Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Rocking out to the Flute

Dittisham Photos
This photo of Dittisham is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Friday, November 25, 2011

The Diaphragm as it Pertains to Singing Aimee Mann

First see how a Diaphragm functions in your body.




Then listen to a concise explanation found on Youtube on how this muscle is the key to singing correctly and with ease.


There.


Now you are prepared to cover a song from a princess and prove to an audience that voices carry, with yours doing so in spectacular fashion.



I imagine this is what heaven would sound like, yet perhaps it would go something more like this.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Life Has Come a Long Way Since Yesterday **

Ziggy in excerpts (of a run-on sentence): "day in day out I've asked many questions only to find the truth it never changes I don't care if it hurts I'm tired of lies and all these games I've reached a point in life no longer can I be this way cause I can't make you happy unless I am I'm moving on yes I'm grooving on well I'm finally free I've got to be true to myself..."



Life has come a long way since yesterday

**So Happy Thanksgiving, I say, I say...

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

The Bouquet Bokeh














The Picture above along with tutorials can be found at this nifty site.

Anyway according to Wikipedia a Bokeh, in photography, is the blur or the aesthetic quality of the blur in out-of-focus areas of an image.

A cool Bokeh tuturial below which even invites you to participate in a contest.



And since Bokeh is partially about motion why not watch something dealing with that as well.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

The Challenges of City Integration

There seems to be a window of opportunity opening up for some of Rio's favelas, specially now that this happened in Rocinha .

Focusing on Rocinha below is a description of the place by a writer called Paul Berger.

"Probably the most surprising aspect of our visit to Rocinha was just how many goods were on offer there. It was almost a city within a city, with hairdressers, bars, restaurants and stores as well as plenty of garages for repairing motorcycles. Rocinha even has a private cable television station, a radio station, two community newspapers and two official banks"

The article can be found here.

Legal businesses fostering economic development is always good and one activity that has included favelas into their scope is tourism. I researched the subject matter and arrived at this well balanced piece, featuring both pros and cons.

Another good source for learning about favela related issues is a blog authored by a native, bi-lingual Rocinha resident called Zézinho. His work, in English, is linked below.

http://lifeinrocinha.blogspot.com/

I wish he used tags in his blog though. It would make it easier to find things like this excellent article containing info that is really hard to come by, even with Uncle Google's help.
Anyway I have babbled on for far too long here (my other posts, which are short and concise, have probably committed suicide by now). So I'll wrap it up with an interview featuring Prof Edward Glaeser whose book "The Triumph of the City" is a great way of looking at how a place like Rocinha could be, and in various aspects already is, a great asset of Rio de Janeiro.