MICHAEL ANGELO BATIO

Michael Angelo Batio, also known as Mike Batio or MAB (born in the 23th of February 1956) is an American guitarist and columnist from Chicago, Illinois. He is considered to be one of the fastest guitarists in the world. Batio is (self-taught) ambidextrous, able to play two guitars at the same time either in synchronization or using separate harmonies.

Batio mastered the "Over-Under" fretting technique, which involves flipping his fretting hand over and under the neck, playing the guitar both regularly and like a piano. (Pic 1)

Double Guitar

Batio was the inventor of the Double-Guitar, a V-shaped, twin-neck guitar which can be played both right- and left-handed.This guitar, as designed by Batio and guitar technician Kenny Breit, featured a flight case latch attached to the back of each guitar, which could reportedly be assembled in five seconds. (Pic 2)

Quad Guitar

As well as the Double Guitar, Michael Angelo also invented and designed the Quad Guitar. The guitar was originally built in conjunction with Gibson, and built by Wayne Charvel in California. The top two guitars have seven strings, while the bottom two have the regular six. (Pic3)

I chose to write about this musician cause he is an inspiration to thousands of shredders and an intelligent musician as well. I believe music expresses that which cannot be put into words and cannot remain silent….. the way I see it!

Logophobia...

Fear is inherent in everybody. What makes it different is what the people are afraid of. But there are some very different, very weird types of phobias, the presence of which is baffling as these are real fears. Here is a list of some strange n some hilarious phobias.

Philophobia - Fear of falling in love or being in love.

Phobophobia - Fear of phobias.

Aibohphobia - Fear of palindromes (It is not an actual word; aiboh is not of course Greek or Latin for Palindrome, but is simply intended to make the word itself palindromic).

Anemophobia - Fear of air.

Antidaeophobia - Fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you (fictional, from Gary Larson cartoon).

Caligynephobia, Venustraphobia - Fear of beautiful women. (Really????)

Eleutherophobia - Fear of freedom.

Euphobia - Fear of hearing good news.(Huh?)

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia - Fear of the number 666

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia - Fear of long words.

Levophobia - Fear of things to the left side of the body.

Melophobia, Musicophobia - Fear or hatred of music.

Papaphobia - Fear of the Pope. (Lolz…:-D)

I believe we should never run from our fears, 'coz when they catch up to us, we're too tired to fight. It’s true… the way I see it.

Bizarre Flags

The flag of Nepal is the only national flag which is non-rectangular.

The flags of Switzerland and the Vatican City are the only national flags which are exact squares.

The flag of Libya is the only national flag which consists of just one solid colour (green) with no other designs or symbols.

The flags of Cyprus, Kosovo, and Christmas Island are the only national flags which depict the shape of the country that it represents *(The Korean Unification Flag depicts the Korean Peninsula although it is not an official flag in either North or South Korea).

The flags of Moldova, Paraguay and Saudi Arabia are not identical on their obverse and reverse sides.

The flag of Mozambique is the only national flag to incorporate an actual modern firearm into its design (an AK-47). The green stands for the riches of the land, the white fimbriations signify peace, black represents the African continent, yellow symbolizes the country's minerals, and red represents the struggle for independence. The rifle stands for defence and vigilance, the open book symbolizes the importance of education, the hoe represents the country's agriculture, and the star symbolizes Marxism and internationalism. The flag of Guatemala has two rifles forming part of the coat of arms displayed as an insignia; however, these are Remington rifles dating from 1871.

The flag of the Philippines is the only flag which may be hoisted upside-down when the Filipino Congress has declared the nation to be in a "state of war". The reverse case is true for peacetime, when the flag is hoisted with blue stripe over the red. The peacetime arrangement is the more conventional method for displaying this flag unless the situation calls for otherwise.

That’s all about bizarre flags. It’s fascinating…. the way I see it.

The Nuts & Bolts

      The fundamental building blocks of learning would probably be - as the teachers call it ;-) "Getting the basics right". So this post would just be about the basics of music. Being a neophyte myself, we'll try to keep this as simple and accurate as possible and these posts would help us all.

 

    Music is build by the various combinations of notes. The western notations being C D E F G A B C and Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do. These are no different from the ones back home. As they say - A note by any other name would sound as sweet. Indian classical music divides the octave into 12 semitones of which the 7 basic notes are Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni. These 7 semitones do have proper names.

Sa   -  Shadaj
Re   -  Rishab
Ga   -  Gandhar
Ma   -  Madhyam
Pa   -  Pancham
Dha -  Dhaivat
Ni    -   Nishad

    In Indian classical music, the equivalent of scales are "Ragas" which are fixed sequences of a minimum of five notes arranged in ascending and descending order. But unlike the western scales, the ascending and descending notes are not always identical, but we'll come back to that in a later post. Some methods of writing music  that are usually shown in cartoons, contain 5 lines and a whole bunch of dots and squiggly lines. That is called "Staff Notation". Its a very precise form of representing music.

 

     This is just a start and I hope this small introduction gives an idea about the basics. It's not rocket science guys it's just music..the way I see it!

 

Technorati Tags: Music,Basic Music Theory

Creating Shaped buttons in .NET

Shapes for controls can be defined by the Region property.Use it to specify the shape of choice for the control.

Lets see how buttons can be shaped:


'Oval Shaped button

Dim path1 As New Drawing2D.GraphicsPath() 'define a graphics path
Dim rect As New Rectangle(30, 30, Button1.Width - 60, Button1.Height - 60)
path1.AddEllipse(rect) 'create an ellipse with the rectangle as boundary
Button1.Region = New Region(path1) 'set the region property of the button

'Triangular Button

Dim path2 As New Drawing2D.GraphicsPath()
Dim pt(2) As Point
pt(0) = New Point(Button2.Width / 2, 1)
pt(1) = New Point(Button2.Width - 10, Button2.Height - 10)
pt(2) = New Point(10, Button2.Height - 10)
path2.AddPolygon(pt)
Button2.Region = New Region(path2)

Buttons can also be shaped in the form of Text.

'Text Shaped

Dim path3 As New Drawing2D.GraphicsPath()
path3.AddString("Text Button", New FontFamily("Arial"), 1, 30, New Point(20, 20), _
                            New StringFormat(StringFormatFlags.FitBlackBox))
Button3.Region = New Region(path3)


This is what it would look like

Hope this helps :)

The Beginning

This Blog is just beginning to take shape.Do check back later for stuff ranging from technology to music.

Cheers
:)