Ocean Beat: featuring Tomas Skyldeberg

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November 5, 2022

Some days I’ll sit in the office on my computer and just listen. One of my recurring favorites is Tomas Skyldeberg.

The video here was produced by ZeroSoundBeat and has a collection of some of the best from Tomas Skyldeberg

It may seem rather lengthy at 42 minutes, but it has a lot of great pieces of music.

Tomas Skyldeberg is a Swedish composer most known for his electronic music, which contains an inimitable balance of dreamy vibes and epic house.

Born in Gothenburg, on the west coast of Sweden, Tomas enjoyed singing and listening to music throughout his childhood, but didn’t start to develop a deep understanding of it until he received some basic music software from his friend at the age of 17.

For the next two years he created music with his friends, subsequently releasing tracks with the aim of masterminding a big hit. Continuing his musical interest alongside a full-time career, it wasn’t until 2016, when he released the albums “Falling Stars” and “Streets of Paris”, that his work began to gain appreciation.

After a relatively quiet 2017, Tomas re-emerged in March 2018 releasing five soft house tracks in the form of the EP “Everything Shines”, subsequently following this up with the singles “Feel The Breeze” and “Moving Up” and the album “Love Like Gold”.

Today he lives in Gothenburg where he continues to compose and produce music, consistently adding to a back-catalog that has already been heard over a billion times on YouTube.

Tomas has been involved in creating tracks that have found their way into notable compilations and music platforms. His work includes songs like “Spaceboy From The 90’s Decade – Radio Edit”, which has a tempo of 140 BPM, reflecting a style that might appeal to those interested in danceable, yet melancholic tunes. His track “Ibiza Sunrise” was featured in “A State of Trance 2010”, a significant compilation by Armin van Buuren, indicating his connection to the trance music community.

You can catch up with Tom on Facebook

This video is a production of:

ZeroSoundBeat – Trance & Progressive Music

facebook: http://facebook.com/zerosoundbeat
twitter: http://www.twitter.com/zerosoundbeat

Charlotte Elliot (a short history)

By

Alan

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November 3, 2022

Charlotte Elliott was an English poet, hymn writer, and editor. She is best known by two hymns, “Just As I Am” and “Thy will be done”.

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On September 22, 1871, an elderly British lady, 82 years old, was ushered into her heavenly reward.

Earlier in her life, in 1835, her frustration at being an invalid left her feeling useless and questioning her very salvation. What she did next would echo through history.

As a young woman, Charlotte Elliot was not sure of her relationship with Christ, not sure of how to be saved, even though she had been raised a minister’s daughter, and the probing question of a Swiss evangelist, “Are you at peace with God?”, would not leave her mind.

When she saw the evangelist a few weeks later, she mentioned that she could not shake his question. But, she protested, what could she possibly bring to God? When he replied that she need not bring anything but herself, she gladly accepted Christ.

Some years later, crippled by illness and constant fatigue, she felt saddened by her inability to help a local church’s cause.

Remembering her conversion, she took out pen and paper and wrote a poem to encourage others who felt perhaps they too had nothing to give.

“Just As I Am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
Oh, Lamb of God, I come.”

Her poem was published and she was inundated with requests for it.

She was gladdened to discover later that some copies were being sold to raise money for the very cause she felt helpless to assist.

After her death, thousands of letters were found in her home, written by people whose lives had been transformed by her words.

Her song has been translated into hundreds of languages, published in more than 1600 hymnals, and has reached billions around the world, and continues to bring people to Christ even today.

Sixty years later, in 1931, a 31-year-old man riding in the sidecar of his brother’s motorcycle in England finally came to the end of his internal struggle against whether Christ was indeed the Son of God.

He finally knew in his soul that indeed Jesus was just who He said He was! He realized that God calls us to Him “just as we are”.

When C.S. Lewis stepped out of the sidecar, he was a new man, saved by grace!

Ninety-nine years after Charlotte Elliott penned her words, and 3 years after Lewis’ conversion, the 16-year-old son of a dairy farmer listened intently as he heard the message of salvation preached at a revival service in Charlotte, NC.

When the song, “Just As I Am,” was sung at the end, young Billy Graham went forward to accept Christ.

Twenty years later, Billy Graham had become a successful evangelist and was invited to speak at Cambridge University in England.

His nervousness over the event nearly led him to cancel it. But he was introduced to a kind man named C.S. Lewis who encouraged him to disregard the critics who had spoken out against him, and to continue with the revival.

Rev. Graham went on to speak to an overflow crowd of 2,000 each night of the revival, and when he returned to England in 1989, he addressed a crowd of 80,000 at England’s Wimbley Stadium!

As always, he closed the event with the same song that brought him to Christ, “Just As I Am.”

Never think you have “nothing” to bring to Jesus!

That is exactly what He wants you to bring — nothing! He wants you, just you — as you are!

He can take frustration like Charlotte Elliot’s, skepticism like Lewis’, and nervousness like Billy Graham’s, and reach the world through you.

“Just as I am, though tossed about
with many a conflict, many a doubt,
fightings and fears within, without,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”

George Orwell (a short history)

By

Alan

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November 3, 2022

“It’s frightful that people who are so ignorant should have so much influence.”

George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair’s pen name) was an English writer, essayist and journalist, born on 25 June 1903 in India and died on 21 January 1950 in London.

A multifaceted author, his work reflects his political commitments in favor of social justice.

George Orwell took advantage of his intellectual abilities to obtain scholarships allowing him to receive a good academic education, notably at Eton College.

He affirmed a rebellious temperament over time, but nevertheless joined the Burmese imperial police, following a family tradition of serving the British Empire.

After five years, he left his position to devote himself to writing.

George Orwell then alternated between periods during which he explored the living conditions of the poor and periods of working as a teacher or bookstore employee.

After having been involved in Spain against the Franco dictatorship, he returned to London and wrote his main novels, including Animal Farm.

He died of tuberculosis shortly after the publication of his most famous work, the dystopian novel 1984.

sourced – George Orwell: A Life in Letters

Anthropologist Margaret Mead

By

Alan

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October 3, 2022

Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture.

The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.

But no.

Mead said, … “that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed.”

Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.

A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken the time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery.

“Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts” Mead said.

We are at our best when we serve others.

Be civilized.

Setting up Windows 11 and Linux Mint Dual Boot

By

Alan

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September 19, 2022

Over the past 12-15 years I’ve always had at least one PC set up to dual boot Windows and Linux.

Windows and Linux seemed to always sort of play nice until the BIOS became the UEFI — then it started to become more difficult because many times the boot.ini or MBR partition was write protected by Microsoft itself so there was no way to edit or configure (short of the shell or cmd if even that) a pointer to the Linux partition. Writing a pointer to the sda2 partition in GRUB was about the only way you could boot into the Windows partition it seemed. The trick here was to be sure that your system picked up GRUB outside of the MBR first, otherwise it was going to be just Windows with no other option available to enter the Linux partition.

When I get out on to the interwebs and look around at all of the tutorials that involve dual-booting these two operating systems, I can begin to understand why so many get confused.
Everyone out there is at a different experience level, and though each solution may work out at the end of the day, it all just comes down to how much time and effort you figure you want to spend doing this.

I’ve pretty much had my fill of GParted, MiniTool Partition Wizards, AOMEI Partition Assistant’s, or any of the other 3rd party partitioning tools out there. 3rd party software usually comes with a bunch of adware and malware junk anyway, so don’t waste your time.
Microsoft Windows already has the tools you need to reduce, expand, or create new partition(s) anyway, so you might be better off and dollars ahead by just using what Microsoft offers.

I pretty much quit buying laptops and PC’s over the counter quite some time ago because they are fairly limited in their over all capabilities. Not only are they extremely low powered as a rule, but their UEFI/BIOS are pretty limited as far as configurations.

Recently I built another new PC basically from scratch and put Windows 10 Pro on it. Contrary to popular belief, Windows 10 will install and boot without having to use secure boot, so that’s what I ended up doing. After the install, I split the main partition thus giving the Windows 10 only 1 terabyte instead of having two. Then I went in and installed Linux Mint in the second partition. All of this was done without having to use secure boot by the way. Once the Linux portion was installed, I rebooted and I was presented with a screen that gave me a choice of which partition to boot into. Windows was using the MBR side on sda2 and the Linux side was using GRUB on sda1.

Simple enough I suppose, but now I figured it might be time to upgrade to Windows 11. Before I could do the upgrade, I had to go into the BIOS and set the UEFI Secure Boot, and enable the TPM 2.0.
Once I had done that, I upgraded to Windows 11. When I rebooted after the upgrade, I didn’t get the screen that gave me the option of which partition to boot into. It went straight into Windows 11.

I rebooted again and this time went into the BIOS and set the boot to UEFI Secure Boot with Legacy Support. (ASUS gives you a few options as far as boot configurations: UEFI Secure Boot, UEFI Secure Boot w/Legacy Support, Legacy, or just plain old Other OS.)
I saved the configuration and continued to boot. I was once again presented with a screen that gave me a choice of which partition to boot into. Windows 11 is happy because it has it’s UEFI Secure Boot in the MBR on the sda2, and Linux Mint is happy because it gets to use it’s GRUB over on the sda1.

I use ASUS Motherboards for nearly all of my builds. The only time I don’t is if a customer wants something different.
I purchase the ASUS gaming motherboards mostly because they are the most flexible as far as configuration is concerned.

At the end of the day I’ve got a new PC set up to boot both of the latest versions of Linux Mint and Microsoft Windows.

Thanks for the read

Happy Trails