E.J. Svoboda

Art Pepper: Art History http://viigo.im/0pk1

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An Edifying Evening of Gerry Mulligan Gold http://viigo.im/0oYr

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Album Review: Chris Potter Underground’s “Ultrahang” http://viigo.im/0oP0

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JazzTimes Resuscitated http://viigo.im/0ha5

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F1 team Toro Rosso fires Frech driver Bourdais
(AP)
http://viigo.im/0fjl

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I wanted some different ear buds for working at my desk. I had picked up some exceedingly cheap ones a couple of weeks ago and they are truly the worst headphones I have heard. At home I mostly use a nice pair of Sony over the ear studio monitor headphones. They were a gift from my father some years ago. The only problem with them is that my wife likes them as much as I do and I have to search for them on a regular basis.

I have a pair of Sony MDR-NC6 over the year noise canceling headphones but honestly I don’t care for the noise reduction circuitry. It introduces white noise to mask the noise of co-workers. The sound of the headphones with the noise canceling turned on is acceptable but nothing to write home about. They’re not headphones I would purchase again.

The new Sony ear buds do a decent job of blocking out the noise from co-workers. Not perfect but more than acceptable. More importantly to me is the fact that the sound quality of these headphones is surprisingly good. Very natural and well balanced. I sense a lot of clarity from them and can easily discern various instruments in a variety of music. They’re not studio monitors but at twenty bucks they are better than any other ear buds I have purchased. I would recommend them to anyone looking for a good sounding well made ear buds.

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I’m back on my road bikes after a long layoff. Something about turning 40 and getting fat inspires me to find a better fitness level.

Longest ride so far is 22 miles. Pace was slow. I mean really slow but it was only my second ride. Did a reasonable pace for a quick 30 minute ride a couple of nights ago. Got out of the saddle a couple of times and had short bursts of power. Still waiting to be able to attack the hills around the house. Happy with getting up them without dropping into single digits. I’m somewhere around 80 percent of a decent level of riding. My cadence is slowly increasing and when it hits 90 to a 100 I’ll be happy. At that point, I will have a decent level of cardio fitness and should be able to thrown down a 50 miles ride or maybe a metric without too much pain and in a decent time.

It’s hard to juggle riding with everything else but I’m not getting younger and I need to get rid of the gut.

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As my wonderful wife can attest I can’t do anything halfway or as my good friend Corey told me years ago – “Ed, you always have good equipment”.

My seven year old recently said he wanted guitar lessons. Easy enough right? After a lot of research I determined that the Ibanez Mikro was vastly superior to the Squire Strat. It also looks cooler or so I have been told by my future rock star son. The supposed weak spots on the Ibanez are the pickups (or at least the bridge pickup) and the strings. Some people content that the tuners do stay in tune perfectly. These are all easily rectified issues if he keeps playing. Since he’ll probably have to play this guitar for a few years before his hands are really big enough for a full sized one I don’t mind putting some additional cash in the instrument down the line. The main thing is that the guitar seems well made and it has a really nice neck.

Prior to spending way too much on a guitar and assorted accessories, I needed to purchase a student amp. On my lunch hour one day I went over to the nearest Guitar Center (my family should be glad there’s not a Saxophone Center – although they might contend that is what I use eBay for . . . ) and saw a used Fender Frontman 25 DSP for the same price as a small cheap practice amp. Easy call on that. Decent little amp.

After getting everything home, I plugged in the amp and the guitar and showed my son the vast amount of guitar knowledge that I have at my disposal. He was impressed when I mentioned that I had a rock band in college. He then got down to trying all the different amp sounds and found that he liked the nice “British” and “Metalhead” settings. So much for my dreams of a talented jazz guitarist! A couple of days later after he had mastered what I can only imagine are grunge and punk he informed me that Patrick on Spongebob plays guitar better than me. Surpassed by a cartoon. I need to remind him that I’m his gear supplier and that he should humor me more.

I talked to the local music store about lessons and then talked to one of the instructors. Now we have gear, an instructor, and a music book. Now we just need to have a regular practice session. I was heartened when I told him he needed to practice for 5 or 10 minutes every day and he said “o.k. but I can practice longer right?”. The teacher made a joke about how it’s good that amps have headphone jacks but his playing doesn’t bother me. I figure I must have annoyed a lot of people over the years when I was learning to play the saxophone. There are still days when I would rather not have others subjected to listening to me fight with some piece of music.

If he keeps up the playing for the next six months then I’ll look into getting him an acoustic. Martin makes a nice spruce top 3/4 size one.

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When I got serious about biking again I quickly realized that I didn’t want to be downing Gatorade all the time. It’s got some funky ingredients and it is expensive. My cheap alternatives are as follows:

1 package kool aide
3/4 teaspoon Morton’s Lite Salt
5 tablespoons sugar (you can use a couple of tablespoons of maltodextrin and three tablespoons of sugar)
64 ounces of water

The first version of a homemade sports drink is as follows:

32 oz. Water
2 tablespoons Sugar
3/8 teaspoon Lite Salt
6 tablespoons Lemon Juice

The salt and potassium profile is pretty close to most sports drinks. This one has more potassium. If you need to avoid potassium then just use regular salt or buy a commercial sports drink.

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Happy for Dale Coyne Racing for getting their first win in IndyCar.

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