Tranquilo

Julio

2008-03-27T15:57:00.002Z

A massive thank you to my man Julio for all his input and synthesiser help :)

Soundtrack - Triana

2008-03-27T15:47:00.006Z

Ah,

The joy of Music. Currently hot on the playlist and gracing the decks, Triana, many thanks (Muchisimo Gracias Tio) to Manu for hooking me up with this little Jewel.

Logically Speaking

2008-03-27T14:58:00.005Z

So where to start? Well, for sure it's been awhile so let's cover positive, important stuff first. Anyone that knows me also knows that I love technology, in particular technology that helps me create. My relationship with my technological kit can puzzle innocent bystanders and leave them slightly baffled nay bewildered and confused. I make no apologies for this, having long ago realised that I have a passion and enthusiasm for what I love doing (and the things that help me do it). Over the last few months 4 other stunning bits of kit have joined the list of technology I have loved.

First up and chronologically ordered, the amazing upgrade to my favourite sequencer, now as I've stated many times on these pages the job of the sequencer is to allow you to make music, it is an interface between your creative ideas and your creative output. It needs to be as seamless as possible. In reality the interface shouldn't feel like an interface, it needs to be intuitive yet powerful enough to capture your ideas. Having spent many years learning various sequencers, both hardware & software, it's a real joy to report that the upgrade to Logic Pro was painless and relatively cheap and more importantly so ridiculously powerful & intuitive that it's a real joy to use. The Channel Strip settings are a stroke of genius and the ease of adding extra Aux, Bus and Rewire inputs makes my creative life so much easier. The media, loop and preset library is again simplicity itself and creating / saving your own customised settings so simple it's almost a joke. Sidechaining is now also easier than ever which makes for tight, fat, professional sounding mixes. I'm also digging the new Compare function which for me is a real Godsend.

I love creating my own sounds, it adds an obviously personal level of detail to a track. Most of my own sounds (but not all) usually start from a preset that is then fairly heavily edited. It's just how I tend to work. Get a sound that's somewhere close to what you want then make it exactly what you want. This maybe a simple case of adjusting the characteristics of the sound itself, passing the sound through some mind disturbing effect units or depending on exactly what sound I'm after - building a sound from scratch. It's here where a good Compare function comes in useful. Logic Studio has that nailed. One click allows a quick before and after comparison - essential for a soundsmith. Save your new creation as a Channel Strip setting and it's available in the new media browser only one click away. Genius.

All in all it's a great upgrade, there's lots more to it but I've gotta cover three of the baddest Soft Synths known to mankind yet so excuse me while I slip into something more comfortable and lay these monsters out on general display.

All I can say to start with is Native Instuments! Stop now you're scaring me!

Those crazy creative Germans have done it again. Not content with launching the careers of thousands of Minimal musicians with the insanely inspirational Reaktor and it's Nuskool plugin (the sound of which has systematically destroyed dancefloors from Ibiza to Brazil and beyond), their rapidly growing Soft Synth catalogue has three absolute monsters that I'm now the lucky & proud owner of:

FM8
Massive
Battery 3

I think FM8 has stolen the title of My Favourite Synth, this prestigious award used to belong to the ES2 (closely followed by Rob Papen's Albino) but I can honestly report that FM8 is the synth that I find myself going to again and again. It's received rave reviews in the tech music press and after using it for only a few days I can already see why. Try it - you'll like it. NI offer demos of most of their synths and once you start playing them you'll be hooked.

When Yamaha released the DX7 it was a milestone in Synthesiser history. Only a few synths are good enough to be called classics, the DX7 was one of them. I remember the first time I heard one (in a little music shop in Bingley, West Yorkshire, England) it sounded like no other Synth I'd ever heard. It was the sound of 80's synthesis. Up to that point analogue was God. After the DX7 was released FM synths became the new "must have" sound. An interesting fact here - FM synths became so "fashionable" and analogue synths so "old hat" that I remember seeing a Roland TB-303 for sale in the same small music shop for £35. I was the proud owner of a Korg MS-10 which I couldn't even swap for a guitar effects pedal (and I tried!) both these classic synths now change hands for hundreds of pounds. Technology eh? Everybody wanted the clean FM sound. Analogue was tired and old and fuzzy sounding, the synths were notorious for going out of tune (as they warmed up), drum machines suddenly used "Samples" to make their sounds. Whatever next?

But "fashion" has always been the same, and as in all things fashionable it's a cyclic phenomena. Technology on the other hand always marches on and the new FM synthesis offered by NI is so far ahead of it's ancient cousin it's frightening. When NI released FM7 it caused quite a stir, FM8 is no ripple on the pond, it's a tsunami. One of the weak points of "old" FM synths was their lack of "warmth" (a yearning for the halcyon days of analogue - which of course led to the analogue sound becoming fashionable again - do you see a pattern here kittlings?) FM8 has no such shortfalls. It does all the things the DX7 and its offspring's were capable of but then shows us that nearly 30 years on FM synthesis has grown into something almost unrecognisable.

Oh yes it does "Warm". It does "Fat" it does all the things you want a synth to do. It also reads all the old DX7 (and later models) soundbanks so should you want to sound like a Bronski Beat revival band you can. But it also generates sounds you can't even begin to describe, sounds that twist and undulate then rip the bass cones from your monitors and shred the shirt on your back. Stupidly fat leads, ridiculously rich pads, effects that spin your cerebrum into a gibbering monkey mind mess.

FM synthesisers are notoriously difficult to program and edit, not so NI's latest offering. They offer an accurately named "Easy" morph mode in which you can tweak and twist recognisable parameters (timbre, harmonics, attack, decay, release etc) and a mind meltingly complex "Expert" mode where you can modulate those sine waves and algorithms till your eyes pop and you have a beard as long as Noah's.

All in all 10 out of 10. NI we salute you! :)

So grab yourself the demo and see what you think, better still let me know what you think, I'll cover Massive and Battery in the next post, until then, happy creating Kittlings!

Hasta Luego

Peace

Migz

Quote For Forever (so obviously quote of the day)

2008-03-27T14:48:00.002Z

"Imagine that every person in the world is enlightened but you. They are all your teachers, each doing the right things to help you learn patience, perfect wisdom, perfect compassion."

Buddha

Global Warming

2007-07-12T19:41:00.000Z

The Genius that is Mark Steel

Having long been a fan of Mark Steel, it was a real pleasure to see this article. A true comedian who like the legendary Bill Hicks uses his comedic genius to "tell the truth". In this case Global Warming

"The Live Earth concert was worthwhile, because it provoked this splendid argument from a columnist in The Sun, who insists the climate isn't changing - "Global warming is simply the new way of screwing more and more taxes out of us."

So it turns out all those scientists and weather people and botanists and people measuring glaciers have made it all up so the Government can propose a twelve quid long-haul airline tax. There's probably a secret group in Greenland hacking icebergs to bits with a shovel to make it look more convincing.

Next week he'll add: "And what about these so-called 'sound waves'? Have you ever seen one? Of course not, because they're simply another scam dreamed up by the BBC so they can charge us a license fee."

This is the level of debate offered by those who dispute global warming is happening. Either that, or they repeat some snippet they've seen on a website, like: "What about the Montana Institute of Snow, eh? They analysed nine different snowflakes in the Andes and concluded flakes are bigger now than in the olden days, so although there are less flakes, there's 80-per-cent more snow in total than ever before, and the man who does the graphs to say there's global warming is being paid by a cycle shop in Taunton."

Even this would be more convincing than the theory of Johnny Ball, who for some reason has become one of their media spokemen, and who cornered me for half an hour, during which time he said with great conviction: "Do you know what causes more global warming than anything else? The methane from spiders."

The little buggers. I bet they're using coal-powered webs, with not a thought for the environment. And instead of hanging from beams in sheds, they're flying round garages in Boeing 757s they've had built by bees.

One thing the spiders should be ashamed of is their effect on the islands of Kiribati, some of which have been sunk by rising sea levels, forcing the population to flee. Or maybe that was caused by condensation. The Sun columnist would go round and say: "Aah, I say what's happened here - someone's had the kettle on."

The other main point of the sceptics is that Al Gore is a pompous politician who flies everywhere himself. Which is true, but this has little bearing on whether the climate is changing. You might as well say, "Isaac Newton was a right scruffy bastard. And yet you expect me to believe in gravity?"

Some of the science is confusing and uncertain, so one way to judge it is to look at who's on which side of the argument. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was made by 600 scientists from 40 countries, assessed by 600 reviewers, and agrees this is happening.

Whereas most of the stuff that contradicts it can be traced back to websites that aren't entirely neutral. For example, one leading source for the "global warming's a myth" supporters is called "Friends of Science" - except their president admitted: "About one third of the funding for the Friends of Science is provided by the oil industry." Yet this stuff is repeated round the world by columnists as fact.

Exxon has spent millions of dollars on a website that disputes global warming. Or there's the publication called 21st Century Science and Technology, which claimed that 55 per cent of glaciers are actually growing at the moment.

But this paper turns out to be owned by an American millionaire by the name of Lyndon Larouche, who has also claimed the British royal family is running an international drugs syndicate. Nonetheless, he's been quoted by global warming sceptics, including David Bellamy.

Johnny Ball, David Bellamy - why does this affliction seem to target 1970s TV presenters? Soon Frank Bough will announce that global warming is caused by cyclists, because they disrupt the path of flies who then whizz about more erratically, making themselves a more difficult prey for spiders, who have to move faster to catch them, causing methane mayhem.

Apart from TV presenters, opponents of the scientists seem to be supporters of the oil companies, or people who believe they're standing up against a woozy liberal agenda. Because the PC mafia are forcing us to burn our cars and buy tandems and not go on holiday, while the only people resisting this are the downtrodden voices of the petro-chemical industry, the airlines, and the government of America.

So they're not interested in the science at all. When they were at a chemistry class in school, and the teacher announced that the litmus paper had turned red so vinegar must be an acid, they probably shouted: "Oh what do you know? I suppose now we'll all have to campaign to save alkalines from extinction will we?"

Live Earth may have brought the scale of the climate problem to people's attention. But it can't be resolved without confronting those giant companies and governments in whose interest it is to deny the problem is there at all.

For example, to reduce the number of cars, we could invest in a re-nationalised public transport system, which would upset the private rail firms and the car firms. And it would upset the people who complained that Live Earth "only put one point of view". They'll probably also complain the coverage of the Tour de France "only puts one point of view," as there should be someone else saying: "They can't have gone all that way, they'd have tipped over the edge."

Having watched his series The Mark Steel Lectures and loved it, particularly the Einstein Lecture which dealt with some of the mind bending implications of his theories, it's always a pleasure to hear Mark Steel tell it like it is.

Peace & Love

Migz

There is No Spoon

2007-07-12T19:36:00.000Z

Remember.....

"You only have a finite amount of time and a finite amount of energy. Make sure you use it positively."

Quote Mike Throup

Never a truer word said. Don't focus on the negative my brothers and sisters, life is way too short for that. Don't be distracted by the world of the ten thousand things. Focus on the positive, let your love shine through.

Negative influences, places, thoughts and even sometimes people need to be let go. You'll never achieve your purpose if you let negative clutter distract you.

Remember there is no spoon.....

A place in the sun..

2007-07-12T19:28:00.000Z

Apologies for the lack of posts recently but now when they do come they'll more than likely arrive in a group. My new work off-line strategy. We're blessed and lucky and give thanks that we are where we are at this moment, our new place to live on this magic island is the most beautiful place we've ever been lucky enough to call home. It's a reality check for me every morning; as having lived in the UK all my life I never really expected to ever wake up and see oranges, lemons, apples, grapes, peppers, onions, melons, peas, beans, aubergines, tomato's, pomegranates, garlic and even coffee growing in my garden. Add to that the still mesmerising foliage and the perfect dream of a life in the sun has manifested itself...

The Old One. Thanks once again.....

Freakshow @ Cocoon

2007-06-25T20:59:00.001Z

Freakshow @ Cocoon
Originally uploaded by Miguel Ramirez

Ready for work, our friends Erik, Rachel, Amanda, Elo and their colleagues. Erik designed & made all the outfits, too much talent that fella :)

An amazing night! Welcome to the real world :)

Fierceness Is Always Welcome

2007-06-21T19:41:00.001Z

Monday night was Cocoon @ Privilege: Erik - our beautiful neighbour, Designer, Dancer & all round "Fierce Black Bitch". A truly beautiful human being and one of our closest friends on this amazing island - Backstage.

It was a stunning night, a truly stunning night....

Peace & Love

Migz

Coco Loco

2007-06-14T19:43:00.000Z

OK, first up - massive thanks to all our new friends in Ibiza who are making all my dreams come true. There is something quite magical about visiting your favourite bar and hearing your music rocking the place. Words just can't describe it! What is it about this place? Monday we met a whole new bunch of people (all from Brazil) talk about eye opening! Roll on next Monday when we all do the Coco Loco room. As for now, well we're sat nicely spangled thanks for asking. San Francisco! Que Va!

Peace & Love

Migz

Internet? Que Va!

2007-06-08T19:04:00.000Z

Ah the joys of living in Ibiza, the pine forests only 3 minutes walk away. But the downside my Kittlings? No ADSL! Que Va!! Still we wouldn't swap it for the world. The upside, the people, the culture, the music, the creative vibe and a wi-fi bar called San Francisco. Apologies to all our friends for the lack of communication but it's a fault that now is easily resolved. Telefonica will ADSL enable our area soon enough but for now.... San Francisco it is!

Peace & Love

Migz

P.S Space & DC10 opening parties back to back! PLEASE! I mean the nerve!

Quote: John Pilger

2007-02-17T00:11:00.000Z

"In numerous surveys, such as that conducted this month by BBC World Service, “we”, the majority of humanity, have made clear our revulsion for Bush and his vassals. As for Blair, the man is now politically and morally naked for all to see. So who speaks out, apart from Professor Edalal and his colleagues? Privileged journalists, scholars and artists, writers and thespians who sometimes speak about “freedom of speech” are as silent as a dark West End theatre. What are they waiting for? The declaration of another thousand year Reich, or a mushroom cloud in the Middle East, or both?"

John Pilger Article

Computing Power

2007-02-13T01:39:00.000Z

Ah, technology. Intel Teraflop Chip less than the size of a human fingernail, that 11 years ago would have required a machine with 10,000 chips inside it taking up a total of 2,000 square feet. The Chip has 80 Cores delivering performance of more than a Trillion calculations a second (Teraflop). As the late, great Terence McKenna used to say "Faster and Faster and Faster"

Possible uses include artificial intelligence, instant video communications, photo-realistic games and real-time speech recognition, said the firm.

Coming soon "Civilzation 2012" a game so real you're unaware you're playing it. Coincidently also the title of a Novel and an Album by a fella called Miguel Ramirez.

Peace & Love

Migz

Give Peace A Chance!

2007-02-12T23:27:00.000Z

Give Peace A Chance!

An excellent article in the Independent today. George Bush you really must desist from this INSANE Foreign Policy you have. The Iranians want to talk, it's a well documented fact.

Your own Baker-Hamilton report suggested opening talks with Iran & Syria to resolve the crisis in Iraq, what do you do? Escalate tensions by blaming Iran & Syria for US Losses in Iraq.

Give Peace a Chance George.

Quote: Bill Gates

2007-02-11T23:39:00.000Z

"I have 100 billion dollars... You realize I could spend 3 million dollars a day, every day, for the next 100 years? And that's if I don't make another dime. Tell you what - I'll buy your right arm for a million dollars. I give you a million bucks, and I get to sever your arm right here." - Bill Gates

Quote: "Why is it necessary to bomb and to shoot at every opportunity?"

2007-02-11T16:53:00.000Z

Quote: Vladimir Putin "Why is it necessary to bomb and to shoot at every opportunity?"

"One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way...."

"...This is very dangerous. Nobody feels secure any more because nobody can hide behind international law," Putin said. "This is nourishing an arms race with countries seeking to obtain nuclear weapons... We're witnessing the untrammelled use of the military in international affairs... Why is it necessary to bomb and to shoot at every opportunity?"

Probably because the current Idiot-in-Charge (Commander-In-Chief) sees himself as some sort of Cowboy Gunslinger out to cleanse the world of all it's Bad Guys, this obviously is done with true Christian Compassion by blowing the shit out of them. I remember reading in the Bible that Jesus had an Uzi and rode around on an Aircraft Carrier, that's definately in there somewhere I'm sure. "Suffer the Little Children..." well the Idiot-In-Charge is certainly making that happen, no doubt. I'm sure Jesus would approve. Wouldn't he?

Strange that a man so fond of thumping the Bible and quoting God, invading countries left right & centre (only if populated by 'brown folks' though let's make that clear) and unleashing Weapons Of Mass Destruction at EVERY available opportunity should have been so cowardly when it was his turn to fight. Making up for it now though, happy enough to send lots of other peoples' sons and daughters to kill brown children. Oh yes. You don't get congress approval for a $622 billion budget then not have fun spending it on highly advanced technology to maim, blind, slaughter, burn, cripple and kill.

The Idiot-In-Charge pays no heed to International Law, Pre-Emptive strikes are now the order of the day. Evidence? Who needs it? "Nuke 'Em All" it's the Christian way to Peace and Democracy. Don't like that Government? Overthrow it. Want some Oil or other natural resource? Invade the country, blow the living crap out of it's infrastructure then charge them $Trillions to rebuild it. Send in your buddy to steal a few $Billion, assign the "rebuilding contracts" to your other pals. The Vice Idiot-In-Charge can hardly manage to spend all the cash he gets in kick backs from his old company but I'm sure it's great fun trying, that's when he has time to go shopping, after all shooting people in the face must be a full time job for that idiot.

And now we're being told that the "highest levels" of the Iranian government is supplying Iraqi insurgents with sophisticated roadside bombs. The evidence? Well none actually, but hey when has that ever mattered? I'm sure they can find a "video" somewhere, maybe a passport to persuade the doubters. Come on let's get behind this, whatever you need I'm sure we can find. Let's go! I mean how dare another Country meddle in Iraq's affairs?

The "inevitable" pre-emptive war against Iran must not be allowed to happen, as Noam Chomsky so accurately states "The grand strategy authorises the US to carry out preventive war: preventive, not pre-emptive. Whatever the justifications for pre-emptive war might be, they do not hold for preventive war, particularly as that concept is interpreted by its current enthusiasts: the use of military force to eliminate an invented or imagined threat, so that even the term "preventive" is too charitable. Preventive war is, very simply, the supreme crime that was condemned at Nuremberg."

—Noam Chomsky, "Preventive War 'The Supreme Crime': Iraq: invasion that will live in infamy", August, 11, 2003.

New Album: Track Complete - "Abre Los Ojos" (Original Mix)

2007-02-09T00:10:00.000Z

Abre Los Ojos: It came to me in a dream. I awoke with the melody, the bass riff and the rhythm all crystal clear in my mind and nagging me (urging me) to bring them into reality. This is the first time I've ever written / produced like this. My friend Andy (I-Nerve) and I both compose in a very similar way. Andy calls it "Organic composition" and I think that usually sums up my writing. But this, ah this was oh so different.

I attribute my new creative "buzz" to my new life style which I constantly give thanks for (it's important to do that I feel). Abre Los Ojos is a case in point - the hook is burned into my cerebrum - I almost can't believe I wrote it, but it is mine and that makes me so very happy.

Knowing my "set up" is proving invaluable, it's a given and an obvious one at that but it's something that can quite easily pass musicians by. Technology being what it is and todays instruments being what they are it's quite easy to get "lost in the machine". By that I don't mean that the music sounds "mechanical" (Squeeks and Bleeps eh Reg?) I mean it's all too easy to get distracted from the creative process and get bogged down with the technology bullshit. Any budding muso's please take note - it's the music that's important - don't lose yourself in the technology. That said and this is my point, you have to know your technology.

When you have a bit of kit you are completely at one with your writing reflects that, both in the quality and the ease in which you complete the writing process. If you're spending too much time "messing" you lose the thread of creativity (well I used to anyway). I've been using my new sequencer (which is really a self contained studio in a single bit of software) for a few months now and having spent a considerable amount of time with it, and it's rather fat manuals, I can pretty much get it to do what I want.

Every single sound in Abre Los Ojos is my own. Every drum sound has been crafted (Ultrabeat what a monster of a Drum Machine!) every synth sound built from the ground up, every effect patch created from scratch, only Ms Cruz has not been engineered by me :)

"Ramirez Ain't No Square" has to be one of my favourite synth sounds ever - and it's mine! It's built from a basic Square Waveform (hence the name) but twisted and modulated with some very tasty envelope & velocity action which makes it sooooo playable and so very very fat.

Abre Los Ojos remixes coming soon, I may well work on those next but "Curious Yellow" "English Voodoo" "Forgotten Friends" "One 2 Eight" "Dorkin" "Layers of Reality" and "Talamanca Dreaming" are all part complete and now shouting for attention.

Abre Los Ojos is Track 7 from the album "Civilization 2012"

Peace & Love

Migz

Stoned Slackers

2007-02-08T23:26:00.000Z

The folks at Comedy Central were annoyed when Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly kept referring to "The Daily Show" audience as "stoned slackers."

So they did a little research. And guess whose audience is more educated?

Viewers of Jon Stewart's show are more likely to have completed four years of college than people who watch "The O'Reilly Factor," according to Nielsen Media Research.

Hardly a surprise. Bill O'Reilly - the most fear filled man on TV, his audience are probably too busy swilling beer and picking fights, they haven't got time for all that "fancy" reading stuff :)

Innovate

2007-02-06T00:39:00.000Z

Good to see that not all technology companies have run out of ideas. Having chuckled at the hilariously funny Windoze Vista and it's plagiaristic Aqua or is it Aero or Widgets or Gadgets or the "new" search...

David Pogue, writing for the New York Times, puts it a bit more bluntly:

“You get the feeling that Microsoft's managers put Mac OS X on an easel and told the programmers, ‘Copy that.’"

Well I'm sure all the Windoze fans will deny it but that doesn't mean it's not true, but anyway Mr Gates & Co lack of imagination not withstanding it'll be interesting to see what they make of 's new baby - the iPhone.

Oh and while we're on the subject - Leopard is waiting just off stage, we'll expect the Microsoft version (copy) in about another 5 years...

Random Acts Of Kindness

2007-02-06T00:36:00.000Z

Make the world a much nicer place. Try it for yourself...

Windoze Vista

2007-02-05T14:38:00.000Z

So fellow dwellers, can you contain yourselves? Are you salivating? Drooling uncontrollably? Has the sight of the worlds richest man whoring himself on every chat show on every continent to push his "new" product got you as moist as an otter's pocket? Or are you like me? Do you see a tired and grey little man who sounds far too much like Kermit the Frog for it to be coincidental, with absolutely no passion for his "product" just going through the motions?

More on this later....

Windoze Vista - don't make me laugh.

Great Start

2007-01-15T13:56:00.000Z

An amazing start to the Year, first of all huge thanks to the Old One for providing more coincidences than mortal man could wish for. Like your style, oh yes.. Love it :)

We've had the Double S Monday (a week ago today) which coincided with the reddest skies we've ever seen. Walking down Talamanca Beach just after 5.30PM having first met up with our amigo and numero uno hombre Pedro we were treated to the most amazing skies, so red, so beautiful. As that fella Einstein said "He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed." Amen to that. We met another friend Miguel at the end of the beach and while we stood there in awe he told us that the skies here are very very red in January and February. Where's my Digi Cam when I need it? Some things just aren't meant to be captured digitally I suppose.....

Which leads me on to

95% of our Universe is made from Dark Stuff....

"Now that we have begun to map out where dark matter is, the next challenge is to determine what it is, and specifically its relationship to normal matter," Dr Massey said (Source - Independent Online Article)

We know where it is we just need to find out WHAT it is? Como? Que?

"Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious." - Einstein

It's a Wonderful Life

2007-01-10T23:40:00.000Z

Coincidence? Que Va!

2007-01-10T22:58:00.001Z

Keep On Keeping On with those coincidences, we love 'em!

Peace & Love

Migz & Jinny

Late (Last Resort)

2007-01-08T23:47:00.000Z

Late, but still....

Big shout out to Anders! I've been meaning to post this for a while but with moving house (again!) my blogging has suffered recently.

For those new Dwellers who are not aquainted with the sublime Trentemøller album "The Last Resort" I can only urge them to check asap. I've been a fan since his Naked 025 EP and blogged the album release way back in October (being a bit of a vinyl junkie I had to have both the CD & Vinyl versions of the album) but his Essential Mix was also voted the best of last year. Result amigo!