Dilbert Blog

Just read a post (hmmm, now removed) about Scott Adams setting up a blog over on typepad.com.

People who are trying to decide whether to create a blog or not go through a thought process much like this:

1. The world sure needs more of ME.
2. Maybe I’ll shout more often so that people nearby can experience the joy of knowing my thoughts.
3. No, wait, shouting looks too crazy.
4. I know – I’ll write down my daily thoughts and badger people to read them.
5. If only there was a description for this process that doesn’t involve the words egomaniac or unnecessary.
6. What? It’s called a blog? I’m there!

I just wanted a way of making a webpage a little more exciting than my previous static incarnations. I do try and generate a few bits and bobs of interesting or useful content, but mainly it’s just inane ramblings. So yeah, it’s just an ego site. Hey, you read this shit, so you can share the blame. There should be some sort of The Ring-like curse for my blog: people who read this blog die in seven days! (Of boredom, usually.) Unless they set up their own and link back to me, MWA HA HA HA HA.

Mobo selector

I feel I’ve earned my geek wings: I swopped the motherboard on my home computer last night. The process was reasonably hassle free, except for shifting the processor. This had become fairly well glued onto the bottom of the heat sink, such that the whole fan-heatsink-processor assembly came off the old mobo in one piece, which probably isn’t supposed to happen. Still, once I was brave enough to get a screwdriver under the chip and prize it off the block of aluminium, I was able to install it on the new board without trouble. The new board is rather a posh (oooo, firewire, get me!) Asus, bought from Aria, who were very quick and didn’t cause any hassle. Of course, now I’m just waiting for the damn thing to crash again. As the old fault was intermittent, I have no idea if the change over has solved the problem or not! At least I worked out how to back up my Half Life 2 games this time. Why I didn’t think of looking in the actual program’s directory last time I’ve no idea, but there is a sub-directory in there loudly and clearly called SAVES. Does exactly what it says on the tin.

Template change

Don’t mind me, just a quick bit of redecoration using the Flex theme.

Akismet

New comment and trackback spam killer on the loose: Akismet. Looks interesting! Hmmm, maybe I should change from Bad Behaviour to Aksimet, the more people using the latter the better it will get. And no-one likes spam! I wonder if the large email providers do a similar analysis of email, though that would probably generate many false positives for large email lists. The yahoo (my webmail provider of choice) spam filter is certainly very effective, I rarely see false positives or negatives, but as I know that Kyla (also a yahoo user) doesn’t tell the spam filter about false positives (she just reads them in her spam email folder), I guess the quality of these filters is ultimately user dependent. I’d say the blogging community should be a good user base for this kind of system because while reading private email from a couple of different folders is one thing, having your online presence besmirched with poker ads is quite another!

Backups and a guitar for sale

In an effort to spice up my guitar playing I thought I’d get an acoustic guitar, and as the door policy in my house is “one in one out” (as enforced by my better half), this means I’m putting my telecaster up for sale. Of course, this means that I’d be left with one electric guitar, and hence be gigging without a back up. I generally consider this to be a bit fool-hardy, as Sod’s Law means you’re most likely to break a string when you don’t have a spare. In this case it’s worse than fool-hardy, because the guitar I’d be left with has a Floyd Rose whammy bar, a device beloved of big-haired 80s rock guitarists. In whammy bars the tension in the strings is balanced by a set of springs in the back of the guitar, so if you break a string the balance shifts and all the others drop out of tune. Changing a string on a guitar with a FR whammy requires allen keys, wire cutters, screwdrivers, hammers, and a team of mechanics that would shame a Formula 1 team. (OK, really it just requires an allen key, but it’s still not as quick as it is for a fixed bridge guitar.) I actually only bought the tele to use as a backup for just this kind of situation, I’d hate to cock up a gig simply for lack of what I consider to be adequate preparation. At my most paranoid I have taken spare amps to gigs, becuase I was worried that a valve might pop; these days I just take my multi-effects thingy and so could plug into the PA. Still, these days I gig on bass without a backup, and I did manage with just one guitar for a few years of gigging… just you wait and see, next gig on guitar I’m now bound to break a string, I’ve probably Murray Walker‘ed it. But anyway, buy my telecaster. BUY IT, DAMN YOU!

Curse of the Were-Rabbit

I went to see the new Wallace & Gromit film last night. It’s fantastic fun, supplanting The Wrong Trousers as my favourite W&G outing. The background sight gags came thick and fast, I’m fairly certain I missed half of them so a second viewing might be necessary. There were also a few film references, King Kong and (inevitably) American Werewolf in London, plus the whole Hammer horror theme of the plot. What I particularly liked about it were the moments when you could see the fingerprints of the animators on the characters; it added a quite literal personal touch to the film.

A bad gig

On Friday I played a gig with Casa on guitar. You’d think after being their guitarist for a bit more than four years I’d be a fairly compentent player, but I had one of those gigs where simply nothing good came out of my amp. I couldn’t get a tone I liked, my solos all sucked… ugh. Still, my rhythm playing was ok. How depressing. Time to use my practice time to take my playing back to basics, work on, oh, I don’t know, being less shit.

Motherboards

Nuts, looks like the mobo is the root cause of the problems my computer is having. I like calling them mobos, makes technology sound rather hip and urban. Mine, due to its fault, is of course a mofo mobo. Knowing next to bugger all about the inside of computers, I’ve been on a little journey of discovery about mobos and the other bits and bobs in there. It looks like it’s fairly simple to swap a new board in, as long as it’s compatible with my HDD, graphics card, RAM, the CPU, and actually fits in the case. Hopefully “looks like it’s fairly simple” will translate into “is fairly simple” when I get around to doing it, but yet again I’m just a couple of episodes away from finishing Half Life 2 and I really cannot be arsed with going through the whole damn game again. After my last experience with backing up my Steam files, I think I’ll finish the game before going any further.

Living in denial

I’ve recently been making an assault on the minor hassles in my life, one of which involved sending my home computer to the generally wonderful World of Computers for repair. This meant I spent the weekend without internet access; the horror, the horror. I didn’t notice any withdrawal symptoms though, so it would seem I’m not an e-addict. As a further test of our will power, Kyla and I have decided to give up booze for a month, mainly in the interests of our good health. I’ve been considering having an extended period of abstinence for a while, so it’ll be interesting to see how I cope and if I actually do feel any healthier. Personally, I’m hoping not.

Wah!

My wah pedal is starting to get a bit knackered (maybe spraying it purple a few years ago had an adverse effect… or at least made it ashamed to be seen out of the house). I was toying with the idea of getting one of the souped up Crybabys, the 95 or 535Q, but I just found a site offering Wah Wah Mods. Hmmm, interesting!