Finally got myself an iPhone. IBM opened up the Corporate tariff to iPhones and from October will even pick up my data charges in addition to Business calls. My personal calls are mere buttons, so it’d have been rude not to get a 32GB iPhone 4.

True, the online hopper system is a horrible introduction that should have been left where it belongs – in FPS games like Halo and MW2. The hoppers have turned everyone into Rank Whores who only drive leaderboard cars, and shunt everyone out of their way. Sure, Custom Public Lobbies as provided in Forza 2 would eliminate the ground hog day that is Hopperland. But it’s not the only way.

Find some like minded individuals and there’s lots of fun to be had in Private Custom Lobbies. I signed up to the 2O4F clan a couple of months ago, a group of folk who are “too old for forza”. We are currently about 200 members strong, and always have good clean racing, mostly in a non league format – even the spec races, and have an age range of 25 to around 50 or 60, so no whiney kids! Great bunch of guys – if you are over 25 and love Forza you should look them up.

I’ve also been enjoying the Forza 3 Tuning Marketplace Community – it’s a great way to extend the longevity of the game. Here, as well as buying and selling tunes and paint through the forums, you can enter community hosted tuning competitions which can be lucrative and are always fun. It’s a great place to find strong tunes that might otherwise disappear amongst the masses on the SF – most of the guys on the TM forum are great tuners and very fast racers. I’ve had a few successful tunes recently, and scored 3rd place in the recent Slo Poke tuning competition which put my RWD Celica #112 on the leaderboards and scored me a couple of million virtual credits. Building a great car, then seeing some of the top drivers do really great things with it is quite satisfying.

Yes, I’m a Geek!

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.

A few years later the POD XT came out promising everything the original failed to deliver. I snapped one up immediately, and was disappointed to find that things hadn’t really progressed much. I’m not entirely convinced the XT improved on the original at all. Mine’s currently gathering dust in a bedroom drawer – it’s a hateful thing.

I’ve tried going down the software only route. This accomplished little other than killing my company laptop. Guitar Rig was just as lifeless and fizzy as the POD, and I spent more time chasing tones with POD Farm than actually enjoying playing. No, software didn’t help either.

It’s got to the point where I don’t plug my guitar in now as it sounds better unplugged than through a modeller. But it’s an electric guitar and I’m a rocker at heart, so “better” is relative. An electric guitar needs to be plugged into an amp, without one the experience is a vastly diminished. I’ve played a Tyler similar to my own through a nice Mesa at GuitarGuitar and the experience was put-a-smile-on-your-face sublime, addictive even. The lack of an amp has led to my guitar being almost permanently hung on the wall, which is sad because I really miss playing it. It’s been my sole passion since I was 16, my wife and kids excepted of course.

I’ve heard really great things about the AxeFX, read some stellar reviews, and listened to some great clips. It’s allegedly a guitar amp and FX processor that not only sounds real, but feels like a real amp too. Of course, it comes with a hefty price tag to match, but so too do the 60 amps it models. This box of tricks is a true instrument with all the sag, feel, and response so sadly missing in every other modeller on the market. It’s only available direct, so cannot be auditioned in person, but Fractal Audio are so confident in their product that you get a 14 day no quibble return period. I’ve been drooling over these for about a year now and really hope to get one sooner rather than later. It looks like a real replacement for the Mesa amp in a quiet, family friendly package. Finally a reason to pull my guitar off the wall – if I ever convince my wife that it’d be money well spent, the last “amp” I’d ever need.

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.

Minus:

My 4yo son Ali was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. Everything else seems trivial in comparison.

Favourite TV:

The Wire – we watched the entire series, every episode of every season in a couple of months.

The Goodwife – a new favourite.

Mad Men – another new favorite.

House – still love it.

Stargate Universe, Smallville, Heroes, and Lost are also personal favs. To be honest, the jury is still out on SGU. Looking forward to 24 again.

Favourite Movies:

Star Trek
Public Enemies
The Hangover
District 9

So many I can’t remember them all. Star Trek by a country mile though. Still to watch 9 and looking fwd to Avatar.

Favourite Music:

This year I haven’t listened to much music. My iTouch has been mostly about surfing, apps, and games. I can’t recall a stand out album. I picked up plenty but never got around to listening.

Favourite Games:

Forza 3 (360)
Infamous (PS3)
Assassins Creed II (360)
Dirt 2 (360)
Uncharted 2 (PS3)
Modern Combat 2 (360)
Borderlands (360)

I bought a lot of good games this year, but for me, Forza 3 is by far the best. I’ve put a lot of hours into that one in the two months it’s been out and expect to play a lot more.

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.

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.

I’ve spent a lot time tweaking a theme of my own. It’s called zerotheme. I did it all on the iTouch itself via a terminal app I’ve installed. I’ve tried using the Customize Web App to build and share it, but after 4 failed attempts (zerolight – zerolightV4) it’s clear that the web-app is currently horribly broken. Any new theme you create ends up as empty folders when shared and downloaded by others – as 28 people told me! Still it works perfectly when built on my iTouch.

It’s got a variation of the dock I use on my iMac, the one I replaced the ugly Leopard one with. It’s got a bunch of icons from David Lanham and Louie Mantia, some nice wallpaper, and a few nice icons I made myself. I also replaced the WiFi indicator with a 5 bar indicator which gives a more accurate indication of the signal strength, and there’s nifty little a blue battery indicator too on the status bar. I made a tweak to the badge, and updated the battery charging screen, then gave it a Stüssy based lock screen… you know I love Stüssy.

edit: If you want it, and since the Customize Web App is f*cked, you can download it for a manual install here.

edit: I’ve migrated it to firmware 2.0 and submitted it to a Cydia repository. In the space of a few hours it’s been downloaded over 1100 times. EEK.

I decided to give it a go yesterday, and whilst I was at it, I mildly tweaked the two themes I liked best Agua (by David Lanham and Louie Mantia) and Buuf2 (by Louie Mantia). The results are below, alongside the original Apple SpringBoard theme. I kinda like it for now. Click the images to enlarge. Photoset here.

I started off with a Marlin Nasty. And it really was nasty. Poorly built, near unplayable action. I’m amazed it kept playing. I upgraded to an Ibanez Roadstar II a year later and threw in a pair of Dimarzio humbuckers, one pink, one blue. A year on traded that for a nice Kramer Beretta III (for a great price as Kramer had just gone bankrupt). That lasted me through Uni and was a great guitar. It’s one of the few I’d like to have been able to hold on to.

As soon as I graduated Uni, I traded the Kramer for a used Gibson Les Paul Standard. A dream guitar – I’d always wanted a Les Paul, almost as much as I wanted a Musicman EVH. The Les Paul was Wine Red, and it played and sounded great. It was allegedly used by Del Amitri on one of their albums. This is yet another guitar I wish I’d kept a hold of.

As fantastic as the Les Paul was, GAS (Gear Aquisition Syndrome) was always (is always?) burning inside, and I was feeling the need to trade again. It didn’t help that a friend at the time, who was a big advocate of super-strats for improving technique, persuaded me that a shocking pink Ibanez JEM 777SK was the way to go. Of course, it wasn’t long until I missed the Les Paul and hated the pink, heavily gigged, used JEM I’d bought. Can you really see me playing a pink guitar?

And so the downward spiral began. I traded guitars over the course of a year trying to find something that spoke to me like the Les Paul had – money was an issue, so I was trading for used guitars of ever decreasing value. I went through the following in no particular order: Ibanez Sabre, Fender Heavey Metal Telecaster, Hamer Steve Stephens Prototype II, and a Moon Les Paul Special. All in the space of a few months. I finally settled on a new Fender Strat to which I fitted Dimarzio stacked humbuckers.

At the time the strat was too retro for. But looking back, it too was a great guitar. You don’t find many great strats, but this one sounded good, and looked cool in a custard yellow finish with a rosewood fingerboard and white scratch plate. It was classy. I shoulda kept it. 6 months later I’d sold it and bought a Gibson Les Paul Classic. Finally, I was back to the good stuff again.

That shoulda been the end of it right? Well no, because I still hankered after the Musicman Axis (formerly Musicman EVH) – but couldn’t afford it. But Eddie jumped ship to Peavey and brought out the Peavey Wolfgang, almost as good as an Axis. I bought one in black. I even kept the Les Paul – yay… two guitars. I played the Wolfgang all the time, the Gibson barely getting a look in. It turns out that I tend to prefer the longer Fender style scale, rather than the Gibson. So naturally when GAS hit and I found myself trading a guitar to buy an acoustic Taylor 710CE, I traded the Les Paul right? Well no, sold the guitar I liked best, a mistake I’d later repeat. More than once.

So now I have an acoustic and an electric. Every guitarist needs an acoustic right? Wrong! I can count on no hands at all how many acoustic songs I like to play. So that mistake sat gathering dust. Then one day I walked into McCormacks whilst Zee was out shopping. And there, hanging on the wall, was the most perfect Musicman Axis, translucent gold (more like a warm yellow) with a flamed maple top. I traded the Les Paul and the Taylor on the spot (dashing home to collect them and bring them in).

The Musicman was simply amazing. Of course GAS hit again, but I wasn’t going to part with the Musicman. No chance. So I bought myself a PRS McCarty Rosewood as an engagement present to myself. My first really really expensive guitar. I considered a James Tyler Studio Elite at the time, but didn’t know much about them, so plumped for the PRS. This too was a mistake, but I never realised it at the time.

When you buy a new guitar, there’s a honeymoon period. You play it all the time, ignoring other guitars in your collection. It is new after all. This was true of the McCarty. So much so, that I convinced myself that the PRS was it, “The Guitar”. I didn’t need two guitars. I sold the Musicman! It didn’t take long to realise I’d made a mistake – but admit it? No chance. Quick tip: don’t go for a rosewood neck on your McCarty, it sucks a lot of warmth away from the tone. Anyway, I bought and sold another load of guitars trying to replace it: Ibanez JEM 7VWH, Ibanez J-Custom RG8270, Musicman John Petrucci and a Fender Custom Shop 51 Nocaster. The Nocaster had a cool vibe, but the tone wasn’t for me. You gotta play like Bruce Springsteen or Keith Richards if you have a Nocaster. The J_Custom was very nice, but not quite what I wanted. The JEM was amazing – but the look was perhaps a bit too… Elvis. It’d have been nice to hold onto the JEM though.

None really fit like the Musicman. Then I bought a James Tyler Studio Elite HD. Yes, the same model I’d nearly got instead of the PRS. At least now I had both the PRS and a Tyler. For two years, the PRS gathered dust and the Tyler got played all the time. It was hands down, the best guitar I’d ever played. Yet after two years I sold it! I have no clue why. I bought a PRS Navarro (Custom 24) to compliment the McCarty. Looking back on it, for the 4 or 5 years I owned the McCarty, I almost always played whatever other guitar I owned more often than the PRS. So why buy another PRS? I dunno, I guess I kinda felt like I couldn’t sell the McCarty because I’d bought it when I got engaged.

So at the start of this year I had two PRS’s. But I was haunted by two guitars I’d owned in the past, the Musicman and the Tyler, mostly the Tyler. GAS got the better of me and I ebayed both PRS’s and to fund a custom order James Tyler Studio Elite HD (and a bed for my son). I’m glad I did. It’s fantastic, lots of pictures here. Barring a lottery win, it’s probably the last guitar I’ll ever buy. I certainly won’t sell it.

Here’s the full list, some mistakes, some I wish I’d kept(*) and one I still own(**):

Marlin Nasty
Ibanez Roadstar II
Kramer Beretta III*
Gibson Les Paul Standard*
Ibanez JEM 777SK
Ibanez Sabre
Fender Heavy Metal Telecaster
Hamer Steve Stevens Prototype
Moon Les Paul Special
Fender Strat*
Gibson Les Paul Classic
Peavey Wolfgang*
Taylor 710CE
Musicman Axis*
PRS McCarty Rosewood
Ibanez JEM 7VWH*
Ibanez J-Custom RG8270
Musicman John Petrucci
Fender Custom Shop ‘51 Nocaster
James Tyler Studio Elite HD*
PRS Navarro Custom 24
James Tyler Studio Elite HD**

In terms of image quality, the 40D is better than the 10D. Not massively so, it has to be said. But that’s because the camera body is only part of the equation, with the lenses (which haven’t changed) having a very significant affect on the resultant pictures. Images seem more detailed, a more colourful, a little sharper. However, the biggest leap is in performance. High iso noise for example, when in JPEG mode with NR on, gives very pleasing images in comparison to the 10D. Auto focus speed is very rapid, as is the cycle time between pictures, and power on is near instantaneous.

The revised menu, ripped straight from a 1DS III (less some features) is great – a particular highlight being a favourites page, where you can place short cuts to even the most buried setting. Live view, for me, is a bit useless. Maybe I just don’t know how to use it, certainly it’s not compatible with my microdrive. However if you are into macro photography, hooking the camera up to your laptop and focusing directly from the laptop screen must be a boon. There’s also more information in the view finder, which allows you to determine at pre-focus, whether or not things are likely to work out.

All said and done, I’m very happy with it. The fact that it makes me want to shoot in RAW, use custom white balance, and actually think about what I’m doing, speaks volumes. AT £500 after rebates, it’s a steal – 6 months ago you’d have paid over double that.

I had been tempted with the Nikon D300, as on paper that’s a slightly better camera. DPReview comparisons show there to be almost nothing between them in the real world. Crucially, unlike the 40D, the D300 is still priced around the 1k mark – factor in a new lens or two, and the D300 becomes a massively more expensive animal, for very little gain. It’s bigger too.

Whilst I’d like some fast Canon L lenses, I can’t justify the price – besides I really didn’t like the 17-40L I once had. To compliment my 28-135IS, down the line, I’ll pick up the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 DI-II lens as it seems to be terrific value. Then a new bag – I’m liking the Kata T214. That’ll complete the package for another 4 or 5 years. Baby steps though, the first purchase will be an EF50 f/1.8 II from eBay (cheap as chips).

RAW:

JPEG:

At f1.8 it’s a really fast lens that lets in a lot of light. It really shines at portraits, even in low lighting. As a walk about lens with smaller apertures and thus more depth of field, it again provides some good pictures. I’ve created a flickr set with some samples. I also used it for a few shots inside the Botanic Gardens, and for this entire West End Festival set.

With such a shallow depth of field, focus is absolutely crucial. In fact, if you can keep your shutter speed high enough, and the depth of field at 2.8 or less, then you can get some terrific portait shots, and it’s here that the EF50 is strongest. I’d almost go so far as to say that the lens is a total one trick, full frontal portrait, pony. But that would be a disservice as it gives good results with smaller apertures too. When funds allow, I’ll definitely buy myself one, it won’t get used all the time, but it will get use – my wife and kids love to strike a pose.

I’ll post some 40D thoughts later, but food for thought, the following shot was taken with my 28-135IS at ISO3200!

This post was updated on 16th June.