The Last Old Mod***MDP74 v. 3.0

My mother wrote me an email saying she would like to buy me “that pickup” I wrote about on my blog as a birthday present, which is undoubtedly great. So, after painful hours of hesitation I decided between L.R. Baggs M1 and L.R. Baggs M1 active. And the winner is M1 passive. I followed KISS strategy – keep it simple stupid – and also the list of endorsees and there choices on Baggs’ web. No preamp in the pickup and no volume control means less electronics and less control on my side, so the sound engineer can do the job while I’m doing nothing. And the sound in reviews is great. I might to try to use it directly in a mixing console or I’ll plug it into my SSL Channel One pre-amp which has been very well reviewed especially for it’s guitar sound capabilities (and sounds really great). Or I will buy another small guitar preamp later. Ordered in Guitarpark it should be already on its way. Thanks, mom!

Yesterday I took my Praktica camera and paid a visit to Foto Škoda, looking for a decent 35 lens as the Oreston 1.8/50 I’ve got is a little bit too tight for many occasions. They didn’t have any 35 but they had 28 for 1400 CZK (I didn’t buy), I bought a nice second hand Pentax strap for 100 CZK (!), their self-made reduction and a new battery replacing the original one, which is impossible to get, for 250 and, trying luck, I knocked on the door of repairs department as the exposition metering didn’t function for years. The guy found the problem in a snap, opened the lens, repaired the aged, broken and corroded contacts and did it for free. My feelings were almost euphoric. I repaired the camera instead of buying a new one, it happened in couple of minutes and it didn’t cost anything. Now I am just looking forward to first pictures taken with a working exposition metering… It should be a huge leap forward, though.

Last but not least, because now comes the entertainment: This week I’ve been asked by Lucie from Czech Original Fashion to take a part in a new Hermes campaign as a model-blogger. You can spot me at IFF KV next week with a Hermes scarf around my neck taking photos of myself. Bohemian bourgeois! Don’t touch me!

I resist. My life is a golden path through a mine field constantly under fire. Off to mountains with Mejla and my children for couple of days, then couple of meetings and presentation on Tuesday and in the evening Louskáček ad awards ceremony and back to process for two days: sound postproduction, treatments, another presentation, then back to mountains again, this time with Luk and Venie and my children, then back to process for two more weeks maybe shooting, treatments, presentations, meetings and then finally departure to Indonesia in the moment Mods are the most demanded in last year and a half. Combining life with reality is sometimes like giving a birth through a keyhole. But I dare. I am known for this.

The first Canon 7D shooting finalised.

The pictures captured for our last commercials with Canon 7D are great. Grading was smooth, way more elastic and detailed than when coloring a video and so the online retouches and final touches. Couple of minor mistakes with focusing had to be repaired but thats ok.

Imagine a cooking show with marmite involved.

Vitana finally broadcasts the first part of Doggie and Pussycat cooking show, a branded entertainment project for their product Masox. You can watch it here at stream.cz. They will also have in couple of hours a facebook profile so you can become a fan. And Doggie also started his own blog with an inside story and some intellectual thoughts of this allmighty cook. The man behind all these online activities is Lukáš Tucznak Franz from Outbreak.

Get recorded.

The Prostitutes started brand new Radiotron demo sessions this Tuesday. We recorded a song called Get Drunk having couple of beers and not being drunk. We also retouched Mr. Anderson, another song we did couple of months ago already. Guys recorded more than 10 demos during the time I was sitting at home with my dislocated thumb finger and I can now transform these lo-fi recordings into a Logic MIDI grids to prepare a playground for Dušan Neuwerth as he is probably going to be our producer for the upcoming album again.

Some pictures from the session are in the Radiotron album here.