Free-to-air TV- Gordan Ramsay’s Food Stars

Who needs paid streaming services? Nor a working catch-up app anyway?!

So, it’s our very first month in a long while since we’ve been TV streaming service free! We gave Netflix the flick coming on a year now, since they stopped password sharing, and when Disney+ did the same, and also jacked up their prices we also walked away from them. And life after paid on demand TV? It’s not bad, quite liberating actually!

And the show we geeked over the past few weeks was Gordan Ramsay’s Food Stars, I’d describe it as ‘The Apprentice’ meets Master Chef, meets Dragons’ Den! Which sounds like an odd mash-up of concepts, but it oddly works!

So, a bunch of Australian food entrepreneurs are gathered in Melbourne, and in a matter of minutes they are given the opportunity to pitch their business/food concept to Gordan Ramsy and Janine Allis (founder of Boost Juice), and from that pitch alone Gordan and Janine need to immediately decide if they would like to add that person to their team (7 members per team). With the end outcome, being that Gordan and Janine would choose one person to invest $250K of their own money into their business, and also provide them a year of mentoring! And to sort the stars from the contenders, teams were given a series of challenges (re-branding well-known products, promoting a new range of products,, developing a brand new product, managing an event etc), and if the team loses the challenge, then they’re sent to the ‘Grilling room’, where one contestant is told “I’m not going to invest in you”. And sent packing.

The challenges were interesting enough, which drew out the various business skills a successful entrepreneur needs to have to be a winner in today’s cut-throat market, while throughout the show the personality and character of the contestants slowly emerged, some more annoying than others, some more endearing than others. And in the final round, Gordan and Janine each have 2 contenders left, and they need to re-pitch their business back to Gordan and Janine, but this time in front of a large auditorium filled with hundreds of food insiders (but now they have more life experience (after enduring 3 weeks of challenges, and also gaining feedback from Gordan or Janine), And the brilliant thing is this, no matter if the contestant ultimately won the main prize or only managed to get into the top 14, I think the national publicity and air-time they received for their brands due to being a part of the show has been priceless, performing a quick Google search now, for  the products of the top 5? You can easily purchase their products either from major retailers like Coles and Dan Murphy’s, or from their own web-sites. So, methinks, everyone is a winner from Food Stars 2024!

And so were we! So, last year I gave up on being a Mac user, it was way too hard to use, especially if you’re using the Apple Screen reader ‘Voiceover’. So, I bought a cheapo Windows laptop and returned back to JAWS. And my old MacBook Pro went to my wife, which she used as an oversized and over-priced paper-weight. Yeah, a bit of a waste of $3,169.

But oddly enough, the 9Now app doesn’t seem to like our Chromecast, each time we try to cast it to our TV it just freezes. So, we had to resort in watching Food Stars off the Channel 9 web-site, which brought the MacBook away from its usual duties as a paper-weight, and it worked quite well as a little TV. Fantastic screen resolution, even better speakers, and the portability was a pro as well! So, we’ve finally found a use case for the MacBook Pro, which is to be a glorified portable TV.

To catch Gordan Ramsay’s Food Stars, just search for it online or on your 9Now app!  

touchsmelltastesoundLeave a comment

Musings- Short scale Vs Long scale Bass Guitars

Is this the end of the ‘Short scale connoisseur’?

It all started as a result of purchasing a set of incorrect length strings (got long scale instead of short scale), which started me thinking…. What if I get one cheapo long scale bass, wouldn’t that be nice to round out my bass collection? And that set me down a slippery slope of buying up all sorts of long scale guitars and plans to buy many, many more. Moohaaha!

Now that I’m 3 Long scale bass guitars in (after 6 months), does it mean that I’ve turned my back on the Shorties?

Well, the plan was to slowly buy up more long scales, until 50% of my bass guitar collection were long scales to short scale. And the thinking was to alternate each month, as in one month I just played long scale, and then the next month to give my back a rest, I’ll just play short scales. But let me tell you, once you’ve gone ‘Long’, it’s hard to go back!

The first time I picked up a long scale bass, I thought it was so heavy, so unwieldy, and the dimensions just felt all wrong in the hands like it was all bloated. But now when I pick up a short scale bass, the exact opposite occurs, it feels light as a toy, dinky in the hands like a child’s play-thing, and now the dimensions feel all wrong in the hands again, like it had been shrunken in the wash! Funny how the body adapts.

And I thought a short scale would be much easier to play now, since I’ve been training to reach for the wider frets on a long scale, my mind was thinking a short scale should be a breeze to play. But oddly enough, it’s not. After a few minutes my fretting hand started to cramp up, as it wasn’t used to being squished into a claw like shape to get the correct fingering on each fret. And then my muscle memory was all out of sorts, I would go for a note, and over-shoot the desired fret. Aiya! And with the shorter neck, all of a sudden, I felt all squished in, my elbows were tucked into my body, and not to mention my mental image of myself playing now, imagining how others saw me, and the mental image wasn’t flattering. I pictured a grown man playing a child sized instrument- I can’t believe I had done this for 2 entire years! How embarrassing!

So, does it mean it’s the end of the short scale connoisseur?

Maybe just for now, I really want to get a full year of long scale bass playing under my belt, where I’m confident that my body has developed the muscle memory for the beastier instrument. And once I’m good with that, I think then I’ll start to flip flop between the two lengths just so that I don’t have 7 guitars which are sitting around gathering dust. Otherwise, there will be a few short scale bass guitars going ‘free to a good home’.

Benefits of Long scale bass guitars:

  1. There are so many choices out there! Brands, styles, colours! You name it, there’s one out there!
  2. There’s 5 strings and active basses (no off-the-shelf 5 string or active short scale basses)
  3. Parts and accessories are all catered for Long scale
  4. And now I look the part of a proper bass player and I’ve lost the shame of being a Shortie

touchsmelltastesoundLeave a comment

Live Gigs- Dr Jason Leong- Why are you like this? Tour

Medicine’s loss, but the world’s gain!

Can you believe this? After watching Dr Jason Leong’s Stand-up comedy show last night, my wife informed me that it was her very first time attending a live Stand-up comedy show! I was like “no way!” But sure enough, we popped her live Stand-up comedy cherry last night, and the man to do the honors was Dr Jason Leong!

I’m not too sure how much of a global superstar is Dr Jason, according to him, he’s freakin’ huge! And I think he might be right (not exaggerating), as he has 2 Netflix specials which can be viewed by the world’s audience! But for those who are less familiar with the Malaysian Chinese Comedian- Dr Jason Leong was a bona fide medical doctor back in Kuala Lumpur, who turned his back on medicine (after practicing for 5 years) and became a full-time Comedian. And because of this single fact, he has cornered a particular segment of the market, and developed a bit of a cult following for himself among Asian doctors (and they’re all around the world!). So, as our med friends first introduced us to his Netflix special a couple of years back (#Blessed), they too invited us to join them when they learned that Dr Jason was coming to town ( Sydney) for his ‘Why are you like this?’ 2024 global tour.

The Friday night show that we attended was at Chatswood Concourse, so no surprises there,…….. There was wall to wall Asian people! And as Dr Jason’s comedy made fun of Chinese, Indians (his wife is Indian), Christians, doctors etc. So, let’s just say everyone in the audience last night was on the receiving end of at least one of his jokes, leaving us laughing nervously as our own backgrounds were being made fun of. And don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a bad thing, as now and again, you have to lighten-up and have a laugh at yourself which reminds one to chill-out a bit.

But what is evident about Dr Jason (and all Comedians that matter), is that he’s a darn good story teller. And what I particularly like about Dr Jason’s style is the fact that he loves to place his stories into context (something I like to do as well). So, he spends much time painting the picture for us, so much so that you can almost  clearly see it in your mind’s eye, before he unravels his tale and reveals the humorousness of this real-life situation for him. And what I do like about his show is the fact that you can tell that all of his stories are genuine (well, I’d hope so), events which have occurred to him in the recent past as he travels the world (all year long) doing his comedy. And like me, he’s around 40 years old, so he’s also getting reminiscent about his teenage years, so the funniest story for me which he told last night was when he recounted his days at an all-boys Malaysian high school. “Mr. Argus!” All of his tales were relatable to probably 95% of his audience last night, so you can say he hit and scored with everyone last night- even with my wife!

So, previously my wife was hesitant to attend live Stand-up comedy shows, as she didn’t like gratuitous swearing and crudeness (which all Stand-up Comedians are). And Dr Jason was no exception last night, but it’s all in jest, so hopefully now that she has experienced her first, she might be willing to attend more Stand-up Comedy shows with me (and other friends) in the future.

To catch Dr Jason Leong’ on his  Why are you like this? Tour, just Google him for dates and locations, there are several more Sydney shows scheduled and many more as he travels the world in 2024. So, you can probably tell what he tossed for when ushering in the new year! Fame! Fortune! Success! Now, that’s a well tossed salad!

touchsmelltastesoundLeave a comment

Musings- Counselling

To seek help, or not to seek help?

Previously, I’d never considered using our work EAP (Employee Assistance Program), as in our corporate comms, they always bring it up in times of stress or trouble “Reach-out to the EAP service if you would like someone to speak to). And I would automatically dismiss this offer, as I didn’t believe just talking to someone would ever help anything. Until….

So, if you’ve been following the blog recently, you’ll know that my dad sadly passed away slightly over 4 months ago. And honestly, I thought I’d be feeling better by now, as I had been telling people “Time does heal all wounds.” But I can tell you, 4 months on and I’m still feeling the negative effects of his passing.

So, as a result I’ve found myself sleeping more, more distracted by my own thoughts, feeling quite sad most of the times, and when I catch myself feeling slightly optimistic about life- I pull myself back as ‘What is there to be happy about, if dad could never enjoy these things with us anymore.

And the other day it got so bad that I decided to do something about it and I took steps to seek help. And since work offered access to trained Counsellors, and they encourage people to seek help about both work and personal matters, I decided to take them up on that offer.

I must admit, I almost chickened out a few times, the first time when I was presented with the options (Press 1-4) I hung up when paralysed by indecision in which option to choose (didn’t seem serious enough for the 24/7 help line). Then I hung up a second time after I was placed on hold and had been waiting for several minutes (oddly enough, I pictured there to be a room full of counsellors there, just waiting to speak to me). And the third attempt, I just forced myself to stay on the line, I told myself I was willing to wait on hold for up to 30 minutes, and then after 15 mins a Customer service person came on the line. I didn’t know that they were just there to screen me and to schedule an appointment (I proceeded to tell her why I was calling and some of my problems. Oops). And then I was a little put off when I found out that they weren’t going to put me through to the next Counsellor, but I had to wait 2 days for an appointment.

The next day I thought I had over-reacted, and I didn’t really need counselling. Then later that same day, I was telling myself to filter what I might say to this person, as in their disclaimer they say all our conversations were confidential unless there is risk of self-harm or risk of harm to others- which admittedly there had been some dark thoughts, but not to that extent. But the last thing I wanted was someone misunderstanding my honesty and candidness, and the next thing I find myself admitted to a mental health hospital held there against my will.

But in the end, all my worries or concerns about seeking professional help were alleviated . as going through the initial survey questions to gage my current mental state of mind, yes, it seemed that I do have some problems and I wasn’t just over-reacting in reaching out for help. And my initial thoughts, thinking that I was just going to talk to someone, and they were just going to listen and nod. Boy! Was I wrong!

As they have actual tools and techniques to treat my problems. The main method they were going to deploy was EMDR (Eye Movement desensitisation and reprocessing). At first the Counsellor was a bit fixated on my blindness and was proposing alternative means and suggesting that he also needed to meet with my wife to teach her how to do the ‘tapping technique,’ the alternative to eye movements. But I had to stop him and ask, is the EMDR technique reliant on something I’m meant to be seeing? Or is it based on me moving my eyes. As yes, I’m blind, but I can roll my eyes, see…….

So, once we got that out of the way, it was much better from there onwards. We discussed what was my most traumatic memory from dad’s passing, and the plan for the next session was to use EMDR to re-program how I emotionally react to that thought. I was given some homework (links and videos to watch), and we ended with some guided relaxation which did make me feel pretty Zen by the end.

But OMG! This EMDR stuff, might actually work! So, I watched the Youtube clip, had a vague idea in how it works, and then tested it out. I Conjured up the triggering thoughts, things which would usually result in sadness in me, and then I started to move my eyes to the right and to the left, and somehow the emotion was taken out of the thought?

My issues have been, that I would recall a mental scene in my mind, a picture which I had created of my dad getting off the train alone as it pulled in to a station called ‘Heaven’, and as he disembarked and joined all the others who had their number called that day, I imagine dad looking back one last time at us, and raising a hand in farewell. And each time I bring back that mental image, I would feel incredibly sad, teary at times, and then I’d feel crummy for the next hour or so. And I would keep dreaming about dad, nothing weird mind you, but just old scenes of us as a much younger family at our family shop, or some fictitious scenario and there would be dad, very much alive. And then I would be jolted back to wakefulness as it was so realistic and stimulating, but I would be all sad afterwards as I realise that I’m back in the real world, where dad is no longer with us.

So, last night, as the first night after experimenting with EMDR, I had this dream, it was like I had returned to school after the summer school holidays. And these guys (people who used to be in my grade), were hanging around, waiting to speak with me. And as they found an opportunity they came up to me and congratulated me on a good speech at my dad’s funeral, and in this dream, I was actually blind and had my red and white cane. Honestly, after 21 years of blindness, this was the very first time I had a dream where I was blind. So, after talking about it with my wife this morning, I think what has happened is that my brain has finally let go of the past, suspended at the same time when I was still a sighted young man, where my dad was still very much alive, and now my subconscious state had come to acceptance and had re-adjusted to my reality. Which is good, I think, so that each time I wake up from a particuarlly vivid dream, I’m not dragged 25 years back to the present where I’m actually old, blind, and miserable. So if this persists,  at least I’m not always disappointed when I wake up from dreams, as my reality is so much worse than my dream-state.

So, only time will tell if this is just a one-off, and the mental clarity I’m feeling today is temporary, or how I’m feeling now is here to stay. But my takeaway at this point in time, is if you’re pondering whether to seek help or not? I say seek help, why suffer alone hey? And even better, if your work is going to pick-up the bill at the end!

touchsmelltastesoundLeave a comment

Product recommendations- Spotify Premium

If I could only have one paid subscription?

I’ve been meaning to write this blog post in a while now, ever since Spotify introduced Audiobooks ‘included in premium’. Which has completely flipped how I consume audiobooks! Yes, really!

So, previously if you were getting your audiobook fix  from Audible, the strategy was to find a book which was as long as possible, because with 1 credit you want to get your money’s worth! Right?

But now with audiobooks included in your Spotify Premium, instead of limiting you to only 1 included book in a month, Spotify limits you to the amount of hours per month. You may be asking, how many hours then? The answer would be 15 hours, around the duration of one and a half  average books? So, now my strategy is to look for books around the 8 hour mark, so potentially I could listen to almost 2 books a month (with bits lingering into adjacent months). Although, with a time limit, it’s an absolute fail when I fall asleep, and need to re-listen to passages. Ah!

And this has now opened up a whole new world for me! The world of the short book (less than 5 hours). Previously with Audible you wouldn’t touch a sub-5 hour book, like who in their right mind would waste an entire credit on a book which might only last you a week or so? But now with Spotify, I’m purposefully hunting around for the short book.

And now with a time cap, I’m more likely to explore new titles! Books which I’ve never heard of before, try out some less frequented genres, or shock horror- try books written by Australian authors! All because it’s now easy to start a book, and if you don’t like it, just remove it from your library- as easy as that, no harm no foul!

So, in my opinion, as a blind consumer of content, I think Spotify Premium can be your one and only paid subscription! The service enables you access to all the music you could ever ask for; a single location for all your podcasts; there’s a bit of a community feel if you’re into creating and sharing your playlists; your favourite artists can communicate directly with you; and now that you’re able to access hundreds and thousands of audiobooks!? Spotify does it all!

And don’t get me started on Spotify’s AI DJ! I love DJ! Even if it’s just hanging out for Xavier (X) Jernigan’s voice drops and finding out what interesting facts have they deduced from my listening habits. It’s all pretty amusing.

So, if you haven’t paid for Spotify before? I’d strongly recommend it, let’s just say, your ears will thank you for it.

touchsmelltastesoundLeave a comment

Product recommendations- Moises

Multi-tracking made easy!

If you know me by now, you’ll know that I love self-paced online learning! I do it every year, deep dive into a new tool and geek out over it for the next 3-4 months, until inevitably the obsession for said tool starts to wean. So, when at the EMU Word in Song conference, they mentioned that they had developed an app which was going to take your music practice to the next level! I was all for it and wanted so badly to see this thing in action. But alas, I was separated from my wife on the day, and she checked it out on her own. Boo!

So, the tool in mention is the HymnBook app, the main selling point being that you can dive into their library of songs, and take a song and isolate individual tracks, so if you’re the bass player, you can either just hear the bass pard, and attempt to learn the official bass parts with all it’s crazy fills; or keep all elements of the song but remove bass, so during your practice you can step in as the bass player, and feel like you’re a part of the music team! However, when I asked my wife how was the app, she first started with the cost, that licensing for a church of our size (around 100 people), was going to cost around $1600-$1800 per year (money which our church don’t have)- so quickly, my enthusiasm was drastically curbed.

A week later, I checked out the HymnBook web-site, and was pleasantly surprised to find that they offered individual licenses, and  it was $20 per month. And quickly I was back in, I thought for the cost of a meal out, surely I could justify paying that much a month for an awesome tool like that! Even if I had to sacrifice one of my meals out  per month, to make it work.  But then my wife told me that at the demonstration, the spokesperson for the app also informed them that the current library of songs was only around 100 songs. Like what the!? Not only were there only 100 songs, but they were from only a few Christian bands/groups which aligned to EMU music’s theology. Now that doesn’t sound all that useful? Does it?

Then by chance, I was bord one Monday morning (had caught-up to all my current podcasts), so I decided to listen to an old ‘Scott’s Bass Lessons’ podcast, and by chance they mentioned ‘Moises’, a tool which allowed you to split out the different instrument parts from songs recordings, and turn pre-recorded tracks into multi-tracks. Like OMG! This thing was exactly what HymnBook was doing, but now not limited to only 100 select songs!

But the catch was this, you can split out the tracks for any song, as long as you have an MP3 recording of the original song. D’oh!

Now in 2024, how do you get a hold of MP3 recordings? My old iPod Shuffle and the laptop with my iTunes library were long gone! Thrown out in a Council digital collection years ago. D’oh! We have a bunch of original CDs, but at the moment we don’t even have a working CD player, nor a laptop/desktop computer with a CD drive, and in another previous digital collection I had also thrown out my external CD drive! D’oh and double D’oh! And on SBL, they had mentioned you could just buy each individual track off iTunes for a couple of bucks. But who buys music anymore, since everyone streams everything!?

But then I was poking around the web and found a tool which would convert Spotify songs to MP3 (I’m thinking not all that legally though). But I was curious, so I downloaded the application (Hitpaw), and it actually works quite well. Once you select the Spotify to MP3 converter, it asks you to log into your Spotify account, and then in moments you can see all your playlists, and you can easily convert them to MP3 which is then saved to your hard drive. However, there’s also a catch! The free version allows you only 2 free conversions, not a month, but ever! Whilst the paid version is $20 per month, which gives you unlimited conversions. So, we find ourselves back at the $20 per month realm, and this time it’s $20 USD.

But I used one of my 2 free conversions, just to test it out and converted a song we were currently practicing at church where the original recording was in a different key to how we do it, and then took the MP3 recording and plugged it into Moises. And I have to say Moises is a pretty slick tool, within minutes it had split out the song into 4 tracks (the free version only allows for 4 tracks), so you now have the option of isolating vocals, drums, bass and other- and the clarity of each track is flawless! There’s AI in there which does the heavy lifting, so prior to AI, tools like this would just boost one part of the track, but you could always still hear everything else muffled in the background, so that old stuff wasn’t very useful if you wanted to sample a track. But Moises, I’d say it was near perfect, as it was super clear  as if they were using the master tracks where each instrument had been recorded separately, before mixed together. And the free version of Moises allows for 5 uploads a month, which isn’t bad. And the paid version unlocks all features and enables unlimited uploads for only $3.99 USD per month. Literally as cheap as chips!

Now, here is where I started to lose my enthusiasm again, when I tried to use both Hitpaw and Moises on my own with a screen reader (as I’m blind). And I’m sad to say, neither tool was blind accessible. Boo! I couldn’t do anything on my own, whilst my wife said that both tools had a simple to use user interface. Grrrr!

And when it came down to it, when we tried practicing with it, removing ‘Other’ (strings, guitar, synths) and bass, my wife’s opinion of the experience (we were acoustic guitar and bass), was that it was a diminished experience compared to just practicing with the original track off Spotify. And when I tried it again, with Moises playing vocals and drums, and I was on bass, it was only ok. But I found myself playing a lot softer and more tentative, as after all the music was coming out of my wife’s built-in speakers on her desktop computer,  so I had to hold myself back, so not being able to just let loose and play? I didn’t end up having as much fun as I usually do when rocking-out with Spotify, when the music is coming out of my Fender Rumble bass amp (phone plugged into the audio jack).

And when we sat down and listened to just the bass guitar parts, that also depressed me, as for the first time we could actually hear the original bass fills (no longer drowned out by everything else which goes on in a recording) and we heard how crazy the bass player was getting! And it just highlighted that I’d never be able to replicate what they were doing, as I just can’t move that fast all over the fretboard like a pro. Boo!

So, after managing to replicate what HymnBook can do, what is my end verdict on multi-tracks and being able to isolate individual parts of songs? I think the verdict is still out.

If I could use it on my own, I think I’d be all in now. While the moral aspect is another issue, we could easily sign-up to Hitpaw for a month, and convert hundreds and hundreds of songs from Spotify in that month and cancel after only ever spending $20. And even though I’m on a Spotify Premium account, so I am paying for music, that still feels pretty dodgy. While purchasing each song on iTunes for $1.99 each, after buying say 200 songs, you’d be down almost $400, which is also a pretty big upfront investment to make. While it was fantastic to hear each individual component of a song and completely geek out over it, and practicing with select instruments from the band was interesting, but I think the novelty would ware-off quite quickly, especially if the sound quality is not as good as what comes out of my bass amp. So yeah, maybe having multi-tracks of songs is good in theory, but in practice? Maybe not as useful in the real world. But yeah, if you want to test it out for yourself, just Google Hitpaw, and Moises- try your hand at being a Music Producer! Or a stand-in bass player for your favourite band!  

touchsmelltastesoundLeave a comment