zerolight

On the whole, guitar amp modellers suck big hairy balls. No point in beating around the bush. I’ve tried most of what’s on the Market, and they all sucked.

Back before I met my wife, when I had no kids and really didn’t give a rat’s ass about my neighbours, I went through a series of nice valve amps that sounded incredible and made your nipples vibrate. My favourites were the Peavey EVH 5150 and the Mesa Rectoverb. I used to play through those things for hours every day.

Then I moved into a flat, and shortly afterwards my future wife moved in too. That, understandably, resulted in me parting company with my valve amp. The guy who bought that Mesa got a bargain!

This was 2001. Digital amp modelling was taking off in the shape of the Line 6 Pod series. I bought one since they were quite cheap. Compared to the amp modelling that preceded it, the POD was terrific. Compared, to a real amp, the POD was pap. There’s a sterility to these modellers, combined with a slighlty unpleasant fizz, and a stiff feel. This feeling is the hardest thing to quantify, impossible to describe to a non-guitarist, yet the most important thing to a guitarist, even more so than tone. A good guitar amp does more than just amplify your guitar, it’s a instrument in it’s own right, and like all instruments feel is everything. So this failing on the PODs part is significant.
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Happy New Year Everyone!

Here’s my list:

Plus:

Rafi – He’s turned into a wonderful, chatty, loveable little guy. A really cute little toddler.

Ali – He’s doing really great at nursery, he’s coping surprisingly well with T1D, and he’s my little buddy.

Zee – My darling wife has had to cope with a lot of turmoil this year, not the least of which has been Ali’s T1D. She still manages to be a great mother and wife.

Parents – Zee’s mum visited again and was a tremendous help, as always, and promises to return in 2010. We’ve seen my parents and sister several times this year.

Tyler – my main (and only) guitar is still the perfect guitar for me. This is a first! I’m usually itching to sell by now. Of course an electric guitar without an amp is like a garage without a Corvette – to paraphrase Jim Tyler. Maybe this year will see me finally get that AxeFX Ultra.

My Xbox 360 didn’t die this year. That’s a first. I bought a new one anyway, why break with tradition?

I was promoted to band 8, got a meager salary increase, and a company car allowance. Goodbye to paid overtime!

Sleepless nights are a thing of the past, except when Ali has a bug / cold which plays havoc with his blood sugar. Rafi loves to sleep for hours and hours.

We had a nice trip to Paris in October, pre T1D, and enjoyed Christmas with my parents last week.

I got a nice, big, fast, quad core iMac i7 27″ for my birthday which I really enjoy.
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The following route has rapidly become my favorite cycling route, which I do whenever I have a couple of hours free to bike. It’s basically a return trip to Pollock Park from Jordanhill via the Glasgow Science Center along Glasgow’s Cycle Route number 7. It takes just 30 mins each way, along some nice cycle paths, so it’s an enjoyable cycle. The reward is Pollock Park’s dedicated MTB trails made up of three grades of single track – Green (Easy), Blue (Intermediate), and Red (Difficult). These can be linked together to form a good 15 minute lap of fairly technical single track, with plenty of roots, rocky steps, and twisty stuff to put a smile on your face and remind you why you love mountain biking. The Red route is really only difficult if you start jumping across the table tops and minor drops, but you can bypass those quite easily. The Blue route is really nice. I’m so glad I found these trails as I don’t have the time to travel out to proper all day trail centers like Glentress.

I’ve not had a bike for 8 years. I’ve barely done any excerise in the past 6 years. I need to get fit. After much deliberation I decided to buy a 2008 model Kona Kula Deluxe which was heavily discounted to make way for the 2009 bikes.

Yesterday, Ali called me at work to excitedly tell me that my bike had arrived inside a huge box. When I got home yesterday evening, he and I assembled it in about an hour and a half. Things might have gone quicker without the 4 year old mechanic, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun for either of us.

I took it out for a spin last night. Great bike. Technology has moved on somewhat – suspension and brakes in particular. Gadgets! It needs some tweaking and a lube. I’m soooo unfit, the hills were a killer. Flickr set here, and some pictures below.

SABNZBD+ is the ultimate nzb file downloader. It’s particularly useful in conjunction with SABNZBDX, an OSX GUI for interacting with the SABNZBD+ server. Unlike other nzb downloaders, SAB runs as a server on your Mac. It’s surprisingly easy to set up. I’d procrastinated for weeks over using it, fearing that setup would be compex.

You place nzb files in a folder of your choosing and the SAB server will automatically download, par, unrar, and organize the them for you. It even cleans up after itself. As my ISP uses traffic shaping between 10am and 9pm I was pleased to see that you can schedule SAB to pause and resume at times of your choosing. You can optionally have it poll your newzbin bookmarks, downloading anything it finds. If that’s not enough, it has powerful post processing scripting options should the basic functionality not do what you need. I’ve been using it for a few days now and am very impressed. Check it out.