I’ve added a few more products to Turbosquid. Here’s a preview of them:

<a target="squid" href="http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/506176?referral=mastermesh"



This one is a photo of a brick wall where the bricks come together. It might be useful for creating pattern textures.

<a target="squid" href="http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/506177?referral=mastermesh"



I belive this ne is a picture of tire tracks on a parking garage floor

<a target="squid" href="http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/506178?referral=mastermesh"



This is another photo of some concrete in the same parking structure.

<a target="squid" href="http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/506179"



This is yet another photo of concrete in the parking garage. This one has a few more interesting textures that are more in focus and might be useful for bump maps.

<a target="squid" href="http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/506180?referral=mastermesh"



This one is another interesting concrete pattern in the parking garage.

<a target="squid" href="http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/506181?referral=mastermesh"



This is a photo of the yellow line on the floor of the parking garage that outlines where cars should park. I love the weathered look of this line. It shows the harsh reality that these sort of places see. Mankind trys to create this neat little line and mother nature chooses to chew it up over time, creating a unique form of beauty.

Scary stuff…

http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20091209/REG/312099987

Lisa Gallagher, senior director of privacy and security at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, presented results of a survey at an HHS-sponsored advisory panel on standards in November. Fifty-two percent of large hospitals, 33% of mid-sized hospitals and 25% of small hospitals surveyed reported experiencing a data breach in the past year…

http://www.muhealth.org/documents/compliance/Word_Documents/December2009.pdf

——————
In October and November, a slew of healthcare organizations announced patient data losses, including:

• Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center: Over the weekend of Oct. 9-11, the office of hospitalists employed by Cogent Healthcare was burglarized in a building adjacent to Aurora St. Luke’s in Milwaukee, according to hospital spokesman Adam Beeson. Taken was a laptop computer with billing information on 6,400 people, mostly Aurora hospital inpatients, that included in almost all cases, names and diagnoses, and in some cases addresses, medical record numbers and Social Security numbers, Beeson said.

• Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee: In its Chattanooga office, 57 hard drives were stolen early in October from servers being used for training, according to a plan spokeswoman. The drives held copies of 300,000 computer
“screens” pulled up during customer service interactions along with recordings of 50,000 hours of telephone conversations about patient care and medical bills, according to the health plan. The data included names, addresses, dates of birth and, in some cases, diagnoses.

• Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia: On Oct. 20, an employee had a laptop computer stolen from a car parked at home; the computer contained the Social Security numbers and other personal information of 943 people, hospital
spokeswoman Juliann Walsh confirmed last week. Walsh said the hospital is providing the affected parties with identity theft monitoring, consultation and restoration services,

• Harris County Hospital District: Sixteen employees were fired for alleged violations of patient privacy laws involving the records of a first-year resident, according to a district official. The Houston Chronicle reported that the workers were fired Nov. 20 for looking at the medical records of a first-year Baylor I College resident assigned
to Ben Taub General Hospital, Houston, according to the Associated Press.

• Health Net: Sometime in May, a hard drive disappeared from the Shelton, Conn., office of Health Net, an insurer based in Woodland Hills, Calif. According to Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the drive contained health information, and financial and personal data, such as Social Security numbers, on 446,000 Connecticut patients. According to Blumenthal, his office was not notified of the breach until Nov. 18, about the same time as plan members. Blumenthal said his office was investigating.

I’m posting this post today to test this new thing out. I’m typing this from my blog. In theory twitterfeed will feed this in to twitter, then twitter will tweet it out to facebook. We’ll see if it works! If you are seeing this in facebook, it worked.

As someone who works for a hospital, in a Department that works closely with insurance contract interpretion, I’ve seen a lot of behind the scenes sort of things that a lot of people don’t necessarily think about when thinking about their hospital and doctor bills – things that might be costing them a lot but that they are not aware of, costs both in healthcare being provided to them as well as monetary costs…

Here’s a few tips related to healthcare that you might want to keep in mind in the future when dealing with your insurance company, hospital, doctor, or any healthcare provider. I’ll probably post more tips in future postings as I think of new tidbits. I’ll try to keep this as specific as I can so that it’s useful information for the general public but as unspecific as I can so that I don’t get in trouble for HIPPA violations or get in trouble with my boss if anyone I work with ever stumbles across this in the future.

Reciepts…
Always ask for a receipt any time you pay a bill. Sometimes clerical errors can cause bills to continue to be sent to patients by a hospital after the bill is sent. Other times, it’s possible that the bills are being computer generated by a system that is automated, and it’s impossible to turn the system off if a bill comes in… In many cases, at some healthcare facilities, hospital bills DO get sent to patients after the bills are already paid, and in some cases, those bills will have a date on the top of them that indicates that they were produced AFTER the payment for the bill has already been paid by the patient. This usually happens because of the fact that many hospitals, doctor offices, and other healthcare providers outsource some or all of their billing, and/or rely on billing systems that are not able to always be 100% up-to-date. In some, rare cases, this could be considered fraud because the bills are being created after the claim in question is already paid, making it highly confusing to patients, who sometimes send in payments any time they receive a bill, resulting in overpayments.

Overpayments… and Small Dollar Writeoffs…
Many healthcare facilities, and some insurance companies as well, typically write off small dollar debits and credits below a certain amount. For instance some hospitals might write off debits and credits below a fifteen dollar amount, and some physician offices may write off debits or credits with values around five or ten dollars. The actual amount varies from place to place, and office to office. What is important to know about this is that this means that they are likely going to write off a certain amount of money up to a certain dollar amount if it is either OVER or underpaid. For underpayments, this can work to your benefit since it might mean that you are getting away with not paying your copay, etc.

However, As mentioned in the above paragraph on Receipts, that might mean that your overpayment on bills that you’ve already paid are being written off and you’ll never be refunded for the amount you overpaid on your bill if it’s an overpayment amount under the threshold that the facility in question is using to determine writeoffs. You would think that it would be unethical for healthcare facilities to keep your overpaid money, but they don’t think twice about it because they have deemed the amount below that threshold, whatever amount it’s set at, to be not worth their time since it’ll cost them more in paying their staff to refund you the money than the actual refund itself is worth. This can really add up over time, since some people may put off going to the doctor for many months, and then go and see several doctors in clinics in a hosptial all on one day – resulting in multiple bills for the same day…

For example… If a hospital has a 15.00 small dollar write off, and physicians at the same facility have a 5.00 writeoff policy that is similar… 15.00 overpayment could be being thrown away in a write off for one bill, and another 5 for the physician bill that’s for the same service… for a total write off of 20.00 overpayment for one clinics for one day… maybe one for diabetes, one for an eye exam, one for a follow up on something else, and a couple of others for various other problems… Lets imagine what could happen if you saw 5 clinics on the same day, and got an x-ray or mri too, both of which could result in additional bills… That could be 7 or more hospital clinic bills, and 7 or more physicial bills since the physicians and hospital send out different bills… You could have possibly overpaid 20×7 = $140.00 in total for just that one day… and never have a chance of getting it back since they consider it written off as a small dollar amount that they don’t want to mess with… Imagine how much money you could be loosing in something like this if you have ongoing problems such as chemo treatments, diabetes, or any other numerous health related issues that require ongoing visits?…

Make sure to ask what the small dollar write off policies at the facilities you deal with are. Also, be sure to always ask as many questions as you can think of related to your bill so that you know what is going on with your money.

Applying Overpayments…
Similar to the issues mentioned above, some facilities tend to move money around on various bills that a patient has where they see fit. In other words, if you overpay a bill one month, and you incur another bill the next month, some facilities will apply the payment up to the amount owed, move the overpayment and apply that overpayment amount to the next bill that still has a balance, resulting in a very messy accounting of where the money you paid was actually applied, and also making it very confusing to know if you have overpaid anything or still owe money on something. This typically happens if you pay a copay or coinsurnace payment to a healthcare provider at the time that the service was provided, and then later, after your insurance is billed, it’s discovered that the insurance paid your bill in full, and there was no actual balance you should have paid in the first place, or the insurance has left you with a copay, deductible, or coinsurance amount that is smaller than what you paid at the time of service. Make sure you know your benefits, and are kept updated with changes, and know exactly how much to pay when, if possible.

Discounts
Many healcare providers and insurance companies have negotiated contracts between one another so that the insurance company can pay a smaller amount than 100% of the charges billed by the healthcare facility, and the payment with that discount makes the payment considered to be “paid in full” by the healthcare facility. These managed care contracts can be very confusing, and often can be interpreted in a number of different ways by a number of different parties, depending on how the contracts themselves are worded. Many of these contracts also have new amendments, negotiations, etc made to them yearly, or on some sort of regular basis. Make sure to check all explanation of benefits that your insurance company sends you to make sure that you only paid the amount that you should have to the healcare provider. If you paid the amount that should have been discounted, request your money back.

Some facilities will work with uninsured people, or people that have out-of-network benefits at a particular facility that they go to (out of state provider that specializes in something that a place more local cannot handle, etc.). Similarly, some facilities are willing to negotiate with under-insured people, such as Amish communities, Church groups, people who have no health insurance that are willing to pay a certain percent of the bill immediately, etc. Make sure to ask as many questions as you can think of to both your insurance company and healthcare provider to make sure you are not overpaying on something that should have been discounted.

Medicare… and other Governement Programs can be very odd sometimes…
Did you know that Medicare pays a flat Diagnosis Related Grouper (DRG) rate on inpatient claims? They also pay something called an outlier in addition to that if the amount billed is high enough and falls in to certain conditions. What is very important to understand about this is that sometimes, the flat DRG payment rate is MORE than the amount that some healthcare providers charge. In other words, if a DRG rate is something like $1500.00, and the hospital is only charging $1200.00 for the bill, Medicare is paying the hospital $1500.00, and this is considered to be legal since Medicare paid the DRG rate. What is even more odd about this sort of thing is that even though the hospital is getting paid more than it’s billing, they can still legally hit you up for even more money in addition to this because you still legally owe your copay or deductible amount… In other words the hospital is getting paid more than it’s charging and you are still on the hook for more money than that. No wonder the folks in Washington are trying to reform Healthcare. Tricare (the insurance for our armed service men, and retirees) is set up very similar to Medicare. In addition some insurance companies use Medicare as a bases for establishing the amounts they pay… so in the past some commercial insurance companies have been known to pay hospitals more than the hospital charged for certain services, due to the fact that the insurance(s) in question were paying based on flat DRG rates, in contracts that did not have a “lesser of DRG Rate or total billed charges” clause in it – and patients still were getting billed copays in addition to this payment over the total billed charge amount… Ask as questions to both your insurance company and healthcare provider(s). Things can and are confusing sometimes…

Scanning money…
It is illegal for healthcare facilities, insurances, or anyone else to scan paper money at 100% of the original size of the money in question. Doing so is considered by the United States Government to be counterfitting. In the past, some healthcare providers have scanned dollar bills as proof of payment for some low dollar copays. If you ever see anyone scanning money, ask them why they are doing that, where they are saving it, and at what size they are saving it or printing it. Some newer software, such as Adobe Photoshop, will actually try to not save scanned money. It is legal to scan money, so long as certain rules are followed, so Adobe actually is going a few steps too far in completely stopping the scanning of money. http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/money_illustrations.shtml

more posts will likely come in the future about healthcare…

Just for reference and historical information, I’m going to list my old blogs, and possibly old websites here if they still exist. This right here that you are reading now is my real blog for today and going foward in time, but I’m going to link to my old blogs from here for my own reading and for yours too if you want. I am going to do that so that there’s a link back and forth between here and there so that you can see where my thought processes have been in the past, and I can too… since there’s a lot of themes and ideas that I come back to over time…

http://oldnewsstories.blogspot.com/ – the idea with this was to edit public domain news stories in the archive since the text that came from the scan was horrible…

http://midnightmoonrunner.blogspot.com/ – this was a highly cliche’ identity thingy for me a long time back…

http://paintstorm.blogspot.com/ – When I get creative I become like a storm… it starts slow, then speeds up and goes hyper with thousands of ideas crossing my mind silmultanously… but there’s a constant quite in the storm… sort of similar to the search for IT in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road

http://role-playing-onion.blogspot.com/- I used to role play a lot back in high school, college, and some after that too, at least in my mind and online…

http://poet-traits.blogspot.com/ – I envision poet-traits as more or less portraits created with poety describing the individual or quoted by the individual where the lines of the poetry are shaped with curves and splines and things to create the face of the individual. I used to do a lot of drawings like that back in college somewhat in sketch books… sketch books are probably best for it, or something like illustrator or inkspace… but sketchbooks are best because of the immediacy of the work and the fact that it’s easy to just keep turning the book and the drawing instrument..

http://satelliteman.blogspot.com/ – I’m in to FTA Satellite…. It’s a neat hobby.

http://entropia-delight.blogspot.com/ – this was my first Entropia Blog…

http://jeffthomannart.blogspot.com/ – This was my latest art blog…

http://haikumostdays.blogspot.com/ – I like writing haiku sometimes

http://mariasgoods.blogspot.com/ – this was another Entropia blog from the days when Maria did not own a shop yet and did street trading in Port Atlantis and Twin Peaks.

http://jeffthomannsart.blogspot.com/ – This was another take on an art blog…

http://obscuremissourilaws.blogspot.com/ – This never went far… but studying the laws, there is a lot of loopholes and plainly stupid things going on, not just in Missouri, but everywhere.

http://photogametry.blogspot.com/ – 3d math and the stuff behind 3d animation is fascinating.

http://harm-onica.blogspot.com/ – I have a harmonica but have not ever learned to use it yet. I was going to learn a while back since my wife and I carpool and worked different hours. I was going to try to practice the harmonica while waiting in the car for her, but never got too far with it because, as you can tell by reading this post, I’ve got a lot of hobbies, and so never found the time to master the harmonica (yet)

http://jeffsdoodles.blogspot.com/ – This was another art blog – based on quick little works…

http://spameaters.blogspot.com/ – I was going to try to copy spam, but decided not to go on with it after a few posts since lots of other websites are out there and it’s stupid to actually make that stuff popular.

http://three-d-news.blogspot.com/ – 3d industry is fascinating. I read 3d World, HDRI magazine, and a lot of other various publications sometimes… also visit lots of forums related to the industry.

http://publicdomainremix.blogspot.com/ – I love public domain stuff and editing it.

http://grababeat.blogspot.com/ – I was going to try to do some music since I own a midi keyboard and a voice recorder, but never got too far with it. I still like the idea of mixing things up like that.

http://720×480doodles.blogspot.com/ – I was going to do doodles that were 720×480 pixels… but never got far with it really… sort of a silly format to go with…

http://knowledgeyoucanuse.blogspot.com/ – this was a good idea blog, but I never did much with it. This blog will likely have good ideas mixed in with various posts as we move forward in time.

http://jeffthomann.blogspot.com/ – real original… lol… almost as good as jeffthomann.wordpress.com,

http://makesomemoneyrightnow.blogspot.com/ – My wife and I are in to online businesses. I was going to try to explain to people my experiences with all of that… I still probably will in this blog since this is my ONE blog moving foward…

http://5×7-doodles.blogspot.com/ 5×7 inch drawings and doodles… I love that format since it’s a size that can be used in postcards on cafepress, and is also a size that fits in 5×7 inch picture frames, and also can easily be shrunken down to artcard sizes.

http://archaicsymphony.blogspot.com/ – this was going to be a music and public domain remix blog, but someone else already was using that same basic name on a website, so I gave up on it quickly.

http://great-quotes.blogspot.com/ – I love reading quotes, especially from artist and other creative individuals. I may do a few quotes in this blog moving foward in time since this is the only blog I plan to keep moving forward…

http://publicdomainartbyjeff.blogspot.com/ – I love public domain works and was thinking about creating some of my own public domain works. I might still do this in the future.

http://hackinghealthcare.blogspot.com/ – I work for a University Hospital. I was going to use this blog with a false name since I may have revealed some basic info that some might see as trade secrets, or at least things that would make the organization I work for look not so great since there is a lot of little dirty secrets out there that most folks don’t necessarily know about in the public. I may still do a tidbit now and then but will be careful to word things so that I am not putting my job at risk… especially since this blog makes it very apparent who I am by the name on it…

Over the last few years, I’ve been an active member of a lot of various forums… I’ll try to post my Profiles for the various forums here in the not-too-distant future. This post might be edited a lot over time as I add more forum memberships to the list. Every forum that I’m in has a fairly highly active community of people that share one or more of the hobbies that I love.

I’ll try to post them all here because honestly, I sometimes forget the urls to some of the places, and/or forget to visit some of them after I leave them a month or many months…. I’m doing this to sort of consolidate all of my online activity to this one blog more and make it easier for people and myself to follow my online identity easier. I’m also doing it to help folks that share some of my hobbies or interests know where to go to find other people besides me that share similar interests. I know, you might say, but that’s just calling for identity theft. I don’t really think so since most of these places are places you can find out about me anyways just with a quick google or forum search.

Entropia Universe Related Forums
http://www.entropiaforum.com/forums/members/mastermesh.html - Entropia Forum is probably the largest and most active communities related to Entropia Universe that exists today. Entropia Planets is trying to take it’s spot, but I highly doubt it can since Entropiaplanets is new, and mostly has content that is being copied from Entropiaforum.

http://www.entropiaplanets.com/forums/member.php?u=145 - Entropiaplanets is another Entropia related Forum. As mentioned above, it’s new. The people that started it are actually members of Entropia Forum. I’m known as mastermesh there.

3d Related Forums
http://forums.cgsociety.org - CG Talk is a highly active community of artists in the 3d animation industry. It’s probably one of the most active members of professional level artists in this field that I’ve ever come across. Over here I used to be known as mastermesh or meshmaster, but one or both of those got banned for inactivity or something – probably because I did not log in for over a year or something at some point in time, so my new account there is known as jeffthomann.

http://www.3dbuzz.com – I’m known as mastermesh on 3d buzz. 3d Buzz is a tutorial and learning website community related to 3d software packages. It’s was one of the first and best places online to offer free 3d training in the form of downloadable videos. I don’t visit here much these days, but do come back occassionally.

Public Domain Related
http://librivox.org/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=7570&sid=dd69261e6f95b53f261932dec392ada3 - I’m on librivox as mastermesh, but have not done a lot of recordings there yet. The goal of Librivox is to have people voice record open source documents off of Project Guttenburg (and possibly other places) so that there is a human voice in these Public Domain documents that is more accessible and easier for people to listen to and relate to. Project Gutenburg has some automated voice recordings that were created with text to voice technology, but that all sounds robotic and messy. The technology is getting better, but has a long ways to go. To bypass that need for the tech to develop, Librivox is just asking people to read, record, and upload… Can’t get more human sounding than a recording of a live human voice.

http://www.pdsounds.org/users/mastermesh - PD sounds is a Public Domain sound archive. It is related to Librivox because some of the folks that set it up are actually from Librivox. The point of PD sounds is for people to record various things and upload them to share with one another. At this point in time, it’s not highly active since there’s not a lot of people in the community there. Perhaps you can help that out by joining and uploading some sounds. All you need is some sort of recording device… a cell phone maybe… maybe a voice recorder… even a tape recorder or mic on your computer would work.

Free-To-Air Satellite Forum
http://www.satelliteguys.us/member.php?u=43610 – I’m mastermesh on satelliteguys.us. I love the forums over there because it’s one of the few free-to-air forums on the interenet that encourages people to use ethics, and not illegal hack their equipment to pull in subscription pay tv channels from Dish Network, Direct Tv, Bell Express Vu, and whatever other pay tv channels are up there in the sky that hackers try to bypass the security on. There’s lots of legit and legal, truly free, satellite channels and feeds up there… no need to hack it and go illegal and take a chance of jail or huge fees just to see a silly tv station. There’s no as many stations as there used to be now that Equity, and it’s Retro TV Network (RTN) stations went under… but there’s still a lot up there, and more will likely come in the future.

Playon.

Digital Painting
http://www.mattepainting.org/vb/member.php?s=a11f3eb93316a2468a96bc19ac4c0d42&u=2739 – I’m mastermesh on mattepainting.org. I have not posted much there, but would like to do that more, and actually learn the secrets of the art of matte painting. It’s a nice, highly realistic art form that combines painting and theater along with computer technology, so it’s right up my alley.

More forum links and descriptions will be added here over time…

Yes, I’m on Facebook…
http://www.facebook.com/jeff.thomann

Turbosquid

I have over 9000 total published assets at Turbosquid at this point in time. I’m always adding more now and then. I love walking around with a digital camera taking texture photos of wood grain, bricks, concrete, asphalt, and a lot of different things, and taking reference shots of clouds and a lot of other things now and then. I also love taking a camera with me on vacation to various places around the country to shoot as many things as I can. I see the camera as a simple little “light” version of a sketchbook for me. I have always been interested in texture photos and can fondly remember finding out about texture photos the first time by visiting websites way back in the early 1990s when this stuff was all brand new and everyone was using early versions of photoshop that could not do much. Most of my photos on turbosquid are taken directly out of a camera card, without edits. I do sometime edit if I need to remove some copyrighted or trademarked element from a photo, but these days, I’m mainly trying to stay away from putting that stuff in the lens in the first place.

Doesn't look much like an altar to the god of music, does it?

Spent the afternoon assembling a workstation that I got from Thomann last year (or possibly the year before – I really can’t keep track of time these days).

Things came together quite well. Looking forward to putting all my gear in place some day soon…:-)

Regards,

djp

上次提到几家方便光顾的实体乐器店，这贴来讲点网购乐器的相关事宜。

1.全欧第一的乐器网店Thomann就在德国。不像北美的Guitar Center，thomann并没有相应规模的实体店作为支撑，不过从另外角度说来，买家也不必担心会收到展示品。并且他的客服实非他人可比，购前咨询和售后服务都很到位且不论，寄琴到订户手上之前也都会先好好检查整理过——毕竟他们要处理退换货的话也是个麻烦事。当然了，这里指的是他们的麻烦，不是你用户的麻烦。我自己买东西来玩玩，发现不对胃口，30天内寄回退款的次数很多，从来都没二话。当然试用期间要好好注意保护货品外观，原包装也要尽量保存完整，否则退款时也要相应打一点折扣。

2.其他可以参考的网店比如上贴介绍过的Music Store Professional和Musik Productiv，还有位于法兰克福的Musik Schmidt，有时同样东西会比thomann便宜一点。这几家也都有30天退货，可以放心购买。我个人觉得电子产品，比如效果器、midi设备从哪里买都一样，要买新琴的话才需要好好考虑客服状况，各位自斟。

3.购买前当然要做好功课。一般人最常用的去处是Harmony Central的器材Review版面，如果嫌上面人说话太罗嗦也可以去Muscian’s friend（之前提到的Guitar Center的网店）查相应产品的用户反馈。习惯看德文的话，德国最大的乐手论坛叫做Musiker-board，器材区下面都有Reviews版面可以查阅。此外，我几个月前收到thomann的邮件说可以写review换取最多50欧元的gutschein，这样好处当然是review都是由实际在他们店里买了那样东西的人写的，缺点嘛，大概是因为利益驱动，reviewer一般会倾向于给产品多说几句好话。

4.买卖二手货，我自己是在折腾了一些年之后，现在只集中看两个地方。其一当然是ebay（德国是ebay在美国之外全球最大的网上二手市场）我是建议你有一些特定目标，针对性地设好电邮alarm就不要再常上ebay页面去看了，不然浪费太多时间。第二是MusikerBoard上面的跳蚤市场，交易相当活跃，也可以发广告求购特定器材。不过我觉得上面不切实际的标价相当多，而且这种卖家一般脑子比较轴，不要指望能说服对方杀下价来。

讲到买二手很多人都有心理障碍，可以理解。但是另一方面，新琴买下一过退款期，就意味着你不得不吃下至少三成的价值损失。而ebay交易中，时机和运气合适的话，买低卖高的例子很常见。这里面一下子就是数百欧的差价，怕也不得不认真看待。而且弹琴的人一般年头一长，要么手头一松，容易倾向于收进些风格不合或干脆没时间弹到的琴，到一定阶段之后往往仅出于不愿照顾东西的心理就愿意把一些存品出清。这种情况据我的观察在德国ebay上多得很，我自己就数次以很好的价钱买到琴况一流，连拾音器保护膜都没撕掉的电琴。这时候尽量多了解卖家的情况就很重要，除了ebay评分，更重要的是这个卖家在最近这段时间做了什么其他交易？交易额和你这在看的这样东西有没有可比性？同样的，MusikerBoard那个跳市的一大好处就是你可以查到卖家在论坛的发帖记录，可以对其人情况有较全面认识。我自己在德国ebay上倒买倒卖近百起，绝大多数都顺利成交，双方满意；只有一次买只80欧的麦克风收到假货，我电邮去骂了那个卖家威胁采取法律行动，对方（一个希腊名字）马上认错退钱。

5.清楚自己的兴趣很重要，绝大多数学吉他的人最后也就坚持了三个月。从这点看，想学吉他的入门者上来最好的选择应该是买那种调音表背带拨片全含的新手套装，电琴木琴都有。能挺过三个月的，对自己的音乐喜好和能力应该也有实际一些的认识了，这时再去考虑买适合自己爱好和经济情况的设备去进一步学习吧。

最后，如果只是想培养点音乐爱好打发时间，而不是为了弹唱把妹的话，学吉他可能不如学midi有趣。尤其是吉他上最后硬件投资肯定小不了；而玩midi的话，只要买台像样点的键盘，配合电脑音源（嗯，没错，都下得到），能做出的音响效果是很骇人的，录音又不需其他外设，非常方便。来看看下面这个用键盘弹电吉他的范例：

这个是软件合成器Omnisphere在实际演奏中的Demo，可以跳过前面两分钟产品说明直接看看他音色演示的部分：

Am 27.11.2009 um 19 Uhr präsentiert Ulrich Maiss in Zusammenarbeit mit Thomann und Embraced Audio die Software NOTION 3. Anmeldungen für die kostenlose Veranstaltung in Burgebrach können bei maissmusic oder Thomann vorgenommen werden.

Mehr Informationen über Notion 3 finden Sie hier.

the weekend that was:
- saturday was, in many ways, was a great day of rest. a very relaxed morning led on to an afternoon of, mainly, window shopping. i say window shopping because i don’t think that either rosie or i bought anything; not even a drink. the evening bought the last meal with my parents before they headed off to romania (at some silly time sunday morning). the evening also bought our first “shopping” trip and the eurovision song contest. i’ll cover first things first. while my parents are away rosie and i are, attempting, to cook entirely for ourselves (and my gran) we won’t be resorting to any ready meals. so, with this in mind we headed over to tesco’s in shoreham and shopped. i suppose i really should mentioneurovision; i am a fan and i thought that russia did a top rate job in creating a memorable event (that i thought looked great on bbc hd). it was also really nice to see the uk’s entry actual achieve a respectible 5th place on the night.

- sunday was an unusually great day too; setup team 5 (of which i’m duty manager) really put in a great performance and apart from some minor technical problems, that will require some ongoing discussions, we got setup and packed in totally unity and harmony meaning that stress levels were kept low and we did it fast.the afternoon bought beautifully grilled bacon, the big bang theory (which on UK TV always sounds slightly higher pitched (especially on channel 4 hd, ideas anyone?), and a tripple bill of e.r. there was a slightly scarey moment when my car stubbonly refused to start (still don’t know what caused that, but it’s ok now) and my herby chicken with winter seasoned potato wedges and steamed vegetables was a great start to my cooking for the week. evening was chilled and quiet; rosie and i watched saturday’s britains got talent .

where i am at the moment: in the office having had an amazingly productive couple of hours at work which were preceeded by an astonishingly productive hour at home.

on my to-do list this week:
- more PAT testing
- sort out an SMS service for the churches prayer and setup teams
- order a dimmer rack
- the weekly podcasts
- prep for bigchurchdayout
- clean the house
- bigchurchday out the actual event

procrastinating about: the idea of adding a friday thoughts weekly post in addition to the monday update post. thoughts?

book i’m in the midst of: the most recent issue of youthwork has arrived and has been a great read. it’s really helped me stay in touch with youthwork trends while i took some time off to explore other opportunities.

music that seemed to catch my attention this past week: two albums this week; deadmau5’s 2008 album “random album title” and the prodigy’s most recent album “invaders must die“

next trip: bigchurchday out in steynning

how i’m feeling about this week: erm, not really sure, it’s going to be really busy.

Sponsored by the letter W.

Started work on writing lyrics. I threw together a rough demo mix in CE4 via AA3 and imported it onto my “songwriter’s friend” – an old iPod Shuffle.

The lyrics aren’t quite in good enough shape to share with you right now, but they’re nearly there. The funny thing is, I’d been hoping they would be dripping with black humour, but at this stage they seem to be unremittingly bleak. This is rather odd because right at this moment I could hardly be any happier…:-^).

Part of this happiness is caused by the fact that my delivery from Thomann finally arrived today. The Phonic Firefly Firewire interface worked perfectly straight from the box! I can’t recall the last time I’ve been able to input MIDI properly – possibly back in the day when I had an old PC with a Soundblaster sound card.

Now, in the immortal words of Diarmuid O’Leary, we’re suckin’ diesel.

Regards,

djp

Sponsored by the letter U…

…and still awaiting my delivery from Thomann…

…and the house isn’t as empty as I’d thought it might be..:-).

I’LL VISIT YOU IN PRISON

• created project file in CE4
• imported a beatbox loop from the “Funky Xtreams II” Acid loop CD produced by a crew delightfully known as the Fish Heads -  a funky, hip-hop type loop – tempo = 110 bpm
• also created an additional rough loop at the same tempo in Fruity Loops
• not sure quite yet where this is going to go, but I’ll keep working on it for a while

ENTERTAINING THE MASSEUSE

• created project file in CE4
• imported another “Funky Xtreams II” loop – anonymous techno-type beat – tempo = 80 bpm

CHARISMA TRANSPLANT

• created project file in CE4
• imported another “Funky Xtreams II” loop – allegedly a reggae loop – tempo = 110 bpm

Now I’ve got to do some much needed chores – ensuring my backups are up-to-date. Oh, the joys…

Regards,

djp

Sponsored by the letter I.

Last night, I reviewed what I’d done with the song yesterday. It was awful so I’m going to scrap what I’ve done with it so far and put it on the back burner. Having said that, I’ve learnt a bit more about CE4 so the time hasn’t been entirely wasted.

I’ve also taken the plunge and bought this from the Thomann website -a Phonic Firefly FireWire interface. Here’s hoping it works. I’ve also bought this workstation for the new house. I should have both of these by the end of next week.

In the meantime, we have (unexpected) visitors at the house for the weekend, so I’ll be taking a wee breakie from active work on the album. But don’t worry, I’ll be thinking about it all the time…:-)

Regards,

djp

Sponsored by the letter H.

Jesus, what a morning:-

• so I got a new transformer for my DX100, only it  doesn’t seem to work very well. However, the original transformer does seem to be working now. What‘s that all about?
• so I attempted to program some rough MIDI drum parts. As stated earlier, these are meant to be very rough parts. And by Christ are they rough! I ended up using CE4, MM4 andVST 3.7. MM4 wasn’t behaving terribly well, CE4 won’t let me randomise velocities (for hihats and ride cymbals) terribly easily while VST 3.7 can.  But then VST 3.7 randomly decides to stop working every now and then. I ended up importing/exporting MIDI files between the three programs all morning. A right pain in the sit-upon…
• ended up with six different drum parts (kick/snare/ride/hihat/2 crashes) and started editing them. This is  going to take a bit of time, but I can edit discreetly without getting my kit out (oo er, missus)
• this latency issue is a real pain in the hole. Not that I’m the greatest keyboard programmer in the world or anything, but when one can’t even keep pace with a metronome at 2 hits per bar for a snare part, well there’s something seriously wrong. I have been advised previously to use a FireWire MIDI interface instead of USB, and I see a nice interface at Thomann which I might take a punt on. Of course, if that doesn’t work, then I guarantee you – there will be blood!!!

Regards (and rather stressed out – but in a nice sort of way…)

djp

ΑΥΤΗ ΕΙΝΑΙ Η ΜΟΝΑΔΙΚΗ ΜΟΥ ΑΓΑΠΗ.
Ο ΜΟΝΑΔΙΚΟΣ ΜΟΥ ΦΙΛΟΣ .
ΜΙΑ FENDER HIGHWAY ONE STRAT HSS RW TW

ΚΑΙ Ο ΕΝΙΣΧΥΤΗΣ ΜΟΥ
MARSHALL MG30DFX

http://greeklee.wordpress.com/

Blues Boy.

I am the proud owner of a pair of Event ASP8 Studio Reference monitors…. they’ve now been discontinued and I bought one of the last pairs available from Thomann.

A couple of weeks ago one of the monitors started making a nasty noise – loose connection somewhere, I think. After switching around all my cables, I spoke to the guys at Thomann and they said they couldn’t replace the monitor, but that they would repair it for free, although it was likely to take a month. I shipped the speaker off to them and waited.

About 4 days later, I email the support team to ask if they’d received the speaker. A guy emailed back the next day with a link to the repair ticket. They had received the monitor, repaired it and sent it back. It arrived today, and works perfectly.

Now, in England if someone says it will take a month to repair something, it’ll probably take about 5 weeks. Excellent service from Thomann – I’ll certainly be buying from them again.

Its nice when things work out…

So sehen sie aus, die neuen Prachtexemplare. Nachdem sich letzten Samstag der tragische Unfall ereignet hat, sind heute endlich schon nach sechs Tagen meine neuen Felle angekommen. Ausnahmsweise passend zum Wochenende, wo mich doch sonst grundsätzlich alle Pakete erst am Montag erreichen.
Und mal wieder haben sich die Thomannpakete als die Chipstüten unter den Versandkartons erwiesen. Um an den Inhalt zu kommen, muss man erstmal mehrere gigantische Tackernadeln entfernen. Die richtige Technik dafür habe ich noch nicht herausgefunden. Eine Zange schützt dabei aber schon enorm vor Verletzungen. Dafür wird man aber mit ebenso gigantischer Noppenfolie belohnt, bei der eine Noppe handgroß ist und mit einem lauten Knall zum Platzen gebracht werden will. Nachdem man so ungefähr 90% des Kartons (Thomann verschickt kleine oder in diesem Fall flache Sachen immer in zu großen Kartons und füllt den Rest mit dieser Folie diesen Noppen auf) entleert hat, kommt man an die längst ersehnten Felle, den Stimmschlüssel und erstaunlicherweise an eine kostenlose Musikerzeitschrift (von der ich noch nie was gehört habe), die sonst 3,90€ kostet. Die soll auch eine CD mit dreizehn Liedern enthalten, bei mir wurde die CD anscheinend aber nur auf eine Seite gedruckt. Immerhin in Farbe.
Naja, ich bin jetzt meine Snare und Toms bespannen, damit ich nicht mehr diesen traurigen Anblick erstragen muss:

Na toll. Was zuerst mit einer kleinen Delle begann, entwickelte sich heute zu einem riesen Desaster. Während ich heute so vor mir hertrommelte, bemerkte ich, dass sich aus der Delle ein (wenn überhaupt) nadelkopfgroßes Loch gebildet hat. Hab mir gedacht, dass das nicht weiter schlimm ist und ich einfach gemütlich bei Thomann ein neues Fell bestellen und auf die Post nächste Woche warten könnte.
Nachdem mich meine Snare eines besseren belehrte und ich erst nach zwei Schlägen bemerkte, dass diese keinen Ton bzw. sehr außergewöhnliche Geräusche von sich gab, realisierte ich, dass heute (natürlich, wie soll es auch anders sein) Samstagnachmittag ist und es hier weit und breit kein Musikgeschäft gibt.
Dabei hab ich schon die ganze Woche darüber nachgedacht, mir ein neuen Satz Felle zuzulegen. Jetzt kann ich nur abwarten, dass die Post schnell die neuen Felle liefert.

Wie man unschwer erkennen kann, ist die Snare wirklich unbespielbar, da der Riss einmal über die halbe Snare geht. Das macht bei einer 14″ Snare einen 7″ (ca. 17,78 cm) langen Riss. Wäre ja alles halb so wild, wenn eine meiner Toms auch 14″ große wäre. Dann könnte ich notdürftig das Fell wechseln.

Wer hat sich eigentlich den freien Sonntag ausgedacht? Wäre doch was gegen die Arbeitslosigkeit, wenn alle Geschäfte auch Sonntag geöffnet hätten.

Et voilà, je viens de passer commande sur Thomann. Enfin, depuis six mois que je zyeutte tout ça sur Internet en espérant par un miracle bien fort improbable que j’obtienne tout ce que je voulais immédiatement… Ouais, enfin, j’aurais pas mal attendu/économisé. Ca y’est, dans une semaine tout au plus (soyons optimistes !), je recevrai… Tout ça:

Commande sur Thomann.de

Muhu, c’est bien beau. 374.99€ TTC , les frais de ports bien évidemment offerts à ce prix là. Une série de câbles et adaptateurs en tout genre pour brancher le tout, un jeu de cordes 9/42 au cas où et un 10/46 pour essayer un tirant plus haut, mais surtout le looper BOSS RC-20XL que je voulais tant, un micro The T.Bone MB85 (réplique présumée du Shure SM85 en lowcost mais pas Lo-Fi), un casque de monitoring The T.Bone HD880 , basique mais qui me suffira bien, et enfin un… Truc pour enregistrer Line6 Toneport GX , basique (1 entrée Jack 6.3/1sortie USB, 1 sortie Jack 3.5) mais très performant. L’idéal pour mon mini home studio… Bref, ça y’est, je peux ENFIN sortir mes compos au delà du papier !

Sinon, il faut bien des entrées d’argent… De quoi faire crier un banquier, je compte sur le poker. C’est un peu tôt pour en parler, mais je suis en train de faire grossir mes 50$ offerts à raison de 5$ par jour en moyenne depuis une semaine. Pas mal donc, mais je reste en NL0.04 (blindes $0.02/$0.04, donc) pour l’instant, en attendant d’avoir 100$. De toute façon je suis bien loin du meilleur de mon jeu, je pars en tilt dès que je choppe un bad beat, et perd tous mes gains au bout de trois jours en dix minutes. En tout cas, j’ai joué mon premier SNG Head’s Up (tournoi à 2 joueurs)… Et je l’ai gagné avec brio !

En écoute: Money For Nothing – Dire Straits (aucun rapport avec l’article, promis)

So sah ungefähr mein Tag aus. Heute hab ich nach einigen Wochen mal wieder direkt um acht Uhr antreten müssen, weil Herr Strienz aus der Reha zurück war. Dem ging’s ganz offensichtlich wieder gut, wir haben uns lange mit aktuellen Themen befasst und auch der typisch Strienz’sche Humor kam nicht zu kurz. Danach zwei Stunden Deutsch-LK, unsere Praktikantin natürlich immer dabei. Wir haben dann erst nachmittags beim Theater erfahren, dass sie die Freundin vom Sohn von Frau Grimm ist. Ansonsten: Der Signor Tichi hat eine Inszenierung von Schillers Die Jungfrau von Orleans mitgebracht und – naja, der König kam etwa so rüber wie der Anführer der Volksfront von Judäa in Das Leben des Brian.

Das waren auch schon meine letzten beiden Stunden Unterricht für diesen Tag, danach waren wir wegen Theater befreit. Wir haben also in der fünften und sechsten Stunde die Bühne aufgebaut, uns danach geschminkt bzw. schminken lassen und als Generalprobe einmal das Stück gespielt. Am Bühnenaufbau war ich nur am Rande beteiligt, der Jan-Robert und ich sind mal “schnell” zum Thomann gefahren und haben u.a. eine Blende und noch etwas Kleinkrams eingekauft. Ist schon eine geile Geschichte, was die da alles an Equipment herumstehen haben. Und vor der Tür hat erst mal eine blankweiße Stretch-Limousine geparkt, das war auch ein überaus edles Teil… Danach wie gesagt essen und schminken, es gab Zwiebelkuchen von Damaris’ Mama und meine Mom hatte einen Kuchen gebacken.

Als um halb vier endlich alle geschminkt waren, haben wir endlich losgespielt. Frau Grimm war dabei unser Test-Publikum und ich war sehr erleichtert, als ich sie ein ums andere Mal herzlich lachen hörte. Insgesamt war unser Spiel geprägt von einer ganzen Reihe kleinerer Fehler, aber kein größerer Bock. Manche hatten ihren Text vergessen, manche ihren Einsatz verpasst (ich! Ich hab in dem Moment zu viel nachgedacht und bin aufs Stichwort nicht angerauscht gekommen…). Aber insgesamt lagen wir nicht wirklich viel neben dem Stück und konnten die vorhandenen Aussetzer auch gut überspielen.

Fertig waren wir dann um etwa halb acht. Ich hab mir das Aufräumen gespart und bin direkt nach Hause gerast, hab mein Schwimmzeug gepackt, dann zum Thomas, dann wieder nach Höchstadt zum Training ins Hallenbad. Wohlgemerkt: Noch geschminkt, das Make-Up bin ich erst in der Dusche losgeworden. Dann noch ein nicht anspruchsloses Training (ich hab mir irgendeinen Muskel in der rechten Schulter verrissen, vielleicht ist’s morgen schon wieder weg) und – zack! – schon ist’s neun Uhr abends.

Rechnen wir mal zusammen: Früh um 8 angefangen, abends um 9 aufgehört. Macht einen 13-Stunden-Tag permanent unterwegs. Nicht eingerechnet natürlich, dass ich schon vor acht in der Schule war und um 21 Uhr noch heimfahren musste…