Dog Movie

dog movie

http://kickstartguy.com/dothedoggieboogie/2009/09/bouncing-around-by-steven-cravis/

The Beatles – Video Game Practice

The Beatles – Video Game Practice

Woops! Refreshing my browser caused me to spend 10 Million more dollars than I wanted to on online stock trading…

Well, okay- I don’t have that kind of money. And in my case the online trading site I was using to buy SIRI ( Sirius XM Satellite Radio ) stock shares gave me a ‘rejected due to limited funds’ message AFTER I had just seen enough settled funds available.

But when I called the online trade site they told me that my first intended buy went through. Sometimes on various sites, I refresh the browser to see the next result of my latest action if the site wasn’t programmed to bring me to that next result. I bet many people have developed an instinct, or habit, of refreshing the browser in these instances. The guy on the phone told me that I was lucky I didn’t have more settled funds available because it would have put my buy order in again, just for refreshing the browser.

Then it struck me how devastating this could be for some dude or dudette with settled funds in the amount of millions of dollars if they accidentally refreshed their screen after a purchase of, say $10 Million of one stock. It would be like “Woops – I refreshed my browser, now I’ve just purchased another $10,000,000 , $10,000,000 of stock that I DIDN’T WANT!

I feel so sorry for those millionaires.

Today’s SIRI share price

How would you like to take guitar lessons from Sting?

My 7 year old daughter Sasha (yes I had the same naming idea as Barack and Michelle Obama around the same time that they did) recently has been enthusiastically saying “Dad, I want to play guitar”.

This was a great sign to me, because when I was 7 I told my parents I wanted to play piano, and between then and age 41 piano has consistently been one of my greatest joys and accomplishments.  I told Sasha she’s going to need to learn acoustic guitar, not electric, to which she agreed. I told her she’d need to take guitar lessons, to which she disagreed.  Now I could be firm and try to force the human guitar teacher situation, but I thought about how many resources there are online, not to mention how the youngest generations’ DNA is basically fused with computers, and got her buy in to at least learn from video tutorials online.

 

I went to an Apple Store in San Francisco and asked about the new feature in iLife 09 Garage Band that includes some basic piano and guitar lessons (also see CNN ). I knew there’s no way Apple software is going to provide infinite free guitar lessons so I asked about the options. To my amazement, Chris mentioned that one of my all time favorite famous artists Sting gives a guitar lesson on how to play Roxanne, sort of a new kind of App (like iPhone Apps) that one can buy for $5.00 USD. See Apple.com for more information. My understanding is that it integrates with Garage Band for the student’s viewing experience and that the Garage Band features include being able to slow it down, skip to sections and other controls.

 

Since we have an iMac Intel I thought wow- this is cool, just buy iLife 09, the Leopard operating system which is required to install and use iLife 09, a guitar, and five dollar lessons at our own pace (at this point I’m picturing our whole family might as well go ahead and start learning guitar with my daughter!)…

 

I’m almost about to purchase a package deal – iLife 09, Leopard OS, iWork, all for $169 from infinitely patient Chris, when it crossed my mind that my very old versions of Photoshop 7 and Dreamweaver MX, on which I rely heavily for my online music ), MIGHT not work on the Leopard operating system. Photoshop 7 was the only version that had worked on both ancient Mac OS 9.2.2 AND OS 10 versions prior to Leopard. Here’s me in front of our previous Mac G4 that had OS 9.2.2. Luckily I didn’t buy Leopard yet, because after I left the Apple store I found some pretty angry comments in forums such as this one and Dreamweaver frustrations such as this.

 

Okay- so here’s the upcoming decisions I have to make if I want my daughter to have access to cool Leopard OS based, iLife Garage Band 09 guitar lessons: Either spend about $1,869 before tax ( iLife09/iWork/Garage Band deal for $169 + Adobe Web Premium which includes CS4 versions of Dreamweaver, Photoshop + many other great programs I need like Flash for the best deal of about $1,700  ) OR buy a new iMac that our family can use as a dedicated internet usage and guitar lessons machine, for $1,200  What’s so appealing about the latter less expensive option is the extra space and time it buys our family. Currently my wife documents our family’s life with thousands of pictures with her skilled usage of iPhoto , Photoshop and various web sites. Not to mention she loves online games. Then there’s me- I need to produce music on Apple Logic Studio  , update web sites, compose new music, and create album covers. She and I literally need to schedule time with each other for our usage of this fun iMac workstation. I LOVE the idea of my children being able to use another iMac while we’re on this one, especially if they can be learning good things like music.

 

But something tells me that I’ll be trying to schedule time on the iMac with the children too. After all it’s me, not my daughter, who wants that guitar lesson from Sting.

JamPlayground launched by Steven Cravis

Welcome to JamPlayground, thoughts about music, technology and more by Steven Cravis