My idea is to offer two types:

• Screen cast style where by I will describe the subject through an interactive video. This will usually involve me providing theoretical foundations for the concept and then performing demonstrations which can be followed and replicated. Any associated files, projects, documents and the like will be included with the tutorial as a download.
• Written tutorials comprising screen shots and textual descriptions. These will be used where concepts are of a purely theoretical nature such as when discussing a concept from music theory or perhaps some kind of sound analysis.

As a first pass design at the various curricula, I want to do the following two courses:

Production Technology

Compressors

• What, Why, When
• How – Threshold
• How – Ratio
• How – Attack
• How – Release
• Where – Drums
• Where – Percussion
• Where – Bass
• Where – Leads
• Specific Applications – Sidechain Compression
• Specific Applications – New York/Parallel Compression

Music Production and Sound Design

Drums and Percussion

• Theory – What is the rhythm section of a track
• Practice – Designing a Kick
• Practice – Designing a Snare
• Practice – Designing a Clap
• Practice – Designing a Open and Closed Hi Hat
• Practice – Designing a Shaker
• Practice – Designing a Wood Block
• Practice – Sampling
• Practice – Sequencing
• Practice – Processing and Effects

All of the above are going to be screen casts and I will probably refine this list many more times because I think it’s quite week and doesnt provide a thorough (enough) overview of concepts and practices.

Nonetheless it’s a start and if this list is anything to go by, then perhaps 2 years from now, I will have hundreds of tutorials on this site. Provided I can ensure that the quality is of the highest level, I plan to completely outdo anything else that is available on the internet.

I have also been toying with the idea of giving it all away for free, both the tutorials and my own music. I know you probably think I am nuts but there is method in this madness that I will go into on another post. For the time being, let me just say that my plan is not to make money from the music on its own because in this internet age, that money would almost be negligible. It’s simply not a viable option anymore. Instead, the plan is to use my music and tutorials to get myself exposure and ultimately gigs as a DJ and performing artist because that is where the money is at.

After watching the industry for a number of years, I have observed the following:

• Artist X is a bedroom DJ and producer.
• Artist X makes tons of tracks, send them to labels for a few years and gets shot down time and again.
• Artist X starts DJ’ing at a local pub/club to get experience and tiny bits of exposure.
• Artist X eventually makes a track that a small label is willing to sign.
• This track then  ends up on Beatport and Trackitdown which is where the artist’s name starts to grow a little bit.
• X releases a few more tracks but now he has developed some industry clout and a big label signs him up.
• X then releases his track on the big label and then his name really blows up.
• The big label usually handles his marketing and acts as management agent controlling his DJ bookings and requests which now start to come in thick and fast from all over the world.
• X now has made it.

Now I know I am making this process sound quite mechanical but honestly I have watched it happen with small names turning into big names countless times and the process always seems to work like this. Also on reading many interviews with famous DJ/producers, they pretty much all say the same thing.

Now my intention is to kind of bypass some of this because it is both a slow process and I am getting into the game pretty late….Note I didn’t come up with this strategy, I am basically copying this guy, Tom Cosm, who pretty much releases everything for free and through providing high quality content and proving his worth, he is currently touring Europe for 4 months playing gigs all over the continent despite not being affiliated with any label or studio whatsoever. His whole reputation has been built up by making good music (firstly!) and then providing good content to the whole community. The only thing he sells are HD versions of his tutorials that can be purchased and shipped on a DVD (I have bought all of them), but you can still download standard quality versions as well as all his music, directly off his site, for free.

So in short, my plan is to give it all away and build up a solid reputation around my personal brand. Using this approach of not waiting for a record label to bite means I can distribute my music at my will and get (potentially) millions of people listening through the power of viral and social media marketing.

It’s a plan that is certainly full of holes and naivety but that’s exactly why I like it

The interesting thing about the RSS feed having a mind of its own is that I got to read that post again for the first time in a few years….It’s quite fascinating reading something you wrote in the past. I think what I should do is write a few follow ups to some of the contentious ones and see if my viewpoints have changed and in what ways. If nothing else, it will be interesting to evaluate my thoughts over time and make some comparisons as well as ponder the influences.

Anyways, the RSS feed is now configured to show all posts so if all of a sudden you see a whole lot that you hadn’t seen before, enjoy!

I also gave one of the new competitors, Concrete5 , a bash which on first impression, seemed pretty good. It had all the plugins you would need to satisfy current social media integration within your blog and seems aimed at designers, which implied that it should be simple to use and capable of crafting impressive UI’s. It’s actually a bit old school in the sense that one drags components around the screen to place everything but it was precisely this technology which I don’t like. I don’t like “designing” each page in isolation. I like to spend hours and hours configuring post or page categories and then use clever tools which derive menu’s from the category hierarchies and then apply page bling across the whole thing.

To cut a long story short, WordPress has it’s quirks but I am used to it and as of 2009, it actually beat Joomla for the top spot in the Open Source CMS awards, so not only is WordPress being considered more than just blogging software but it’s actually considered the best CMS software at this moment and I fully concur with this.

Back to the tips and tricks…

In WordPress you can only have a single dynamic page of posts. You can create static pages for things like “About” and “Contact” but you can’t actually post to them. This posed a problem for me because I am trying to use WordPress as a CMS with a complex and hierarchal menu structure comprising dynamic pages which contain posts pertaining to those sections. The answer lay in post categories and the particular theme I am using. What I did was first replicate the menu structure I wanted as post categories, including any hierarchies. This is one of the great things about WordPress.

Then once those were set, one can setup the menu using the provided menu editor for this particular theme. The cool thing about this custom menu is that you can point the items at pages, categories or custom links.

The resulting menu looks like this:

So at this point, we have a set of custom post categories defining how we want our content to be structured and a menu structure linked to both the categories and some static pages. The purpose of this exercise is so that when we create a new post and specify that it is in category x and y, then WordPress will add the post to menu item x and y and effectively dynamically generate different pages for us based on the the category of the post.

Post Categories

The use of the categories will also allow us to use the category sidebar widget to inform the user of both the nature of the posts but also to provide a post count and rss feed per category.

The menu item that matches the post category will now contain posts within that category such as the example below which contains a single post in the “Fun and Humour” category.

Hope it helps your WordPress en devours

It’s very interesting because we are all very interesting, full of our own agendas and mind games which seem to hurt us when they backfire and deflate our sense of self.

Not that we know how to change nor desire to. If we did, what would there be without all the mind games, strategies and innuendos. Well, maybe not much. Would it be more whole though, more complete or would the desire to win come through regardless.

Can we win without aiming to win? Can we fight without ever fighting? Should we bother trying?

Why am I talking about this and why does it matter to me? Well, for no other reason than it does.

Why does home ground advantage mean so much? How does this affect our mindset? Its the same field isn’t it?

What is this post about, is there a point? I have absolutely no idea. Is there a point in this for you? Does something resonate with you?

Is the downer worth the upper? Is my upper, your downer and vice versa?

Would life be simpler if these questions didn’t matter at all to me? Probably….

Is there ever truly a right way or a wrong way? Surely it’s all relative?

Is the colour that you were told to recognise as red, the same as the colour that I was told to recognise as red? Couldn’t we ever know?

Is there something that matters more than the people we share the moments with? Are the people more important than the moments? If you took the people away, would the moment still exist? Would you want it to exist if you were experiencing it on your own?

Are you a tourist or a traveller? Is there a difference for you?

How did I learn to read and write and do basic maths? I can’t really figure it out yet I seem to be able to do it.

If we only aim for things we understand, will we ever achieve anything? Doesn’t stepping outside of your boundaries require you to master things you don’t understand or so you already understand them and need them to be brought to the surface?

How does something move from short term to long term memory?

What happens when we are gone? Are we still omnipresent? I believe so…

Is this post getting longer than it needs to be? Define how long something is. Define how long a piece of string is. Is it as long as this post?

If people don’t consider these questions, are they stupid? If people do consider these questions, are they stupid?

Stupid is relative isn’t it?

I guess I must be stupid.

On the 25th of this month, it will be 3 years ago that my mom passed away. She died due to complications related to colon cancer. Despite my overwhelming positivity in most aspects of life, I feel that it is probably time that I speak about this and the effect that it has had on me. This post will be long and if you are squemish, you probably shouldn’t read.

It’s not easy watching someone disappear from your life. My mom was a great woman. Loud, passionate and incredibly loving. She sacrificed so much in her life for my sisiter and I and I will always be incredibly grateful for everything she did to allow my sister and I to succeed.

My mom grew up in a tiny town called Jan Kempdorp outside of Kimberly in South Africa (which itself is a pretty small town). How the hell a family of Jews ended up there I will never know.

My mom had a difficult upbringing as one might expect, being a Jew in a small South African town. Antisemitism was rife and money was almost non-existent. Despite this though, my mom did well at school and her life long dream was to go to Uganda to live and work with the their gorilla population, sadly though, this dream was never to materialize.

It is hence not a surprise that as an adult, I am extremely passionate about animal welfare and am a member of a variety of welfare groups. In fact this weekend, I will be participating in a Peta protest against the use of animal skins in clothing where I will be covered in “blood” and will taunt people at the side of the road as they drive past – something I love doing because in general, I can’t stand people.

My mom was never able to attend a university but I was so happy that 2 months before her death I was able to give possibly the greatest moment of her life, which was my university graduation. I don’t think I have ever seen a bigger smile on her face, even bigger than my Bar Mitzvah.

One of the many lowest points that occur in seeing my mom pass away and something that still haunts me 3 years later is the last conversation I had with her before she fell into a coma. It was not the content of the conversation but rather that we had a bit of a argument. It was nothing serious, but we had an scuffle over something trivial while she was in the hospital and I kind of walked away in a huff.

The next day, my dad called me to say that my mom was in a coma. Two weeks later she was dead. I never got to say goodbye or how much I loved her. That moment haunts me.

Over the next two weeks, while her lifeless body was in the ICU, we all were around her, we spoke to her, we spoke about life, we did out best to put off the inevitable.

I knew that my mom was holding on till we told her it was okay for her to pass, I could feel it and sense it. On the 25th of July at 12:15 in the ICU at Linksfield clinic, I asked my family if I could have a moment with her. I told her how much I loved her and I thanked her for everything she had done for me. At the end, I kissed her incredibly bloated face and I whispered in her ear “Go and be at peace”. I turned around and walked towards the door of the ICU. As I was about to walk out of the door, her heart stopped and the infamous flat line sound was made by the hospital machinery.

It was over.

My dad and I hugged for the first time in my life and he cried which was something I have never seen before. I told him it would be ok. They were married for 27 years and my mom passed away at the age of 62.

The last 10 years of my mom’s life were not happy at all. Prior to her having colon cancer, she also had breast cancer which led to her having a mastectomy. She also had around 10 major 8 hour back surgeries which included things such as a spinal fusion on multiple occasions. At the time of her death, she couldn’t really walk anymore and was in constant pain.

Yet despite this, she always showed tremendous positivity and courage and even went to work right up until 3 weeks before her death. She was a file administrator for the same family of companies for the best part of 30 years. That courage, positivity, loyalty and strong will is something I am proud to carry with me today as part of her legacy. She was a great woman and the life and soul of our family. My sister and I sound so similar to her, especially our enormous laugh.

I miss her so much and it has been difficult for me to come to terms with seeing a new women in my dad’s bed where my mom used to sleep, especially given that it only took him 4 months to move on and is now unhappy (although he has yet to admit as much to me). Our relationship has been strained but I want him to be happy. He is still healthy in body and mind and has many years to live. I want them to be happy years.

This month is always hard for me and closer to the 25th I will become snappier and a bit nasty to those around me but it is never intentional.

Anyways, I am glad I finally had the courage to post this.

I love you mom!

The most basic error is the belief that you are seeing the truth and you know the truth because you see it. Seeing is a sense, like other senses, its hard wired through the mind and therefore influenced by the mind. Seeing, as we are talking about here, is not the action of sight but rather the interpretation of the sight.

Let me give you an amusing example. For those you watch rugby in South Africa, you will know that we have a variety of magazine shows each week where they analyse the weekend’s games and discuss the upcoming fixtures. On top of this, our tri-nations rivals, Australia and New Zealand have similar shows and we see theirs and they see ours. Now if there happens to be a big moment in a particular game from the weekend, such as a controversial referee decision, try or yellow card, all the shows will discuss it. The most laughable thing is how all the rugby experts will look at the exact same evidence, they will replay it over and over and nine times out of ten, each side of the pond will see the identical events in completely opposite ways. If a South African player got the yellow card, the South African rugby experts will say that the ref was being tough and unfair and it should not have been a yellow. The New Zealand rugby experts will say that it should have been an immediate red card and the player should be banned for life.

So why do you think this occurs? Do you think it is because one or both sides are not experienced enough to know the rules or know what is happening? Of course not, the panels that make up these magazine shows are usually famous ex-players, couches and the like so of course they know the rules, far better than any of us.

The issue, of course, is that even in the action of watching some piece of live footage and actually “seeing” it unfold in front of you, we are still unable to remove various bits of conditioning, bias and even patriotism when looking at a situation. It is neither a good nor a bad thing, it just is.

I see it every day, in almost every conversation around me, at work, at home, with friends, with colleagues, with parents, with everyone.

We like to believe that we are somehow objective and impartial but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Being genuinely objective about any situation is truly a rare feat and if was able to it, I would tell you how but since I am human, it is probably impossible to remove all the shackles of societal, cultural, religious and financial conditioning.

To a certain extent, it does in part, aid to defining who we are and makes us unique. It is part of having a definable opinion. After all, if we all saw things from an objective standpoint, we would all see things exactly the same and life would be pretty dull.

The important thing here is to try be aware of when an opinion is designed to hurt/diminish/see the failure of/degrade others or prove others wrong for the sake of making yourself look right. What is needed is more genuine, albeit different, opinion, whose value is measured by each others success.

I haven’t spoken about it much on this site, but my absolute passion in life has become music and more specifically music creation, engineering and production. I absolutely love electronic music and my genres that I am interested in both from a production but also a live performance point of view are from the 125 bpm tech and electro house through to progressive house and then to the 140 bpm tech, progressive and uplifting trance with a massive dose of belting techno in the middle.

Between these genres they represent everything that appeals to me in sound and my own productions in some way, attempt to combine all my music interests into one track. One thing is massively prevelant in everything that I make and that is my love for percussion – african, latin and synthetic as well as my love for powerful, driving bass-lines that you might find in techno or tech-trance. There is just something so provocative about the rolling bass of a Simon Patterson track and the complex percussions loops of a Daniel Portman track. I love complex drum and percussion rhythms and the interplay with the bass-line always where my heart is at.

But back to what this post is actually about….I plan to completely redo this site using Joomla instead of WordPress and will put a custom theme together which I feel better defines me (well, I intent to pay on of my more UI talented colleagues to help me with it .

The reason for Joomla is because I intent to create a bit of a community and artist portal site for myself where I will not only provide my tunes as well as weekly/monthly podcasts of me mixing together my top tunes but I intent to use it as a platform to provide some pay-for content.

A big trend in the music production world over the last few years is for budding and mostly unsigned producers such as myself to release high-quality screen casts tutorials on things such as sound synthesis and design, sound engineering, mixing and production techniques, specific hardware or VST tutorials and even genre specific tutorials.

Most charge either a monthly fee to access all content (but then you need to be constantly delivering new content) or they work on a pay per course basis. Of course, the quality of the course is everything as well as the ability to leverage off the viral marketing potentials of the current interweb.

From all I have seen up till now, the sound and audio community is more than willing to pay for this (unlike the software dev community) and I, myself have forked out a good few hundred dollars for top quality content which has really helped me learn and grow in my abilities.

Now where I intent to diff slightly is that I plan to offer soundsets and sample packs for download. For example drum and percussion sample packs which I have designed from scratch. This is currently only being done by some of the top industry professionals and few can compete with the Vengeance sample pack series. Nonetheless I intent to try and initially I will give away a third of each pack for free to entice potential users.

For example say I have created a pack that contains Kicks, Snares, Claps, Open Hats, Closed Hats, Shakers, Congas and Bongos, then i will create a sample pack containing a third of each of the type of samples and distribute it on the various sites, forums etc etc.

This community is brutal, if my sample collections suck, they will flame me to death and obviously not buy. If they are good, there is the potential to gain not just the respect of the vast community but also to turn labels in your direction.

I would probably offer the full sample pack for $20-$30 and it might contain 300-500 one shot samples and maybe 100 loops created solely from the sample in the pack and various bits of processing that effecting.

For the tutorials, I will need to first determine what I want to create and how often I am able to get something out before deciding on a costing model. I will probably include the Ableton Live Packs for free (I use Ableton Live as my primary sequencing system) to registered users of the site, again to entice them to view the tutorials that produced the live packs.

I also intent to provide tutorials on my live performance setup once I have actually figured it out for myself and actually started performing live. My intention is not to be a DJ, but rather, an electronic musician commonly known as a Live PA. This differs to a DJ in two ways. Firstly, I will only play my own music. Secondly, like a band or musician, I will totally recreate the music live – if you have ever seen Goldfish, then you have an idea about what I am talking about…

Overall, this is not something that will make tons of money by any means, it is not something that will allow me to make music all day long. It could however, have a tremendous impact on community support which in turn leads to gigs (where the money is at if you are a DJ) and production/remix requests (not much money to be made any more here).

The current trend in the electronic music world is that your music gets you the gigs and the gigs get you the money and that is why, nowadays, every DJ is a producer and every producer is a DJ.

Anyways, should be an exciting year. My intention this year, musically, is to get my tracks to a level that I would be willing to submit them to labels. If I can do that, It would mean that it has taken me around 2.5 years to get to that level which is decent since most well known producers say that it took them 4-5 years to get their tracks to top level standard. Who knows, maybe I am being overly optimistic, I still have so much to learn but hey, that’s just me

IMAGO is an area of psychology which deals with our perception of what love means, as passed to us by our parents primarily but also influenced by our environment…the whole nature and nurture thing.

At the time, we were both about 24 years old and the youngest there by at least 15 years. If fact, most couples that were there were either divorced, separated or pretty close to it and so we did feel pretty uncomfortable initially because unlike everyone else, we were coming there very happy in our relationship, but looking for further ways to enhance our lives together. All of the other couples, seemed to be there as a last resort to somehow get that spark going again.

I’ll start with the results first, at the end of the weekend, all the couples that were separated and even divorced actually got back together. Nuff said!

So what makes the course so amazing and why would doing it bring you closer together? Well, it all has to do with your parents….Whether we like it or not, our perceptual image of love, money, sex, men, women, religion and other racial groups are heavily controlled by the way we were raised. Ever read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki? It’s the same idea but with reference to money and how the rich stay rich because of how they think about money and how the poor stay poor, as well, due to how they think about money.

Now the image that our parents give us about love and what it means in this world has an enormous bearing on not just the rest of our lives, but also every aspect of our lives. Much more so than anything else. Why? It’s because for the first 18-25 (or sometimes even longer) years of our life, our entire mental picture of what it means for two people to be in love is entirely contained by the way that our parents love or don’t love each other. Above this though, the way they act towards each other in terms of how they speak and behave and under which scenarios and contexts also shapes everything we think and believe about love.

Have you ever found it interesting that:

• The child who was beaten, often beats his own children.
• The person who always picks the bad boy/girl, continues to do so and never gets why they keep getting hurt.
• The child whose parents got divorced when they were young, has serious commitment issues as an adult.
• The child whose parents were known adulterers, often becomes one as an adult.
• The child whose parents were together forever, often has no trouble committing to one person for life.

Now if these examples seem stereotypical or even clichéd, then we need to ask ourselves, why are they stereotypical? Is there some truth to them that makes them so common in society? I know people from each of these example and the amazing thing is that every single one of them conforms to the cliché. It’s not really a hard mental step to grasp really, what you see as a child, you believe as an adult. Whether you believe it or not.

So how this specific IMAGO course tackles this is by making you confront each and every issue that you have with your parents in a manner of highly engaging role playing and powerful psychological tools. It forces you to bring up, acknowledge and discuss things from the trivial to the most serious. The role playing is difficult but powerful. To give you an example of how it works…At one point, my wife and I had to sit on the floor together facing each other, we had to look straight into each other’s eyes and remain that way for the entire duration of the exercise. We took turns being the others parent and in doing so we had to give answers to concerns around a specific issue that the “child” was asking.

The whole idea behind this is to firstly get answers for and then have closure on why something is as it was. If you think you have no issues with your parents, wait till you do this. Let me assure you that every person ends up in tears, it is very traumatic and very healing.

There are many different psychological exercises that you will do with your partner to unearth everything related to how love was represented to you by your parents.

Over the course of the weekend you begin to really, truly understands who your partner is and why they do what they do, from leaving their clothes on the floor to the need for a boys/girls night out to issues such as cheating, children and life.

The reason why those couples got back together at the end of everything is that for the first time in their lives, they understood each other and why they do things. In most cases as well, if one partner was continually doing something that was unintentionally sabotaging their relationship, they also realised, probably for the first time, what they were doing and why they were doing it. In realising all of that, they now know how to stop doing it.

This makes all the difference.

My journey has brought me to a place where I believe most will never reach due to their obsession with money, greed, fame, lust, desire for power and all the other symptoms of the ego.

I have had many helpers along the way and as I continue to grow to become a better, more caring, more genuine person I wanted to acknowledge those helpers who have played a cardinal role in what has become a life worth treasuring.

Now besides from my wife, who is obviously the most influential force and person I have ever had on my life and who, over the last 10 years, has made me into a man that I respect and love, I have some secondary influences in the form of pieces of literature.

Now you might be thinking, what can a book do to change your life, well, you need to read these books and then you will understand. These books will help you understand how poisonous you are to yourself. If you are not so obtuse and ignorant that you cannot look deep into yourself, then these books will change the rest of your life for the better. Without further ado my top 5:

1. A New Earth – Eckhart Tolle

This is the most life changing book I have ever read. This is the source of dissolving your ego. Your ego, which you may or may not realise is the everything and anything upon which your apparent life is created. It is why you say and do practically everything and you have no idea how much it has polluted your life.

It creates that niggling little voice which is making you insane, every second of every day (though you may not realise your insanity until it’s gone). Every conversation you have, every thought, every thing you do, is affected by your ego’s desire to attain more.

Those who think they have no ego, are some of the most egotistical people alive by virtue of the fact that they use their apparent higher plain of consciousness to perceive themselves as better than everyone else. This of course, is the ego. It is only we you can be truly non-judgemental that you will understand this fully.

One day, although I suspect it will take a lifetime, I hope to be non-judgemental and ego-less from a purely genuine place.

If you think you do not need to read this, then you are precisely the person who needs to read it. Everyone on earth needs to read this, simple.

Does the following mean anything to you:

When I do well, it is because of my intelligence, but when others do well, it is because of their environment.
When I do badly, it is because of my environment but when others do badly, it is because of their intelligence.

You know what your answer is to this, that is why you need to read this book.

2. The Power Of Now – Eckhart Tolle

This book is by the same author as above and although written first, I believe should be read after you have read and absorbed the first book. This book conveys another side to the ego that we all struggle with every single day and most importantly how you overcome it.

For most people, the future will always be better, brighter and greater. We will achieve all our goals in the future and we will be happy, fulfilled and successful in the future. On top of this, most feel defined by their past. Their past shapes their abilities, their reactions, their lifestyle and their ambitions.

The problem with this, is that if this is how you define you life, you will spend the rest of you life blaming the past and wishing for the believed to be better, but never attainable, future.

Again, this is the ego’s desire to be better and in the same way as described previously, it completely poisons you out of your own future. This book provides the same solution as the first one, because it is the only solution to the same underlying problem.

You need to understand that the message in both above books takes years to understand and digest and it is not something that you just read. It is something you need to live. But after merely reading, the transformation will have already begun. You will be staggered at how much happier you are and how much more comes into your life.

3. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Steven Covey

Possibly the most famous, “self-help” book in the world. The definition of effectiveness. An absolute master-class of how to create everything you want, practically.

7 life-long habits that will take you a life time to embrace. These habits make you believe that anything is possible and if you are naive like me, then you will certainly welcome this way of thinking. If you are a glass is half-empty kind of pessimist, then you need to read this in order to not spend a life wishing for what you can only blame yourself for not attaining.

4. Emotional Intelligence – Daniel Goleman

Emotional Intelligence has nothing to do with how well you handle pressure or stress at work or how nervous you get in a job interview. This is what MBA students are taught to understand it as, but that is not it.

EQ is related to everything spoken about already and it is all of the above. This book discusses both the physiological and psychological aspects of EQ and if you love science like me, then you will find the biological aspects of the brain and mind discussed in this book, incredibly interesting.

This is the authoritative work on the subject by the man who first understood it and while it is a challenging read, you will feel incredibly awakened by the notions of how pointless and meaningless things like IQ really are. If you love the fact that you are clever and all you think of is shallow financial success, then you need to read this because you need to understand that clever has nothing to do with getting you the materialistic props that you seek so badly.

5. Gut Feelings – Gerd Gigerenzer

Superb. If you want to trust every decision you ever make and know that it comes from a place of depth so far beyond what the primitive, conscious, logical mind can fathom, then you need to read this. I think we all know, intuitively that all the best decisions, that we all make, are not those that come to use by way of logic and deep analytical thinking.

I have tried to live my life avoiding logical thinking for as long as I can remember and I have always made the right decisions for better or for worse. Note, that your gut may not always lead you along the path of least resistance. It may not even lead you on a pleasurable journey, but, it will lead you where you need to go, because there is a message and life-lesson for you in that journey.

This book is fascinating in that the author actually shows you how, though a multitude of verbal and thought experiments, just how powerful and correct your intuition is. It is staggering and provoking. It will make you understand that life is not as serious as we all wish it to be. Life is as fun as we make it and life is everything that we think it is. If you think it is bad, it will be bad.

So how have these 5 books (amongst many others) changed me? Well, everyday I am living the life I want, I am happy, I have all sorts of amazing opportunities coming to me, money always seems to make itself available to me when I need it and most importantly, I have a soul mate to share it all with.

Couldn’t ask for anything better really!

Why shouldn’t they have favourites is my question? I mean we all have favourites regarding almost anything and everything, right? A favourite cat, a favourite music genre, a favourite food, a favourite colleague, a favourite friend and definitely a favourite extended family member….so why not a favourite kid?

Why do we assume or even expect that the laws of society and human dynamics don’t apply when we talk about kids and their relationships to their parents?

I am not saying that it makes being the less favourite any easier. All I am saying is that it is what it is and it is what makes us human, we have a tendency to like and dislike.

Anyways, my brain fart for the day

We take this for granted surely. I mean we get pulled into a world of abstraction where the blue sky formed from changing air pressures creates this blueish barrier between us on earth, and space.

The reality is that the moment I jump into the air, I am already in space. I have actually done what all those people who spend $20 million do. I went into space. I know it sounds retarded but think about it for a second. Walking on the surface of the earth is essentially the same as walking on the surface of the moon. We perceive it be different because we see that amazing blue sky above us which creates this illusion of separation but its just air really.

What a simple thought, it was profound for me.

Well, I am naive and I am fucking happy about it! Let me tell you what naive means to me…

While you find a problem in every solution, I find a solution to every problem. While you spend all your time focusing on the details, I spend my time happily ignoring them in the knowledge that everything always works itself out in the end. While you complicate your life with your inability to commit or to compromise, I acknowledge that two heads are always better than one and three heads are always better than two. While you spend your entire life focusing on meaningless titles and pats on the back that neither you nor anyone else will even remember in 5 years, I focus on being true to myself and not playing the game. While you have no idea about how toxic you are to yourself, I am confident that the way to my own success, is by us all succeeding together.

While you cannot survive without others knowing how clever you think you are, I carry the knowledge that I am smarter than you for the simple reason that I do not care whether or not I am smarter than you. While you cannot know true love because you cannot face yourself, I love completely and am completely loved because I am not afraid to get hurt.

The reason I am all this and you are not, is because I am naive. I chose to see the world as new and fresh every day. I choose to see each situation as an opportunity and not a chore or a disease. I choose to make mistakes and admit them. I choose to not care about being the smartest or fastest or richest.

I choose to be everything that you are not because I understand that the secret to life is not lust or greed or gain or revenge but rather it is love.

I choose to tell you this because watching you’ destroy yourself again and again and again and spend a long life chasing things you think matter, is agonising. I want you to be happy. I want you to know how wonderful it is to be free. I want you to know that in not chasing everything you think is important, the things that are important become apparent and realised.

Go ahead, call me an idealist, but one day, when its far too late, you will realise that you could have been more to more people by being a little bit, naive…

With my home country, South Africa, hosting the Football World Cup this year and with a good dose of irony in that my wife and I are emigrating from this beautiful country this year, times ahead are both exciting and daunting!

So excited, so scared, its gonna be a heck of a ride! By this time next year, I will be writing this blog post from Sydney, Australia (and will be lavishing the supremely better internet connection). I wonder how we are going to look back the place that has been our home for 28 years? How will we see everything once viewed as an outsider? I wonder how long it will take before I put on an Australian rugby jersey and praise the team?

So much beauty here, seems crazy to leave paradise except for the fact that it’s nearly paradise but not quite. It is all those not quite’s that are driving us away and to the place that has everything we have but fills in the missing gaps. You probably think we are taking the easy way out.

Is it easy to leave everything you know and everyone you know behind? Is it easy to start again from scratch? I think it’s far easier to maintain status quo.

I just can’t imagine ever supporting the Ozzie cricket team though

I thought I would describe my home “studio” to anyone who may be wondering what kind of stuff is needed to create music nowadays from home.

First off, I will show you what I wish my home studio looked like:

and….

At this time though my studio is comprised of 5 simple things namely:

• Laptop (the same one I use for work)
• Sennheiser HD 25-1-II Headphones
  
• M-Audio Axiom 49 Midi Controller
  
• Ableton Live Suite 8 as my sequencer
  
• Wide variety of VST instruments, processors and effects

At this point in time, you will not have heard any of my tracks because I have not put any of them anywhere. In due course though, I will start bombarding every available web avenue and social media platform until hopefully a label bites

In terms of instruments, effects and processors, I make use of the big names:

VST Instruments

Subtractive

• LennarDigital – Sylenth1
• Novation – Bass Station
• Novation – V Station
• ReFX –  Vanguard
• Rob Papen – Predator
• Fab Filter – Twin

Wavetable

• Native Instruments – Massive

Harmonic Component Modelling

• Tone 2 – Gladiator

Frequency Modulation

• Native Instruments – FM8
• Rgcaudio – Z3ta+

Percussive Synthesis and Sampling

• Native Instruments – Battery 3 (Sampling)
• Waldorf – Attack (Synthesis)

Orchestral

• Miroslav Philharmonik

In terms of effects and processors, I am using a variety of stuff from SoundToys, Sonalksis, Waves, Flex Development Labs, FabFilter, PSP and Oxford. These comprise compressors, limiters, phase and frequency shifters, fancy filters ,gates, transient designers, expanders, multiband EQ and top class echoes, reverbs, delays, doublers, flangers and a million other things.

The thing that I have realized over the last 8 months since I started my music production journey is that your processors and effects are crucial to obtaining that professional sound but using the latest, greatest outboard gear is not.

Music theory is important but not as important as being spontaneous and learning as much about sound engineering and production techniques as you can.

I am not yet at the point where I have made a professional sounding track with all the polish that you would expect from a top tune but this year is the year!!

Us jews are seen as somewhat a thrifty bunch. Knowing a few jews I can both confirm and deny this stereotype in equal amounts but of course, the collective mind likes to generalise about a few examples and in a secondary fashion, generalise about the most recent occurrences as well. By this I mean that most people will take the most recent memory of something occurring such as a person being sick and go make the generalisation “you are always getting sick, what wrong with you”. In fact, all that needs to happen is that the mind attaches the stereotype of sickness to that person when it happens in recent memory and perhaps once before, possible even quite a while before.

The generalisation powers of the mind are some of our greatest strength and greatest egoic weakness.

Based on partial information we are able to generalise a system, situation or action to the point where we can plan, strategise and apply logic. Our ability to do these things is why we are so successful as a species. We are able to generalise the action process needs to track a ball travelling through the air and actually catch it through a reactionary instinct that has taken millions o years of evolution. It sounds so trivial but try get a robot to do the same thing. Yes you are right, it hasn’t been done yet because the mind’s parallel computer and vision system and mechanism by which actions performed over time become “common sense” are pretty hard to replicate.

Of course, the greatest weakness comes in when the stereotypes lead to a desire for separation and an incorrect feeling of superiority caused by the ego’s need to distinguish itself from others. With specific references to the Jews, the Holocaust is an easily identifiable case in point.

But between both extremes lie some of what effects most of our life. Those little generalisations that come out after a few too many drinks or in casual conversation. Those stereotypes of jews, blacks, whites, women, homosexuals etc etc. You know those ones, you have them too. We all do at some time.

Of course they affect how we interact with people who are part of that generalisation and it is pretty difficult firstly, to realise that a certain reaction is due to the stereotype you have and then secondly, to acknowledge it and try make a decision independently of it.

I have a particular issue with a very specific person at present and although I am aware of the stereotype in my mind and the effect it’s having on our interactions, I still choose to act in a certain way because of it. That is my fault and I need to resolve it. I cannot change them but I can change myself and how I respond to this person. Again this is my ego’s need to separate at work in trying to prove to me that because I do not act like them, I am therefore “better” than them. This is all ego, this is not me.

Hopefully this will be the last post on this current theme that I seem to be on, I will probably be boring all 3 of my readers to death by now J

I do try and see every problem as an opportunity to learn and I am the first to admit that this is not always easy, especially when the pressure is on and I haven’t handled something the way I probably should’ve.

If, in the moment of crisis, struggle or mental upheaval you step outside the thoughts and think about what you are thinking about, you might be surprised how insightful you actually are about the way you do things and the way you think about things. But first and fore mostly, thinking about how you are solving the problem actually takes away the problem to an extent because in that moment, there is no problem, there are only thoughts and thoughts are never the issue, it is your emotional reaction to those thoughts that can be the issue.

Think about that for a second. If you control your emotions, then over time you can control your reactions to any situation even when you are challenged in a way that seems to threaten your ego’s sense of ownership, entitlement and desire to be the victim. That is powerful because you have not only changed how you “think” for the better but you changed it without actually changing your personality or being hard on yourself for how you think.

You can’t really change how you think and by this I mean you cannot control a thought that comes into your head but by changing how you react emotionally, over time, those negative, pessimistic thoughts that cause mental anguish and disease just subside on their own and all of a sudden you realise that you don’t think those thoughts any more.

Negative, compulsive thinking is everything that is wrong with the current world in my opinion and if you look around at the increasing number of people getting cancer, getting divorced and living unfulfilled lives, then surely this is all too obvious.

Knowledge contained in books like “The 7 habits of highly effective people” by Stephen Covey, “Mind Power” by John Kehoe and “Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman and “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle should be the foundational knowledge upon which all other knowledge in life is based. Everything else is less important and reciprocally, everything else will become more achievable if your emotions can be mastered.

It’s certainly a life-long battle and I am always learning more and getting it wrong all the time but that what it’s about. Enjoying and treasuring the journey because you will never reach the destination so rather embrace that concept now and let go of the reward at the end of the tunnel. There is no reward at the end, the reward is happening right now whether you are aware of it or not.

I was fortunate enough to go to Ibiza in 2008 and in doing so, one realises just how far behind we are in terms of parties, the atmosphere, the fun and of course, the music. There is only on place in SA that has it and does it right and that is ESP in JHB! They know what music is and how to play and mix it. They know how to drive a crowd wild! They are the only nightclub I will go to because they have a soul for the music.

Everything else in SA is shit!

I don’t know what happened to that rave seen of the 90′s? Those good old Rosebank days of the 90′s! Fuck man, those were the days! Since then, there has been almost nothing new, nothing unique and nothing that pushes the boundaries. Trance and Techno just aren’t accepted in this country and I don’t know why, it has so much depth and character but I guess, one can’t account for taste these days!

I listen to the radio on my way to work and all I hear is Lady Gaga, Britney and other horse shit and I wonder, where have the real musicians and artists gone? Where is the talent, it must still be there surely?

I saw something on Facebook the other day which really pissed me off. Fucking Tiesto is giving away as a competition prize, a personal phone call!!!!! Huge ass WTF!!!!!

How can their egos have gone so far up their own asses that even the guys that are talented, have become shallow, vote seeking, Top 100 thriving assholes!

Good on you ESP and James and Shane and everyone else! You are authentic! Don’t loose sight of that!

I have been reading the 2 famous books by Eckhard Tolle namely, “The Power of Now” and “The New Earth” and of course they are life changing, mind altering and truly revolutionary. I have been on the quest of self-improvement for a number of years now and at this point, I have been able to reach a good place in terms of ego balance yet I am still battling a bit with acceptance of The Now, acceptance of what-is.

It is a difficult thing to comprehend because our entire lives, upbringing and culture is fixated on making you, effectively, the conglomeration of the past who constantly yearns for the future, believing that the future is better and the grass is greener.

I see this around me mostly because I am now able to see it in myself. I want to help those around me get out of this train of thought but I know it would be too condescending to mention. Of course, my emotional awareness also makes me realise that I want to make it aware to them because at some level, it would satisfy the always present need to have my ego scratched, due to the ego’s desire to prove a separation between them and me. I am aware of it. The work place seems to be where people need the most awakening but it is also the one place that would probably never understand.

The trick is to not be too hard on yourself for having the egoic thoughts. It is merely to acknowledge them. Acknowledgement does 2 things. Firstly, it stops the thought in its tracks. Secondly, stepping outside of the thought, over time, will stop the egoic thoughts from happening in the first place because that’s just part of how the mind seems to work.

I love where I am right now in terms of my consciousness but ironically the world seems simpler when you let your mind run on auto-pilot and never truly thinking about what you are thinking or feeling.

My true aim for the next while is to be able to completely focus on the now without needing to focus on the now. If what is, just is, then, well….I have reached that point where few will ever tread.

My medium term goals, in no particular order are as follows:

• Continue to be an awesome husband (well that’s my opinion anyway)
• Become the worlds greatest DJ and producer
• Play the piano and bongo drums effortlessly
• Eat the food and drink the wine of every country in the world
• Continue writing on topics of substance and resisting to be like every other popular blog that writes bits about everything
• Definitely cook more, especially more Mediterranean
• Exercise more! A got a gym contract, it’s a start, give me a break!

That’s a decent list for the time being. I think I will have to re-evaluate whether I am the worlds greatest DJ and producer every month or so because it’s has such an immediate horizon

I know very few leaders and of the managers that I do know, few of them are good at it. Managers tend to be those that love to be negative and pessimistic, they spend all their focus on trying to do things right without paying any attention to whether or not they are doing the right thing. I have no time for managers, good or bad because the bad one’s make my life hell and the good ones cannot consider other options or other ways of doing things. They care not about being better than they already are, they only care about not becoming worse. Growth is not an option, the only option is not moving backwards, how negative!

Leading is about being the visionary, the one who won’t accept defeat and the one who knows how to be humble when he is defeated. Managers have no idea how to think beyond the boundaries of their experience. Managers may in time become CEO’s but they will never be entrepreneurs. They do not have the internal guiding light to separate themselves from what everyone else is doing and consequently, they become like every other business head void of any real concern or creativity.

I would rather be a leader of one than a manager of many.

Amongst the thousands of issues I have with the man of today, the one that I feel like speaking about at the moment is how much of his useless life is filtered through his jealous mind.

It’s as if he was put on this earth to rape, pillage and plunder the life and soul out of anything that could infer a weakness in own ability, wealth or status.

One of the best places to see such effects, are in your typical business meeting, you know the type where we try to impress you by metaphorically dragging our dicks across the board room table, taking out a ruler and measuring the mighty sword that has fucked up much of this world.

It’s all about me versus you, us versus them, haves or have nots, the hottest girlfriend, the most woman, the best car, the best LCD TV and the sad excuses at the end of the debauchery.

Now I am not going to sit here and say woman are not like this because that would be bullshit! Woman are are slowly treading the same paths by trying to beat men using the same game, instead of playing their own game, to their own strengths and being better than men by virtue of the fact that they are better than men.

The same clichés, the same stereotypes are more prevalent than ever and will continue to further dominate the increasing divorce rate until people learn to break free from the way they were raised and the excuses they continue to make to justify their behaviour.

You do not have to be the person that everyone else is, you are responsible for your actions and you can change to be a better person. It’s taken me many years to break free from my upbringing’s indoctrinations but I did it first and foremost by realising that indoctrinations existed.

That has to be the first step but of course, the world is too ignorant and selfish to realise a problem in itself so never mind, waste of time….

I find it so sad that going to the police station, I was made to feel somewhat embarrassed because my reason for being there was not something akin to rape or murder. It seems lessor issues are precisly unimportant to the SAPS but even worse, the fact that I am white means that I now somehow deserve it or can, at least, afford to deal with it. It’s pathetic.

Those people are supposed to be our knights in shining armour, our saviours in darkness but instead, they are the epitamy of what is wrong with this country. In their eyes, they are above the law and as such, have almost no motivation to implement it. They would rather laugh at you then assist you.

I have lost all faith in our police service over the last few years due to the unfortunate interactions that I or my family has had to have with them. For me it has reached the point where should I need to call someone in the most dire of situations, they will be last on the list.

Its quite sad actually how our real world life is being replaced by our Second Life or one of our 150 profiles on all these sites. I am no longer Doron Dusheiko, I am in in fact, www.facebook.com/DoronDusheiko and that URL apparently has more meaning than who and what I really am.

I recently have written a few articles for a some blog sites and have decided to stop writing for anything but my own blog mostly because of the realisation that 99% of everything I read is all bullshit! It’s all about inflating weak ego’s, associating one’s pathetic self-lack-of-image with something that is supposed to be important. In truth, no-one cares about what they write, they say and increasingly, what they do. This worries me and I do not want any part of it. Blogging has become entirely about numbers, promotion, dollars and has completely lost its original purpose of expression. I will not put AdWords or AdSense on my site as it is fucking ridiculous! Who cares if no-one in the entire Internet reads this. Who cares if my SEO descriptions and whatever are not appropriate! Fuck it! It’s all bullshit!!!

Becoming hooked on who is looking at your Twitter account is only going to ensure that you miss out much you could discover in the real world. I dunno, maybe I am a realist, a naturalist or just the usual cliche of wanting to return to the “good old days”. Well, fuck you I am! The good old days meant that people actually communicated, corporations actually did some work and each of us valued our first life more than our virtual life.

To paraphrase something from the movie, Good Will Hunting…”You can read, study and understand everything about the Sistine Chapel, but until you go there, you will never know what it smells like”

My view is that most of us give charity because we are too lazy to make a real, lasting effort and difference. You see, its very easy to write out a cheque or deposit money into some account and then wipe your hands of the matter based on the justification that you’ have done something for those poor and needy out there.

Its complete bullshit!

I agree and concede that is better that (maybe) that they receive something rather than nothing but lets be honest with ourselves…who of us is willing to actually go do some real charity work with individuals in the townships or in Africa somewhere? Yeah I thought so.

Now I don’t think we should be too hard on ourselves for this either. I mean, first port of call is to actually give a shit about the needy and of course, if you don’t give a shit, then i guess, you have nothing to feel guilty about, right?

I personally feel very little for human causes as I have the somewhat hard-ass view that they can help themselves. For me, it’s all about the animals but even saying that, I know I am guilty of just making a bank deposit and not actually gettting involved on the ground. I know others who have been far more giving of their time despite their busy schedules so I am not going to use that excuse.

Live and learn I guess!

My wife and her sister get along very nicely when they are sperated by the 600 or so kilometres between joburg and maritzburg. Consequently, I do not get along too well with her or her husband. The thing is, that we couldn’t be more different really. They are the uber rich, private bording school, learn to horseride and play golf types whereas my wife and I are from humble beginnings, have huge opinions that we don’t mind sharing and throw caution to the wind on most matters in life.

They think we are stupid and childish and we think they are pompass, anally retentive old prudes.

I guess the challenging thing about family get togethers is actually getting the family together really…not physically, but rather in terms of communicating constructively where jelousy, favouritism and differences don’t feature.

Never really seen it with my wife and her sister but I am sure it happens successfully for other families…

Not really any point to this post, just thinking out load Pietermaritzburg is a pretty place though!

For me, success in my passions and for that matter, even the enjoyment of my passions is stupidly, but nontheless, actually, self-limited by the time in which things are achieved or discovered.

I keep imposing limits on myself to the point where I rationlise that I am already too old (at the age of 27) to achieve what I really want to in life. I have actually managed to reason myself into believing that because many of the examples I gauge my success against, started on thier voyage at the age of 14-15, that I have somehow missed the boat by starting on this late in life. That’s the biggest pile of steamy, smelly bullshit I have ever heard!

The worst part about it all is that in deciding that I am too old, I also make myself think of what I love as a chore because of course, if I am too old, what’s the point and if there is no point, then there is no desire for the journey or the discovery.

Wow I amaze myself sometimes with how convoluted my thoughts can become…Thankfully though, I try keep myself ever vigilant on what I am thinking and why.

It’s time for a change. I can and will achieve what I want to. Age is nothing but a number or so I have heard…

Is it possible that we will find every excuse in the book not to trust the people around us? Why?

Well, my theory is that if people we actually know personally, like work colleagues or even loved ones, have that great eurika moment, or even worse, they succeed at something, then the shallow amongst us feel somewhat deprived of the moment, to the point where they rationalise that thought that “OMG if he is successful and he is not Mark Shuttleworth or someone famous, then holy shit, what the fuck am I doing with my life?!”

It’s a wierd concept but I actually believe that some of those around us would rather see us fail then succeed because if we succeed, then it means it’s possible to succeed from nothing more than the same as what we are made of…which is quite scary if you haven’t succeeded yet…

You see, the only difference between myself, Warren Buffet and the dark side of Africa is not how much paper we stash under our beds. It is determined by an entry, some rows and columns, in some database somewhere.

Now stop and think about that for a minute, some field in a table in some banks database (or no row at all if you are from the dark side of Africa) is determining something which shapes my entire life and existence. It provides the means or lack thereof to enjoy much of life and is often use as a measure to filter the weak from the poor. All that and it’s just a field in a table where Warren Buffet’s value is fuck off huge and mine, well….

It’s a crazy thought really that so much of our life is determined by something completely virtual. Money is completely virtual. Stock traders make huge amounts of virtual money by doing nothing more than shifting other people’s virtual money around, from place to place across the world, all the while, obtaining an potential increase in virtual value from nothing other than market psychology.

And the world laughs at people who claim they have seen UFO’s…tisk, tisk!

To answer this I think we need to summarise where we’re at….Social networks have become, for many people the most interesting side of the Internet and old Web 1.0, which was aimed primarily around information dissemination and corporate advertising, has been incorporated or replaced by the rise of social connectivity. Names like Facebook, Twitter and Google are common language almost anywhere in the world and business are utilizing these and other social platforms, in some cases, as their primary form of attracting their respective target markets. For the first time in history, the world is truly one and geographical boundaries, unless for the purpose of 3-dimensional travel, no longer matter.

So if this is where we are, what is missing from this picture? What doesn’t all of this already provide, where is the gap in the market? Well obviously if I completely knew the answer to this, I would be implementing it right now and in 3-5 years I would sell it to Google and spend the rest of my life wiping my arse with silk.

What I can say is that although social networks have become incredibly sophisticated at connecting us, they still don’t quite understand us, individually. They don’t yet truly know what moves us, what inspires us and what drives us. They certainly allow for this kind of thing to be communicated through various means but they don’t intrinsically know how best to help us change the course of our lives. I think many of us still make our day to day decisions without actually relying on some sort of artificial heuristics engine which has figured out what the best course of action is in any circumstance.

Now if this sounds like AI, then yes it obviously has something to do with that but because social networks are perfectly placed to be the seed of most, if not all, bits of our connected data, then they may be the prime target for aggregation systems to accumulate knowledge on each of us which could in future provide more insights into how each of us think, behave, feel and act then we could ever imagine.

What if the future generations of Facebook type systems could infer from all our connected pieces of data, not just that we have made these certain connections with other people, places and objects in cyberspace but more importantly why. And in doing so, they can accurately map out and predict our path through life based on incalculable (to us) bits and pieces scattered everywhere.

Maybe that information could be used to advise us on situations as and when they happen, be it business, family, relationships or career. Would you trust the advice?

Perhaps systems of this nature could be linked to micro-RFID’s embedded under the skin, so that you and everything about you will be available to all, not just passively though cyberspace but as you traverse the real world…So something like the movie, Minority Report, where you enter a store and as you walk in you are directed to choices that the system is 99.95% sure you will purchase and can afford to purchase….

Good or bad?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0BJxcJje4g

Time will tell if Record can complete with the audio heavyweights but if Propellerheads unique way of thinking is anything to go by, it probably will. Will keep you posted as I give the Beta version a bash.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe7Iapsu_38

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGZ0LB_hz2c

I am a firm DA supporter and like many people, I believed that JZ should have been brought to trial so that the courts could decide his innocence or guilt on our behalf. I also had strong reservations about appointing a leader who, although was proven innocent, had been charged with very serious allegations of rape and fraud.

But now what’s done is done and we, as a nation, need to move on. We have to respect that we have one of the best legal systems in the world and stand by its decisions and look towards the future with some positivity. I am in no way saying support JZ in all manners and with every policy but we have to give him a fair chance to succeed or fail and I for one, certainly hope that he does not fail.

Despite our views, I am sure we all want to be proud of South Africa and it’s leaders and unless we give JZ the chance to succeed and the support to succeed, how could he ever succeed?

Ultimately he and the ANC need to really show what they are made of, but we too, have a responsibility to stop bitching and whinning and let the man run the country.

Now apparently, Jesus who is Catholic by birth, has decided that he is going to convert to Kabbalah(ism?) in order to make/keep Modanna happy, which at face value may not seem so bad. I mean, if you believe that one religion is more inline with you self-belief systems, why the hell not, right?

Well that’s precisely the problem! This dumbass has been going out with Madonna for only a few months and of course in all that time he has managed to acknowledge that everything about what he fundamentally believes in is different (all of a sudden) to what he has always been taught and Kabbalaha is the answer!!!

Is this all religion has become? Something frivilous that can be exchanged at random times to support random needs?

Now before you bitch at me and tell me that its only the stars who do this kind of thing, lets be a little bit honest with ourselves…

I am Jewish by birth and atheist by practice and my wife is Christain. Throughout the years leading up till when we got married and moved away from our parents, both of us were constantly subjected to the ramblings of the parental units triumphantly stating that we were ” unequally yoked” and that it couldn’t work. Now what does this have to do with the subject matter? Well, most mixed religion couples that I know, have ultimately had one person convert to the others religion before they were (allowed to get) married. They were dealt the pressure and fell into the same trap that Jesus (pardon the unfortunate pun) is falling into now….they are changing their religion, not because they want to, not because they need to, not because they even believe anything the religion postulates, but rather, they change because they are not strong enough to fight their each other, their parents, society and everyone who thinks a mixed-religion relationship cannot work.

Even as an atheist, I still respect the practice of one’s faith but it seems that many others have an ever dwindling respect for there own….There are obvious issues around raising children in a mixed religion environment but to be honest, these issues are no different than raising children in a homosexual environment. To my mind, these issues are not real, they are just excuses because it’s easier to concede than stand up and fight for what you want and believe in.

Do most claimed authentic establishments meet this criteria, unfortunately not. However, on walking into Da Graziella on Sunday afternoon with my wife for what was promised to be an authentic Italian lunch, I was pretty much blown away! The place looks simple and old fashioned, the menu is a couple of typed pages in a plastic binder, serviettes are straight from the Pick n’ Pay down the road and there are kids running around screaming at each other in Italian – it was exactly what I was looking for!

The place is exceptional and beautifully disorganised. The bread came after the starter while the drinks came after that. They make no excuse for that and why should they, you are not in Sandton and it makes the place that much more charming anyway. To be honest I can’t stand perfectly efficient service, where they have you in and out in an hour. That’s not what it should be about.

The food was amazing. For starters we shared these funny little deep fried rice balls with mice meat and mozzarella inside them. Main course was the Roast Rabbit for me (their most popular dish) and Napolitana Gnochi for my wife. I have never had rabbit before and although I felt bad for 5 minutes because a rabbit could be someone’s pet, I quickly forgot about that once that beautiful rich taste began permeating my taste buds, mmmm, my mouth is watering just replaying the moments in my mind!

Dessert was chocolate mousse and this long phyllo parcel filled with Ricotta, mixed fruits and some other stuff, WOW is all I can say!

The prices were great and nothing on the menu, including seafood dishes, is over R100. Rare these days!

I think what makes the place even more special is that it shows that there are still places where families and friends meet every week, share great food and wine, kids play together and the owners actually come and introduce themselves to you because you are new. This sense of the restaurant being part of the community has been completely lost amongst the trendy northern suburb eateries and although this place will probably never make it onto the eatout.co.za top 20, it is has a real warmth and genuine ambience which none of those Michelin type of places can ever match.

You can find it at the corner of Dunvegan Avenue and Boeing Road East, Dunvegan, Johannesburg.

Tel: 011 454 6202

Opening times:

Lunch Tues – Sun
Dinner Tues – Sat

www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8Aq042KPSg

Of course, this ad lasted about a week before the ANC decided that freedom of speech is good and well until it comes too close to home, wankers!

Now the ANC are saying that Nandos should pay “Julius” (the real one) for using his brand identity….once again, I say, wankers!

Have you noticed over the last 10 years or so since the net really took but in general over the last 50 years of history, that fundamental discoveries, especially those in science, art and music have kind of dried up? Now I do not mean that great works and theories are not occuring, what I am referring to is a general loss in our generations ability to solve fundamental questions? Perhaps it’s just me but where have people of the order of magnitude of Einstein, Mozart and Da Vinci gone? Is it that core understandings of the universe have reached a point where there is little left to discover or that art and music is now something that is so well understood that the universe no longer needs priceless works anymore? Somehow I doubt that concept, instead I argue that the ease of information gathering and transfer, coupled with our generations desire to simply see what Google or Wikipedia says about a topic, has rendered us somewhat limited in our problem solving abilities and in general, quite uninterested in really understanding the core of any issue…

I have noticed this very specifically in my day-to-day as a software developer and project manager. As time goes on, each set of new graduates seem to have less and less ability to problem solve without being hand-held. Now obviously I cannot say for sure what is going on, but I have a suspicion, that as children are being introduced to the pc and Internet at an earier and earlier age, their desire to discover with some manual effort and their ability to really understand something is going down the toilet. I mean in the days of the great scientists, one couldn’t just go to google, type something and get back 1.345 million results. No no, one had to figure that shit out, how ever long it took because there simply wasn’t another way….

Now don’t send me examples of all the Noble prize winners over the last 50 years claiming that more has been discovered in the last 50 years than the last 500 years…you need to look at the quality and magnitude for changing life, of that discovery.

The Internet has made us take everything for granted, everything is easy, everything is about the next big thing, quantity without any quality. I mean take twitter for an example, seriously what’s the point?? It’s just facebook statuses which facebook was already doing well so why is facebook as my friend put it “No longer relevant”? To my mind, we are becoming a society where we are losing respect for the basics of life and I blame the Internet.

So what can one do when part of a purpose has a relatively long duration to maturity? Patience is a virtue isn’t it? Hmmm, perhaps I am without that virtue. In honesty, I have always fallen into the trap of planning for the next before finishing the current. Now that might seem a reasonable way of going through life, if not admirable, but every now and again, I have to ask myself, does that way of thinking come at the cost of not enjoying the moment? not throwing oneself completely and honestly into what one is doing at the time?

I mean if you are always plotting for the future and forgetting that the best plans are the ones you never made (which in my case is absolutely true) then surely hindsight would suggest to fuck the plans and LIVE LIVE LIVE!!

I am both trying and getting better (despite the obvious paradox of trying to be spontaneous). In the last few years I have definitely started to acknowledge that the best things in life are truly free and on top of that I am slowly beginning to enjoy each and every moment and see every step in the work flow, every part of the process, as a journey and not a destination.

As the sugar packed says, life is a journey, not a destination…I try to remember that every day.

In fact, in an earlier post I actually praised myself for my enhanced emotional development that I believe I had spawned over the course of the year, only to realise towards the latter part of the year, that much of my self-prescribed improvements were in fact, merely syntactic sugar and band aid around some far greater characters flaws and deficiencies.

In my short period away from work, I endeavoured to correct some things, re script some paradigms and create an environment which fosters change…My idea was that instead of trying to tackle the problem itself (which I haven’t figured out yet) I would rather change my environmental frustrations as well as take greater charge of the things I have some control over. In other words, I am focusing on my Circle of Influence instead of my Circle of Concern.

Already I have seen vast improvements in my view towards the things which I felt were upsetting me….I was predicating that I did not have a fundamental problem with the specific thing itself but rather the sugar which surrounds much of life….by improving my acceptance of the sugar and also adding sugar to taste I actually feel better and even excited to tackle those things which I believed, only 2 weeks ago, were eating my soul.

Time will be the truest critic of whether or not I have actually made a lasting improvement but I believe I am on the right path again and I am really and honestly looking forward to 2009.

I hate those people, I hate those concepts and yet despite my best efforts so far, I am becoming them. It is frustrating and depressing and I don’t know how to get around the bills, the career expectations, the way we have been told it should be done.

I am not that person, I have so many dreams and desires and yet I can’t find a way to live them. Life is hard but I have always said and believed that it shouldn’t be, you are doing something wrong if it is, yet I am completely guilty of failing to listen to my own advice. Human nature is amazing isn’t it.

To say that the “coming” was accurate is a complete understatement. Names, places, emotions, histories, events current and past and everything in between reared their presence. It could only have been real and the amazing feeling that I had that I am being watched over was quite something, even for an atheist like me.

Since that day, I am not devastated to visit the graveyard, nor am I unable to reflect deeply on what could have been. The reason for this is that once the physical realisation that they are not actually gone, but merely physically departed, has set in, ones sadness is somewhat subdued due to the knowledge of their presence. In essence, they are still there, not just passively, but actively watching over you.

The replacement on the other hand, is much harder to come to terms with.

If all reasons, all why’s were obvious and available, there would be no need for and no ability to evolve. Why should drive us, but shouldn’t hinder us. Why should provoke us, but shouldn’t excuse us. Why should not agree with us, but should’t create false illusions.

Why oh why!

Perhaps you should be asking what you know the answer can’t possibly become, so that you couldn’t forgive yourself for knowing less about more when yesterday is greater than the day before. Confused? You should be….

Instead, release the bird from captivity whence it came regardless of Nitrous Oxide.

But you did what was told of you, and now you were told you what was but you.

No one tells us that dreams are meant to be broken. no one tells us that enjoyment is only for the priveledged. Perhaps it’s karma, perhaps it’s freedom. We are not supposed to know the truth.

Firstly I would recommend spending more than than usual “5 days with no sleep” approach…We were there for 10 full days and critically this gave us ample time to have the huge massive blow-outs typical of Ibiza but also, to have time to explore the beautiful island, eat the amazing food and have some “off” nights at the world famous bars like Bar M, Itaca and Plastik……

I would most definitely spend the extra money and get a an air-conditioned penthouse room, the views are spectacular and when you collapse into your room at 7am and its already 35 degrees outside, trust me you’ll appreciate it…..

After a big night out, take some time to relax on the beach along with all the other “come-downers”. Its a once in a lifetime experience and it gives you a chance to reflect on what you just experienced as well preventing you from going to the ever present Nigerians for some more “accessories”.

Take everything you see there with a pinch of salt and remember that whatever happens in Ibiza, lives on YouTube

When its time to get, go to the egg, you’ll know what I mean when you get there….In fact anywhere along the famous “street of shame” is your best bet.

Go to the beach everyday, its the most beautiful in the world and the sunshine, sunsets and cocktails from Cafe Del Mar will recharge your soul for another night of debauchery.

Take lots of money!! We took 2000 Euro for 10 days for 2 people and despite the massive nights, eating out, bars, beaches and shopping we actually managed to come back with 400 Euro. Better be safe than sorry, we met tons of people who ran out of money after a day or two and it pretty much ruined their trip. Its fuck off expensive there, get over it and accept it. In Amnesia we paid 12 bucks for a 200ml coke, I shit you NOT!!

Use the busses as much as possible. They offer a decent transport service and are dirt cheap as opposed to the taxis. You may have to do a bit of walking and take more than one bus to reach your location, but it will save you tons of cash and they offer a disco/night bus service around the island.

If you take a taxi after a big night, make sure that the guy is actually a taxi driver, with the little yellow light thing on his roof and the meter in his car, you don’t want to end up in the Thailand prostitution trade.

Definitely go on a boat party, it will blow you away (literally if you go on the Hard Dance boat party as I did).

Don’t get one of these pre packaged deals (I did). They seem fantastic on paper but they offer you stuff as part of the package that you find out is available to anyone when you get to the island, such as free transport to the clubs from pre-party bars and reduced price tickets. The tickets they give you (and which you can pre-purchase from outlets) are reduced in price but they also don’t allow you to pass out the club during the night you are there, so once your in, you can’t leave. Not the worst thing in the world until you are starving at 4 am. Never mind, you’ll be too fucked to be hungry….

Most importantly, go with a group you love and trust……your friends make all the difference between a good night and an unbelievably incredible night!

Even more importantly, the terrace on We Love Sundays @ Space and Cream @ Amnesia will change your life forever, don’t miss it!!

Why do we act on far less than we intend? Fuck if I could give you or myself a complete answer to this, I’d be a millionaire. All I know, is that over the last few months, I have grown tremendously. From an emotional stand point, I have really began to understand what I am feeling at a given moment and more importantly, why….

Its a lot of fuckin work, being a defined introvert, accepting all my OCD’s and fetishes and actually learning to accept myself. Its taken me nearly 28 years to get to this point, but I am nearly there and now that I’m nearly there, everything I think becomes and even greater cause for analysis, not so much of myself, but of others…..I find myself constantly investigating the poeple surrounding me, searching their body language for signs of the common. Signs of the familiar emotion that seems to bind us all together. Signs of a deeper meaning lurking in their superficial actions. Perhaps, all I’m doing is projecting myself onto them in the hope that I can explain myself by looking for them in me, and me in them….

Who the hell knows!

An agile methodology is what we should be using, not this archaic system of dividing analysis, design, implementation, testing, deployment etc. into nice little bite size chunks. This will not work in the modern software world where requirements change all the time, new technology progresses at a daily rate and collaboration is needed on a constant basis in order to ensure results. All that the waterfall model affords is permanent frustration because decisions take months to be made, they have to be made by people who have no understanding of software, entire enterprise systems requirements must be completely thought out before the damn thing is even started and managers sit all day looking at their ridiculous 5 year project plans which are impossible to follow, maintain or have any basis in reality…..

The new guard is here and if you choose to accept it, your life will be much easier. Think Agile, think Test-Driven Development, this is the way forward, this is the only way……

Words are illusions, a word can mean anything, we choose to give them a particular definition but that doesn’t mean that that word defines that object or emotion. An apple is not an apple, we don’t actually know what it is, we may call it an apple so that we can all identify it and have common knowledge when referring to everyday objects or emotions or concepts, but, this does not change the fact that the thing that fell on Newton’s head, is not an apple.

Why do we try over analyse what people say. Its not about what anyone is saying, its about how they are saying it….the tone, the tempo, the volume and most importantly, the look in their eye. One can make any sentence mean any other sentence with enough thought on how to mimic the non-verbal communication that such a sentence would invoke. Give it a shot.

Most belief systems that I created for myself, I did so when I was 6 years old. Time since them has allowed me to refine them but remarkably, none of them have been shaken…….I am still atheist, pro gay marriage, pro abortion and pro death penalty. These are the very surface level issues which my intellect concerns itself with. The more important stuff needs more blog posts…

If you only rely on your IQ, even a high one, to get you through life, you are bound to run into trouble. Intelligence without cause or more accurately, intelligence without emotional control is like calling yourself a freedom fighter, period. You can have all the brains in the world, be capable of creating the most beautiful strategies but without a good dose of emotional stability and intuition, you will be never understand how and why you do what you do, react the way you react and make the choices you do. You will commit yourself to a lifetime of self begrudging and mutilation because you fail to understand your own soul, hence how the hell are you gonna understand anyone else’s with enough clarity that you can make lasting and powerful relationships??

Having a high EQ means you understand how and why you react, how and why you have the opinions you do, how and why you have the relationships you have, and most importantly it allows you to make corrections in the above, not only in yourself but also in others. This is because you can figure them out better than they can figure themselves out. This runs the risk of manipulation of others but fuck why not……

So does this mean I possess all this, give me 5 minutes with you and I may or may not use the information against you. It is quite funny though to notice the lack of EQ around you. Just look at your friends and family, watch their reactions to everything, their body language, how they need to have their ego stroked every 5 seconds. Make special notice of how it perturbs them that you don’t. The greatest threat you can pose to a weak ego is to let them insult you or try and think they won the argument without any fight back from you. They don’t realise it consciously but deep down something says to them, this person will fuck me up…Sorry I’m listening to very aggressive Techno at the moment…….

Now don’t read this and think this guy is an arrogant prick, yes I know that’s exactly what you are thinking. All that means is that while reading this you are thinking to yourself, “shit maybe this guy is smarter than me, this cant be, we need to hate him or call him arrogant to settle our ego a bit, or perhaps we need to make ourselves believe his beliefs and knowledge are a product of his environment, not his IQ or EQ, I dunno, which is it, I’m confused”. Sound familiar, this is the same reaction you have to anyone who challenges you in an argument, says something clever which you didn’t come up with and generally every few seconds.

Now you know, fix it.

I treasure those electronic sounds to a level of pure infatuation because without them I would not know how to define myself. I think in terms of memorable song moments and indulge in the richness of its symphony. It gives me that adrenalin rush that I need to calm my intelligence and to sober up to the realisation that I have to act like everyone else.

How could I live without it.

I cant sleep and its pissing me off. Two weeks ago some mother fuckers broke into our house through the window on the balcony on the second fucking floor!! I mean the fuckers deserve an A+ for effort! Now I am constantly waiting, patiently, for it to happen again, night after night, desperately seeking the inevitable like the day is long. Maybe this time I can be there when it happens or be awake when it happens or be aware that it is happening….We are so fucking desensitised that when a 6 day old baby gets raped we think for about 5 seconds how kuk that is and how we don’t want it to happen to us and then we carry on facebooking.

Freedom is not a privilege, its a fucking right or is that what all the 6 year old Zimbabwean war veterans forgot about….Irony is the reverse of guilt my friends and if you don’t understand that then you have just proved it. Only when we are all in London or Sydney will they be happy, and they bitch at us for Apartheid, fucking Nazi’s!

You see they are all the same, they are all driven by the same sort of phenomena….their undying quest to ensure that their ego is scratched at least 100 times a day! Obviously this is something shared by all of us, but what I have always found so startling is the range to which the uber intelligent are willing to expose themselves to exploitation just for a little bit of self indulgence. They will work enormous hours, absorb mountains of punishment and go back for seconds all because they need to feel smarter than the next person in order to extract an ounce of fulfilment from this life. When will they realise my favourite quote: “The smartest man in a room is the one who gets all the clever people to do the work for him”.

We are an army of morbid disciples whose entire self-worth is wrapped up in those few occasions when we get to snigger at the person who the boss craps on for something which we did yesterday….very sad indeed. Its like something which I read in some book…..When we do well, its because of our intellect, when we do badly its because of our environment. When others do well its because of their environment, when others do badly, its because of their intellect. I love it!!

If the average Joe could just realise that ego and its self deluded obsessions are without doubt the greatest waste of energy, waste of money, waste of talent and waste of time then we could become a more harmonious civilisation, one whose aim is to achieve the best result for the group, not the individual. Can you imagine a society where men ask for directions, people ask questions when they don’t understand, people trust the judgement of others implicitly because they realise that there is always someone better, faster or stronger…..this is where I wanna live! Boring you say, perhaps a bit, but aren’t you a bit sick of all the survival of the fittest BS??? All one has to do is look to the US for a few thousand examples of how to fuck up a society and you soon realise that we are gonna need all the ascended masters in existence to get us out of this one….