I’ve decided to learn to play the guitar. I’ve had one for years – a Christmas present from way back that I never managed to to get around to using. Well, it’s been sitting in my parent’s house all these years, so I figured I’d string it and give it a whirl. I’m being helped out by a rather useful new feature of Garageband ‘09 on the Mac.
Included with the software is a learning package for guitar and piano. There’s one lesson on the disc and the others are only a free download away from the Apple servers. An instructor talks you through the basics of the instruments, and in the case of the guitar it even has a tuner to tell you when you’re instrument is sounding as it should.
The first lesson consists of the very basics, such as how to sit and how to hold the guitar. Reassuringly he tells you to expect painful fingers for the first few weeks, and I’m certainly suffering at the minute! Then he moves on to the E chord and a single strumming pattern. Along the bottom of the screen while the instructor speaks is a model of a guitar showing where to place you fingers and whilst he’s strumming it is also displayed as chords, chord grids, TAB or TAB & Standard notations; your choice. The option is also there to turn the guitar around for lefties and to display subtitles on the screen if you’d rather turn the sound down.
At the end of each lesson you get the chance to put what you’ve learned into practice and play along with a song. You can change the speed at which the song is played if you’re finding it a struggle to keep up with the chord progression, as well as changing the volume of the different instruments in the band if you’re struggling to hear yourself play.
Once you mastered all of the free beginner lessons you can move on to downloading specific songs to learn. It’s the same set up as before with an instructor teaching you what you should be doing, but this time it’s by the people who actually wrote and performed the songs. So for example, Sting will teach you how to play Roxanne, Message In A Bottle and Fragile. Or perhaps you’d prefer to learn Apolopgize by OneRepublic? There are a few to choose from, but I’d like to think they’ll be adding more in the future.
All-in-all I think it’s a great feature of Garageband ‘09 and I’ll hopefully be playing like a pro soon!
As some of you out in Webland might be aware, I used to write web pages. I did it for a number of years, though if I’m being honest I never made it to any level I was truly pleased with. It was only ever a hobby and whilst at one point I did have ideas of moving into it as a career, I never really took it forward. I even went so far as to talk down someone who wanted to hire me because I didn’t believe I had the necessary skills required to fulfill the role. At the time I didn’t want to quit my old job and then be fired on my first day because I didn’t really know what I was talking about. A bit daft, but that’s what a liberal sprinkling of fear will do.
Over the last few months I’ve been getting up to speed with my iPhone, trying out new apps and the like. There are a number I love and a number that I think could be great if they just had certain new features. Then it hit me; why not try and right some myself?
Well, one of those reasons is that I don’t know how to write in Objective-C or Cocoa Touch. But why not learn? So I’m starting at the beginning with Dave Mark’s Learn C on the Mac. This will be the foundation to move on to other books in the series covering Objective-C, Cocoa and Cocoa Touch, which I hope will give me a grounding in developing for both the iPhone and the Mac. Whilst I’m not saying I want to take this up as a career, it will nonetheless be something to do in my spare time. Plus, given the ease with which developers are able to sell apps in iTunes, if I were to come up with something I liked I might be able to make some money out it.
But that’s all for the future. The starting point is with the learning, and my past experience with PHP whilst developing for the web will really come in handy. I’m currently racing through this book at a rate of knots due to the similarities between the languages, with just a slight noticeable difference in some of the syntax. At the minute I’d say it was like an Englishman reading something by an American. It makes perfect sense, but it’s just written slightly differently. More to the point, I’m enjoying it. So fingers-crossed that I’ll keep on doing so.
After pressure from @jeruss I decided to have a go at budgeting my money. He’s come up with a handy guide for those of you wanting to give it a go yourself. Whilst I’m not following his advice to the full, I am keeping track of each of my transactions using Squirrel for the Mac and the associated iPhone app. This will enable me to keep an eye on my spending whilst on the move.
So I’ve got budgets for everything (I think) down to the penny for each month, and then extra budgets for those events that come round but once a year (see my MOT post). This’ll allow me to save bit by bit for those things which tend to sneak up on you when you least expect it. I guess I’ll have to be doing it for a couple of months before I really get into the swing of it and at the moment it does all look a bit daunting. Especially when I look at the amount I’ve set aside for myself each month and compare it to the amount I spent on myself last month – it looks like it’s going to be tough. But it is at least making me think about the money I’m spending each time I take out the wallet and whether what I’m considering purchasing is worth it in the long run.
Time will tell how effective this will be, but if I can stick to my budgets then I think I can start to save some serious money.
I don’t normally post about technology, but the BBC have finally released Mac and Linux versions of iPlayer. And this isn’t really a post about technology anyway. This is a post about how the BBC seem to have concentrated a little to much on one thing at the expense of another.
The BBC iPlayer is a work of art. It’s genius. It works so much better than any of the other channels have managed. It works on Mac too because they’ve used Flash and not burdened us all with a Microsoft invention. And now that they’ve made it possible to download shows on Mac and Linux it’s just got even better. They’ve spent a great deal of time and effort on the thing to make sure it’s at the top of its class.
Trouble is they haven’t really spent any money on the shows. So we have day’s worth of programming available to download at the touch of a button (and all for free too). But it’s all crap. Fair enough, there’s the odd show I like to see. I’m partial to a bit of Top Gear, Have I Got News for You and Never Mind the Buzzcocks (before Bill Bailey left and it degenerated into awfulness). I also hear people enjoy Heroes, although I could never get into it myself. But the rest of it? We pay for this rubbish?
I don’t really have anything else to say on the matter, and I’m not really that bothered to be honest. I was just flicking through their line-up to see if there was anything I wanted to download, and nothing appeared. Never mind.
