Gah

Spent a bit of time yesterve playing with an FV-1 (a Fender electric violin) played through a Rockman—a tiny battery-powered headphone amp usually used for practicing electric guitars silently, without waking one's sleeping family.

Reaction: gah! Terrible, terrible, terrible tone. Fiddled with the knobs endlessly, and whatever I did, it still just sounded dreadfully tinny.

This is probably partly that I'm pretty new to the instrument, and my tone isn't exactly gorgeous even on a decent acoustic violin. But I don't sound that bad. The setup somehow made it vastly worse.

Suspect it has to do with the inputs in the Rockman having been built more for guitar, which is probably much heavier on the amplitude in the lower frequencies, lighter higher, and thus needs the amp to pump up the higher while throttling the lower. Do that with a violin's tone balance, and you get no bass, and a terribly raspy, whiny treble... added to the fact that a Rockman isn't exactly the warmest-sounding device in the world to begin with.

Thinkin' there has to be a business opportunity there: portable practice amps for electric violins which don't make them sound quite so dreadful. It really isn't much of an incentive to practice, hearing it sounding that incredibly bad.

Iced coffee

I spent my first few years of my life a long way north, seem to have somewhat acclimated to it; I really don't do heat. So, seein' as it's been getting warmer lately, I've been doing the iced coffee thing a fair bit of late.

And no, this ain't exactly a recipe blog. But it is my humble opinion that this concoction and the accompanying technique, developed in the labs of yours truly over recent summers, needs to be shared.

It goes like this:

1. Brew two demitasses worth of espresso, by whatever means suits your fancy (I use an electric pump-driven machine, myself).
2. Optional step: dissolve any sugar you might want into the espresso (I often put in a modest teaspoon). You want to do this now while it's hot and thus easier, 'cos this stuff isn't going to be too hot for much longer.
3. Chill the espresso. The following method can get it to nicely chilled in about a minute or two, which is probably the best you can do sans liquid Nitrogen: pour the espresso into a steel martini shaker, then put the martini shaker in a smallish mixing bowl full of ice water... enough water to float the ice and make sure heat gets carried away from the mixer, thassall. Stir the espresso gently (note to the scientifically disinclined: if you've a shaker which isn't steel, this ain't gonna work, or not with any speed—the stainless steel is usually quite thin and a good conductor of heat, which is why it works so well for this).
4. Pour chilled espresso and milk into a 16 oz. chilled beer mug about a third to a half full of ice cubes.

That's it. Very iced coffee in just a few minutes.

Yes, you probably could do this with just one demitasse, and a smaller mug. But I don't.

Oops

Washed my cellphone this morning. How I do love a nice, crisp, freshly washed cellphone...

Probably shoulda used the delicate cycle. Or, I guess, checked my pockets.

In case you hadn't heard

... and also happen to care, the Canadian government survived the budget vote last week. Tho' the speaker of the house had to break the tie.

I find there's something marvellously European about having a continually unstable minority government presiding over an incredibly fractious parliament. Add the separatists to the mix (granted, the Quebecois variety haven't blown anything up in a fair bit longer than have the Basques), and I feel a bit like I'm in Spain, of late. So who's up for tapas?

Mmmm... anchovy-stuffed olives.

Obligatory lithping pun here

Thith ith jutht to thay I won't be commenting on 'Revenge of the Thith' in thith blog (nor, probably, theeing it in theatreth). What can I thay about it that hathn't been thaid already anyway? And Holly and PZM have thaid it well enough already in any cathe.

Bigger than Jesus now

I just got some otherwise fairly typical 'increase her pleasure with our ever-so-effective sugar pills herbal supplements' spam whose return address implies it was sent by one 'Jesus'.

Great. More bulk email from mythical dead and/or resurrected god-men types... I'll have to file it with Osiris' offer to refinance my home. Time to update the spam filter, I guess.

(Alternate title for this entry: Blessed are the not particularly well-hung.)