ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

Fender Musical Instruments Company was the first to realize that, silly as it seems, people were willing to pay top money for bashed up guitars, that is, new guitars that have been artificially aged. And so, the Time Machines series was born. Fender's Custom Shop Time Machine series comprises a number of models built to exacting specifications of their respective vintages, including: body contours and radii, neck shape, fingerboard radius, pickups, electronics and hardware. Original materials, tooling and production techniques are employed wherever possible.Each model is available in three distinct finish packages: NOS (New Old Stock): as if the guitar were bought new in its respective year and brought forward in time to the present day. Closet Classic: as if the guitar was bought new in its respective year, played perhaps a dozen times a year and then carefully put away. Has a few small "dings", lightly checked finish, oxidized hardware, and aged plastic parts. Relic: sh...

My obsession to compare myself to a computer continues. That is I can’t help thinking that we are so much like computers, our brain is the CPU and also the hard-disk [a very very big hard disk] and Life itself is a computer program-written to Run until it completes its task and then self-Delete. And of course the programmer is what you call God. Maybe the whole Universe is one big computer program that has been started. And maybe everything programmed is so advanced that it maintains itself, reproduces itself, heals itself, updates itself etc just like the latest Windows would aspire to.. But back to the subject of what happens to the data we acquire everyday through our sensors [eyes, ears, nose etc]. One important fact very often forgotten is that before data can be turned into information, it needs to be in a form that can be digested by the computer. This is because, when we feed in data for one model, there will most probably be very diverse types. One variable may be in single di...

Following my previous article on Life as a Complex Adaptive System [CAP], it is only natural that I should explore the nature of knowledge in a data-driven context When a CAP acquires data through its sensors [in human beings: our ears, eyes, nose, tongue etc]. it needs to process this mass of data to turn it into information. Information differs from pure data. By being organized in a contextual format, information yields insights. Some of the things the human brain tends to do to data are: Categorization. Human beings are fond of sorting things into pigeon holes. Thus, this is a Monarch butterfly and that is a Swallowtail butterfly. This is an insect and not a reptile because etc etc. Categorization implies groups of objects with common properties. When we categorize, we have fewer objects to deal with and Life becomes more simple. Sometimes categorization can be quite arbitrary. When is a human considered tall or fat, ugly or beautiful? The definitions differ from person to person, ...

The extraordinary powers that musicians have still mystifies me. For example, the fingerboard of the violin is only a few inches long. Each note is only a millimeter or less away from the next. So when you consider that an accomplished violinist can play at great speed and his fingers must always be in the correct position within 0.5 mm for him to play each note pitch accurately [note out by half a tone is still discernible as out-of- tune by the human ear], it is really a wondrous feat. But this is just a technical feat. Even more interesting is our ability to 'feel' the chord changes in a song. In a simple song with a Root chord, a 4th and a Dominant Seventh,[e.g. in C key, it is C, F and G7 chords it is usually no problem for an average musician to know when to change ]. But ask most musicians and they can't explain how they know when to change. It is just a 'feeling' and it's quite unerring in it's accuracy. Folk songs, church songs, country songs ...

A dinner menu is like a musical composition. Harmonious and balanced, with a theme, and if possible saying it in a special way that unerringly identifies you as the composer. Each country has it's type of cuisine that reflects the psyche of it's people. And so the sophistication of French cuisine, the 'friendliness' of American cuisine and the stodginess of the British. But in China, there is no national Chinese cuisine, as each region and it's peoples are so different. The Cantonese can be likened to the French, their sophisticated cuisine reflects an obsession with food, with elaborate sauces and concoctions using animals and parts of animals that no one else would use. The fiery people of Szechuan and Hunan need to keep themselves warm in such a frigid climate and this is reflected in their cusine. So too, the robust cuisine of the poor Fukien peasants of coastal South China with it's clumps of noodles and fatty pork dishes for people who only get to eat like...