Crossroad: de març 2015

diumenge, 8 de març del 2015

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/aerosmith-talk-45-years-of-kicking-ass-onstage-20150226

The music magazine "Rolling Stone" has made an interview to the Aerosmith members asking them how they feel after 45 years on stage. The band says that the experience of going from a boston garage band to a world-wide-known band has been amazing. Their heats are stucked in people's mind and this fact doesn't allow them to make a change. Tyler (the singer) says that they have never been able to change their initial versions except in the case of Walk this Way (they played the song with Run DMC and created the rap-rock music that inspired Limp Bizkit for example). They ara 60 year-old now, all of them have passed the drugs hell. but they want to rock yet so if nothing stops them they will carry on kicking-asses on stage.

The most particular fact of the band is that they haven't improved the sound systems. They play how they began: With valvestate marshall amps and 70's humbuckers guitars. No digital synths nor digital drums. They are one of the classic bands that encourages the young people of nowadays.

When they were asked about what would they do in a near future they revealed that maybe an upcoming film named "Janie's got a gun" (this name is shared with one of their best songs), But they admit that they just like to live day by day, from one stage to another.

Steven Tyler this summer in Aerosmith Rocks Donnington

Film review: "Fifty shits of Grey" Sorry I meant shades...

Well how to describe this amount of shit in a few lines... This is the story of a girl who is very stupid (in my opinion) that finds a pervert (well it's a man but I don't consider a man somebody who needs to hurt people to get pleasure so, it's a f*****g pervert). This specimen wants to possess her (I've said possess because it is what he wants). Well so he begins to do some games of persuasion and ends up convincing her to do this. Then there is about an hour of porn (sadomasochism). She is a bit afraid in the end and asks him for the next level so he kicks her hard in the bottom and she leaves crying. Do you even consider this a film? I'm sure that some boring and monotonic lives have a better argument than this amount of trash. Now I'll leave some reviews:

"The first film with explicit hard sex, amazing" - Somebody with a very destroyed mind

"I would see it again, simply wonderful" - A pervert

"A realistic love story of the 21st century"- Somebody who entered in a wrong cinema

"The worst 7€ of my life" - Me

After this amazing reviews now some personal opinion (last paragraph was an objective description). Well, can somebody explain me why the hell all those millions of people pay for seing this film if the network is plenty of porn films? I don't really understand. More than 50 women (the fifty shades I suppose) have already died trying to do what they saw in the film. What's wrong with mankind?!?!?!?! Well By now I think that my opinion is clear so I have just one thing to say: If you love your mind healthe, and you want to sleep at nights don't go to the cinema and pay for this!

Mars had water before so it was probably inhabited.

http://www.cienciaxplora.com/astronomia/marte-tuvo-oceano-mayor-que-artico-hace-4300-millones-anos_2015030600057.html

Scientists have spent a lot of time lokking for life outside of our solar system but now, with the new research project they've sent to mars they have seen that there are a lot of possibilities that life is in our own system. The erosion of the mars land brings them to conclude that there was a sea that covered more than the 50% of the area of this planet. The question is: "Why all this water has dropped into the space?" The answers are many: Maybe a weak atmosphera, maybe it's too hot for staying there, who knows? The important fact is that now we are one step closer to know a bit more of our planetary neighbours. Let's see how science advances and gives us more information, maybe we coul live in mars if we recovered that water ;).

Vocabulary:
Inhabited: That has life on it.
Erosion: Action of the water over a rock or similar.
Planetary system: Amount of non gas bodies that turn around a star.

Research Project

Well last week we were meant to give our teachers the purposes for research projects, so we did. I had spent a lot of time thinking about what to do, first I thought about the closest galaxies and itsn features but ateacher told me that I just had to do a research project instead of a doctoral project, so I changed the topic. Then I thought about biology department and working with bacterias and all that stuff but I wasn't really motivated so I carried on thinking. I concluded that my project had to be related with physics so I started thinking and I told myself "What about making a robot?" and my wallet gave an answer: "You have no money to pay it". So when I was about to jump from a cliff I had an idea: Hadron colliders and the origin of time. Oooooh Yeaaah! And it has been accepted by physics department (applause), so I couldn't be happier now!! My project is divided like this:

1.What is the big bang?
2.What are the hadron colliders? How do they work?
3.What relation do they have with the origin of time?
4.Latest discoverments and future of the investigation.
5.The CERN.

Practical part:
1.Building an electro-magnet collider with two metal balls on it (low cost).

dissabte, 7 de març del 2015

Fonix 2015

This year I was purposed to participate in this contest named fonix. This is an exam (no need to study) of general contents that proofs the best english students and give them the oportunity of winning a trip to London. Well, my teacher asked me and 4 students more to do the first stage that was the scholar one, 5 students one winner. I had a lucky day and did my best, fortunately I won. (I spent a lot of time asking who had won ¬¬.) The second stage was in the Udg (Girona). It was on a saturday morning (I wasn't really happy about that) and I went there to compete. I arrived one hour before and I wasn't really nervous but I was completely asleep so I drunk some coke for making my mind go clear. ·0 minuts before the contest started a man with a strange spanish explained us what we had to do and where we had to go, and he began doing a distribution of us. In my class there were two exams: 1st Batx and 5th Primary, so the level was almost equal, my young mate made almost all my exam. When we finished we went out and we came back home. Now we have to wait until 9th april to know the results so let's hope we go to BCN!

Susi Mai moves to Tona

One of the most famous kitesurfers of all times has moved from cabrinha to Tona after having been almost 20 years in the hawaiian brand, This has been shocking for Cabrinha cause she was the one who leaded the public relations department. The Tona brand is a very new enterprise and is on development yet, their boards are not the best yet but they are improving very fast and they have shocked the world of wakestyle which had been refused until now. The move of Susi Mai represents a new style in Tona kiteboards, they will drop a women size boards soon, with an affordable price and an attractive design. So let's see what this new stuff will be like!!

What will I study?

Well, I've benn thinking a lot the last weeks. After visiting two universities I've had to think a lot in what will I do in a near future, and I don't really know what is it going to be. First of all I'm sure that I will study in Barcelona because I already have a flat there and is the best way of not wasting to much in a place where to live. Then I'm also sure that my degree will be related with physics because is what I'd like to carry on studying. I thought about doing a degree of physics but, looking to the future jobs they're not easy to get so I'm trying to find other alternatives. After that I told myself "What about being a doctor?", but I've got a lot of problems with touching other people's injuries and all that stuff. I also thought in biomedics, but it has no physics so I left the idea easily. Now I'm thinking about biomedical engineering and Although I'm not really sure, I think that will be the best choice because it's one of the best degrees now, because it's completely new and It has a 89% of possibilities of getting a well paid job after finishing the career. So, let's see what's gonna happen!

The evolution of the electric guitar along the 20th century

The Electric Guitar has survived and thrived through ongoing periods of natural selection, hybridism and fruitful bouts of geographical distribution; creating what we have today; seen as the top of modern technologies.

Now I'll introduce a few transcendental guitars from 1931 until nowadays, let's go:

1931: The Rickenbacker “Frying Pan”

The “frying pan” was the first electric guitar ever produced. The instrument was created in 1931 by George Beauchamp, and subsequently manufactured by Rickenbacker Electro. The instrument earned its name because its shape resembles a frying pan: it has a flat, circular body, and the neck represents the “handle.” It was a lap steel guitar designed to cash in on the popularity of Hawaiian music during the 1930s. Beauchamp and machinist Adolph Rickenbacker began selling the Frying Pan in 1932; however, Beauchamp was not awarded a patent for his idea until 1937, a fact that allowed other guitar companies to produce electric guitars during the same period.

1935: The Rickenbacker “Electro String”

This electric guitar was called the Bakelite Spanish Guitar. Bakelite is an early form of plastic used to make records, billiard balls, and telephone receivers in the early 1900’s. Electro String was the original company that created the guitar. Electro String later changed its name to Rickenbacker. Adolph Rickenbacker had maintained other interests throughout Electro String’s short history; he never had as much faith in the guitar business as his partners. Nevertheless, he continued instrument making until 1953 when he sold the company to F.C. Hall, a leading figure in the post-WWII Southern California music business. That sale marked the end of one era and the beginning of another, the dawn of modern Rickenbacker guitars.

1941: Les Paul “Log”

The Les Paul “Log” was created by Les Paul after persuading Epiphone to let him use their workshop on Sundays. A Gibson pickup was mounted onto a 4″ x 4″ block of solid maple wood with the string, to avoid the feedback problems that acoustic/electric guitar had at the time. For the sake of appearance, he attached the body of an Epiphone hollow-body guitar, sawn lengthwise with The Log in the middle. This solved his two main problems: feedback, as the acoustic body no longer resonated with the amplified sound, and sustain, as the energy of the strings was not dissipated in generating sound through the guitar body. These instruments were constantly being improved and modified over the years, and Paul continued to use them in his recordings long after the development of his eponymous Gibson model.

1947: Bigsby-Travis Guitar

In the 1940s, Paul Bigsby, best known as the creator of the “Bigsby Vibrato”, was a foreman in a machine shop owned by Albert Crocker of the Crocker Motorcycle Company. Bigsby’s love of motorcycles and country-western music led to a friendship with country-western singer Merle Travis. The seeds of Bigsby’s subsequent career with his signature vibrato design were most likely planted the day Travis asked him if he could fix a Kaufman vibrato unit. He did more than fix it. Bigsby created a whole new system. The creation had something that would subsequently prove very important in the development of solidbody electric guitars — all six tuners on one side of the headstock as opposed to the three-a-side headstocks popular at the time (and, of course, still popular on many electric solid bodies).

1948: Fender Broadcaster (Telecaster)

Once Leo Fender had parted ways with his partner “Doc” Kauffman, he set out to create a guitar that concentrated on utility and practicality, and less on design esthetics. He wanted to create a regular guitar that had the clear sound similar to the sound coming from the electric Hawaiian guitars, but without the feedback problems. The result was a two-pickup model named the Broadcaster. From this point onwards all Fender necks incorporated truss rods. The Gretsch company, itself a manufacturer of hollowbody electric guitars (and now owned by Fender), claimed that “Broadcaster” violated the trademark for its Broadkaster line of drums, and as a newcomer to the industry, Fender decided to bend and changed the name to Telecaster, after the newly popular medium of television.

1952: Gibson Les Paul

The Les Paul model was the result of a design collaboration between Gibson Guitar Corporation and the late pop star, electronics inventor, and accomplished jazz guitarist Les Paul. In 1950, with the introduction of the Fender Telecaster to the musical market, electric guitars became a public craze. In reaction, Gibson Guitar president Ted McCarty brought guitarist Les Paul into the company as a consultant. Les Paul was a respected innovator who had been experimenting with guitar design for years to benefit his own music. After successfully experimenting with his “log” guitar, Les Paul took his ideas to Gibson. They turned him down, calling the guitar “a broomstick with a pickup on it.” However, in 1950, Gibson came back to him and signed him and his design. While at Gibson, Les Paul went through 50 to 60 prototypes before he felt happy with his final design. The rest, as they say, is history.

1954: Fender Stratocaster

The Fender Stratocaster, often referred to as “Strat”, is a model of electric guitar designed by Leo Fender, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares in 1954, and manufactured continuously by the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation to the present. The Fender Stratocaster had 3 features that made it a revolutionary guitar in 1954. First, it had a double cutaway neck with beveled edges. Second, it had the Fender engineered “tremolo” unit built into the floating bridge. Third, it was the 1st solid-body guitar to be fitted with 3 pickups. A 3-way selector switch on the guitar allowed the guitarist to select a pickup. This was later changed to a 5-way switch, as guitarists began to see they could get unique sounds by having the switch set in between the 3 positions.

1979: Van Halen “Frankenstrat”

The Frankenstrat was Eddie’s attempt to combine a Gibson and Fender. It was made from an ash Stratocaster body with a routing that Eddie made to fit in a Gibson PAF humbucking bridge pickup, with a single coil neck pickup. The neck pickup was simply for decoration and was never actually wired with the humbucker, due to Eddie’s inability to wire the switch properly. It had a maple neck, chrome hardware, and red, black, and white stripes. Eddie Van Halen’s “Frankenstrat” guitar marked the beginning of guitars made for the hyperfast, technical playing. Van Halen pioneered employing higher output pickups, state of the art floating tremolo units, and sleeker, more profiled necks and bodes to play faster on. Virtually every major manufacturer raced to come out with models based on Eddie’s original guitar.

1982: Jackson Randy Rhoads

The Jackson Randy Rhoads was the electric guitar that was originally commissioned by guitarist Randy Rhoads, and is now produced by Jackson Guitars. Originally, this guitar was to be called The Original SIN. His second Flying V, which was black with a silver pickguard and string-thru body bridge, was going to be called the Concorde. Randy re-designed these newer ‘Concordes’ or production models with a longer “horn” because he felt too many people were relating his white Pinstripe V to a Flying V; he wanted to produce a guitar that bore more resemblance to a shark’s fin. His V’s both had maple bodies with maple thru body necks. The SIN had a standard blocked vintage-style tremolo. The vibrato is of very high quality; and the pickups are designed to capture the treble more efficiently than a normal guitar.

1994: Ibanez 7-String Guitar

The 7-string, solid-body guitar was originally developed in the early 90s by Steve Vai with Ibanez guitars. The seven-string guitar became prominent when the band Korn featured Ibanez Universe guitars on their 1994 debut album, capitalizing on the massive low end produced by the 7th string (typically a low A). This period marked a highwater point in the popularity of the seven-string guitar, as manufacturers jumped on the seven string bandwagon that they had previously steered clear of including such “traditional” brands as Fender subsidiary Squier and Gibson subsidiary Epiphone, and manufacturers who had been producing sevens expanded their offerings. Today the 7-string still rumbles and shreds on with artists like Muse, Dream Theater, and Suicide Silence.

2008: Guitar Hero Controller

The Guitar Hero series has made a significant cultural impact, becoming a “cultural phenomenon”. The series has helped to rekindle music education in children, influenced changes in both the video game and music industry, has found use in health and treatment of recovering patients, and has become part of the popular culture vernacular.Many consider Guitar Hero to be one of the most influential products of the first decade of the 21st century, attributing it as the spark leading to the growth of the rhythm game market, for boosting music sales for both new and old artists, for introducing more social gaming concepts to the video game market, and, in conjunction with the Wii, for improving interactivity with gaming consoles.

Polemic dress.

Lately, a very strange picture has been going through the social networks and causing problems for its low image quality. The picture consists in a dress that a woman posted with the question: "It's white or blue?". And in less than 24h the world divided itself in 2 social groups: The ones who see it white (like me for example) and the others who see it blue (unfortunately, the rest of my family). Well many people has tried to give a valuable argument about this phenomena but all of them have been destroyed by the others. The interesting thing is that a group of american students has begun a research project about this phenomena and their first impressions look good. They've said that people who has a better night vision see it blue because they don't have a significative colour loss, but people who are not such that good at night vision see it white because they activate low light receptors which make us see things black and white. They have another hypothetic explanation which says that the colour could depend of the contrast with the background, so, people who have a better concentration see it blue, and people who have a more panoramic bvision see it white. I agree with the second theory because it's better for my self esteem :P. I post a photo for you to see the dress.