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You know what sucks?

Pulling upto where I leave my car for Uni, on a public holiday, and seeing no cars in the street at all. (Uni’s don’t follow public holidays’).

I’m getting the the point where 30w of DSP just isn’t enough.

Well, I mean, its more than enough for playing in my bed room, but when around at Craig’s, or playing with my drummer aunty, I’m finding that a bit more volume would be nice.

Obviously, that would mean that Luke would need to use a louder amp as well (well he already does, 15w DSP hardly cuts into the mix at all), and Craig would actually need to use an amp for his keys.

The main reason I would like to go louder, besides it being, well, louder, is that it gives me a greater range of tone for my guitar.
At the moment, with the 30w DSP, some chords can come through a bit tinny, and just sounding thin, which can be quite frustrating.

For example, when playing American Pie, I KNOW it would sound best CLEAN (ok MAYBE a little Chorus), through a single coil neck pickup, however, the DSP makes this sound extremely tinny (even with all the high-end cut off). I know this to NOT be the case when played through tubes.
It would also make the distorted guitar sounds a-lot less harsh.

HOWEVER.

I could also achieve this by running TWO amps at the same time (with different EQ settings).

This presents a problem.

If I go two amps, its cheeper, but, I will then have TWO amps to transport, TWO amps to change volume on (this can change natural distortion, or even adding “hair” to your sound), two extra cables where line noise can come in, and completely scream up delay sounds, if I’m not careful.

The other option is getting a tube amp, which will really be too loud for when I’m at home by my self. And will cost more (really need to look at head+cab instead of a combo).

Atm, I think, once a new car has been purchased, I will start looking at a Bugera BC30-212.

Whats my movie pick for last year?

I bet your expecting me to say Avatar aren’t you? Aren’t you?

Well you would be guessing wrong, my movie choice for last year is Up, by Pixar.

I don’t know what it is, but Pixar have released two awesome movies in two years (well technically three isn’t it? Monsters vs Aliens was Pixar right?).

Everything about this movie is awesome, from the story telling. The writing for the characters, vocal performances, and yes. Ofcourse Dougg is a big part of that too.

For those that have not seen this movie yet, I will warn you. The start of it is VERY sad (but not in the “not safe for children” way, altho young children might not understand why it is a sad moment).

So if you have not seen this movie yet, head out to your local store and buy it, or if it is available in your region, download it with iTunes.

I think it is a common thing that everyone does, listening to music that suits their mood. I would even go as far as saying every human does it at some point.

Music in itself can express many different emotions, and is designed that way. And good music’s meaning is open to interpretation for you to find your own meaning in it, sometimes separate to what the artist/artists were attempting to express. This is a good thing, both from a sales, and an artist getting the most people to experience their art.

For me, the song which has just the most profound energy, and is just always enjoyable to listen to is Rumble by Link Wray. Just the way it sounds and is preformed always brings a smile to my face. And yes, I’ll admit, its close to this.

Strangely for me, I don’t actually listen to sad songs when I’m feeling down. I havn’t found any songs that will be “me”. I guess this is where I’m lucky in that I have the ability to make/play music myself to represent how I’m feeling at the time.

Anger is always distortion for me. Always. Lots of noise and distortion. I don’t care what the lyrics are, but LOUD guitars with quick drums always does the trick for me. Oh, and the volume has to be on 11. Generally that takes me towards the likes of these guys.

Then I have the songs that just make me laugh all the time, regardless of what mood I’m in, if these come on, then I cna’t help but laugh. The Majesty of Rock by Spinal Tap are just a few that can do this to me.

This brings me to the music I have been playing lately my self.
It is all well and fun learning how to play some of my favorite songs on guitar, but in all honesty, its nothing compaired to being able to pick up that piece of wood, and use it to express how I’m feeling at the time.

And I have found that I am often at odds with myself when playing expressively like this. Its both more natural to play, and (generally) requires more concentration from me. I’m happy to use a guitar that’s not exactly in perfect tune, maybe the neck has a bit of a bow after a new string change, or I haven’t set the action yet, but that doesn’t bother me either. When I’m playing expressively I know it shouldn’t be easy, and I’m going to have to battle this thing in my hands. I’ll use techniques I’m not very good at. I’ll strip as many effects away from my playing as possible. And I don’t care if the “noise” I’m making annoys anyone.

Music is for you. Weather you make it your self or listen to it.

Content delivered via a subscription. You would have thought that with the technology, better video streaming and delivery would be what people would seem to want.

With TV, and Video, the Radio started to loose its popularity, but now with iTunes, and RSS feeding of pod casts (both video and audio), it seems that the idea of a radio show is back on the rise again.
The idea of pod casting a radio show after it has been broadcast in the normal sense, has seen a resurrection in the idea of a talk back radio show.
It can be seen plainly when looking at the top downloaded pod casts in iTunes, there usually isn’t any video based ones in the top 5 overall.

The Hamish & Andy show is a brilliant example of this, the popularity of the show has just kept growing since the decision to both broadcast it live, and offer it for pod cast shortly after this airing time. And that popularity has just kept growing. I’d even wager that their odd appearances on Rove didn’t have a great effect on the number of people listening in.

Another brilliant example is the Ricky Gervais show. That’s a pod cast that had minimal advertising, and as of the second season required payment to listen to it, and it still managed to reach the number of downloads and listens that alot of TV shows struggle to attain.

Personally, I welcome this change back to audio only broadcasting, it saves me from having to see poorly edited, shitty, videos on youtube, or people attempting to be funny for a forced 30 minutes on TV.

So last night, me and Nick decided to catchup and play some console games, started out with the awesome Halo 3 ODST, and we got a respectable score on it. My God it is so much fun, both the singe player and the brilliant mod Fire Fight.

Next we moved onto the Wii with the brilliant Mario Kart Wii for some old time gaming. Caitlyn came out and joined us, and it soon degenerated into us yelling at each other and generally making fun of each other like we usually do.
Then Caitlyn started getting into a reminiscence mood, and was trying to remember a level she claimed “might” have been from the original Halo, and after a long time of her failing to describe what the map looked like, and us loading up all three Halo games. She finally went away and drew a few lines on a piece of paper.

You can see this piece of paper down the side here.

Now, how much of a bloody nerd must I be to know exactly what Caitlyn was talking about from a simple drawing like this? And yes, I was right, we loaded the game up, and sure enough, it was the map that we remembered (it wasn’t in Halo).

We also decided it would be cool to every few nights to get a Halo PC game happening, just for fun. If its just us three. Or if any of you want to join, then that would be brilliant.

Oh, and yes, we did also play some Halo 3 in multilayer. Defiantly better than Halo 1 on the Xbox, so much fun. Love doing races in the ATV’s, and some of the new weapons are just awesome fun to try and use. (Single handed playing ftw).

Definitely gonna have to get a Gold subscription for my 360 so I can play Fire Fight, and Halo 3 online.

I should probably make a start of Gears of War, and Perfect Dark as well.

The map was Torlan from UT2k4 btw.

Just gonna quickly run through a few things that I felt were note worthy this post.

First, my Ford Fairmont EB (1992), the gearbox on it died recently, this gives it a Park, no reverse, Nutural acting like Drive, Drive acting like Drive, and 2/1 acting like 2/1.
Obviously this makes it hard to get out of parking spaces, so for now, I’m traveling around in a 1984 VW Transporter, which I have to say, is one of the most fun cars I have ever driven.

Who cares that it takes almost 2 minutes to reach 100km/ph when you can have this much fun driving a car, and its a completely different way to drive. Your sitting on the front wheel, so you have to wait a little before turning (such a weird sensation behind ahead/on the turning point), the car doesn’t sound like its going to epxlode when it hits 4k rpm, and the fact that the body is so light you can just throw it around.

Good fun.

Second, its so funny how dumb people are getting these days. A few days ago, as some will notice, I made a twitter/facebook update, this is the explanation of what I was on about:
At Frankston station, you now have to actualy scan your ticket before the barriers will open, and with AO’s on the platform, you can’t just jump them. Its obvious that some people have been using melbournes public transport without a ticket… ever.

Trying to get onto the platform after a train and pulled in and passengers were disembarking, one young girl, she looked to be about 15 or 16 (fuck school holidays), was trying to get through the ticket barrier from the train. She had clearly NEVER used a ticket before in her life, even with her fried explain “put it in the slot with the arrow facing it”, she just couldn’t get it. I mean, how hard is it, to put the ticket into the slot (which has a picture of a ticket above it showing which way to insert it as well), the correct way around (arrow on the ticket too). She was triyng to put it into the top of the machine, swipe it over the slot, put it in SIDEWAYS (that is the long side of the rectangular ticket).

She eventually got it, but FUCK, how stupid are some people?

Oh, and on the instrument front, I finaly got myself my own guitar amp. A Marshall MG30R.

AND I wana update the 320gb Seagate HDD in my system. Someone recommend me a new HDD thats cheep!

I now have 4 guitars.

Three electric and one acoustic.

Do I really need 4 guitars? Probably not.

The Strat on the left, is a Legacy I bought from cash converters, as I wanted something with single coils, and some form of tremolo.

The Semi-Acoustic on the right, my Greg Bennett RL1, first guitar, has humbuckers, and does rock-and-roll extreamly well, and playing unpluged fairly well as well.

The green and black guitar was custom painted and the electronics re-done in it as a learning exercise on a $29 Catch-Of-The-Day special.

The acoustic I got because I wanted an acoustic.

Do they all get played? Yes. Lots.

Yo, long time no update!

Been a little crazy recently, and havn’t had much time where I’ve been able to just sit down, write, or do other general stuff.

Heck, take a look at the IRC stats, my lines per day for this month are way down, to non existent! So I figured I would go through a bunch of different things.

First thing I’ll talk about is another rant about drivers.
Specifically drivers of big cars. No, I’m not talking 4×4’s. I’m talking 4×4’s, Van’s, station wagons.

Now, I know some people need vehicles like that, but for the love of God, can you PLEASE learn how to drive them. So many people seem to have trouble reversing out of a car park with them.

This isn’t a case of me ranting about people in big cars without driving them myself. I drive both a Ford EB, and a Volkswagen Van (an old early ’90’s white tank thing). And I have no issues throwing them around Frankston city, or other small road places. I can also park, and get out of parks, regardless of size and position fine with both of my vehicles.

Oh and that brings me to another thing about cars. 90% of 4×4 owners shit me. Now I know that some people actual use 4×4’s for what they were designed for. Going off road. And I know some people have 6+ kids for some mental reason.

What shits me is the amount of people I see driving them, who will never take them off-road, and will never have more than 2 kids in the car.

Its stupid, a big 4×4 doesn’t make you safe, infact most 4×4’s have safety ratings lower than alot of small cars (go check www.howsafeisyourcar.com.au).
When on the train back from Bittern about 12 months ago, someone was sitting accross from me, talking to a friend about their cars (yes I was listening in, I was bored). She was talking about how, on a farm, they just drive about the in their station wagon, but when they go into the city they take the 4×4 “because its just safer”.

It took all my self control to not yell “No! Its less safe, you just clog up the streats with your big arsed car like you take up all the seat with your big arse! I hope a truck hits you so you can see how unsafe it is!”

Anyway, enough about cars.

Games time!

I’ve started playing a tonne of Fallout 3. I did try the game out a little bit ago, and I was just treating it as an on-rails shooter, and quit shortly after nuking Megaton.
Recently, after learning a bunch of cool stuff that you can do in it, I reinstalled it to give it another shot. And oh my God, I’m having so much fun (yet somehow, even after disarming the bomb in Megaton instead, I’ve still got a negative karma).
But my oh my, what an awesome game.

Now, I know I’ve ranted about Quake Live before, but that game is just pure Gold, unless you play it as much as The Muffin. Hes over it now, but if you see how many games hes been playing a day for the past 2 weeks, thats understandable. Mental. I mean, I love the game, but maybe 1 or 2 duels, and a few CA games is enough for me a day (can’t stand being in one thing for too long).

Life / Work

As you may have guessed from my last post, stupid professionals shit me.
I’ve been doing some office and network maintenance work for a local company who have just opened, and my God, working with the “communications experts” (read guys who install phone’s with multiple lines, and that’s it), is an absolute nightmare.
They have no freakin’ idea what the hell is going on with everyone else, and enjoy getting in the way of everything.
I wans’t the only one pissed at them, the new buisness owners were pissed off too.

Oh, and then there are the people who work for them. They seem to deliberatly go out of their way to break everything.
No, I’m not going to give you permision to install ANOTHER photo editing program, ONE is enough. No, I’m not going to let you change the clock to a different time zone so you know when to call your boy friend, why? BECAUSE YOU ARE AT WORK.
Oh, and PLEASE stop pulling cables out the back of the computer and leaving them out, I really hate going under that desk. Yes, you can do this, this and this, no you can’t access your bosses private files, please jump into a fire and DIE.

I’m going mental. Seirously. How bloody hard is it to install a phone?

Or three phones?

Or 3 phones and a fax?

On 2 lines?

When the lines have already been installed for you?

And everything else has been basicly set up for you?

So why in God’s good name do you have to go and pull out the ADSL cord, which is on a completly different line, and stop all the peoples from working from home?

Why cause everyone un-needed stress and fuel usage?

Die phone people.

In a fire.

Thats hot.

And burns.