The Blog of G

Before I get into the meat of this post, I wanna take a paragraph to congratulate Cristiano da Matta on his release from hospital, as some of you may be aware Christiano was involved in a nasty accident with a deer while testing a champ car. Good luck with the rest of your recovery.

Anywho, What did we all think of the Chinese Grand Prix? Magnificent, only word that I can think of to come close to describing it and it puts things closer at the top of the championship, than they have been at this stage of the season for more years than I can remember.

I do think some of the Renault tactics did have a strong whiff of team orders about them. Apparently, that’s okay though unless it’s Ferrari. I mean it was okay when Ron Dennis ordered Coulthard to allow Hakkinen through to win the championship and then a year or two later Ferrari do the same thing and the rules are re-written, go figure!

Still it was nice of them to set the precedence, expect to see Schuey/Masa employing similar tactics over the next 2 races which will decide the championship for this year.

Before I get on with our main review I feel I have to mention this keyboard, all I can say is this is a work of art no more no less, I so want one and here’s hoping Santa will be good to me.

 Now back on topic, I have is a simple 128mb flash based unbranded player, hangs round my neck on lariat style headphones and holds little bit more than an hours worth of toonz so only minor overlap on an average workout.

If I’m being honest, I inherited this little guy, from my sweetie last christmas cause someone (ahem) got her a shiny new 6Gb Rio player.

While the 128mb capacity is not wonderful it only takes a couple of minutes to load a different set of songs on it so not a big hassle. I would be lying though if I said the new “clip-on” shuffle hadn’t tempted me when I saw the video of Steve Jobs Launching it, but thanks to not having the cash to drop straight away, I discovered this little iRiver player a few days later and I think I’ll wait for it

Unlike most people in the world today, I don’t swoon over ipods, I think there over priced, have way to many restrictions and well to be honest, I don’t follow the herd mindlesly, if there is a good reason to follow the herd then yes of course follow but to do so blindly is somewhat shortsighted. So the rest of the world can keep bleating on about how great there ipod is even though it’s there third warranty replacement and they had to reformat the thing cause they had to re-install windows and the case scratched within seconds of being removed from packaging.

This week I want to talk about this article I read recently on wired. the short version of this story is that at the recent Santa Cruz Baroque Festival a contemporary composer, David Cope, premiered a new 12-movement piece from the mind of Antonio Vivaldi.

Yeah, I know Tonios been feedin worms for over 2 century’s so how did David find a new 12 movement piece from a dead composer. Well in short it’s a fake, written by software that David has developed. Essentially, it takes a database of a composers work, analyses the phrasing and then uses that information to create a new piece.

According to the article he has done this with lots of other composers as well as Vivaldi. Now I’m not a huge fan of classical music but this is an incredible creation and what I would love to hear is that David has unleased Emi on the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa and Les Claypool. Yeah Les is still alive but there’s method to this madness.

So once we have all these artists and composers absorbed by Emmy, why not mix and match, Hendrix and Beethoven, Zappa and Ravel, Claypool and Debussy. Or let Bach or Haydn go nuts with a full Philharmonic Orchestra.

There are definatly purests who will say that this is souless and grave robbing etc. I don’t, so long as someone doesn’t try to claim that they wrote it rather than the artist or composers “profile”. Bottom line, if it sounds good then who cares how the music was written.

So F1, whats been happening since Monza, where as we all know once again the evil FIA ganged up with that evil german and well those guys wot build the evil cars, you know they’re red like the Devil for god’s sake.

Well that’s what some people would have us believe anyway. After all the commotion in Monza, I’m so disappointed in the mainstream F1 press they all wanted to say it but none of them would. You wonder why? I did but then I realised there just trying to make a story where there isn’t one, yup that’s it if enough people start to believe a story then it starts to take on a momentum of it’s own it creates it’s own smoke so there has to be a fire right?

Fair play to Fernando and Flavio they said what was on there mind Flav more than Fernando who just seemed to think F1 isn’t a sport anymore. Then again Flav retracted Fernando didn’t and infact has gone considerably further since.

I know Alonso is the youngest world champion in the history of the sport but what does he hope to achieve by slagging off the most successful driver in the history of the sport? that’s not going to win you the championship only keeping a calm head and scoring points will do that, not driving beyond the limits of your car until the engine explodes or whinging into the radio or sideswiping a friday test driver at high speed before brake testing him.

Schuey has his history too as so many people have been quick to point out since Monaco, but for some reason the media are blinkered to Alonso‘s wrong doing’s and very quick to point to Schuey’s past indiscretions at every available opportunity. Yet very quick to forget that schuey has been penalised severely in the past as well, both on and off the track.

Well whatever Alonso and flav had hoped to achieve by there actions at Monza what they did achieve was a clarification of the “blocking” rule in F1 although you can tell by the tone that the FIA aren’t happy about the way these 2 conducted themselves. I really am surprised that neither have been pulled up for bringing the sport into disrepute.

I think there are 2 thing’s Fernando needs to learn from what has happened at and since Monza.

1. You’ll never win an argument with the referee
2. If you wanna have a bitch about a competitor get your manager to do it for you

Still it’s nice to know the fans have more sense than to listen to the media and have made there own minds up by voting Schuey and Ferrari there favourite by a country mile.

Hi all, week 2 and I’m still going this week and next weeks reviews are actually fairly closly related. While MP3 players and Heart monitors seem fairly diverse gadgets I use both only in one place… The gym!

I know some of my readers may be surprised to learn that I have a weight problem! It’s true, It’s getting to be less of a problem everyday though and part of the success I’m having on this is down to these 2 gadgets.

I’ll start with the less interesting of the 2 gadgets, my Heart Monitor. The vital details first of all It’s the most basic “Polar” model available the F2, there are 2 elements a “wrist watch” type device and the sensor unit that straps to my chest.

While this is a basic model it does everything I need and has an unadvertised “Bonus features” that I really like but more on that later.

This unit does everthing I need, it tells me my current heart rate, it times my workout and when I’m finished it tells me my average heart rate for the duration of my workout.

There are other models on the range that give alarms when your heart rate is getting out of the range that you set but what’s wrong with just looking at your wrist? Or for that matter leaving the “watch” in an easily viewable spot while working out.

As for the unadvertised “bonus feature” I mentioned well my local gym uses Procor equipment that has heart monitor handles builty-in. The chest sensor for my Heart monitor is picked up by this kit so while I’m on one of these machines I have a full read out with target workout zones the whole lot, very handy

Why would you use a heart monitor? well for a start so far in the 3 months of my excercise regime I have paid out more than €500.00! A heart monitor is a small aditional cost that insures I get the most out of my exorcise program and optimise my limited time that I can afford to speng in the gym. Plus it’s interesting to see the difference in your heart rate for different activities.