I took these screen shots of suggestions in Google while typing, “Stephen Conroy”. Enjoy!
Google Search for Stephen Conroy (click for larger image)
Dave’s Blog
Dave Muller – The Website Guy – Personal and Technical blog
Guitar practice no more
I had a gap in guitar practice because I was starting to get RSI back. It’s been a fair few weeks now and no change. I can still play, but not the scales and exercises to a metronome. I have improved enough that all the solos I have written are now quite playable but it leaves with the knowledge that I will probably never be a fast as I hoped.
Guitar Practice – Week 5
I was sick this week so I didn’t practice much. Ross from MCD Guitars has finished the refurb on my JEM and it was a pleasure to play it again. The neck was taken off, sanded down and polished, new pots put in and a new trem installed. I can play a few BPM faster on it (compared to the S series), but nothing that makes too much difference for these figures.
I did manage to breach 100BPM on the scales to 105. I could play uncleanly to around 115 for diatonic scales and 135 on the chromatic scales!
Here’s my improvement over this last week, first figure start of week and the last figure the end of the week. All tempos are playing semi-quavers.
Diatonic scales and modes, Ionian to Ionian
100bpm / 105bpm
Chromatic exercises
100bpm / 105bpm
Alternating string arpeggios (1, 3, 2, 4, 3, 5, 4, 6, 6, 4, 5, 3, 4, 2, 3, 1)
75bpm / 80bpm
Non-scalar string skipping alternate picking (1, 3, 4, 6, 6, 4, 3, 1)
75bpm / 75bpm
Arpeggio sweep picking exercises
70bpm / 70bpm
Guitar Practice – Week 4
Again I have been slack. Belinda is back in hospital so I have been busy with that, and I have also had a creative spurt so I have written a bit of music instead. 100bpm is still proving to be a barrier, but I think I will be up to 105 next week. 115 is my unclear max. My main improvement was in string skipping and sweep picking.
Here’s my improvement over this last week, first figure start of week and the last figure the end of the week. All tempos are playing semi-quavers.
Diatonic scales and modes, Ionian to Ionian
100bpm / 100bpm
Chromatic exercises
100bpm / 100bpm
Alternating string arpeggios (1, 3, 2, 4, 3, 5, 4, 6, 6, 4, 5, 3, 4, 2, 3, 1)
70bpm / 75bpm
Non-scalar string skipping alternate picking (1, 3, 4, 6, 6, 4, 3, 1)
65bpm / 75bpm
Arpeggio sweep picking exercises
65bpm / 70bpm
This marks close to one month and it has really paid off. I am much more accurate and faster. I have also found myself writing better solos as well. If this trend continues, it will be six months until I reach goal number one of 130bpm.
Guitar Practice – Week 3
I practiced more this week and have improved mostly in consistency. 100bpm is proving to be a tough barrier. I could play the chromatic exercises at 110bpm reasonably well, but still would think of 100 as the clean speed. I changed the sweep picking exercises to arpegios.
Here’s my improvement over this last week, first figure start of week and the last figure the end of the week. All tempos are playing semi-quavers.
Diatonic scales and modes, Ionian to Ionian
100bpm / 100bpm
Chromatic exercises
100bpm / 100bpm
Alternating string arpeggios (1, 3, 2, 4, 3, 5, 4, 6, 6, 4, 5, 3, 4, 2, 3, 1)
65bpm / 70bpm
Non-scalar string skipping alternate picking (1, 3, 4, 6, 6, 4, 3, 1)
65bpm / 65bpm
Arpeggio sweep picking exercises (new)
40bpm / 65bpm
Guitar Practice – Week 2
I only practised three times this week. Mostly to do with slackness, and a little because I learnt “sleep walk”. I’ve been asked to demo an MCD guitar at the guitar expo this year, so I will be learning some classic songs to play. I went backwards this week, but at least I can play “sleep walk”.
Here’s my improvement over this last week, first figure start of week and the last figure the end of the week. All tempos are playing semi-quavers.
Diatonic scales and modes, Ionian to Ionian
100bpm / 100bpm (better at 105 than last week, but still messy)
Chromatic exercises
100bpm / 100bpm
Alternating string arpeggios (1, 3, 2, 4, 3, 5, 4, 6, 6, 4, 5, 3, 4, 2, 3, 1)
70bpm / 65bpm
Non-scalar string skipping alternate picking (1, 3, 4, 6, 6, 4, 3, 1)
70bpm / 65bpm
Non-scalar sweep picking exercises
70bpm / 65bpm
Creating MySQL stored procedures from PHP
I’ve been writing an n-tier PHP web application, and I’ve been working on the installer. As part of it, I needed to create stored procedures from PHP. I hit a snag, which was the following:
$sql = "delimiter $$ drop procedure if exists spsTableDelete $$ create procedure spsTableDelete(mySession nvarchar(255),myTableID bigint unsigned) begin update sTable set Deleted = TableID where TableID = myTableID; end $$ delimiter ;"; $this->mysqli->multi_query($sql); if (strlen($this->mysqli->error) > 0) echo "<p class='error'>".$this->mysqli->error."</p>"; else echo "$operation Procs Written<br />\n";
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘delimiter $$’ at line 1
The problems is that MySQLi does not use delimiters so the following code will work instead:
$sql = "drop procedure if exists spsTableDelete ; create procedure spsTableDelete(mySession nvarchar(255),myTableID bigint unsigned) begin update sTable set Deleted = TableID where TableID = myTableID; end ;"; $this->mysqli->multi_query($sql); if (strlen($this->mysqli->error) > 0) echo "<p class='error'>".$this->mysqli->error."</p>"; else echo "$operation Procs Written<br />\n";
Guitar practice week 1
It’s been about two years since I practiced my scales and exercises on guitar to a metronome. I’ve been writing a fair bit of progressive and neo-baroque rock recently and I wrote a solo at 260bpm quavers, which I can’t play cleanly, so I need to get up to speed. Last time I checked (two odd years ago), the fastest I could play the diatonic scales cleanly was about 85 bpm semi-quavers. I’ve played for around an hour to an hour and a half each day for five days this last week, so it will be an interesting experiment to find out how quickly I can improve.
I have two targets.
1. 130bpm semi-quavers in diatonic scales
then
2. 160bpm semi-quavers in diatonic scales.
The first figure is so that I can cleanly play the solo I wrote, and the second is just an arbitrary figure that would make me feel like a shredder.
Here’s my improvement over this last week, first figure start of week and the last figure the end of the week. All tempos are playing semi-quavers.
Diatonic scales and modes, Ionian to Ionian
80bpm / 100bpm
Chromatic exercises
90bpm / 100bpm
Alternating string arpeggios (1, 3, 2, 4, 3, 5, 4, 6, 6, 4, 5, 3, 4, 2, 3, 1)
55bpm / 70bpm
Non-scalar string skipping alternate picking (1, 3, 4, 6, 6, 4, 3, 1)
?? / 70bpm
Non-scalar sweep picking exercises
?? / 70bpm
I didn’t take a close note of the speeds at the beginning of this week, so there are some holes in data. I can play up to around 140bpm for the chromatic exercises, but it is pretty messy. All figures are for relatively clean playing.
A lot of the improvement this week would have been getting back to my old speed, so I think each week from now will have less increases.
Password Generator
I wrote a password generator today to help me whenever I need to create passwords for myself or a user. It’s pretty easy to use – just enter the password length and character set to use. Enjoy!
PHP Pluraliser
I wrote a pluraliser in PHP.
final class Pluraliser
{
private static $alreadyPlural = array("sheep","people","deer","moose","premises","series","fish","chassis","alms","amends","cattle","clothes","doldrums","ides","pants","pliers","scissors","shorts","smithereens","trousers");
public static function MakePlural($word)
{
$returnWord = "";
// If the word is in the list of words that are both singular and plural
if (in_array(strtolower($word),self::$alreadyPlural))
$returnWord = $word;
else
{
if (substr($word,-3) == "ess")
$returnWord = $word . "es";
elseif (substr($word,-3) == "sus" || substr($word,-3) == "ews")
$returnWord = $word;
else
$returnWord = $word . "s";
}
return $returnWord;
}
}
So a test app of:
echo Pluraliser::MakePlural("Jesus") . "<br />";
echo Pluraliser::MakePlural("Sheep") . "<br />";
echo Pluraliser::MakePlural("Building") . "<br />";
echo Pluraliser::MakePlural("Band") . "<br />";
echo Pluraliser::MakePlural("Guitar") . "<br />";
Produces the correct output:
Jesus Sheep Buildings Bands Guitars
If requires some tweaking still, such as custom plurals for “men”, “women” and other tricky words, but for the time being they can be added to the if statement.