This update should probably have been posted much sooner, but in case you didn't hear, jennhi, Gretchen and I moved together in our new place in Culver City last month! This has been keeping both of us rather busy, but it is finally starting to feel like we're settled in at last. Everything seems to be in place, with a few exceptions, but the bulk of the work is finally done! Woohoo!

A bit more on the place itself: it's a 2-bedroom/2-bath condo (that we're renting out from the owner) in Fox Hills. We're right across from the Fox Hills Park, of which we have a great view from the large windows in the living room. We got a great kitchen, HUGE balconies, an office full of various geekery and all sorts of musical instruments, and my large screen HDTV and 7.1 surround system are now comfortably set up in the living room. :)

To top it off, the complex features a nice swimming pool, outside BBQ area, club house with pool table (!!), sauna, gym... Perfect for gatherings of friends! So be on the lookout for an invitation to the housewarming party soon! :D

What better way to celebrate the new year than with some lolcat pictures of jennhi's kitty, Gretchen? Here are a few of my attempts. Click on the picture to go rate them if you like them.

In honor of talk like a pirate day, the following instructional video that I had posted here last year is still a good reference!



Avast!

My nerd test results :

Rock star back at university again after 33 gap years

From the article :

Brian May, the multimillionaire guitarist who founded the rock group Queen, has finally completed the PhD in astrophysics that he abandoned more than 30 years ago.

The 59-year-old composer of hits such as Fat Bottomed Girls and We Will Rock You turned his back on the stars for international fame with Freddie Mercury and his band. His thesis on interplanetary dust clouds lay gathering dust of its own in the attic of his home in Surrey.

May’s interest in the subject was rekindled last year when he co-authored a children’s science book with the astronomer Sir Patrick Moore. He discovered that remarkably little research had been done in the intervening 33 years.

He dug out his old handwritten notes and spent nine months conducting further research at Imperial College, London, where he had studied before Queen hit the big time.

May revealed his achievement when he received an honorary doctorate at Exeter University this week. He told students: “For the last nine months I’ve done nothing except slave over my PhD, which is now written up, thank God. But there are times when you really want to give up. There are times when you go, ‘Why on earth did I take this on?’ ”

After the ceremony he said: “I worked on my thesis at Imperial from 1971 to 1974 when I had to give it up because Queen became a full-time thing. I kept all my notes and I was able to find them in my loft and start working on them again.”

Using a giant telescope in the Canary Islands, May was able to show for the first time that dust clouds in the solar system are moving in the same direction as the planets. He will receive his PhD next May, provided that his thesis is approved by assessors.

Abigail Smith, a spokeswoman for Imperial College, said: “People are aware he is here and there is a feeling it is pretty cool that he has come back to finish his PhD, even if he has not been hugely visible.”

Here is what I might look like in the Simpsons world :



You can make your own avatar on the Simpsons Movie site.

In other news, I was one of the lucky recipients of a backstage pass for the upcoming Steve Vai tour. I'm going to meet Steve at the 9/11 concert at the Wiltern Theater in LA.

*squee*

I am proud to announce the final release of my Java application for cell phones, Guitar Trainer !

It took me quite some time to complete the mobiletutor.org Web site on which it is hosted, but everything is now online and open for business.

Feel free to try out the free demo (that includes unlimited usage of the built-in instrument tuner!), or even purchase the full version.

This small application for mobile devices is an educational tool for musicians to help deepen their knowledge of the fretboard of their instrument. Here's a quick recap of the features :

• Learn the location of notes on the fretboard of a guitar or other stringed instrument.
• Supports a variety of standard and alternate string tunings: guitar, bass, banjo, ukulele, mandolin.
• Training mode allows to focus learning on particular parts of the fretboard.
• Game mode provides a fun way to make progress. Work your way through levels of increasing difficulty!
• Train your ear at the same time as you improve your working knowledge of the instrument.
• Left-handed and right-handed neck types.
• Tune your instrument with your cell phone. Open string tones can be produced for any of the supported tunings!
• Dynamic user interface that works on a wide variety of mobile devices.
• Support for pointer input (stylus, touch screen, etc).
• Available in English, French and German languages.

So if you know anybody interested by this kind of application, please spread the word! This can be an interesting tool for music teachers as well as apprentices, and musicians of all levels. I know I certainly wanted something like this as a guitarist, hence why I ended up writing it myself. :)

www.mobiletutor.org

Another thing that everybody else seems to be doing...

For the past few weeks, I have been working on a pet project of mine in my spare time: an educational music game for cell phones.

It is now ready for wider testing and I need people with a variety of mobile devices to help me make sure it works well. If your phone is capable of playing games, you should be able to test this.

The game is called Guitar Trainer, and it is basically a fun way to learn your way around the fretboard of any stringed instrument (guitar, bass, mandolin, banjo, ukulele so far).

Here is a quick screen shot of the thing in action!


So please head on to guitar.mobiletutor.org for more information (I own this new domain) and sign up for the beta! You just need to fill in a short form and installing it is easy. At worst, there's also a Web demo you can try straight from your browser.

Please let me know of any feedback/suggestions/ideas/compliments, your help is very much appreciated!

Here is an amazing rendition of my all-time favorite song, Bohemian Rhapsody :



I should also mention that I have posted two more reviews: the Abe Lincoln Story and Mike Keneally.

This morning, I also bought tickets to go see Rush at the Hollywood Bowl this coming July. w00t!

My review has been posted. Check it out if you'd like.

Going back to the Echo tonight to check out a last-minute show by the Abe Lincoln Story. I met their frontman, Steve Moramarco, at a party last week-end and he let us know about this show. Should be fun!

I've been thinking of doing this for a while, but I will now be posting my future concert reviews exclusively on my Last.fm journal, which is more friendly to this kind of material, providing automatic link to artist pages, events, etc.

It will also free up this personal blog, although I will probably still post links to the reviews here. I have created a syndicated LJ, angryfrenchman, which is just the RSS feed from the original journal. So if you enjoy my reviews, feel free to add it to your friends list!

I have already cross-posted the last 10 or so reviews I have written, so this will mostly save me the trouble of cross-posting. My only regret with this is Last.fm's inferior formatting capabilities for journal entries (no real HTML), but it's a minor detail compared to the community it builds.

And of course, all my old posts will stay here. Once again, feel free to add me as a friend on Last.fm if you have joined the site - which I highly recommend! It just keeps getting better.

I went to Santa Ana's Galaxy Theater last Saturday for a special St Patrick's Day concert featuring the Poxy Boggards and the Merry Wives of Windsor.

( Very quick review of the show... )

Coming up: my review of the fantastic G3 concert from last Sunday. It also looks like I don't have any more concerts scheduled for March, and April should be rather light as well.

Funny meme stolen from march__hare.

Google your name and "needs" and select the top 5 funniest selections.

And I get the following:

• Stephane needs a woman and he has come to the right place. They're quite cheap. We are going to buy a bong and get STONED! Again.
• I do think Stephane needs to work on his English a bit though.
• Maybe Stephane needs to do some research before asking questions, as he is being smacked down now has become a daily occurrence.
• With childlike innocence, Gondry shows that Stephane needs to use his imagination in order to communicate and love.
• In fact, I was just saying to my hubby yesterday that Stephane needs a makeover. Perhaps a shorter, edgier "do". And some trendy new glasses!

:-P

On Saturday night, I headed to Hollywood's Knitting Factory to go check out one of my favorite recent side projects, Blackfield, a collaboration between Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree and Israeli pop star Aviv Geffen.

( Review of a great show, with some pics... )

Coming up this week: the Poxy Boggards on Saturday, followed by the G3 tour on Sunday at the Orpheum, with John Petrucci and Paul Gilbert!

On Friday evening, I went to the Baked Potato for yet another Frank Gambale gig. I have seen him a number of times in this club now, so I'll keep the review short.

( Quick review, with some nice videos! )

Coming up: review of the Blackfield show on Saturday!

On Tuesday I attended the second edition of WesFest at the Gig in Hollywood, a benefit concert raising funds for the Wes Wehmiller scholarship at Berklee School of Music.

( Review, with many pictures and some cool videos... )

This month is rather busy in terms of concerts. I'm just about to head out to the Baked Potato to check out Frank Gambale, and tomorrow is Blackfield at the Knitting Factory. Then next week the G3 tour and the Poxy Boggards. I also just got tickets for Roger Waters in June, who is coming back to the Hollywood Bowl!

I have been pretty busy lately, and haven't really had a chance to post full reviews of the last concerts I've been to over the last couple of weeks. So I'm going to do the lazy thing and post about all of them in this single post!

( Mini-reviews of the concerts, with pics and videos... )

While February has been rather slow in terms of concerts, I got plenty coming up: WesFest, Blackfield, Frank Gambale, the Poxy Boggards, G3, and the Red Elvises in March alone! The Mars Volta is also playing in April, which I am very interesting in seeing again in an headlining setting. May will be a month of prog festivals, with the great CalProg, but also the newly announced Bay Area Rock Fest, which seems like it will kick ass with my favorite band Spock's Beard headlining its first day. This would definitely be a good excuse for an excursion to San Francisco...