Last night I ordered a new DMX light controller. This will give me more control over my LED par cans, enabling me to produce better quality light shows for my own band and performances, not to mention other performers I work with.
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On Sunday, I set up a Facebook Page for my PA and Light Show Hire. I should have done it years ago, within 24 hours I received 1 booking, at Lynton Town Hall, for a Pink Floyde tribute band, and one very good enquiry for a festival in Bude. Looking good I think. Please drop by and give my page a like https://m.facebook.com/PA-and-Stage-Lighting-Hire-133247160415564/
Researchers have discovered music lessons boost young people's brain power Find out more about my guitar and ukulele lessons here http://paulclews888.weebly.com/guitar--ukulele-lessons.html YouTube guitar lessons are free. They are worth less than that. Let me explain that comment. I spend an awful lot of my time as a guitar and ukulele teacher correcting students who come to me having tried (some cases for years) this method of learning. They learn bad habits and incorrect information from YouTube. Consequently, time and money is wasted as I put things right again. Students find it harder to relearn than starting from scratch. When I started to learn in the Stone Age, YouTube didn't exist. I'm not saying YouTube is all bad, but sorting the good from the chaff is really difficult as a beginner. Let me give you an example, I searched in YouTube 'how to play G on guitar'. The first 'lesson' I saw was this. The smart ones amongst you will notice it's F. I don't think this would have tripped too many of you up. So let's look at the next video. This time Justin explains how to play a G chord. He rabbits on a bit, has nice graphics. Further on down and you get this. This guy teaches G completely differently. Which one is correct? Very confusing if you're a beginner. If you hit the wrong version first, you could learn the chord the incorrect way, screwing up your guitar playing career before you have really got going. Let me give you a clue, Justin has lovely graphics, but his guitar playing is not so lovely. It's the 2nd video on YouTube. Don't forget, F was the first one. Hopefully you get my point. Here is another. This guy has got hundreds of lessons on his YouTube channel. He does not even know the basics. He does not know what the strings are called, constantly mixing up the top and bottom strings. Please don't waste your time and money trying to learn on YouTube. Get professional advice from someone in the know. I give guitar and ukulele lessons around North Devon homes and schools, Petroc and anywhere else in the world by Skype, FaceTime and Google Hangouts. An article in the North Devon Journal, about ukulele workshops for Mother's Day. It's 20th February 2014, Ilfracombe, North Devon, 1:20 pm. A 4.1 magnitude earth quake shakes North Devon. I felt myself thrown forward, and Purdy, my cat, lept from my lap. She has been asleep. I was a little puzzled to what had happened. Seconds later the Twitter and Facebook world confirmed the tremor. Many in North Devon tweeted, I tweeted this.https://twitter.com/paulkclews/status/436493248341999616 I later tweeted this picture. This lead to the great British press requesting use of my picture. Here are a couple of the requests. I said yes to them all. These articles were the result. None of them asked me how the lamp got broken. They all seemed to assume the earth quake broke the lamp. Well here is the full story about the broken lamp. Well at the beginning of this blog post I explained how I had been thrown forward and Purdy jumped. We were both frightened, Purdy far more than me. She jumped so high, she landed on the lamp an broke it. So there you go, did the earth quake damage the lamp? Well, yes and no. Another par can has arrived. It will be used has a new addition to The Backtrackers stage lighting. It is also available to hire on it's own, or with other lighting effects. The Backtrackers PA and Stage lighting hire. Also great for parties. Win a free half hour guitar or ukulele lesson by Skype, FaceTime or google hangouts. During #DevonHour on twitter, this week only (21/82013), 10 questions about me will appear under the hash tag #SoYouThinkYouKnowMe. Simply tweet the answers back to me. All the answers are in my twitter time line and blogs. The winner will be announced shortly after Saturday 6 pm (24/8/2013) when the competition closes, here and on Twitter. In the event of a tie, I will draw a winner from the most correct answers. Anyone is eligible to play, except me. Good luck! You must be able to get your hands on a guitar or ukulele. No cash alternatives. My decision is final. Every time I camp at Tamar Lake, I see a sign at the end of the road saying, 'Wei's Chinese Kitchen'. I always say, 'we'll have to go there sometime'. Well, finally we went and tried it. We followed the sign to another sign pointing into a field. Ahead was caravans and tents, to the right was a smallish wooden building with red Chinese lanterns adorning it. Walking away from the building was a tall slim gentleman, who approached us because we were clearly unsure about where we should park. 'Can I help you'? I replied 'we're looking for the Chinese restaurant'. He told us where to park, and pointed us in the right direction for the entrance. Once inside, the same gentleman introduced us to the menu on the wall above the hot plates. 'This is what we have this evening, Wei changes the menu every day'. We were offered a choice to either eat in or take away. The take away was £4 per punnet, but we chose to eat in, the all you can eat for £9.90 per person. We were offered a table for two, and very quickly a bag of prawn crackers appeared to get us started. We tucked in. Very soon after this, a Chinese lady, who we were later to find out was Wei, offered us a chicken, sweet corn and noodle soup. The main course was a number of dishes, including, egg fried rice, prawn balls, chow mein, sweet and sour, duck and pineapple, and many more. I tried them all except the beef with chilli. I'm not keen on beef, and really dislike chilli, hence the wide berth. Everything I had was unbelievably delicious, causing me to tweet, 'this is one of the best restaurants ever'. We were also offered tea or coffee and apple pie and ice cream. Amazing, and highly recommended. Electric Bike Day On Exmoor
A couple of weeks ago, Robert Zarywacz (@robertz on twitter) invited me to join him in a prize he had won. It was a days electric bike cycling from http://www.experienceexmoor.co.uk/ (@experencEXMOOR on twitter). Mrs Z was not keen to take part, so I immediately said yes. For me it meant a really early start, getting up at 6am, because I am on holiday at Tamar Lake. I got an early night in the night before, but unfortunately, woke at 1.30am, then was unable to get back to sleep. Really tired, I set off back to Ilfracombe at 6.15am to be picked up by Robert at 9.25am. When we arrived at ExperiencEXMOOR, Neil gave us an explanation about how the bikes worked, including pannier bags for our packed lunch, sun cream and cameras. Also, an impressive list of free charging points, stretching from Ilfracombe to Lynton and Lynmouth. After a little paper work, and a helmet fitting, it was time to test the bikes around the court yard. I went first. Now before I arrived, I had assumed, being electric bikes, you wouldn’t have to pedal, but this is not the case, you do have to pedal, otherwise they just stop. The first thing you notice is they accelerate like a formula 1 racing car. With a couple of turns of the pedals you’ve hit 30 kph. It takes a little getting used to. After a short while we were both ready to start a great adventure. With a rough plan of the route we wanted to take, which would take in Lynton and Lynmouth, and the Valley of the Rocks, we cycled up the drive and turned left on to the road for the first time and headed for the Hunters Inn. http://twitpic.com/ahz67c When we arrived at The Hunters Inn, knowing Julian Gurney’s (@NTExmoorRanger on twitter) office is near there, we checked to see he was home. He was, and with only a brief conversation about cake, Robert and I had an ice cream. http://twitpic.com/ahqo7d Soon we were off again, heading towards Lynton Steam Railway http://www.lynton-rail.co.uk/ for another brief stop. http://twitpic.com/ahqm6h http://twitpic.com/ahz5pv http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLQ2ma3njUk&feature=youtube_gdata_player And so on to Lynmouth. Approaching Lynmouth, we were beginning to feel the affects of half a days cycling, and considered not going down into Lynmouth, because of the massive climb out afterwards. “We could cycle down and take the cliff railway back up” I suggested. “Are you sure they take bikes?” Robert asked. “Not sure no, about 85%” I replied. With no mobile phone or internet signals we were unsure what to do. So has with so many of life’s great decisions we flipped a coin. Heads we go to Lynton, tails we go to Lynmouth. The toss http://twitpic.com/ai3omv Heads we go to Lynton, tails we go to Lynmouth. I secretly hoped for heads. I really couldn’t face that climb out of Lynmouth. http://twitpic.com/ai3pyg Down we go http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOyDbA8SaiQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player At the bottom of the hill we stopped. We decided to check out the cliff railway, to find out if they did take bikes. They did. Neil, then happened to see us and caught up with us at the cliff railway. He asked how we were doing. All was well. We had planned to have our packed lunch at Lynmouth, and recharge our bike batteries. We had a choice of charging points, and chose The Glen Lyn Gorge http://www.theglenlyngorge.co.uk/ therefore recharging with the power of water. We left our bikes at the Glen, and went for a wonder around Lynmouth, and to eat lunch. We wanted to give the bikes a good charge, so we had an hour to kill. We had lunch by the river. http://twitpic.com/ahz5g6 http://twitpic.com/ahuh6w Afterwards went for a walk around the town. http://twitpic.com/ahs44n http://twitpic.com/ahuhfp http://twitpic.com/ahuhhi http://twitpic.com/ahuhss After 1 hour 15 minutes we were back in the saddle heading for The Valley of the Rocks via Lynton. We didn’t take the cliff railway after all. With the help of our charged up batteries, getting to The Valley of the Rocks was not as bad as imagined. We rested our selves recharged the bikes one more time. The cherry pie looked amazing, we couldn’t help ourselves. http://twitpic.com/ai7gz5 After the cherry pie, it was time to pass though The Valley of the Rocks, see the white lady http://twitpic.com/ahuij4 http://twitpic.com/ahui45 and head for home. We cycled on through Woodybay, onto Martinhoe, passed the Hunters Inn one more time. Finally pushed on up the hill to drop the bikes back to Neil. A very tiring, but really enjoyable day. Robert dropped me back home, I drive back to Tamar Lakes after doing a couple of jobs at home. Arrived back at the caravan at 9.15pm Shower! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz |
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