways to kick off the first evening of my Holiday break. As the night wore on, I pulled out my guitar and Rocksmith only to be reminded that all of the extra songs I have purchased are not playable without a connection to the Internet to verify that I have the paid to play them. Sure Rocksmith comes with 60 songs but I wanted to rock out to all my Christmas ones. Instead I ended up playing my acoustic guitar with my songbook full of Christmas music.

Eventually my service provider got the Internet working again. I checked my e-mail and during the time that the Internet was down, I only received 2 messages which goes to show it wasn't down that long. However it still felt like an eternity.

To show how important the Internet is in our daily lives, I have the day off and here I am back on the Internet. Sure I got up and went skiing this morning at Snowbird. We got 16-inches of new snow last night and I had one spectacular run in untracked snow before the crowds destroyed any hopes of a repeat. When I got home, I did a few chores but have spent the past 2 hours utilizing my home Internet connection. I am done though and will be heading off to do things that don't require a computer . . . oh wait, I may continue one of my video games. Scratch that.

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.

Be Careful What You Like

This morning I got up early and thought I would play Rocksmith on my PS4 to help me get in some guitar practice before work. Imagine my surprise when I turned on my PS4  and saw that I had liked the movie "Let's Talk About Sex." I've never even seen the movie but the title might make some question my taste in movies.

So how did I "Like" a movie I have never seen? Well it is quite a funny story. Someone turned on a PlayStation 4 that I have logged into before (there are a lot of them), signed in as me, found a movie with a shocking name, and selected the thumbs-up icon indicating that I liked the movie. It is a funny practical joke and I know who did it. Yes, I will be sure to get back at the person in an equally harmless way. However it brings up an important point: how do you un-like something on social media?

When I saw my movie recommendation on the What's New part of the PS4 interface, I immediately jumped in and un-liked the movie. Unfortunately that didn't do anything and the What's New section on the PS4 still registered that I liked the movie. Next I figured I would like another movie. Keeping with the theme of liking movies I haven't seen, I liked "Rogue Elements." It is a skiing movie I have yet to see but contains some skiers my kids grew up skiing with on the Snowbird Ski Team. Now the What's New section says that I like 2 movies and lists them both. I hoped that the new like would overshadow the old one but that didn't happen.

Rather than waste any more time on it, I figured I would let it stand. Now I wonder what the recommendation engine is going to do with the 2 likes for movies I have never seen. Perhaps the next time I log into my PlayStation I will be inundated with ads for ski porn (the link goes to Urban Dictionary . . . not a website that would be unsafe for work).

The Achilles Heel of the PlayStation 4

Last night I practiced my guitar as my daughter came in and asked if I wanted to watch a movie. Being in the middle of a song, I wanted to finish it before hanging out so I told her to get started without me. She headed down to the TV room and booted up our other PS4. The only problem is that I was in the middle of my song using Rocksmith on the console in my bedroom. The PlayStation 4 does not allow you to be logged in at the same time on 2 different physical machines and that is its Achilles heel.

I had to laugh as my daughter yelled up a sincere, "Sorry," when she heard me tell my wife why I suddenly stopped practicing my guitar. Last night was not the first time we encountered this problem and probably won't be the last. My daughter could have used the dedicated DVD player or our PlayStation 3 but prefers to use the PS4 as it does so better than any movie player available today.

There is a very simple solution to getting booted from my PS4: create a user on it in the TV room specifically for watching movies. I could even name it something like "Movie Watcher." That way when someone else in the house wants to watch a movie, I get kicked off my console in the bedroom.

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.

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.

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.