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Reviews

Tommy Emmanuel CGP

I found about about Tommy Emmanuel recently, from a YouTube video that showed him playing a wild and incredible version of “Guitar Boogie”. That particular video was afterward removed from YouTube due to a copyright claim from an entertainment company. Still, thanks to someone from that same entertainment company (see comment #1 below), I found another clip of him playing that same song. Try to follow the incredibly complicated fingerwork if you can. The amount of dexterity and virtuosity this man possesses is amazing.


Tommy Emmanuel – Guitar Boogie

Tommy Emmanuel

Photo used courtesy of tommyemmanuel.com

Tommy’s been playing guitar professionally for over 40 years, and is huge in his native Australia. He started playing at the age of 4, by ear, without formal instruction. Two years later, he was already working pro gigs. He plays guitar differently from most, using all ten fingers. He calls it “finger style”, and I’m sure you appreciated it on the version of “Guitar Boogie” shown above.

I found two other really nice videos with him, recorded when he did a show on Korean television. The first is “Since We Met”, and the second is “Angelina”. These are quieter songs, but the man’s talent is readily apparent. These two songs, instead of impressing with virtuosity, relaxed me, and that’s worth more to me than a little excitement. (I’m somewhat tightly wound, as regular readers might have found out by now…) The final proof of Tommy’s talent came when I showed the videos to Ligia (who is Conservatory-trained in voice and piano) — and she immediately said they’re great.


Tommy Emmanuel – Since We Met


Tommy Emmanuel – Angelina

Want to know what the CGP in his name stands for? It’s “Certified Guitar Player” — a title given to him by the legendary Chet Atkins in 1999, for his lifetime contribution to the instrument. Awesome, don’t you think?


Tommy Emmanuel – Questions

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Events

120th Anniversary of the Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower under construction, 1878

Built between 1887 and 1889 by French engineer Gustave Eiffel, the tower has since become the most recognizable landmark (and the most visited) in the world. For its size, the tower is amazingly light — its mass is less than the mass of the air contained in a cylinder of the same size. For its time, the system for joining the metal girders together was truly innovative, and was inspired by the design ideas of a Romanian engineer named Gheorghe Panculescu.

Eiffel Tower Girders, 1889

The shape of the tower was dictated purely by mathematics, and the primary design goal was wind resistance. Eiffel and the other engineers wanted to make sure it could withstand strong winds, being at the time the tallest building in the world. Being a very tall building, made almost entirely of metal, it’s also a very large lightning rod, which attracts amazing lightning bolts, as you can see in this photo from 1902.

Lightning striking the Eiffel Tower, 1902

Also interesting is the use of the tower as a radio antenna. Over time, antennas were mounted to the tower, or the tower itself was used as a large antenna for radio communications. In 1910, the first cosmic rays were observed with the aid of the tower by Father Theodore Wulf. Nowadays, 9 radio and TV stations broadcast content with the aid of the tower.

This year, the French celebrated the tower’s 120th anniversary on Bastille Day. A concert by Johnny Hallyday was held at night, while fireworks blazed forth from the tower. It was an amazing lightshow, captured fittingly by Alta Media Productions and Toys Prophet, two Vimeo users. You can see their videos below. Taken from different vantage points, one focuses on the Paris nightscape and the tower lightshow, while the other captures the interaction of people with the evening’s events.

http://vimeo.com/5621455
Eiffel Tower on Fire from Alta Media Productions on Vimeo.

-SPEED OF LIGHT- ….. ESSAI N°5.1 from toys prophet on Vimeo.

I haven’t yet visited the Eiffel Tower, and I look forward to doing it someday. It’s a structure unlike any other. When you think of it in the context of architectural design, it fits into no category. Its design is pure engineering, with no allowances for the niceties of normal architecture. Sure, it’s been adapted for human use over time, and you can even eat there now, but these are all add-ons, insignificant to the initial design goals. It didn’t fit within the times when it was made, in spite of some of the Victorial wrought iron work it faintly resembles, and it still doesn’t fit within any normal design constraints today, even in post-modernist times. And yet it has become a symbol of architectural design, of Paris, and of French culture, odd as it may be. If nothing else, Gustave Eiffel had serious guts to undertake such a work and to withstand all of the criticism leveled at him during and after the construction of the tower. He was right all along.

Eiffel Tower by briandeadly on Flickr.

Eiffel Tower by briandeadly on Flickr

Historic photos of the Eiffel Tower used here are public domain, obtained courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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Places

Grauseeli time lapse

Beautiful time lapse video from Tobias Straka, taken at night from the Grauseeli lake in the Bernese Alps, near Gimmelwald, Switzerland. It’s amazing how much a soundtrack can liven up a video. In this case, the music adds a whole other dimension to it.

http://vimeo.com/5843652
Grauseeli from Tobias Straka on Vimeo.

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Places

Peruvian vampire bats carry silent strain of rabies

Courtesy of the Greenhall's Trust - WI

Courtesy of the Greenhall's Trust - WI

In Peru, vampire bats are increasingly biting people, and death is often the result of their normally innocuous bites. Researchers are exploring the possibility that the bats are carrying a strain of rabies known as paralytic or dumb rabies, which causes disorientation, muscle weakness, then death.

The vampire bats normally stick to biting wildlife or livestock, but as more people infringe on their habitat, through deforestation and agriculture, the growing bat population turns to them as another food source.

Research is focusing on how the disease persists in the bat population, and also on where it is located, so that health authorities may know where people will need to be vaccinated against this particular strain of rabies.

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Thoughts

Alice in Wonderland official trailer (2010)

Tim Burton’s version of “Alice in Wonderland” is out (the official version, that is). Guess what role Johnny Depp is playing?

alice-in-wonderland-trailer
Alice in Wonderland Official Movie Trailer in HD

Not to be nitpicky, but in the trailer, Alice’s hair is curly before falling through the hole, straight as she’s falling, and curly again when she finds herself on the floor at the bottom. And while she’s falling, her hair drapes downward, which doesn’t make sense. It should be blowing upward, right? Have a look at this frame from the trailer to see what I mean. Looks like they forgot to use some fans when they filmed those sequences, to simulate the force of the air blowing past her during the fall.

alice-falling

The role of the Mad Hatter has naturally been made more prominent since Johnny Depp plays it. It’ll be interesting to see how the story changes to accommodate that.

mad-hatter

Can’t wait to see this movie.

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