Finally couldn’t wait any longer. Am actually quite suprised at just how much I ended up missing playing.. I don’t really think of myself as a proper guitarist anymore – just a thirty-something dude who rocks out in his bedroom. Not really sporty enough to own a tennis racket, so had to plumb for the real thing.

I think I’ve probably mentioned before, but I really do credit Guitar Hero with getting me back into playing. It was the instant gratification element of it – basically not having to do much and feeling like you’re holding the song together. I’ve got a friend who’s learning guitar at the moment and, as much as he loves practising and making his guitar actually make all those cool sounds, I know he plays a lot of ‘Hero too and I’ll bet there’s many times when being able to play favourite tracks perfectly without having to worry about string muting or feedback makes the easy option too easy to ignore…

I don’t doubt he’ll get there, though

Anyway – here’s the puppy. It’s a Tanglewood Tomcat. I’d originally wanted to get a Jackson – Mark Morton signature model. It’s a beast of a guitar and has a fixed bridge too (which I’ve always been quite partial to) and, most importantly, twin humbuckers. The reason I don’t have one now is that Jackson – the bastards – don’t make cocking lefties.. and a custom build would’ve set me back somewhere on the bad side of £3k! Fuck that!

So this is where I’ve settled for the minute. It’s in need of a good setup (intonation’s pretty good, but the action’s waay too high and got a couple of buzzy frets here and there) but so far it’s playing well the setup should turn it into a pretty sweet player. Just need to get a new pedal now to replace my stolen Boss Metal Zone and we’ll be fucking off the neighbours in style!

Just found a great little free app from Logitech that turns your iPhone into a really responsive mouse to remotely control your pc or mac.
It requires a lightweight receiver app to be installed on your computer, but the result is super fast and simple.
Two finger dragging for scrolling, left, right and middle buttons are supported.

Just gave money to a random man in the coffee shop at the station. Know it was a good thing to do, but feel kinda weird about it now.

The train had come and I had my coffee – priorities taken care of.. He wanted a sandwich but only had about 80p and his credit card and they wouldn’t take a payment for under £2. They also didn’t agree to his suggestion of over charging him for the sandwich to meet the minimum credit card spend – all this while the train was coming into the station.

Feel weird because the guy could obviously afford to lose a couple of pounds (in a monetary sense ), but when it comes to homeless people of big issue salepeople, my pockets are wired shut. Maybe it’s just I could relate to his needs better. Maybe I wasn’t trying to help him financially, more just empathising with his being caught in a crap situation that I’ve experienced in the past and trying to help him out – maybe even alleviate some of that Monday morning stress
Maybe I only did it cos I want someone to do that for me and prove this world isn’t as crap and mercenary as it seems – strike something of a balance to all the miserable commuter shit I see people doing every day to each other..

Probably shouldn’t analyse it too much eh.. Hopefully taken some of the shit outta someone’s Monday morning. Still got all of mine

Love the way that sometimes three or four people are converging on a point and, through only slight changes in each persons walking speed and direction, they move smoothly past each other without any visible break in their gait.
The whole effect looks planned, the people following predetermined, invisibly marked paths, sometimes missing each other by the smallest gap.

Suppose it’s an example of strangers subconsciously acting together as a unit – no conscious decision, just an awareness on each persons part of the others’ movements.

Good post about the worth of reviewing your own and others’ code. Makes a good point about how you have to read and understand your own code every time you enter a debugging session. The cleaner and more readable your code is, the less precious time you’ll waste trying to fathom where your code is breaking.

http://agile.dzone.com/news/clarity-code-clarity-thought

For years now I’ve been carting a large collection of cassettes (largely unlabeled) around with me when ever I move house.. They take up space and generally sit there, unplayed, containing unfathomable favourite bands of my youth.

I’m generally been in favour of all things digital really, my movie and music collections are now exclusively digital – no bookshelves of DVDs and space-hogging CD racks looming around my place! So I was long past due a sort through of these damned tapes and to rip any gems they may contain. I’d just ordered a reasonably cheap cassette to USB player off eBay, so I wrote off the rest of the day and got started

Remember poking rizlas or bog roll into the holes in the top of cassettes in order to tape over them? Bit of a trip down memory lane to look through all of these – three ripped copies of Blood Sugar Sex Magic, some horrifically bad death metal, half a Helmet album and a whole shit-load of rubbish jungle and drum and bass that some git had taped off some pirate radio station. God only knows what classics had been lost forever there

The way the tape case fits in your hand just kinda felt natural and well sized – I remember picking up a CD for the first time and thinking how thin and insubstantial it felt compared to a nice fat, chunky cassette. That must’ve been my first ever CD, Mr Bungle, that I’d bought even before I even owned a CD player – a kind of audio cart-horse situation, I suppose.

Anyway, I got through them – I’d say about 30 tapes all told. Some good finds – songs from my old band and even ones of me just recording riffs I’d written (mostly crap ones ) – all nicely ripped to MP3 and backed up on my hard drive.

Tapes meet bin. Bin.. tapes.

Digital being such a versatile format, I can’t see me having to go through this rigmarole again thank fuck!

Addictive as hell

Tone Matrix – more fun than the name implies

Photos: flickr/tripleaxis/sets/barcelona

Have just got back from my short trip to Barcelona. Not been there before – in fact it’s actually the first time I’ve ever been to Spain. Crazy, I know, for someone living so close, but you never explore your own back door, eh..

Had heard lots of good things about Barcelona. Everyone I met who’d been there had recommended and raved about the place; great for skating, great art and design all over the city and an overall lack of stress and frenzied city life.

Well the skating claim is so true – half the place looked like it had been designed with skaters in mind. Smooth transitioned banks and slopes, steps and grindable blocks. There was even a few seemingly dedicated wide rails setup.
Art in the city? Spot on – you can’t walk more than a minute without noticing either a striking piece of sculpture or just an everyday object that had uniquely and refreshingly designed to be either more functional, aesthetic or tactile. Just great!
Pace of life. I wouldn’t mind experiencing a working life out there actually. Just to see if living and working in the city was really as unpressured as the impression I got. I suppose it will always depend on what work you do there, but I definitely got the feeling that the amount of overtime hours worked there were kept to a minimum and the onus was definitely on working to live rather than the other way round..

Last night of the trip ended up being the blow-out night, starting with a couple of easy beers, followed swiftly by my fave, Southern Comfort and then shots of Absinthe …at which point the night started a steady decline into chaos, ultimately peaking with me dancing to shitty music in a shitty club somewhere, then wandering off to mash a completely unnecessary filth burger into my face hole.
Feel dirty just from typing it.. dancing.. yuk

The next day we were kicked out of our hotel rooms (which were fantastic, btw) at noon. I felt like absolute dog-shit and we crawled into the nearest KFC for some alcohol absorbing, fried chicken goodness! We headed up to the Park Güell and just simply laid on the grass for a good hour or so, recuperating which, I have to say, worked an absolute treat . With most of the time I’d been there having been soaked or at least drizzly and miserable, we ended up getting more done on that last day than the rest of the trip.

Ultimately, I had a great time. Hanging with Steve was really cool and just being able to amble along with no real agenda was fantastic for a few days – oh, and we completely pwned the casino by spanking them out of almost 10Euros! Take it, bitches!

I always seem to end up doing this – booking multiple events within days of each other.
I generally maintain a bit of a low profile, but as soon as the old wallet creaks open, I find its contents spill out in every direction almost uncontrollably. Once a semblance of control is regained, all that’s left is to count the receipts and grimly look forward to the upcoming adventures that I know I’ll be secretly very pleased I had

This time what started off as a simple plan to piggyback a friend’s work assignment in Barcelona into a long weekend in the sun has now expanded into 2 gigs, 4 days in Barcelona, 5 days in New York, a first time meeting with someone I’ve been chatting with online for almost 2 years and catching up with the Lebowski Fest – Speed Of Sound Tour

All, I should probably mention, within the same two weeks! Still, couple of firsts in there, the chance to catch up with some old friends and see a couple of seriously badass bands play!

What on earth am I complaining about?! Shut the fuck up, Donnie!

If I’ve installed the wave notification wordpress plugin properly, then I (as the only bloody subscriber) should get a notification

let’s find out…

[EDIT]
Bumz.. looks like it needs the curl package for PHP.. will see if i can find a workaround..
[/EDIT]

[UPDATE 25-10-09]
Testing new Curl support…

…fail
[/UPDATE]

[UPDATE 26-10-09]
once more, with feeling…

curl enabled – plugin fail Hehe – fukkit
[/UPDATE]