Sunday lunch at The Three Horseshoes, Comberton

I went out for lunch yesterday, and had what is probably the best Sunday roast I’ve had in years. We went to The Three Horseshoes, Comberton, where I had the roast lamb and Kyla had a nut roast. Even the mere fact that they had a nut roast was amazing, Kyla wasn’t stuck with the usual “no meat yet exactly the same price as a full roast” option. Even better, both the roasts were very good, both being accompanied by a pile of veg (mashed swede, cabbage, leeks, carrots, roast parsnip and roast potatoes) that were cooked for the right amount of time, rather than being served as vegetable puree.  Frankly it was a scary amount of food, but somehow I prevailed.  The Harvey’s Best and Tim Taylor’s Landlord were both well kept and tasty, and Greene King IPA was also available, though I didn’t try that.  Heartily recommended.  But not if you want to do anything other than sit groaning on a sofa afterwards.
I’ve actually eaten there once before, one time in the summer.  I had the homemade spicy chilli burger, which certainly packed a bit of a kick.  When we’d all finished the landlord came out and asked how the burger had been, so I told him it was pretty damn spicy.  He replied, “Yeah I’ve been messing around with the recipe, at the moment I’m putting a whole chopped scotch bonnet chilli in.”  “That would be it, sure,” I said.

Buy my stuff!

I finally got around to putting my telecaster on eBay. Now bid! Bid, my pretties! You must do my bidding.  And I bid you farwell, for I have other bidness to attend to.

Guitar effects bleatings

I was back on guitar last night for the final gig of the Christmas season, Casa del Funk plus special guest appearances by Diccon on bass and Derek on keys. After the comedy levels hassles I had last week, I had vaguely intended on simplifying my set-up and just taking a wah. As it was I actually took an extra pedal (a delay) and swapped the flanger for a phaser. I can’t resist having an overly complicated set-up; last night the drummer nearly beat me in packing-up time. Last week I ran the pedals in-line infront of the amp, so the signal chain went guitar -> flanger -> wah -> compressor -> amp input. My reasoning for this was that I like the wah to have the percussive wakka-chikkas (technical term there, kids) at the same volume as normal notes, so I put the compressor after it to squash the dynamic range. I also figured if might help reduce any perceived volume differences from the flanger, and also I inferred from here that modulation effects might have an interesting sound at the front of the chain. Anyway, as I said last week I couldn’t get the levels to sit still, so spent the evening madly fiddling with the settings when not actually playing.

This week I thought I’d go all conventional and set up like this: guitar -> compressor -> wah -> amp in -> fx out -> phaser -> delay -> fx return ( -> amp speaker out -> 2×12 cab -> compression wave in air -> audiences’ ears). Anyway, this was a lot more successful; I also combined it with my lesson re-learned of having the amp’s volume set so that the quietest sound (coil-tapped humbuckers and pickup selector in the middle, so out of phase and half-power compared to a full humbucker) was at the right level, and for every other pick-up and effect setting I just turned the guitar’s volume down.

Of course, despite the fact that I had what I felt was a reasonable tone and level (apart from thinking that my Boss CS-2 is perhaps a bit aggressive, which led me to leave it turned off as much as possible last night, however I did need it to get to the sustain required for Smooth), I couldn’t play for shit. Still, at least it was nice-sounding shit. Must do more practice. (How many of my posts end with that sentence? Too many, I bet.)

Tosh Head Dome

What can I say?  When technology attacks.  We’re going to order a set for the office just to really freak out the neighbours.

Chemistry blogs

One for the scientists again, I’m afraid.  I’ve been reading In The Pipeline for a while now, which is a well-written chronicle of the life of a medicinal chemist plus other matters of interest in the pharmaceutical industry.  He’s dealt with polonium posioning, a post on a new twist to RNA interference that makes a nice pair with one on Merck’s acquisition of Sirna, and something that I’ve laughed about before, the crap names of biotech and pharma companies.  Recently the author has been made redundant, which is something I have in common with him; the company I work for went breasts-skyward a few months ago, but I have potential employment with a company that is spinning out from the wreckage.  Of course, in contravention of the naming rules suggested in Lowe’s post, the new company’s name ends in an “X”; hopefully people won’t mind the cliche.

Another chemblog I’ve been keeping an eye on is Totally Medicinal, which is usually posts centred on recent publications in the chemistry literature, plus other synthesis highlights.  It’s definitely a case of a good writing style rescuing what could be quite turgid subject matter; for example, in Feeling Aroused?, TM writes

In BMC (2007, 15, 142-159) Pfizer are riding to the rescue of the sufferers of FSAD – that’s Female Sexual Arousal Disorder. [Stop sniggering at the back there!]. Far be it for me to suggest that this is in fact a bullshit, totally made-up, non-disease. Nothing to do with the fact that loads of people will want to buy these pills and make them loads and loads of money, even if they are only intended and approved for use in a very small subset of patients with a specific aetiology. This is a serious disorder, which demands serious medical attention.

I am looking forward to seeing the spammers latching onto this as soon as a compound makes it to the market.  And it’s rare to see a chemical series described as “a bit gash” in the literature.

Casa at Hughes

Casa del Funk played for charity at Hughes last night. Due to Mark being off in Japan I shifted back up the octave to guitar and Diccon filled in on bass. I’d got quite excited about the prospect of taking my big amp out on the road again, and had been thinking about what effects set-up I was going to go for. I also wanted to try out my recent guitar purchase (a Patrick Eggle Berlin with coil-tapped humbuckers). Having recently picked up one of those effects power brick thingies from Maplins I felt it was appropriate to take a few toys, so I went with my compressor, wah and flange. As it turned out, between the two channels and two master volumes of the amp, the wildly different volumes of the full pickups vs. tapped, and the perceived volume changes from the effects, I couldn’t get a decent level or tone out of the amp. Disappointing. Well, it was until I just turned everything off (apart from the wah when necessary), turned the amp up and ran the show from the guitar’s volume and tone controls. It’s a lesson that I keep forgetting: the dials on the front of the guitar aren’t just for decoration, much musical gain can be made there.

Actually the Maplins power brick, while generally fine, has one hassle for me: the power cables supplied with it aren’t very long, so your effects end up a bit packed in; I’m not the most delicate of stomper mid-gig, so like my pedals suitably spaced apart.

Anyway, I get to try again next Thursday with what appears to be the last gig of the year for me, playing guitar for Casa at one of the college’s MCR Christmas dos. Antlers and Santa hats strictly optional.