Good response from the NRA! Armed guards for our children. Our children deserve protection. Some Texas schools are already doing it! Israel schools are doing it! Protection of our children should be Paramount. My tax dollars spent on guards protecting our children instead of sending it to rebels in other countries sounds like a good idea to me.
Why doesn't the media sensationalize someone who has saved his family, a neighbor, his daughter from being raped? I will tell you why! It is not news worthy.
We hear a lot about the loan individual, mass murder, and all of the defenseless people that were in harms way or killed. The media sensationalize how horrible it was, and the body count, the gore. The photo of the killer taking up most of the screen on your TV. Entire programs devoted to the mass murder to figuring out the madman's thoughts? And we only make a blip about the deceased! Guess what America? We have just set a goal for the next mass murderer. Sometime will pass, the lives lost will be but a memory. We will move on are merry way. We will probably hear about this killer for years to come. Meanwhile, the next killer, is already planning to do something even bigger.
Israel School Teacher with a Gun! Israel seems to take security a bit more seriously then America!
Why don't we train our teachers to do the same?
Are teachers and loved ones are sitting ducks in our schools right now!
We need to embrace protection! To solve more shootings in our schools, we should arm the teachers and the administration. Yes guns can be used to kill, but they can be used to protect too! There are a lot of people that are afraid of guns, but they have the wrong mentality. The outcome would have probably been completely different if all the teachers were armed. Israel teachers carry a gun with them. The teachers are highly trained on how to use their weapons. I have never heard of any gun shooting in their schools!
Are teachers go to school knowing that they are unarmed in a place that is a "Gun Free Zone." The expectation is that criminals will read the sign. Criminals don't care about laws! Last I heard that's why they are called criminals, they broke the law. The next criminal can now ante up "thanks to the mass media!" The educators say "well we are not a third world country," and like to believe people are more intelligent and have morals and be reasoned with. "Schools are not a place for guns!" Oh my, I wish we were in Utopia!
Unfortunately, we are in a depressive economy. in this depressive economy, mental disorder is growing. It's not going to stop! Someone with a mental disorder is like a bear, you can't stop a bear with reason. In many situations, you can't stop someone with a mental disorder with reason! It usually gets to a point where something like this happens before the person can get any help or it's too late!
Media has raised the bar by publicly announcing who the killer is and sensationalized the event in his name.
In Albuquerque NM, there is a liquor store that was always getting robbed. The owner finally stopped the robbers by arming all of the employees and trained them. I believe there was one attempted armed robbery after the employees were armed, the fool never made it to the door. Since then, they have never had any problems.
My point is to train personnel, the school administration in how to protect themselves with a firearms!. At least it will prevent issues like this from happening again.
Regarding gun control, Mexico has very strict gun laws. As a private citizen, if you get caught with a gun you will go to jail. Tell me why is Juarez Mexico the "murder" capital of the world? All I know is that the Innocent can not defend themselves.
You don't need a hand gun for mass murder. Someone with the intent of killing doesn't care about laws!
9-11, the hijackers all they used were box cutters. The rest is history. When and are we going start regulating sharp objects? I don't believe that will happen to the degree guns are already regulated.
It's crazy people that need to be held accountable. We need to focus on making it easier to get mental health care. We need to train our teachers to recognize lethal situations and how to protect themselves and our children. Excuse the rant, but It's like we are saying the gun has the control over the mind, and guns kill people.
With the country divided on this issue, I will hug my family a little harder today, and pray for the Innocent in this tragedy including the families with their loss.
We need to think twice about disarming America! By regulated guns only makes the Innocent defenseless! If it does happen, and my guns are taken away, I know who not to vote for next election. We elect politicians to uphold the constitution and the Bill of Rights. Are the politicians keeping our interests in mind! It looks like to me our rights are slowly being chiseled away! What do you think?
Don't be a victim.
When seconds count.
Don't be defenseless.
Learn how you can protect yourself, and family and save your life!
Make Electronic Music? Sounds Great! Cheap! Super Easy!
Hey! Have you ever had an idea for a song, but didn't know how to pull it together i.e.
No experience.
No instrument.
Don't even know how to play an instrument?
Well look no further. I want to introduce you to FL Studio. With FL studio, one can start making electronic music right away with the demo version, and its free. All you need is a computer that run FL Studio a mouse and a computer keyboard. It does work better with a midi keyboard though, It really almost sounds to good to be true.
Even for the professional, FL Studio can be your back up in a pinch, or even enhance your existing sound. I imagine that professionals are already using FL Studio. Want to make that Wobble Bass sound, FL Studio is the package that can do it.
Even if you bought all the packages that they offer, what you get in my book it's a bargain. Years ago, one had to fork out a lot of money for this stuff.
Imagine if you had all the tools you need to write that hidden song that's in your head, all that talent at the tip of fingers! Basically being able to start running like a track star as soon as you download the demo. I'm sure it will be initially like driving a MAC truck without a drivers license, but unlike crashing with MAC truck, if you crash you, can start all over. How cool is that.
To get started all you need is a computer that meets the requirements, your computer keyboard will map out to the keys on the keyboard. I eventually broke down and bought a midi keyboard. I saw a You tube tutorial and the recommendation was that the M-Audio Midi key board Oxygen49 was a good keyboard to get started with for FL Studio. The interface was very simple. Hook up a USB port Midi keyboard, go to the options and select refresh. It mapped all the keys, and I was playing right away. Defining a button was just as easy. I'll save that for another tutorial, or look it up on You tube, super easy stuff.
What you get with the demo is an easy to use sequencer, tons of effects, whole bunch of synthesizers, thousands of sounds and millions of possibilities. I'm talking about mind blowing ear candy!
You need a computer.
System Requirements:
2Ghz Intel Pentium 4 / AMD Athlon 64 (or later) compatible CPU with full SSE2 support. The faster your CPU and more cores it has the more you will be able to do simultaneously. Download and test the demo!
32 or 64 Bit versions of Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista, XP (with service pack 3)
(or) Intel Mac with Boot Camp / Windows.
Running XP (with service pack 3), Vista or Windows 7 (in 32 or 64 Bit)
1 Gb or more RAM recommended
1 Gb free disk space
Soundcard with DirectSound drivers. ASIO/ASIO2 compatible required for audio recording (FL Studio installs with generic ASIO4ALL drivers)
In the past few months, I have uploaded to You Tube, Sound Cloud, Face Book.
Check out my songs that I've put together for your enjoyment. It may not be your Genre, but it's just an example of what can be done.
I hope you will get lost in the world of electronic music as I have.
The beauty of this software is if you want to figure out something, type in a key word in YouTube, and there is video on how to do it.
Pick a certain Genre and it's there too.
From the basics to the more complex.
Say, how about making a song for a video. You don't have to worry about it being copy written since it was you that created it.
Also if you need any pointers or some ideas, I look forward to hearing from you. Tell me about your experience.
Thanks for looking and any constructive criticism on this tutorial is welcome too! I hope you enjoy what I put together. I hope it is entertaining and enjoyable to watch and listen.
Peace!
Here are some of the tunes I've written, and I welcome any comments. I'm no professional, but I sure have had a blast figuring out how to do this stuff.
My thing is to use the right side of my brain. Imagination is a wonderful thing. I like to draw! I like music! I would like to solicit everyone's help for my next project? I don't know if I will be drawing or writing another song. Here are some examples of the things I can do. Please make a comment below if you like or dislike. Be specific of which one you are making a comment about.
Drawings done with charcoal and colored pencil.
I like to make my own music too!
Inspired from my son who recently picked up the game of call of duty.
Inspired for the recent synthesizer I picked up. It has some pretty powerful features.
Recent discovery of dub-step and inspired to create this song. It was more of a learning experience.
Drawing thumbnail is a perspective drawing done with charcoal.
So my question is to get some ideas for my next project. If you don't have any ideas, Thanks for showing up and looking.
I also work on commission. Send me a photo and I will draw it. We can negotiate the price.
Here is a drawing of my son playing a guitar. It is done with charcoal 18"X 20" on Bristol
Stay tuned for more to come.
Please look at my other posts. Hopefully my other posts will help you in developing the right side of your brain. Please tell me so. I'd like to hear if you will be following me.
For all you U.S. techies out there, I'm auctioning a Fluke 683 LAN analyzer that is fully functional. It can scan your network, and isolate network issues. It is also a CAT5 tester as well as a coax tester. It also comes with the CAT5 injector, and optical fiber source and meter.
It is a great tool to help trouble shoot your network. It will read 10/100 TBaseT data and it can also be used to assist in balancing the network. It can also generate traffic. A great device to help find the weak links.
Besides the scanner, the CAT5 injector, optical fiber source and receiver, it comes with 3 soft cases, manual, optical fiber launch jumpers, power supply.
The larger bag shows some slight ware, but other then that, all the equipment is fully functional. I checked the optical source meter and receiver, it zeros out and will determine the db loss between the source and the receiver. The data can be saved for future reference.
It is one of the few devices besides trouble shooting the physical layer, it can look at the upper layers as well.
For people that like to create some crazy bass sounds on your MIDI keyboard. Do you want to create the that Dub-step sound? This might be the tool you are looking for? It awesome! Definitely ear candy!
Cyclop is a personal computer application. A synthesizer enthusiasts dream in my personal opinion, or even for the professional musician It is really cool and fun to play. It comes with hours and hours fun with tons of presets that can be tweaked to create your own personal sound.
Some unique features that set it apart from other synthesizers are the automation controls filters and sequencer. It's really easy to use too.
https://soundcloud.com/lancruz1/are-we-zombies
[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/67848905" params="?" width=" 100%" height="166" iframe="false" /]
It will work as a stand alone midi interface with current OS and at least 4 gig of RAM , or it will integrate with FL Studio which is another software PC application.
You can buy at Guitar Center or Amazon or maybe at your local music store.
What I did to create Are We Zombies, I used FL Studio as a sequencer. I'm an affliate, so if you follow this link, and buy FL Studio you can get it with a 10 percent discount from the purchase price.
This is great Keyboard if you want to piddle around with easy to load software. I also need to mention, it is nicely priced too for what you get.
It comes in a nice box, that can be reused to pack away if you want too.
After a week of playing on my standard qwerty key board with FL Studio 10. I decided to go a step further. I bought the M Audio Oxygen49. By the way, it has two other brothers the Oxygen25 and the Oxygen61.
At first, I was apprehensive in purchasing the controller, cause it seemed really light. What caught my eye though was all the slider knobs, turning knobs and buttons. It has pitch bend knob, modular knob and more buttons. The other thing that caught my attention was I was hearing that the keys map very easlily to FL Studio. And you know what they were right.
It took me about 5 minutes to plug in the 5' USB cable that came with the key board. I wish the USB was longer though, so I was limited to where I could place my new keyboard. I think I'm going to run out and buy a maybe a 10'-12' USB cord for routing through my desk. Interfacing to FL Studio was a snap too. I launch FL Studio. At the top, I selected Options and selected Midi.
I didn't see the Midi keyboard at first so clicked on Re-scan Midi Devices at the bottom of the dialogue box. There it was, I highlighted the 2- Oxygen 49 Midi Out and clicked the x box on top to get out.
Immediately I could push a key, and I could hear the kick drum that automatically loads when opening FL Studio. All the keys the transpose and select were mapped out. I started jamming away. I think that day, I didn't stop playing till 3 a.m. in the morning. FL Studio is another review that I will be sharing in my blog, but for right now I will focus on the key board.
The black white keys seem a little light, not as heavy as a standard keyboard, but I did notice when playing on the keyboard, FL Studio would recognize how hard I was pushing down. Cool, now I can add dynamics to my song. Expression! Yes! A big plus in my book for dynamics with this keyboard. I noted this in some of the songs I've played. At the end of this post I'll put my sound cloud profile, so you can listen to some of my creations.
The slider buttons can be programmed to respond to just about anything through FL Studio. Just right click for example on one of the Synths knobs. Then select link to controller (shown below) and move a button on the keyboard. FL Studio will automatically map to that button. Isn't that cool? So you can even further control dynamics to your song for a live performance.
This USB midi controller works great with Fl Studio. My experience has been very satisfactory in purchasing Oxygen 49.
Link to some of my music. I hope you like? Give me some feedback on either this review or any comments on my songs.
Another day has passed. Another Friday with the weekend upon us.
Your thoughts would be helpful, but I will be talking about new electronic equipment, perhaps a topic of writing music for today's standards, perhaps even the latest new artist on the scene?
On a different subject, I went for a ride and took my camera with me to see what I could find of course with my wife too. The photos I took were in Grapevine Texas, supposedly the Christmas Capital of Texas. If you want to see a lot of Christmas lights, that's the place to go. Here is a video. I hope you like it?
At the end of my experience, I could see why people were making that claim "Christmas Capital of Texas".
Here are some of the many photos I took.
They have a lot of neat shops to investigate, but I was mostly caught up with the decorations. To my surprise not to many people, and I found parking right away. I imagine the weekend would be a bit more of a challenge, but I did see plenty of places to park. If you have kids, I believe they will have fun too!
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Thursday, November 29, 2012
Welcome to my new blog!
I've recently decided to take on a new adventure and its a cross road in my life. Not sure where it will take me, but perhaps in this day, and age it will bring me closer to what I was meant to do on this earth. I've recently moved on from my previous job. It was too stressful for me, and as a result I had to pull the trigger to move on. I'm sure that there are lot of people that have to deal with stress, but I had reached my threshold based on income, and what I was being asked to do. Long story short, here I am.
Self portrait of me! done in charcoal!
So that brings me to this blog. I've recently decided to utilize all my talents as a tech and my love for music to control my own destiny. Even me, I'm thinking it's crazy! You and everyone else will be a part of it. The challenge is to bring interest to me and my blog.
My blog will be to share everything electronic, or how to do certain things that make life easier for me and everyone else around me. I'm sure that there maybe other folks out there that may have shared the same thing. My goal is to shed some light on how to do things, my understanding that is? I welcome any feedback. Perhaps you might have some enlightening input as well.
To start with, here is one of my video's that I've recently posted with my experimentation with electronic music and video integration.
Your comments are welcome. Perhaps you can show me something that I may be overlooking. The main thing is I would enjoy hearing your feedback as well.
My recent video's have been exploring the realm of electronic music.
This is a tutorial on making the Wobble Bass with a soft ware product http://www.image-line.com/ by Image Line. Toxic Biohazard.
I will also post more videos as part of my blog. Some will range from first impressions of product to a tutorial.
That's it for today. Thanks for looking.
I can't live on my words alone, so any donation would be great. Even if it's just a dollar.
