New Amp?

My brother-in-law is going back from the States, so its another chance for me to get something for cheap! I find myself again thinking of something to buy. And this year, I think I’m going for the best fender frontman 25r amplifier. It is not too heavy and cheap, making it an easy amp for my brother to carry into the plane. Still I am hoping to get a good tube amp or another acoustic.. will have to make up my mind soon though because time is running out!.

Clutter Free Stage

Now that we’ve been upgrading the gear that we are using at church, we are faced with a different kind of problem – how do we make our stage clean and clutter free.

We recently acquired a bigger mixer and we’re planning to finally have all the instruments properly mic’ed. However, there are now too many cables and its getting harder to maintain them in working order.

We are thinking of getting cable management tools, or maybe get one of those expensive snake cables, another thing we’re looking at is to have all the vocal mics be wireless.

Bluetooth Speakers

My wife and I have been hunting for a decent speaker system for our home, and since we have an iPad – we were looking for a suitable dock with bluetooth capability, unfortunately most of the speakers available are meant as iphone speakers and docks and does not fit well with our iPad. So we will probably be going for a default speaker system that has bluetooth capability so we don’t have to dock our iPad.

Vocal Workshop

I have scheduled a special vocal workshop for our music ministry – to be facilitated by renowned vocal coach Jeanne Velasco-Vicars. Our aim is to help everyone develop and use better vocal techniques during choir singing or praise and worship. Everyone is really excited – myself included as I have experienced attending one of her vocal workshops in the past. Hopefully this will spark further interest in self improvement and self learning within our team.

Aside from natural vocal improvement – I’m also thinking about improving my vocal gear. Since I already have guitar effects, I’m also considering vocal effect pedals like the TC Helicon VoiceLive which has impressive features.

Online Books

Ever since we had our iPad, my entire family loved reading electronic books. We get children’s books, Bible related books and other story telling books. Now if you ask me – what is the best ereader? My answer would be the iPad, but its just because its the only tablet that I have tried. I feel sorry for traditional books – electronic books are years ahead specially with its multimedia capabilities, having the capability to have interactive games, music, videos and anything else you could think of.

Router upgrade

We have recently acquired a new D-Link 600 router. And to our surprise, we experienced tremendous improvement in terms of internet connection speed and stability. Since my wife and I use only wifi (a Macbook Pro, an HP Pavillion G4 laptop, plus an iPad2), we have benefited tremendously with this new router. So if you are having problems with your WiFi connection, here are some things to check:

- Do you have the latest WiFi connection technology? –> Currently it should be “N” type WiFi
- Do you have updated WiFi cards on your Laptops? –> Your WiFi connection is only as fast as your slowest Laptop. This means if you have super fast laptops and an old one with “A or B” type connection joins in, the speed of your network will be affected. So make sure to get the latest WiFi drivers for your laptops and other devices.
- Is your router, modem and ISP working as intended? –> Do a router bypass, connect your computer wired to your modem to see if there is a huge difference. If there is a huge difference, then you may adjust the setting of your router, upgrade the firmware, or better yet, consider getting a new router. If the problem persists even when connected directly to your modem, you will have to check on your modem by calling your ISP. With these tips you will be able to get a more stable speed and connection.

Now the only thing I’m thinking of improving is the signal of our secondary internet connection – which is Sun Broadband. I might consider looking at getting a home cell booster which may help with the signal problems I am having with Sun.