Toothbrush

Note to self: Always check to see if you have a new toothbrush before you throw away your old, used one... x_x

Take My Life

Chris Tomlin is one of my favorite song-writers and worship leaders. I stumbled upon the Passion Conferences site and found that their 2008 world tour is making a stop in Sydney later on in the year (21-Oct). Would absolutely love to attend one of the Passion conferences as I am a huge Crowder fan as well. I'd say there's a 5% chance that I might try to make it down to Sydney somehow...

There's an old song that I came across again from one of their older albums, "Sacred Revolution." It's called "Take My Life" and it's based off the hymn "Take My Life and Let It Be." I love the lyrical richness found in hymns and the little bridge part that Tomlin adds is great too...

Here am I, all of me.
Take my life, it's all for thee.

Wordle

So I've stumbled across this neat online toy called Wordle that creates these word clouds from a source of text. The more often a word is found, the larger the font size. Here's one of my blog...

Finger pickin' good

With the guitar, sometimes I feel that I've progressed to this stage where I don't really know where to go next. Right now I'm just trying to learn various songs that challenge me to do different things so that I can pick up on the various techniques required to play the songs and then hopefully incorporate those techniques into other music. I'm sure that if I practiced scales and stuff like I did when I took piano lessons that would also help improve my technique heaps - but that's no fun!

There's this guy on YouTube that has done a couple really good John Mayer covers and I've watched his videos over and over to check out his technique. Here's one he did of "Why Georgia":



Aside from seeing how he frets the chords, I like watching his right hand technique. For the longest time I never realized how much more versatility you could add to your playing using your right hand. Different strumming patterns, muting some strings/all strings off an on while strumming, using a pick or using your fingers...it's stuff that you can't really get from looking at guitar tabs. I started learning how to play using a pick and I've been heavily dependent on a pick for my playing. But slowly I'm realizing how much more you can do if you use your fingers as well.

Watching kman518 in that video, it looks like he starts off Why Georgia finger picking and then when he gets to the first bridge with "Cause I wonder sometimes, about the outcome..." he switches to a strumming pattern using either a pick or his fingernail (it sounds like he's using a pick with the way he can attack the strings). If he is using a pick, he switches to it very quickly and efficiently without missing a beat in the song. I think John Mayer holds a pick between his ring finger and pinky when he plays some songs and kman518 could be doing the same...

I've been experimenting with ways of switching back and forth by holding a pick in my right hand while I play. I could always hold the pick between my lips but then I'd look funny doing it and you can't sing while holding a pick between your lips. But holding a pick between my fingers was really awkward and I kept dropping it. So instead, I hold it using only my pinky finger...

I've been practicing but it's hard to switch the pick back to my thumb and index finger. Maybe I just need to practice more...


I'm hoping that if I can master moving the pick in my right hand, I will be able to switch from fingerpicking to strumming with ease - even mid-song if necessary. For example, one of my favorite hymns is by Horatio Spafford called "It Is Well With My Soul" and I've been working on a cover of it that starts off nice and mellow using some fingerpicking. But then for the last couple verses I try to pick it up a bit and use the pick to build up the song to a stronger ending. I'll have to see what other uses I can come up with for the pinky pick hold...

Out of Shape

So it's been a while since I've hurt myself playing a sport or doing something active. The biggest reason is because I haven't really been doing any physical activity. I've never had any major injuries in the past - maybe a few sprained ankles from volleyball or basketball. The last major injury I had was from cooking while camping. I was using the gas stoves to cook steaks and some of the oil splashed on my legs and I sustained some 2nd degree burns. I managed to avoid infection and any serious complications but I think I will be forever left with the scars.

Fig 1. 4 days after burns

Fig 2. 11 days after burns

Fig 3. 20 days after burns

Haha, no need to thank me for grossing you out with my fugly legs. As you can see about a week or two after some of the larger burn spots were looking pretty bad...there was definite loss of epidermis and you could see the underlying dermis. Unfortunately, this has been replaced by pigmented scar tissue and I'm now left with these dark patches on my legs. There goes any chance of me being a leg model...

About 3 weeks ago, my flatmate's boyfriend brought over a Canadian Football from Toronto and we played a little game of 2-hand-touch. I also threw it around a few times and a few days later I was noticing that my shoulder was really bothering me. It gave me a sharp pain everytime I tried to elevate it above my head. Long story short, I went and had an ultrasound done and it turns out that have a small tear in the tendon to my supraspinatus shoulder muscle (the most common site of rotator cuff injury). Probably serves me right for not warming my arm up at all (and not using my arm to throw anything like that in many many months) and suddenly chucking the ball around fairly hard. Actually, probably serves me right for doing pretty much 'nil physical activity for the last 6 months. The doctor said that it's not severe enough for surgery (thank God) but it may require a steroid injection to help with the inflammation (there is some bursitis that is causing the pain when I abduct my shoulder). Plus, I should probably get some physiotherapy done in order to strengthen the muscles around it and aid in recovery.

So when is the next opportunity for injury? September 7th for the Bridge to Brisbane run. A whole group of us are going to do this 10 km run and if I don't do some preparation for it, I will likely hurt myself in the process of trying to run a respectable time. Do I like running? No. In fact, I don't know if I've ever ran 10 km straight before. I can run pretty fast (at least I used to be able to) but I can't run very far; nor do I have the passion for running as some people do but this will be a good reason for me to do some physical activity in the meantime so I don't pull a hamstring on Sept 7th. The training will start as soon as my shoulder stops hurting when I move it...