Friday 26 February 2010

Happiness is a Guitar called Lucille

The Explorer arrived safe and sound today, very nice guitar and I will enjoy getting a bit of metal practice done on that before I sell it on. I was planning to take it to our semi monthly jam session tonight, but I didn't have a suitable bag for it's very strange shape. I will have to look into that.

So I went with Lucille, giving her her 1st time out and she was lovely played at high volume, very cool. Sadly only 1 other IGADer turned up for the Jam, we were expecting a few others but transport, sickness and other issues meant we were on our own which was a shame after so much practice performing cheesy guitar ballads. I had just about got More than A Feeling worked out and wanted to try it out with others..But in the end I spent the evening showing Ozzy (who turned up ) how do handle the 6th string mute on the root 5th powerchords...Still it was fun and I did finally nail that intro riff.

some pics.
A strangly familiar looking fat bloke in need of a haircut, with an amaizng guitar he can barely play



Ozzy's 1st Electric guitar...he's so proud :D




Ahthankyew

Friday 19 February 2010

Bargain time

Ohhh I love ebay....I especially love ebay when people don't put full detailed descriptions of the items they are selling which causes people to pass by and ignore them.

As a result I spotted a fairly unassuming ad for a Gibson Gothic Explorer on ebay. These are the premier heavy metal guitars much favoured by Metallica and many others for that hard heavy bass driven metal rhythm sound....The price was about average for such a guitar, but what was amazing was he didn't really mention the type of pickups he'd had specially fitted.. A pair of very expensive active EMG's set up in the Zak Wylde configuration (no I know, its all gobbledeygook unless you like guitars) had he done so he would have had people chasing it big time, so I put in a modest bid for it...and won :). Got it for slightly less than a standard Explorer that age would cost and considerably less for an explorer with those p'ups

I now have a really nice 2001 Explorer with kick ass pickups. This though is something I will probably not keep for long, I'm not really a metal thrasher kinda guitar player so I'll hang on to it for a bit then resell it at a hopefully tidy profit. I already have a couple of people interested who just need time to save up...so I'll have a tinker with it to experiment then sell it on







Ahthankyew

Art can make you cry

This is amazing and all done in real time with sand, watch the audience , and it might even bring a tear or 2 to your eye..


Ahthankyew

Tuesday 16 February 2010

Day 4

/Geordie accent ON

Day fooor in da Breda house.
Brian has been been slow to recover from his late night solo drinking session and is missing the company of his housemates.

After the highlights of taking t'dog ooot for its regular pee's and poos and checking t' mail box to see if anybody loves him, Brian has retreated to the bedroom to play one of his many guitars badly and louder than he would normally get away with.

Big bruvver would very much like him to stop playing his guitars badly and have him go ooot t'shop and get some milk.

/Geordie accent OFF

Can't even make this funny.....booooooorrrrrrreeeeeeed


Ahthankyew

Monday 15 February 2010

see last post

it does...it helps a lot :D

Ahthankyew

Bored now!!!

No really... 3rd day on my own and I'm bored wittless...

Done loads of coding, had some wine, played guitar, had some wine, played games, had some vodka, done loads of reading (ipod coding), had some whiskey, listened to my ipod, had some JD&coke, shopped for food and drink, cooked, had some wine, done some modelling, had some vodka, eaten and watched telly.


sigh....might as well try drinking and see if that helps.

Ahthankyew

Sunday 14 February 2010

10,000+

I just noticed I seem to have had a sudden leap in interest in this blog, when I last looked it was 9,800 or so views...now its hit that 10,000 landmark and I didn't even notice. 10,140 in fact.


seriously....who comes here, and why? leave a comment I'd love to know what is so interesting about my ramblings?

Ahthankyew

My Inner Child

Y'know the daft bugger who does what ever it wants when there's no adults around to make it behave.

Well its been up all night programming on the Iphone and occasionally playing games.

All night!!!

I'm too bloody old to have an inner child, I need to find my inner grumpy old man who likes his cocoa and goes to bed at 10.


Anyway, been working through a book on IPhone coding and got a bit engrossed, though a lot of it still makes no sense to me, I am hopeful that it will click soon. Objective C (the language used by Apple) is very odd stuff, I kinda get it, but have spent most of my time trying to write standard C/C++ to avoid doing it. I don't think that ultimately this is productive, The Iphone OS uses ObjC so I might as well just knuckled down and get used to it......though since the point of this is to port some stuff written in C++, I probably should just do my usual, go for what works easiest approach.

Oh well, its 7.51 now..I better take the dog for a walk, then put my head down for a bit, before I start chapter 8.

Ahthankyew

Wednesday 10 February 2010

PIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEE


It is a sad fact, that the Dutch don't do pies.

sausage rolls, yes....apple turnovers...yes..

But Pies...no..not a chance..


So I made my own.

A delicious Steak and Ale Pie..


num num num num

I had to share it with Jodie and Bina, who enjoyed it :D

There will be more pie making now that I have the correct pie dishes ;)


Ahthankyew

Monday 8 February 2010

oh c'mon...thats not bloody fair

So after finally getting rid of my cough...I have flu.

thanks fate...thanks a bloody bundle.

We went to see our collegue Ken play with the Breda Symphonia orchestra yesterday. It was nice to get out and listen to some live music, even classical, which is not really Bina's thing, but I like to dabble sometimes. Considering Ken has only been playing Oboe for 3 years its quite remarkable that he had his debut so soon.

The post gig party at Kens was a lot of fun and much wine and cheese was consumed, resulting in a rather drunken Beatles singalong (you really had to be drunk to put up with my oooooo's).

Good night had by all...but feeling crappy when I got up with Bina's flu from last week taking hold.

Next week is Carnival here, and I am having to have a think about a costume (its traditional to dress up while getting rat arsed pissed!!!) Ken and others are going dressed as Smurfs..........I really don't know what to think about that while sober!!!


Ahthankyew

Thursday 4 February 2010

My Kinda Porn

I now realise what a sad geek I actually am,

I prefer to watch interesting YouTube videos of WWII aircraft than use the computer for what it is actually meant for,
Its a joke between Bina and me that if I'm up late watching videos I'm obviously watching porn :D....I think she suspects though when she saw me watching this little beauty...hmmmmmm

Of course there was a purpose...I wanted to get an idea of the type of saftey strap a Boulton Paul Defiant gunner used ....hey....its sexy for me. =My current model project is a BP Defiant.


The entire collection of these videos is both technically interesting and unintentionally hilarious...especially the film about how to resist German interrogation where all the Germans are played with various accents by clearly English actors.


Ahthankyew

Wednesday 3 February 2010

cough free

ish...

the new meds worked a treat.


Ahthankyew

Monday 1 February 2010

Dammit

Cough is back again, with a vengeance, slept on sofa again last night to avoid a very pissed off Bina who was being kept awake even though I was still in the lounge.

It was getting better but a trip out into the cold air seems to have brought it all back. And I've been barking away since this morning.

Have been to the chemist for some medicine, not sure if it'll work as its neither a chesty nor ticklish cough and they don't seen to have meds for something in between those two types, but I got something different from the last lot that did nothing and we'll see how it works.



Ahthankyew