Custom Bokeh Blurring Lens Hood

Very simple and very effective. No further instruction is needed beyond looking at the image below. Lens needs to have a big aperture though, < f2.0 for effective results.

[info via : image via]

In Soviet Russia, We Recycle You

That's exactly how you deal with Green Peace dregs! Funniest thing I've seen this week. The juxtaposed situation between both images is just perfect.

[UPDATE - video now available]



Damn, I was hoping there'd be more kicking and stomping involved.

[via]

Waterford Crystal Scuffle - Video Footage

The action kicks off at 35 seconds. It's sad to see that this is what Ireland has come to, people literally fighting for their job. Expect to see more of this and worse, around Ireland during the year.

[credits to RTÉ SixOne News]

Burn it like its Hot (Hip Hop)

I'm down with the homo's; I'm jizzle'n ma shizzel here!

In short: I was learning to play the baroque'y keyboard piece from Burn, with a Harpsichord/Bass split patch in Reason. I thought it sounded a bit gangsta' so I added a Hipity Hopity beat. Next Thing I knew the Burn guitar riff was added as a bass line. Some harpsichord later, I added a Snoop Dog vocal track, and that's it really. Nothing planned it just happened.

Burn It Like It's Hot by Gamma Goblin

In long: I was practicing as already mentioned when the hiphop thing happened. The main guitar riff from Burn got added as a bassline. Then I add harpsichord over the top and had a bash at as much of the solo as I had figured out. I thought it sounded interesting, and I left it alone for a week. When I came back to it, it sounded quite inspiring. I developed it a bit more and decide to add some vocals. It was only after I added the Snoop Dog acapella track that I realised the connection between the titles.

I was going to rerecord the solo as I had mastered it by now but I liked the edginess the original had due to be being totally random. I messed about with bits and pieces in the tune and then I called it a day. One thing I do wish though, I wish I was more familiar with ReWire. I ended up having to export a rough draft of the song from Reason and then key the vocals to that in a non-ReWire DAW before exporting that vocal track and importing it back into Reason again where I could do some edits before the final bounce. It wasn't a pain in the hole as it all made logical sense to me, and indeed isn't necessarily a wrong way of doing it, but it's very convoluted in this day and age.

For further listening, check out on YouTube the originals of...

• "Burn" by Deep Purple

• "Drop it like it's hot" by Snoop Dog

[UPDATE] I looked it up in the dictionary, there's only one "g" in Dog :p Fuck it anyway, couldnt be arsed fixing it... it makes it all the more gangsta now... big pimpin' etc.

Gail Trimble - Why the Hatred?

Apparently Gail Trimble, of Corpus Christi Oxford, appeared on University Challenge again last night. I mentioned her in post a while back, when I saw her appear on an earlier episode of University Challenge. On that occasion her appearance gained some negative interest on the internet. It's worse this time however, for example...

"We have been watching this horse-toothed snob for the last number of weeks. she ruins university challenge every time she is on it with her 'better than thou' attitude"

As I've mentioned umpteen times before, I don't watch a lot of TV. Very rarely would I sit down and tune into the goggly-box. I do own a modern TV though, with amazing features like an "OFF SWITCH". And I really paid a lot for the delux model with the ability to CHANGE CHANNELS! Seriously, if a program annoys you that much just turn the fucking thing off! Maybe if you spent less time sprawled out in front of the rot-box and more time reading you might not feel so inadequate watching these shows.

[UPDATE 24.02.09] Gail Trimble & Corpus Christi Disqualified For Cheating in Final!

[Gail Trimble Creates Traffic, 22.02.09]

Mashed Up Scat

No don't worry, the title has nothing to do with my last post. Have you ever surfed around the internet listening to music, when you started browsing videos on YouTube only to find concord between the music and the audio track to a video? Yes? Excellent, because you won't find that here! Instead you'll witness what happens when you take some Scatman John, a recorder played via the nose, a bunch of other random videos, and stick them altogether under the supervision of a bottle of vodka.

This might not be high art but it is mashtastic! Lots of goodies included for your pleasure in the video, so its well worth a watch even just once. And if all that doesn't jingle your trouser bell, enjoy this Scatman John album cover I doctored.

Next week, a Bobby McFerrin mashup... maybe.

[Nose-Recorder version of Bach's Minuet in G very kindly donated* by some legal guy on the internet. * Without knowledge or permission.]

My Digestive System Went On Strike

Yep, I got a dose of the double blow-outs there yesterday (well today too I guess). I've been awake all night vomiting every hour, regurgitating the saliva I swallow. That's not fair is it? I mean sure, vomit up that old hang' sandwich and gallon of coke or what have you, but why saliva!? Thats being very mean, I think I'll have to get onto my local MEP about that, I'm sure its a war crime or something! And of course it wouldn't be a double blow-out if I wasn't suffering at the other end too. Yes sir, chocolate rain! <-- 33 million views!!!

I was at work yesterday, just after lunch when I get that "uh-oh" feeling. You know the one, the one that makes you keep an eye on the bathroom at all times just to calm yourself down. You tell yourself "its fine, if all gets to all you can just dart in". Well thats just what happened, out with the sandwich and coke into the sink. "Well, at least its over now" I thought, but much like the end of a bad horror film, a demonic voice from my innards growled "oh no its not!".

So I made my excuses and left work early.Merciful god, the voice wasn't lying! Once I mounted the throne at home, I felt like a sausage being sqwez' in the middle. There was fire and brimstone from every orifice! But the vomiting, that I couldnt handle. Usually when your stomach is dry you just dry wretch, oh not this time. I don't know where it was finding the stuff but it just kept coming. Then an hour later, more came... and again and again. I tried to sleep but I couldn't with the ill feeling that was over me. I finally started to "rest" by half dreaming that I was a block of matter trying to navigate home through other blocks in some kind of giant puzzel. Then at 12 I woke up and vomited some more.

I thought I'd never get back to sleep, when I started half dreaming again that I was making bullet-points for real life scenarios (don't ask me what that was about). At 4 I woke up and tried a little bit of water, it stayed down anyway. It was better than sex, never have I appreciated water so much! I'm fantascising about all other kinds of liquids now too though, even prune juice, which is very strange considering my current condition. I had this video saved in my youtube account since the jazz festival last year. It sums it all up perfectly (with a soothing Acker Bilk soundtrack!).

For Your Consideration

In my last post, I referred to Brian Cowen as "El Biffo, the Clowen". I think the Clowen part is fairly obvious but whats up with putting El before Biffo? Well it just sounds better, but also its in reference to a lovely little suite of music by Chick Corea called El Bozo. Great, so whats the connection? Well, "Bozo" is a very famous clown in American Pop Culture. So there you have it, and again I say El Biffo just sounded good. But the other weird thing about Brian Cowen and Chick Corea is...



While they might look slightly similar, that's where the similarities end. For instance, one loves to rattle out a few tunes in public but has no ability to run a country, while the other is a jazz pianist.

For foreign readers, who are perhaps at this stage totally lost, I should point out that Biffo' is our current leader, our Prime Minister, our Taoiseach. And here he is last year, telling us how he's going to save Ireland from recession. Obama could learn a thing or two from this!



Anyone else get the smell of hot Guinness and fag butts while watching that? I can definitely hear him suffering from indigestion at the end. You know what the scariest thing is though, remember Boris Yeltsin, that infamous Russian leader, now since deceased. Remember at how we laughed at the video of his little dance on stage. "Oh Russia's rightly in the shit with this guy" we chuckled. Remember how their economy crumbled and people had their savings wiped out in the banks? Remember the scenes of hyperinflation where people where buying loaves of bread with wheel barrows of cash? Yep, I think we're in safe hands with Brian though. I get a mighty fine feelin' about that kid. Sure sing us another one there... a good Fenian one this time "The Broad Black Brimmer" or "Get out of me country, ya black bastard ya".

El Biffo, The Clowen

There's a few versions of the Brian Cowen / "Brian Clowen" parody out there already, and it would be far too easy to be, once again, inspired by Tim Curry's demonic version of Pennywise in Stephen King's "IT", or a Ritchie Kavanagh styled "Aon Focail Eile... get up here child and I'll ride ya, after I ate this mutton chop" perversion. I instead went for a different angle, a less brutal but no less cutting affair. I wanted you to feel sorry for Brian Cowen. I wanted a clown-tragedy, a character perhaps not out of place in Leoncavallo's opera, "Pagliacci". Gone is the venom and the stinging personal insults, what we are left with, is a mere child-like Brian, looking lost and simple, with a bag of money by his foot. Our country is failing, not because of personal malice but because of political ineptitude.

HOPE, Me HOLE

You can HOPE all you like but this is reality for an awful lot of people. I didn't have enough time to do up my own version so I just Googled around for an online automagical generator. I found this Flash based one. It's not bad, you can alter the colour ranges after you upload your image but it smooths out the final image too much. It looked much better before it rendered the final version.


Here's the actual image I created and uploaded to the site. You can see how sharpe the lines are.

[DOLE @ obamaicon.me]

Britain, How Much Would You Give For This Broken Down Country?

I know Britain is fairly nabbered itself, but Jesus Christ, Ireland is rightly fucked! More fucked than a porn star! We are free falling into a economic black hole and all we have is Brian Clowen [sic] to save us. Imagine if Hans Zarkov went into space with Brian Cowen instead of Flash Gordon to battle Ming The Merciless... yeah, you'ver getting the picture now.

Sure aren't we all British anyway; we speak English, 90% of the Irish population are addicted to Coronation street and support Man Utd, most of our trade is with Britain, and all our abortions are carried out in British clinics. We are obsessed with British Monarchy and we consume British TV like it's cocaine. Don't play the Feinian bullshit with me. We admitted that we don't give a monkeys about independence years back when we accepted the "Euro" as national currency. We effectively took a shit in the graves of the 1916 martyrs when we dropped the Punt, so it's not as if we care deep-down about sovereignty. [joke: whats the greenest thing about Ireland these days? A hundred Euro note!]

Joking aside (Christ was I actually joking though?). If we could somehow magically wake up under a British flag tomorrow would we still be as adamant to break free? For one, we would be better off, socially and economically, instantly. The problem is this "magic" changeover is an impossibility. We as Irish nationals were treated like dogs for hundreds of years. Thats being far too kind, for dogs would have been treated better. We were chastised and brutilised and treated like shit. Paddy jokes and black spuds... We had to break free, there were no two ways about it. But, it wouldn't be the same today if we were still lived under the "Union Jack". An unfortunate paradox: things would be better now, but not if hadn't broken free.

The government bought Anglo Irish Bank and all its toxic debt. The question to ask is, how much would it cost for Britain to buy Ireland and its toxic everything? "Buy us Britain, all is forgiven!" Now before you try and lynch me via the comments, may I suggest that Britain is only the most logical choice for national takeover. Personally, a German-Irish "Anschluss" is what I'd like to see. Heil!

Farts On Mars

Well, maybe! I just loved my phrase "Farts On Mars" too much not to post something.

"Hausu" (Those Crazy Japanese Are At It Again)

The cat did it. I need to get this on DVD. Hausu(Japan 1977).

[Full Film on Youtube : via WFMU]

Chances of an Athiest believing in God

I don't get it.

[via usemycomputer.com]

Garda Enrolement eh?

I was on irishblogs.ie one morning last week when I spotted this. I don't visit irishblogs.ie very often so its new to me. Sorry if it's been covered by someone else already. I was going to delete this post but after seeing the add again today, I just felt like publishing.

Kilroy College are offering a course to help you get into the Guards, and travel back in time apparently. They offer "The best possible preparation with [they're] unique coarse" for 2007 enrolment. A very "unique coarse" in that case.

Thats two years out, surely someone must still have the fla file to edit, and publish a new swf from.

A Recitative Dream - In C Dim Whole Tone

I "wrote" this over Christmas when I was fairly out of it because of the flu. I wanted to capture the mood of delirium. I started out with a diminished scale but I wanted a more dreamy feel, so I switched to a diminished whole Tone in C. Ooh classy eh? It's like Cdim half scale, only with the G and A replaced by a G#.

Anyway, it's all a bit of fluff and the interesting part gets going half way through (marked with a comment of the embedded soundcloud module below). While musically it could do with some work (As always, it was almost a "one take" wonder, and I didn't even attempt to play the saxophone like a real saxophone), it does have one major aspect though which I'm happy about: It sounds pretty much how it did beforehand when it was just in my head. I wanted to create a type of "breathing" effect with pad sounds, in and out, like a human accordion... but with this type of "musical speaking" over the top with a raspy reed instrument (sax), hence the use of "recitative" in the title. Like I said, the actual sax performance is rubbish (no saxophone has a register that dynamic :) but I think the overall tone its quite effective, if I do say so myself. Reverb and delay was tweaked with afterwards.

A Recitative Dream - In Cdim Whole by Gamma Goblin

[The image above is my own (except for the moon). I knew those kooky contrast flash photos I took a few years ago would come to good use!]

God Bless Pleurisy

This is something I've been thinking about for the last few years. You know the way they say you shouldn't repeatedly reheat and refreeze food because it increases the amount of nasty germs and bacteria contained within the food? Well doesn't the same thing happen in Ireland regularly on a national scale? Last week we had to put up with temperatures in minus figures and this weekend we're experiencing temperatures in excess of 12 degrees. Knowing Irish weather, it will probably be snowing tomorrow.

So is this the reason that "the snots" always seem to be worse in Ireland, or is it just a internal perception? Who cares anyway, when you're trying to cough up porridge from your lungs, it doesn't matter how you got it.

[The image was taken from Whacky Packages stickers collection, something I used to get as a child.]

Return of the Commodore 64

And the return of the Amiga, Spectrum, Atari ST... well almost. Computer design will recurse when Asus release their Eee keyboard PC in the September of this year. The unit will be not much bigger than a regular qwerty keyboard, but will sport a small touchscreen monitor to the right of the keys.

Looks handy, novel and nostalgic. As long as the price is right it could be a viable purchase. The keys look a bit iffy though.

[Info @ The Register : via]

"Fuck Dell"

Dell Job Cuts

Michael Dell, "smoking the bitches", at the Limerick Dell plant today.

[1900 jobs cut at Dell Ireland]

My Mobile Phones

Here is a picture of every mobile phone (bar one) that I've owned. The one that's missing is my first, a Motorola A130. That was the first phone to be used with a prepay mobile service in Ireland, back around 1997. A few weeks back I desperately asked for help identifying this phone. Des came up with a very close answer but after finding the manual in the attic a few days ago I now know for sure that it was the A130 model.

The phones are in chronological order, left to right, top to bottom, and my descriptions of each are more personal than technical.

• Motorola A130: Slagged off as being a brick with a pop up aerial, this simless analogue mobile made phone calls and thats about it. I think I mashed it up with a hammer with the analogue service got turned off, can't be sure, but it was definitely "dismantled" anyway. 

• Siemens C25: This was described as being tiny, it wasn't! The aerial alone could be used as a weapon. The main selling point with this was the ability to compose crude monophonic melodies and use them as ring tones. Oh the horror of it! I remember spending an evening transcribing Mike Oldfields Tubular Bells. Hardly original but it was a lot more accurate than some of the other "homemade" versions I heard sequenced on this phone. 

• Nokia 7110: The "Matrix" phone... only it wasn't, that was actually an earlier model. This phone was truly a milestone in mobile telephony. It's still one of my favorites, its a real pity it turned itself off one night and wouldn't turn back on. It had the best interface on a phone I've used. I wish my other phones had scroll wheels, it made navigation a breeze. It was also the best phone to text on, simply because the slide down cover allowed your fingers something to grip. After using other phones since, I now firmly believe all mobile phone designs are upside down, the keys should be above the screen, which allow you to grip the whole phone when texting. 

• Nokia 6110: After my 7110 died I needed something quickly. I got this second hand. A solid phone with the important feature I used often on the 7110, an infrared port. Before all those "crazy frog" company's you see on the backs of magazines, I was there making operator logo's for people on my laptop, sending them to my phone via the IR port and then forwarding them to their phones over the network. Try telling the kids of today that, and they won't... care. 

• Nokia 6210: Fairly soon after the 6110, I bought this new. A lovely phone to hold, similar in shape to the 6110 but slimmer and without an external aerial. Again, it had an IR port which got a lot of use but eventually became unused. I remember one of the accessories for this phone was a customised plate for the front (the little silver thing at the bottom). You could order one from Nokia with your name on it. I thought it was utterly pointless, even if you used it in a business sense to identify phones.
  

• Nokia 7650: This was another coveted flagship model from Nokia. My first phone with a Symbian S60 OS, a colour screen, a camera, and bluetooth connectivity as well as all the other bits and pieces. I got it relatively late in the day and other newer models were beginning to pass it out, most notably regarding its non-support for expandable memory. It was primarily for this reason that I retired it some years later. The S60 OS got a lot of use though, and its amazing how much you can store on 4MB if you're careful :) I remember thinking how well it looked as a phone; solid! Now I see it as an obnoxiously sized brick! 

• Nokia 6670: This was my most used phone ever, even to this day it gets the odd bit of use. I read dozens of ebooks on it, watched hours of videos I transcoded, sent and received emails, programmed in Python, used it for time lapse photography, hung it from my neck on a lanyard in nightclubs with giant scrolling text on the screen (fantasy #87alpha, I have the software but not the bravery). It was the only phone I owned with changeable covers too (wow thrilling feature). It was a great phone really, but it had to go when the "0" button started to act up. 

• Nokia N73: Much the same as the 6670 only now with 3G and a "theoretically" superior camera. I say theoretically because while the quality was a lot better, the slowness and always on flash was a real pain the hole. The slowness of the phone in general was the reason for dropping back to a S40 OS model for my next purchase. Mobile internet got a lot of use on my N73. I also used it as a 3G modem for both my laptop and Nokia N770 Internet Tablet. It was getting very slow so I decided to flash the firmware, as I did a few times before. It was the last thing I did with the phone, it never survived the procedure.
  

• Nokia 6500s: My current phone and so far so good! No S60 OS but its as nimble as Speedy Gonzalez with his balls on fire. The camera while outputting images at the same resolution as the N73 is much much better! Fast start-up, quick focus, auto macro selection, a flash you can turn off (not just for super sneaky shots, but now macro shots aren't ruined by the flash!) Nice slide action, nice memory expandability, solid feel, stainless steel body. A wonderful combination of business phone and cretin phone features (all that crazy frog shit) to make it practical and still fun. I can live without S60 OS because I augment the 6500's feature set with that of the N770 running Debian Linux.

Two final trivial facts: 3 dead phones, 2 still in existance. And there's a trend running through the phones I owned... a slide covered phone after every 2 candybar shaped phones.

Tony O'Reilly & The Crystal Factory

RTE might be showing this movie next Christmas, or should that be Halloween. Sir Anthony O'Reilly has resigned from the board of Waterford Wedgwood, which incorporates the subsidiary of Waterford Crystal. In case you're unaware of the current situation, Waterford Crystal are in a bad place right now. A pack of administrators, receivers, boogey men... have stepped in to see whats to be done with the company and workforce. The general consensus is, unless a buyer can be found, the whole lot will fold.

I think Waterford' should have tried an Apple marketing scheme a long time ago. Some kind of "Drink Different" slogan with flashy add's that gave the impression "unless you buy our product, you're a fucking retard." They could have had a whole line of iGoblets, iVases, iTumblers and iFlutes. Trying to raise sales via dying art forms like ballet was a total waste of time. They needed to do like Apple and appeal to the dregs. They tried this low level advertising at Christmas for their Clear Crystal range. Sadly, way too little and way too late.

All that said, not much you can do with an over valued currency like the Euro. Ireland is just a bad place to be making stuff right now. Is Paddy Power taking bets on which manufacturing companies will go next? What odds would I get on Dell staying here? I see a lot of black Mondays coming in 2009. Yay!

addendum: Look at these Waterford Crystal flutes designed by John Rocha, aren't they fucking beautiful? I think I might get me a pair to sip my coke out of. Have you ever seen these advertised anywhere? Why weren't there adds for these during Coronation Street add-breaks every night? Pride! "Waterford' is too good for the likes of Corrie watchers". They badly needed a Michael O'Leary in there, with a low brow advertising blitz campaign. Luxury goods me hole! Sell them in Dunnes and Tesco! Darwin: "adapt or die".

Secret Messages

Look closely, do you see it? There's something very spooky about this image. You'll probably only see it though if you've seen the likes of it before. And if you've "seen" the likes of this before, you'll know that me telling you to look at it is a load of crap. There are secrets to it though. Yes.

More M8 Highway Robbery

I got a nice Happy New Year message from the tolls people when I took the Fermoy Bypass/M8 Motorway today: The toll has gone up another ten cent to €1.90. I had €1.80 ready for them and when they wanted more all I had was €0.20 so they got €2 off me in total. I left them a Happy New Year gift though.... two black lines of rubber. Cunts!

They seem to have this 6 month increase trend going on, so in six months time it will be upto €2. Be warned anyway, the toll for non commercial vehicles now stands at:




€1.90

Photograph Of 2008

REUTERS/Kevin Coombs

I meant to post this earlier. There's a fine collection, in 3 parts, of photographs from 2008 [a 'Big Picture', boston.com special]. Its well worth even just glancing through them because they really are fantastic. I choose this the above image to show off the collection because I think it's a sign of things to come for a lot of people in 2009.

Image description:

"Staff stand in a meeting room at the Lehman Brothers offices in the financial district of Canary Wharf in London September 11, 2008. Lehman Brothers eventually filed for bankruptcy - the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history - and was delisted from the NYSE, and later liquidated."

[Part 1 : Part 2 : Part 3 : via]

Christmas Goodies

A few bits I picked up so that I'd have something to open on Christmas day.

Three CD's:

• The Orchestral Works of Toru Takemitsu, a 20th Century Japanese composer.
• H'art Songs by Moondog. A wonderful album of sweet little tunes.
• The Last Rebel, soundtrack. Music by Jon Lord & Tony Ashton for a 1971 Western. The movie is awful apparently.
  

A book on midi orchestration, covering both real life orchestration and how to make virtual instruments sound right in a sequencer. From the bits I've read so far it seems to be a great read. Nothing is taken for granted but the level of technique extends into levels for the fully experienced composer. Teaches theory and practical application. When I'll be able to practice some of the stuff is a different story, I'm all over the place at the minute.

Korg NanoPad

I got one of these recently. It was actually meant to be Christmas present to myself, but unforeseen circumstances meant I had to open it up and check it out before Christmas (long story; short version, UPS are shit!). I was going to upload some samples and stuff, and even a video but you know how these things work, you're lucky to be getting even a picture I took of it.

So what do I think... well, its a terrible drum controller, but comes in useful in other ways. First off, the pads are awful, a lot of this could be personal taste though. I've spent years trigger drum sounds with a keyboard and it was only recently when I got my Novation ReMote with the little row of pads along the bottom (they're in the picture above the NanoPad) that I started using pads of any kind. These are beautiful in comparison. You can play them with the same force you'd use casually tapping out a drum pattern on a table. They respond to the slightest touch, and have wonderful dynamics. The pads on the NanoPad frankly need to be hammered to work, well sometimes anyway. Trying to find the appropriate force to trigger a sound of a certain velocity value, repeatedly, is hard! Setting the sensitivity values through the NanoPad software is pointless, it doesnt affect the level of force needed, it just alters the output. You'd be better off setting it to output at full volocity because at least you'd know what you're going to get when you hit a pad then.

Whats good about it then. Well its got a cheap but working XY controller. You can assign anything you like to each pad, and there are 4 banks available for you to edit. You can also program pads to play clusters of notes (chords) which is very handy. The roll and flam effects can create some interesting effects when used on non percussive sounds. You can come up with interesting melodies you might not have ordinarily have thought of on a keyboard. You can play it like a drumtar, or a drumflute.... if you're feeling adventurous. It's cheap!

On a final note, this product is obviously designed for Apple users. To use it on my computer I had to download drivers from the net, it apparently works out of the box with Apple Mac's. And the software you can get for it pops up in a Mac styled window.

[Korg NanoKontroller's Website]

Microsoft Programming Skillz

year = ORIGINYEAR; /* = 1980 */

while (days > 365)
{
    if (IsLeapYear(year))
    {
        if (days > 366)
        {
            days -= 366;
            year += 1;
        }
    }
    else
    {
        days -= 365;
        year += 1;
    }
}

The code is designed to calculate the current year from the total number days since 1980 to the present, but its a tarp!

A bag of Jelly Babies for the person who figures out whats wrong with the fragment of code above. It's world famous  now, but no cheating please! I saw the problem without cheating and so should you!

[via]

Happy New Year!

I wouldn't be surprised if this was my best blog post of the year! Coastal Aussie wanted some help 'shopping an image so I obliged. Paedobear might be old hat to some at this stage, but the oldies are the best in my book :) Expect this to get repeated postings lol

Well wishes to all my regular readers, subscribers and those that just randomly pop in every now and again. Happy new year to all those who leave nasty comments too, for you are the ones who keep me on my toes :)