Five days ago the mighty Arjen Lucassen has announced on his Facebook page two live shows of his Ayreon mega-project, which got the name Ayreon Universe. The shows were scheduled for 15 and 16 September 2017, with the official ticket sale starting on 24 November at 10:00 CET.
Last Saturday was marked by a show by the prog metal band Myrath from Tunisia (Northern Africa). The venue was the club Patronaat in Haarlem, Netherlands. Myrath is unique not only because of its origin, but also thanks to a magnificent combination of heavy sound and Arabic motives and instruments in their music. Furthermore, they have a belly dancer!
But first things first.
Sound Switcher Indicator is getting more and more intricate and advanced thanks to the never-ending stream of ideas from the users. The majority of changes in the version 2.1.1 pertain to the configuration file ($HOME/.config/indicator-sound-switcher.json).
I’ve stumbled upon a cute and convenient DC adapter the other day, with four USB charging ports (up to 4800 mA total), a power socket, and a tablet stand. All of that for less than € 15.
A bit later turned out there’s a pitfall, too: it produced annoying whining noise. The noise was quiet but clearly audible in silence, especially while the adapter was unloaded.
Last weekend, 22-23 October, has been marked by a colossal event in the Belgian Brussels, lead by the Doshu (hereditary head) Moriteru Ueshiba, a grandson of Ōsensei Morihei Ueshiba.
I’ve been able to pay a bit more attention to the Sound Switcher Indicator and implement some of the long asked-for features.
It’s been more than two years since the last release of the Sound Switcher Indicator (1.2.2). During this period I’ve been bombarded with requests to allow the indicator to switch device profiles, because most sound cards cannot be otherwise switched to their digital ports, like S/PDIF and HDMI.
So today I proudly present Sound Switcher Indicator 2.0.1, which finally supports profile switching:
I’ve recently been to Saint Petersburg, Russia, to help my parents to renovate the apartment they had moved into. Just for your information, Russians recognise Saint Petersburg as the “cultural capital of Russia” due to its rich cultural traditions, heritage and, arguably, population.
But I’d like to touch on another subject now. For the sake of the renovation I had to do a lot of shopping in a big builder’s store. Just because it was big, I preferred to ask staff for directions rather than waste my time looking for the thing I needed.
And here we are, almost four months after the exam I officially possess a Shodan Aikido Aikikai:
The diploma has been solemnly granted by Marc Jongsten (who also took the exam) during a short ceremony at Aikido Centrum Leiden.
I’ve finally nerved myself to tell you about a sad development for prog lovers.
I first learned about the Dutch prog band Sun Caged when I came to Holland back in 2008. Shortly after I’ve even seen them playing on Walhalla. I must say I was impressed. But three years later, in 2011, the band has released The Lotus Effect (which also happened to be their last album), I was totally blown away as this was absolutely a masterpiece of progressive metal. I can’t even explain why, but I deem this album one of the best rock works ever, and I seem to be able to listen to it endlessly.
