The Ramblings of Alex

The Rising Sun

2011-03-21T00:13:00.005Z

This is serious business.

As you may or may not know already, Japan is in a bit of trouble at the moment. They had an earthquake and soon after a tsunami, which probably isn't a very nice thing to experience.
So, good old Buckethead, being the kind and generous soul he is, has decided to make a song dedicated to Japan and it's people, and release it on iTunes.
But that's not all! All the proceeds that are made from the sales will be donated straight to Japan relief efforts.
And other than that, it's a pretty good track too.

Download it for £0.79, from iTunes, here. CLICKY.

Just download it. What else can you do with £0.79? It's a win-win situation: You get a great Buckethead shard and some money goes to Japan. Suck on that, Comic Relief.

3 Mobile - The Saga Comes To An End (Almost a Definitive Review)

2011-01-27T20:39:00.007Z

Since November, and since getting my HTC Desire, I have been using 3 Mobile as my phone network. I used to be on Vodafone, but swapped to 3 as they had the best deal on contract phones, for example, the Desire.
People always said that 3 Mobile were terrible. I never knew just how terrible, as nobody had ever really said why they were so bad - Just that 'they were'. Well, as I found out personally, they suck because you can't get signal anywhere. At home, in a semi-built up area, (ie., not in the middle of the country) there was no service at all. Not even enough to make emergency calls. There was so little signal, in fact, that I couldn't send or receive texts, and my phone didn't know which time zone it was in. That's bad, especially in 2011. 3's website claimed my postcode had full indoor and outdoor signal for everything.

So I called 3 up. I was diverted to an Indian call centre, much the same as I was for Xbox Customer Support.

Initially, I was asked to remove/replace the SIM, turn the phone off/on etc., the usual business. After this had no effect, I had to wait for a call from their engineers. A few days later, I got the call. The claimed the mast was broken, and it was under repairs.

They asked me if I could get signal in other areas, as it could be the phone that was broken. I told them I could in about 50% of places, very rarely would I get signal indoors. They were still adamant that it was in fact my handset which was the issue, so I had to put my 3 SIM card into another phone. It still had no signal.

Anyway, to cut a long and boring story short, I am now about to cancel a 24 month contract while I'm only 3 months in. But I have to send the phone back to them because it was free. I am very surprised they allowed me to cancel at all. When I first got it I had to sign a sheet saying if anything went wrong they wouldn't help me at all, this included terrible reception.

However, one good thing I will say about 3, is that their customer services are very good. They called me back, like they said they would, and called me every time they said they changed something asking if it had made a difference to the signal. It never did, and they said the signal in my area should be fixed, so I don't know if they actually tweaked stuff or just said it.

But, the people I spoke to knew what they were talking about, all spoke English well and were very helpful. When phoning Xbox I soon got sick of saying my surname using the phonetic alphabet. So, well done there, 3. They probably were so good because I'm their only customer.

So I will be returning to ye olde D500. It will be a bittersweet reunion, as it doesn't do anything. It's just a phone. Even though the Android OS is noticeably becoming less responsive and is degrading by the week, at least it can do things.

So, until June, I will get a SIM only monthly thing and use 'Uncle Sam(sung)'. Then, in June, I will get an iPhone 5, hopefully. If not, an iPhone 4. It will be a good day.

Until then... It's going to be a dark 5 months of disconnectivity. I can't take pictures of Cat Milk, Deli Crépes, or silly things and put them in the Dropbox or Photobucket.

But, I will have signal, so if I happen to be indoors and need an ambulance, I can get one.

Goodbye, 3 Mobile. It's been a troubled three months.

Goodbye, Android. Father Time didn't take to you too kindly, did he?

Goodbye, Mobile Tubes. You will be missed, until next time.

The Definitive Review of 2010

2011-01-01T00:42:00.002Z

Well, there it goes. 2010 shuffles off to the graveyard of previous annums. It's been alright, I s'pose.
In future years, I'll look back at 2010 and think: That was the year that the Double Rainbow guy happened, a parrot sang Bodies by Drowning Pool, I started university and Buckethead had a bad back. That didn't stop him though, because he still battled on like a soldier to release 11 albums.
Politics took a turn for the worse, as Julian Assange and WikilLeaks were targeted strategically by the governments of the world. To no avail, however, because it made them look worse when they made up excuses for shutting things down.

BP lost an oil rig, but nothing was really done about it after the Daily Mail got bored of calling it an outrage and waste of our license fee. I bet the situation is no better than it was before.

A few billion pounds has gone missing between the cusions of the sofa in 10 Downing Street, the guy in charge now doesn't like people so he's putting prices up for almost everything in his power.

V for Vendetta is becoming the future. The majority of people are controlled by the media and only have a memory as long as the 30-minute news program they are watching. After it finishes, they probably know less than they did before it started.

Overall, not a good year for politics, I don't think.

Music in 2010 was, for the most part, horrendous. Justin Beiber is popular, the Kings of Leon have lost the funk, Rammellzee died, Ronnie James Dio died, Jedward didn't die.

On the plus, Buckethead carted out some smoo wedges. 11, in fact, ranging from collabrations to insane solo messes, and then back to the start with a nice melodic tribute album to Michael Jackson, Captain EO's Voyage. Serj Tankian's second album was OK. It wasn't as good as Elect the Dead, but it was still pretty good. Poets of the Fall cotinued to be amazing with their fourth album, Twilight Theater. It follows a similar path to the others in that there isn't a bad song on it, and it also contained War, part of the Soundtrack to Alan Wake.

Films have been good. Not new ones made in 2010, but old ones I've got from LoveFilm. Into the Wild was incredible, Moon was good, The Last King of Scotland was gritty, Blood Diamond was deep, and quite an obvious inspiration for Far Cry 2. The Hurt Locker was inspiring, but was a very American film.

On the other hand, Avatar and Batman Begins both sucked, and were a waste of a rental and a waste of £1.995.

Games have been possibly the best pocket of entertainment this year. Some good things have graced the Box in the last 12 months. Dead Rising 2, Assassin's Creed 2 and Brotherhood (ACII was actually 2009, but I only just got it). The previously mentioned Alan Wake was brilliant. One of the best storylines in a game since either Condemned 1 and 2 or Fahrenheit. Fallout New Vegas came out, and although I haven't played it yet, I know it will be good.

TV this year was average. The IT Crowd season 4 was disappointing, but still very good compared to regular listings. My purchase of all seasons of Peep Show made up for this year's shortcomings, as well as season 7 being just as good as the others. I had a massive binge on seasons 1-3 of Prison Break, and they were pant-wettingly exciting, despite it getting a bit silly in parts. The Pacific also looks very good, but I haven't seen that either.

So. All in all, 2010 was a bit average. The highlights balanced out with the... lowlights (?).

Semi-teed, semi-smoo. Could have been worse, I s'pose.

The Definitive Review of the HTC Desire

2010-12-20T19:03:00.009Z

I caved.

iPhones are expensive, too expensive for me to be dealing with. *See HERE for an update on this situation.
For half the monthly price, I could get a free phone, unlimited texts, 500 minutes and unlimited internet.*
This seemed a good deal, and the free phone was a HTC Desire. I didn't want to like it when I was playing with it in the Carphone Warehouse, but to my surprise, I did like it. It has a nice screen, the touch screen is better than I expected, not too big or heavy, pretty good camera... Android. That's the bit where it falls. Android. However good the anti-Apple nerds shout, Android will never be an iOS. Yes, it's good. It does the job for me, but it just isn't an iPhone.
In this review, I will compare almost every aspect of this phone to the iPhone 4.

*Not really 'unlimited'... 1GB is what they gave me. It sucks to be a real user of mobile internet, not someone who only wants to show off with a fake iPhone.

So, the review:

The Business.
The phone seems to be well built. Rubbery texture on the back, plastic on the front. Glass screen. No surprises. The screen is pretty good, apart from appearing to love trying to scratch itself. The iPhone has Gorilla Glass, scratchproof. It's had this on every iPhone and iPod Touch released, and even a 1st generation iPhone's screen will look almost brand new now, under general use. The Desire's screen, although mine never got scratched, seems very scratch prone. Don't keep it in the same pocket as keys or coins. I bought a screen protector as soon as I got out the shop, before even using the phone. Even with this plastic covering, the touch-response works well. Typing and clicking small buttons and links online can be troublesome, more later about that.

The Eyes.
The resolution is 400x800. Pretty good for a phone it's size, but looks like a 1980s digital watch compared to the iPhone 4's Retina display, with it's 960x640 resolution.

The Camera is pretty good, I think. Most reviews say it's sub-par, but it's 5MP, with autofocus, flash, tap-to-focus and it seems to work well enough to pick up text for Evernote.

The Shell.

The Build Quality on the phone is pretty solid. I think it should survive a few missed-pockets. Like all my new things, it suffered the 'Slippery Gadget Syndrome', in which all my brand new and expensive thing wants to do is land on the floor, by any means possible, from as high as it can. So, from personal experience, I know it can survive a drop off the desk, a tea spill, a missed-pocket into the snow. It does have a rubber case, but that's mainly to protect from scratches and hopefully to make it less slippery.

The Fingerspace.

The touching business is a lot better than I was thinking. Accurate 90% of the time, however it doesn't agree with cold fingers, gloves, or accidental touches.

Typing is good most of the time, but sometimes the software just seems to have a little fit and go mental, replacing words like 'know' with 'Oklahoma'. It's favourite auto-correct error is changing 'the' to 'Tue'. Massively irritating. Moving the cursor to midway through a word it has changed can't be done. So, if I have typed a word like 'toffee' and actually wanted 'coffee', I'd have to delete the whole thing and write it again. It also cannot understand abbreviations or acronyms, for example, CD. I have to type C, then select it as only being C, then type D. If I don't do this, it will auto-correct to something else, apparently the first word it thinks of beginning with C. Other times, it finds words completely at random, such as Oklahoma from trying to type 'know'.

The Guts.

This phone is not very technically powerful. It has a tiny amount of RAM compared t the iPhone 4, a processor incapable of multitasking, video hardware which can't play videos properly and about 300MB of internal storage, which is embarrassing compared with the iPhone 4's minimum of 16GB. Luckily, there is a 4GB memory card in the phone, upgradeable to 32GB. Even then, the iPhone could double that with the 64GB model.

The battery life on it is horrible. From fully charged at 9AM on a morning, send a text, float on the tubes for about 10-20 minutes, check the time on it a few times and the battery is below 50% by 5PM. Multiple times have I forgot to charge it at night and it be completely dead by the morning. I am used to my Samsung D500 lasting around 6 days without a charge under use described above. The reason? The battery is Lithium-ion, whereas Apple products and old Samsung phones use Lithium-polymer. Polymer is more expensive, but lasts around 5x longer than lithium-ion.

The moral of the story is to never go anywhere without a charger. If you go somewhere regularly, buy a second charger to keep there in case you forget the first one. Even turned off it seems to suck up power for something.

The (Paranoid) Android (of Notre Dame).

The Android operating system is not iOS4. Far from it. It tries, but falls short in so many places. There appears to be no easy way of doing things, such as changing the wallpaper, selecting your ringtone, deleting text messages, finding contacts, making new contacts, typing a text to someone who you have not already texted recently... All involve multiple menus and buttons just to get working. I don't like reading instruction manuals. I can usually work out phones and computers pretty well, but a lot of this seems to be designed by masochists or The Riddler.

There are a few easily noticeable glitches in the OS. I'm running the newest version, 2.2 I think (No easy way to check, can't be bothered to Google how to do it). Firstly, I get a lot of mysterious error messages in the menu bar, which look like random phone-related words arranged in random order.

Also, it suddenly decides it no longer wishes to text people. Despite having signal, unlimited texts, and the other person having signal, it will sometimes say "Cannot deliver message after multiple attempts". That's it. No error log, no reason, nothing. What does that mean? The only way I've found to solve this is by deleting every single text you have from that person in the recent conversation thing and start again.

Often the lock gets stuck with the slider at the bottom of the screen, and to fix this you need to turn the screen off and on again with the sleep button on the top.

The Time-Wasters.

Downloading applications is an arduous affair. The Android Market is their version of the App Store. It seems to have about 3% of the Apps of the App Store, most of which either need paying for or suck, or both. I have often had apps crash the entire phone whilst downloading, and the only way out is to un-battery the phone and turn it back on. I have also tried to download a coin-flip widget, which has been claiming to be 'Installing' for the best part of two weeks now. The 'Cancel Download' button is blocked, so it's always there, stuck floating in Application Purgatory.

Lastly, the most annoying this is that HTC and Android have filled the phone with their own terrible apps. I thought: "Fair enough, I'm getting a non-Apple product, it will be filled with demo bloatware." The problem is, though, that bloatware can be uninstalled. HTC and Android apps can't. This means I'm stuck with two sets of almost every app, GMail/Mail, Calendar/Google Calendar, Twitter for Android/HTC Peep. I can't uninstall any of them, and they are just taking up loads of space with their turdness. There are also Facebook apps I can't get rid of, which really annoys me. Worst of all, none of these apps can be programmed. They are exactly how HTC/Google wanted them. They all open on their own, using up the phone's already limited RAM and sucking up my not-so unlimited internet. So yes, that annoys me, especially since I only use the GMail app, which sucks itself.

The GMail app is unbelievable, really. It's pretty counter-intuitive, to be honest. I can't find anything in the settings to allow it to automatically check my account for new mail, and alert me when there is. When I first got the phone, it worked well, and it alerted me whenever a new email came. Now, however, it never alerts me. I need to manually click 'Refresh' when in the application, even then, it will say there is no mail when I know there is, because I can see unread messages on my computer. When it does find emails, it will sometimes say 'Inbox (5)' but not load the 5 unread messages. I don't know how to fix it.

As for the Android OS's ability to use Flash, well, I will say that it needs work. Flash barely functions on the Internet browser. Often the phone will revert to the home screen and close the browser app when it encounters Flash objects. I have the option to not load Flash unless I touch the object, but it doesn't seem to like that at all. So, I do like the option of having Flash on my phone, but I want it to work.

The Verdict.

So there it is. The Definitive Review of the HTC Desire. I might add more to it as I think of more ways to creatively say it's not as good as an iPhone, but I probably won't.

Overall, it's a good enough phone. If you can live with Facebook apps and multiple of everything else, and have access to electricity 24/7, then it's great.

If you've used an iPhone, ever, you will instantly see endless limitations.

Finally, it could be a lot worse. Non-Apple phones still suck as a whole, only a few make it through the suck-pipe unscathed.

The Pros :

Pretty well built
Good enough screen
Flash capability
Physical buttons on the case
Better than the Samsung D500 in most aspects

The Cons:

The Android OS is buggy
Poor battery life
Very little internal memory, MicroSD limited to 32GB
Technically not very powerful
Can't sync with iCal, iTunes
Very few useful Apps on the Android Market, not many developers support the platform over iOS
Inability to delete unwanted HTC/Google Apps

Is it recommended?

Well, if you want a new phone, ask yourself this:

Can I afford an iPhone?

If the answer is Yes, then get the iPhone. Without question. If the answer is No, then I think the Desire an alright runner up.

Lovely Day for a Guinness.

2010-12-20T18:55:00.004Z

My return has happened!
It was foretold in the ancient scriptures!
I am Alpha and Omega!
It is the best of times, it is the worst of times!

A Day Will Come...

2010-12-03T23:46:00.001Z

Posts will be happening shortly. I'm doing a hiatus, like System of a Down, but will return in full force with more posts than your eyeballs can keep up with.
There is a lot to discuss, Lord Elrond, The Bucketed One has done some fresh slabs!
All will be revealed. Good things come to those who wait, like Guinness.

Banjo Binges

2010-09-26T15:46:00.003+01:00

The other day I got my Limited Edition of Spinal Clock from TDRS. It's Limited because the first 500 pressings were signed and numbered by Buckethead, which I like.

I got #2, which I was a little bit disappointed at, but not too much. I was hoping for #1. On my copy he signed and numbered it, as well as drawing some arms and hands coming from the banjo's spine.

On the whole, it is a much, much better album than I was expecting. The tracks are actually structured rather than a recording of a guy strangling a banjo. The standout tracks are Lafayette's Landing, Spinal Cracker and Skeleton Dance, which all seem to be structured. The other tracks are OK, but nothing special.

But, as always with Buckethead LE albums, it has it's fair share of complete arse. Notably Gelatin Nerve and Whale On This.

Overall, a good way to spend $25, if you like Buckethead, and possibly banjos. But it's likely that the banjo nerds on their version of the TDPRI will see this as sacrilege.

It sounds a bit as it could be the theme to a Western film, and is less inbred sounding than I was expecting.

I will do a review shortly. I remember when I ordered this I thought it would be a play once and iPod straight away and then not listened to much again, but I think I'll certainly listen to it every once in a while.

There is a scan of the cover of mine.

Apple's New Stuff

2010-09-02T11:49:00.006+01:00

It's that time of year again. A few months before Christmas, so Apple decide they have to release a whole range of new Poodies to allow them to continue to buy themselves diamond-encrusted iPhones and all that.

All the info I have here is taken from the Apple Website and the Engadget.

Anyway, to the matter of goosing:

iPod Touch G4:

Not much has changed, dramatically.

-Thinner

-Same amount of GiggleyBytes; 8, 32, 64.

-Front-facing camera so you can see your hideous friends if you want to talk to them. If you over-use this feature, you are probably better off getting an actual iPhone.

-Retina Display, just like the iPhone 4.

-720p Video Recording, I don't think it has a camera on the back as well, so you might not be able to see what you are recording if you have to use the front one. (Unless you are Bootsy Collins)

iPod Nano:

I Have no idea what is happening here. The iPod Nano has become some little, stumpy Elephant-Man version of the iPod Touch. This is no way a winning design. I think next year they will revert to at least something more like the old ones.

-Smaller, square.

-Multi-touch screen

-8 or 16GB capacities

-Clippy thing

-FM Radio (very surprised!)

So... That's it. I'm not a fan.

iPod Shuffle:

It's basically a remake of the old version. Apple seem to want to kill the iPod Shuffle by making the last design with no buttons on it at all, but they might have brought it back this time. Maybe they are hoping stupid people will buy both the Shuffle and the Nano because they think it's an optional Click-Wheel.

Not much to say about it, really. It's an iPod Shuffle.

iPod Classic:

No changes at all, as far as I can see. Just the regular old iPod. I'll get this one if I do any upgrading.

TV:

A few changes here, nothing enough to make me want one, or be able to see the point in them, but at least they've tried.

-It's smaller, blacker and looks all better compared to the last one.

-Streams HD content better, apparently

-Still no TV tuner, still basically the same as plugging your iPod into your TV.

-Looks like the name iTV was scrapped. Just as well, really. Not only were the real ITV annoyed, it also sounded ridiculous. TV/ATV is good.

iTunes 10:

A new iTunes has been announced to match all the new iPods, and I don't think I like it. They are trying to get me to join up to a silly social networking service called Ping. It's basically Last.fm but probably not as good.

They have changed the logo, from the CD with a note in front to a blue circle with a note in it. I don't like it at all.

Also, they have moved the window-control buttons on the top-left corner to go vertically instead of horizontally. Not a fan of that either.

I think I'll be better off keeping with iTunes 9.

The lack of a CD in the logo makes me worry that in a few more iterations of iTunes the rip from/import from CD functionality will be dropped, allowing only for management of downloaded files or ones previously ripped.

The good thing about being a Pessimist is that you are always right or being pleasantly surprised.

Spinal Clock

2010-09-02T11:44:00.004+01:00

I found out about this the day it happened, but I've been too lazy to make a post about it.

Buckethead has announced an LE. Another one. Called Spinal Clock.

It is a CD filled with 9 Banjo Binges, and it will be out 'on or around September 15th' said Travis.

It was $25 for the Limited Edition version, which will be signed and numbered by Buckethead.

Originally, there was only supposed to be a limited run of 300 copies, but they sold out so fast that Travis upped the limit to 500 copies. Slightly un-rarifying them, but these will still be one of the lowest numbered Limited Editions ever.

I think I have a good chance at getting my mittens of #1. It will be a good day then.

I Done a Binge

2010-08-23T23:03:00.003+01:00

Since I have started to get some money in the bank, I have suddenly amassed a lot more stuff than I would have from (mainly) Amazon.

It started with a simple celebratory purchase of a White Coily Cable from Bullet Cables. I bought that as consolation for not winning a Snarling Dogs Whine-O Wah pedal off eBay. That really annoyed me when I lost that because my internet was too slow to place another bid in the final seconds.

Then I floated to Amazon, goosing my Wish List and picking out my most desired things from that. To date, I have Peep Show Series 6 on DVD, Come Down With Me by Errors, Lucas amd Kissing the Rain by Kevin Brooks, Unison and Cobra Strike CDs from TDRS, A massive Flaming Lips Poster, a preorder of Imperfect Harmonies by Serj Tankian, an Aphex Twin T-shirt, a Praxis/Transmutation press poster kit (in the post now) and Break the Cycle by Staind.

Quite a binge, I think.

And I will get paid again in three days, so, it will be another worthy reason to buy more stuff.

I'm thinking I need Maggot Brain by Funkadelic and Alchera by Heirs next. And I need to get Transmutation on CD...

The Definitive Review of Best Regards

2010-08-02T22:55:00.010+01:00

So. Here it is. The only review you will need for Buckethead's latest effort: Best Regards.

I also think that this could be the longest post I've ever done on this Blog... Unless you count the Honduras Diaries or Internet Diaries as one post being segmented.

I will do a track-by-track dissection of the set, trying to describe the style of music on each differs from the others where applicable. I don't usually like this method of writing reviews, because I know it can be boring. So, for that reason, I will label the ones I think are imperative to the set so you don't have to read through the ones I'm not especially keen on.

III

There are some real, actual, structured, well-made tracks on here. Others are what you should expect from a Buckethead Limited Edition release such as In Search of The... or Cyborg Slunks. The ones that are clearly planned are ones that I would not be disappointed if they were to be on a regular album release. However, these are not the 'usual' kind of music from Buckethead, but more of the niche albums like Dragons of Eden or Population Override, sans the Travis, who is replaced by Melissa.

I will review this as I would in order of the discs coming out of the box.

Blue

I. The opening track on Blue disc is amazing. Track 1 is pretty 'epic'. By that, I mean it is epic in both the Soothsayer/Forgotten Trail way, and also that of the way Padmasana or Mrs Beasley way. This disc plays out like I expected: Amazing opening track, but in my mind I was thinking: "There is no way it can be this good throughout". I was partially right. Each disc has it's highs and lows, but there aren't any discs which don't have their share of both halves.

The Blue disc, as I said, opens amazingly. A trumpety, heroic sounding battlefield soundtrack which you could easily put a slow motion, lachrymose montage of images to. Track 1 finishes, leaving me thinking I had struck gold.

Track 2 happens.

I check... Is this the same disc? Yes. From the loud and monumental opener comes an odd collection of clicks and killswitch things, with the pitter-patter of drums behind it, and a variety of odd sound effects (likely from Melissa's keyboard). These include whirring, whistles, canned applause and dripping water. Eventually, it slows to a more 'conventional' sounding LE track. Buckethead doing oddness and the occasional drum tapping.

Eventually, Track 2 ends. It's been a long haul, but I think Track 3 makes up for the second's randomness.

II. It's a swirly, spacious chamber of sound, which has some slow and melancholic guitar in it. No drums here. It reminds me of an Aphex Twin/Selected Ambient Works Vol. II kind of feel, or even something more like Death Cube K's Maggot Dream, which I don't see as a bad thing. I think that once you get into the envelope of this one, it can feel as big as Track 1. I really like this one. Good thing I am, too. It's a long'un at 15:02.

Orange

The first track on the Orange disc follows a similar pattern to that of Blue Track 2. It opens with some sounds that don't seem to fit together that well, and a low hum in the background which I thought originally was my CD player. I realised it wasn't when it changed pitch to match what Buckethead was doing. This isn't the best track. Nowhere near. I'd rank it higher than Blue Track 2, but not by much. It's odd throughout, with very little in the way of 'music' as I would say. Regular kind of ISOT styled stuff here.

III. Track 2 opens with a quiet, soft piano type thing, followed by a nice smooth guitar, and slow drums to match. I think this could be a contender for one of the favourites on the set. Buckethead continues to do the guitar, while Melissa seems to be more active in this one than in previous tracks, as she provides the 'lead' as the guitar gives the slow, steady backing. If I had to say what other track it was like, I would say either like Padmasana, Track 8.1 from ISOT or Aunt Suzie from Cyborg Slunks. A long, slow and very nice track. This is what I wanted from the set. This is my favourite style of Buckethead - The Real Diamond/Shadows/Electric Tears type.

Track 3 opens sounding similar to Track 1, but quickly you realise that it is certainly one of the structured ones, eventually creating a repeating section and a relative tune. It's pretty samey throughout this one. Not a huge fan of it, really, but it's better than the 'noise' tracks.

Green

Track 1, again, is similar to the other non-musical tracks. It's the second-longest on the set, at 30:53. For the most part it is a selection of noises and beeps put together in a kind of semi-tune. Every few minutes thought there will be something which hints at a real tune, where the three instruments work together rather than fumbling around trying to find sounds which will match together.

IV. The second Track on the green CD is another one of those that don't have much to live up to by going from previous tracks on this disc. This one, however, is a beautiful, Colma-styled, echoey mythology, which goes on for only 10:18. They keyboards on this one are styled to make a violin/orchestral sound, and it works together brilliantly, and similar to Blue Track 1, could easily be used for a meaningful montage towards the end of Saving Private Ryan. This is also a strong contender for the favourite.

Yellow

Track 1 on Yellow opens with a very short, but odd sound. The first second is what sounds like a chicken noise being made on the guitar. I don't know why we don't hear this more often on Buckethead's albums. Despite the odd opening few seconds, it turns to a track which is not actually that bad, but a bit repetitive. I like the drumming on this one, and the keyboards are set to a kind of backwards Stylophone thing, which I'm not sure if I like. Buckethead's favourite effect returns, just like it did on ISOT. I'm not a fan of this effect to be honest. So, Yellow is not off to a great start.

Track 2 is not very good either, really. It sounds a lot like Green Track 1, in which it is a mush of sounds floating around hoping to work well together. Melissa making plane noises, Brain rustling on the drums and Buckethead fidgeting. The guitar effect on this one is similar to the sound of the acoustic guitar in Can You Help Me? off Bucketheadland 2.

V. Track 3 on Yellow is another one which is very clearly inspired by Dragons of Eden. Slow, smooth and almost upbeat sounding, but not too much so. This track is long and calm, with Melissa using the sad-violin sound on the keyboard, and Brain doing steady drumming. This track is most similar to Orange Track 2 because Buckethead provides the backing music while Melissa and Brain are more in front than they would normally be.

Yellow Track 4 is similar to Track 1 on this disc, in that Buckethead does fidgeting, Melissa provides the backing hums and Brain pretty much leads the song with lots of fast drumming. This track, I think gets better the further you get into it, and like Green Track 1, has moments of good matching. Most of it however, is a bit messy.

Purple

The first track on Purple opens with high pitched jingles on the guitar. Drums kick in and the whole thing evolves into a semi-organised mess. More organised than tracks like Green 1, but a lot more improvised-sounding than the better tracks on the set. As it progresses, the guitar becomes more electric sounding, but the drums remain pretty much the same throughout. Melissa occasionally chimes in with what is similar to the opening sounds of Blue Calx by Aphex Twin.

Track 2 on the Purple disc is the longest on the set, coming in at 31:53. Brain seems to lose the full drumkit on this track to replace them with a set of bongoes, making a rhythmic, almost African-sounding background. It is also quite similar to Slapatron by Pieces. Eventually, the amount of bongo decreases, and is replaced by electronic drums, likely by Melissa. Throughout this, Buckethead is messing on with a variety of hideous effects which I don't care for too much really. Occasionally he will chime in with something which sounds pretty good, but like the other improvised tracks it rarely lasts more than a minute or so. Towards the end of the track it tuns into something I wouldn't be surprised if Aphex Twin had released it. Fast electronic drums, guitars which sound like synths and repeating loops.

I'd say Purple is the weakest disc in the set, being the only one which doesn't have what I think is a 'good track'. I don't think the Purple disc would feel out of place if it were put into ISOT back in 2007.

So there it is. What I would call a well crafted and in-depth review and overview of Best Regards. It took less time than I was anticipating...

In conclusion, I really like this set. I was very pleasantly surprised when there was a good percentage of the tracks that I actually really like. Maybe the others will eventually grow on me in a similar way to what ISOT did. First impressions were much better than that of ISOT, so as far as I'm concerned, it's a victory.

Was it worth my $75? I think so.

Best Regards - A Review Foreword

2010-07-27T18:41:00.003+01:00

I will be eventually writing a somewhat in-depth review of Best Regards. It might take some time, because I'm both forgetful and lazy. Also, the long-promised review of In Search Of The... took a good few months to finish (I had it saved as a Draft for ages) and was only actually completed and uploaded a few weeks ago, where it received [not so] much critical acclaim.

I will be holding off on one of my world famous 'Definitive Reviews' for a few reasons, other than the laziness and forgetfulness listed above: My Blue Disc doesn't play at all. I tried on my CD player, iMac and Xbox, and none of them played. I emailed Travis and he is sending me another one out. I got an email reply within 1 minute of sending it - That's what I call good customer service.

I will also hopefully get a review of Alan Wake up shortly... I finished that the other day. Pretty good, I think, but not without a few irritating drawbacks. And I also want to do a post about the book I've just finished reading: A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon. I thought it was actually better than The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Google Has Turned Poogle.

2010-07-25T21:04:00.005+01:00

The new Google Images Search is awful.

I can't be bothered to wait around 30 seconds for the page to load about 10 miles worth of images just so I can click on 'Switch to Basic Version' only to have the page load again.

When clicking on an image, it takes you to the host site, only with a silly box in the middle, which the image never fits into because it's either been shrunk or overly enlarged.

If I decide that I want to actually look at the site, then I click on the X in the corner which makes the page load again.

Maybe if I had faster tubes I could use this. It isn't that I don't like it, but it's that I can't use it. Also, the image sizes are not visible until I mouse-over the image, which takes loading time, up to another 5 seconds.

It's tedium.

I'll use it for a bit longer to see if there is an option to permanently change back to the original Images search... But if not then I will start using another search engine.

Come on, Google. Nobody likes/uses/wants Bing. There is no need to try to better it by doing the same thing with image search.

Update:

I have managed to make a crude fix, with some help from Lifehacker.com.

So: I use iGoogle as my Homepage. I like it. It has gadgets and all that which I use, as well as links to my GMail.

I added a gadget to the page which allowed me to store links I use regularly, so I used the same thing as in the above link, and searched for the word 'Google'.

In the URL, I then changed it to add '&sout=1'. This makes it display the old, better, cleaner, easier to use settings.

I have also added this link to my Bookmarks bar, so I never have to use the new Google Image search again.

I don't know whether to feel proud of myself or sad...

Best Regards II

2010-07-24T19:26:00.006+01:00

Today my set of Best Regards turned up in the post, in great condition, and without any stupid people ransoming it back to me at customs.

I got #3. Nobody knows how many are being made, but I think it's up to the #500-600 now, so probably either 999 or 1000.

I'm glad I got in there quickly!

Number 3.

III.

Numero Tres.

Nr. Drei.

Número Trois.

The Big Dog.

The Lord of the Rings.

The Bourne Identity...

I got carried away.

Anyway, enough chit-chat!

You want pictures, and pictures thou shallt receive!

You'd better put seatbelts on your eyes, 'cos they are going for the ride of their lives:

GOOSE!

It's a good day.

Speedy shipping as well.

Winter

2010-07-18T22:50:00.007+01:00

My favourite Month is November. It has the best of everything: Cold sunlight, beautiful Autumn colours, dark nights.

Sometimes I feel like I just wish that it would be Winter again. There is something about late Autumn and Winter that I love - Not Christmas or my birthday, but I just love the dark nights, rain hitting against my window, going outside in the freezing wind but being warm under a massive coat. Listening to Electric Tears with a big a mug of tea or Horlicks, looking outside at the wind and rain and feeling cosy.
That smell that's in the air which smells like it's about to snow, the wet leaves on the ground, in beautiful colours and shades of reds and orange. I like it how I think of this scene and can see, feel, smell and hear everything as though I was there now.
I like going away for the weekend in a cottage in the country, sitting out in the crisp air at dusk and admiring the beauty of everything around me. Being able to smell the log fire smoke from the chimney.
It's times like these when I wish I lived in somewhere like Canada, where I imagine it to be snowy for most of the year, but even when the sun is out, the air is still cold and crisp, and each morning the grass outside has frozen.
Despite having a horrendous Winter in this country last/this year, I still want it to come back, even though when we were in it we couldn't see the light of Spring.

You feeling that?

Best Regards

2010-07-15T23:24:00.005+01:00

Remember In Search of The...? Well, when that was first released in 2007, the firs 999 copies were hand drawn, signed and numbered by Buckethead himself. After that first batch of 999, they were all the same, like mine is.

Today, I was innocently perusing on TDRS Music, and lo and behold, I was slapped with this lovely, but entirely out-of-the-blue surprise.

It is a new Limited Edition box set, with 5 coloured CDs and around 4 hours of music. It is called Best Regards.

The people involved are Buckethead, Brain and an unknown someone called Mellisa, who is playing the keyboards. I have no idea how many of these limited copies will be produced, what is on them or what else to expect. I ordered them without a second thought.

Here is all the information on the set which was provided by Travis, on THIS page:

New! Limited edition box set from Buckethead and Brain.

"Best Regards"

5 discs of all original music. Each disc set is hand drawn and numbered by Buckethead, Brain and Mellisa.

Burned to colored CDr's and housed in a 5 disc case.

Buckethead-guitar

Brain-drums and keyboards

Mellisa-keyboards and percussion

Orange Disc:

Track 1: 13:00

Track 2: 13:24

Track 3: 19:22

Blue Disc:

Track 1: 9:50

Track 2: 19:37

Track 3: 15:02

Green Disc:

Track 1: 30:00

Track 2: 10:17

Yellow Disc:

Track 1: 13:06

Track 2: 12:58

Track 3: 9:28

Track 4: 11:35

Purple Disc:

Track 1: 17:05

Track 2: 31:53

The unnamed tracks and the absolute immensity of this looks like it could be like a smaller ISOT, but I think that Buckethead only does really strange, sometimes unlistenable stuff when he's on his own. Other people seem to make him do structured music.

I'm hoping for each disc to have it's own sound. Or for it to be a large set of Population Override or Dragons of Eden styled tracks, but I never know what to expect from Buckethead.

I should have it in 1-2 weeks. I can already see that they are going to drag along until I get this. I love this. Me, the proud father of a Limited Edition Buckethead boxset.

It is a good day.

BT, Ich haße Sie.

2010-07-02T17:30:00.003+01:00

The Broadband is starting to go downhill again. Ever few hours, sometime on the hour, I get slapped with this picture:

Sick of it.

Is BT so different from Tiscali? Looks unlikely.

The Rejuvenation of Klaus III

2010-06-29T17:25:00.005+01:00

Yesterday I finally found some 240 Grit sandpaper in the garage and decided to finish off the sanding of Klaus.

The 240 Grit got rid of all the tiny little white lines and scrapes off the body, but I think I'll still have to redo the sides before it's completely finished. The top of it is pretty hard to sand evenly.

Anyway, soon I hope to get some Butterscotch paint from ManchesterGuitarTech... One tin should do, so I'm only going to buy one and then if I need more I'll buy another one. I know that if I get two initially I'll only use half a tin or something.

I'll get the Clear Gloss lacquer a few weeks after the Butterscotch because it takes about 3-5 weeks (!) to harden anyway depending on the weather, humidity and temperature.

Here's some more pictures to clap yo' eyes on:

The Boxer

2010-06-21T12:44:00.006+01:00

Today I got my copy of The Boxer by Kele Okereke. I preordered it about two months ago off Play.com because I would get a 'Limited Edition' signed copy.

So, it's come today, and it is signed! (Suck on that, UK Undercurrent!)

So far, it's a pretty good album. It's a lot like Intimacy by Bloc Party, but also has bits of the other two albums by them as well, but mostly from Intimacy with hints of A Weekend in the City, like a fine wine. But, it's very clearly not Bloc Party. It sounds very similar and has a similar style, but there's something about it which makes it not Bloc Party.

So far, the standout tracks are Everything You Wanted, The New Rules and Yesterday's Gone, with the last one being quite similar to Ion Square by Bloc Party.

Mmmm... Signatures...

These images were uploaded with my new Photobucket account, because I don't want to keep using the Dropbox Public Folder for my images.

A Levels

2010-06-16T11:49:00.006+01:00

I've just completed my last A Level exam ever!
Today it was the second module of A2 Biology.. And I think it went really well. There was only 2 questions which I didn't know the answer to after thinking about them and they only added up to 4 marks in total. (One was about Genotypes and the other about the genes involved in Body Maps of a Drosophila Fruit Fly)
The other exams I had have also went pretty well... I had a AS Chemistry resit from January and also the second module of AS chemistry, which hopefully went better than the first time.
So.. Other than getting my results I never have to go back to that awful prison-hospital thing. The worst part of Sixth Form was having to share the building and resources with the lower school childs, most of which didn't want to be there or abused everything in their power. And they stunk, were full of disease and made everything sticky.

I now have an AS Chemistry OCR textbook for sale if anyone here wants it.
£9+Postage... They are £15-17-ish new, and mine is as new apart from a bit of tea-stain on the edge of some pages... Spillage happened. Comment if you want it. I like PayPal.

Tonight I'm going to watch Hancock I've had off LoveFilm for a few days now, and I'm going to play some games, kill some aliens on the Xbox and get some Southern Comfort to suck on. It's going to be an anti-revision par-tay in my house tonight.

The Xbox 360 Slim

2010-06-14T22:23:00.004+01:00

So... Microsoft has announced their newest version on the Xbox. It's shiny, black and pointy and looks like a nerd's gaming PC which he thinks looks cool. I think it's pretty hideous.

However, on the plus side, it now has built-in WiFi, which means no more silly expensive USB wireless receivers. WiFi should have been on the 360s from launch, really. Also, it's now thinner and has both an internal Hard Drive and an internal power supply. I don't like the internal HD at all. What if I needed to take my hard drive and put it on another Xbox? What if it breaks and you have to send it to Microsoft? You'll have no save games when you get it back.

The little Memory Cards have now also gone, being replaced by Microsoft's rubbish version of USB mass storage.

So other than that, there's not much change on the inside apart from a smaller, cooler chip (hopefully to avoid the dreaded Red Ring of Death).

On the outside, apart from the new hideous angular design, there is actually a nice on/off button, which looks to be made of chrome... Or shiny silver plastic.

The controller has also had some slight changes to match the new box - The analogue sticks are now black rather than grey and the Guide Button matches that of the on/off switch, whih I like. I'd consider buying one of them if I need a new controller, but knowing how much Microsoft love money it probably won't work with old Xboxes unless you buy a £60 adapter and subscribe to the Controller Service for £40 a year.

That stupid Project Natal is also official now, with a real name... It's now been ever-so-cheesily called 'Kinect' (See what they've cleverly done there? It's like 'connect' but using the word 'Kinetic' as well because it's movement based... Har-har!). It's a silly device. There won't be any more information about it on this Blog... Not in my name!

Image from Engadget.

UK Pricing has it down for a surprisingly cheap £199, which makes it almost identical to the US pricing of $299. The UK may actually get it £2-3 cheaper. Amazing.

New Design

2010-06-12T22:51:00.003+01:00

Blogger has been updated in the last few days, and it's added a load of new templates and backgrounds for me to use. This one came under the 'Textures' list, and I liked it, so here it is. Wood.

I'm currently working on trying to make another header in the top... The last one had outstayed it's welcome I think... Probably been there since around 2007.

Requiem for a Dream

2010-06-11T16:13:00.000+01:00

Requiem for a Dream was in my rental list on LoveFilm for ages, but today I've cancelled it because I watched it online for free.

This film is, again, one of those 'completely fantastic films which I managed to not see for ten years'. Possibly the best film I've ever seen for free, it is about four people who all end up addicted to drugs and what happens to them over the course of a year and what effect the addiction has on them.

Harry Goldfarb, the main character, is a heroin addict, who repeatedly sells his mother's TV in order to pay for more drugs, while his mother will continue to buy the same TV back from the pawn shop because she is addicted to TV game shows and self-help programs.

Eventually, Harry and his friend Tyrone begin selling heroin to make lots of money for themselves, while his mother receives a phone call from a TV station telling her she'll be on TV, which is her perfect dream. She decides to wear her red dress to the occasion, but cannot fit into it properly so goes to the doctor to get diet pills, to which she also becomes addicted.

The story is about each character's addiction and the downward spiral their lives take when they struggle to cope with the effects of it.

If there was ever a good enough argument not to start taking heroin, it's watching this film. Then reading Russell Brand's Booky Wook.

I can't recommend this highly enough if you like films which are gritty and harrowing, which I do. I think it has gone straight to the list of my favourite films, along with Seven, The Darjeeling Limited, The Orphanage and Donnie Darko.

I also have Trainspotting in my rental list, and I can't wait to see that.

☆☆☆☆☆

The HomeHub

2010-06-08T21:57:00.000+01:00

If you remember the last time I had internet problems, it turned into a month-long saga involving phone calls to TalkTalk/Tiscali and BT. I wrote an account of the horrors I witnessed during this down-time, detailing what I had done to save myself from insanity caused by disconnection.

Anyway, it appears that I now have yet more problems, only this time with BT's HomeHub repeatedly losing connection for around 1 minute at a time. When we first got it, we were told that in the first 10 days it may occasionally restart because BT were 'testing the line' (I reckon it was seeing how much speed they could shave off before we noticed). So then it was fine up until about a month ago, when it disconnected, but I assumed it was just an update, and I was used to disonnections happening almost daily with Tiscali, so I didn't pay any attention to it. Recently, it has started to disconnect on (or around) the hour, probably about 5 times per day. By this I mean anywhere between x:50 and x+1:10.

I know it's peak periods, but that silly estate agent guy on the advert is moaning about his internet because '''alf the worwd's onloine!'' but then that other guy off My Family is thinking: "Yeah, you should have got BT" (just like how I think "Should have got a Mac" when everything goes wrong on Dell-Boys). I don't think I'm getting 'consistently faster broadband, even at peak times'.

I've also noticed it gets pretty hot as well... I don't know if it's supposed to, but it does. I mean, pretty hot, like fry-some-eggs-on-it hot.

On the super-massive plus side, when I am connected I'm getting speeds 10x faster than I was putting up with from Tiscali - When not in peak times, I previously got about 14-25kbps download, 3-10kbps upload, but now I'm getting up to 200kbps download and 30-40kbps upload. Serious improvement considering the phone lines where I live are made of cheesestrings or something...

Buckethead

2010-06-08T11:30:00.000+01:00

"Got message from Buckethead, he's doing much better, he said he miss everybody's Slaugther-House but he will be back from Bucketland" said Bootsy Collins, via Twitter.

This makes me a Happy Bunny!

What's This?! A Review of In Search of The...?!

2010-06-06T18:26:00.002+01:00

Yes, here it is. If you read this regularly or remember when I said I was going to review In Search of The... properly back in August last year, you'll find that I never got round to it.

Well guess what? I done a review of sorts. Clap your eyeballs on this juicy review, Motherlickers!

In Search of The... was a set I really, really wanted. I thought that the idea of 13 original CDs in a set was amazing and entirely original, not to mention quite a task to listen to it all (which it still is). However, most of the time before buying a CD (or in this case, 13) I like to listen to it on YouTube/Spotify/Grooveshark and decide whether it's worth getting, especially since I don't have too much money to begin with anyway, making Buyer's Remorse seem that much more bitter to me. Unfortunately, this set has very little representation on YouTube and none at all on the other places I check, so I had to buy this set, for around £70, based on about 5-10 tracks out of ninety-something. So it's a bit of a stab in the dark.

I got it, put Disc 1 into my player, and heard what sounded like an electric horse being cattle-prodded. I thought for a second, bearing in mind the first track is 59 seconds long, and thought to myself: "Oh no... What have I done?"
I pushed this thought to the back of my head, and tried to find consolation in spending $115 on a few CD-Rs in paper cases with nothing but photocopied stickers on the covers.
As a few days passed, I half-listened to each disc in order while doing other stuff. I finally got to the end of Disc 13 and that awful feeling of "Oh no..." came back. During this first listen, there had been some 'standout' tracks that I had noticed as being almost unbearable, where I skipped the track altogether, notably the dangerously similar 7.4 and 11.2, and various other tracks I would personally label as 'sub-filler' standard.

However, I imported them into my computer, and began listening to them in no particular order on my iPod, desperate to find something to console me for what I had heard already. It was around then when I discovered that there really are some good tracks on here, which I would not be surprised to find on a regular album. These include 1.2, 2.5, 3.3, 4.6, 5.1, 5.8, 6.3 and 8.1 as what I would call the 'gems' of the set (Real Diamonds in the Rough you could say... Har-har!). After 8.1, it all seemed to get a bit too odd for me, with sometimes things which sound like a drum kit sneezing and a guitar having an epileptic fit.

Now, about 8 months later, I can listen to a lot of the ones I previously labelled as 'sub-filler' standard. Instead of melting into a large block of similar sounding noise, I can now see that each disc may have been intended to have a unique sound, gradually getting more unhinged as the discs count up.
Despite my somewhat delayed appreciation of the set, there are still up to 15 tracks which I still find absolutely dreadful, and those are the ones which I remembered from my first listen.
ISOT, to me, is a set which I think I will only like more as time goes on and I listen to more tracks individually rather than as a set. I think Disc 5 is the best of the lot, so if you want to buy them individually, get that one first.

There's not much more I can say about it. Almost every track features a strange guitar effect which I can only relate with a smooth-jazz effect, somewhere between a fully clean sound and something which is too loud for a tape recorder to pick up properly, causing slight 'blurring of the edges' of the sound.

I'll end this rather long review by saying that if you have $100 and want to buy a slice of what Buckethead is as a musician, buy this set. It ranges from the gentler, almost Colma themed songs to the mindless, atonal messiness of early Buckethead releases, and has almost everything in between.

As Buckethead once (not so) famously said: Music to me may not be music to most. I think he's proven that here with a pretty inaccessible album if someone is new to him. If someone who's first time listening to Buckethead was some of that 'sub-filler' stuff, I wouldn't blame them for thinking this is music for the deaf and/or insane, but if you're persistent and you take the time to scour the depths of this set you can find some real gems.

Buckethead - On the Mend

2010-05-23T21:03:00.001+01:00

Good news!

It comes from the ever so tight-lipped Bootsy Collins, who posted on his Twitter:

Yeah Bucketbots! I talked to Buckethead today he wants to thank everybody for the prayers, hope in 3 wks he be in "Boot-Cave"

That sounds like good news. He'll be safe and happy in the "Boot-Cave"... It's a top-secret location I'm guessing...

Is it a gigantical coinky-dink that I was listening to On the Mend by the Foo Fighters when I read this news?

Dun-dun-duhhhh....

The Rejuvenation of Klaus II

2010-05-15T15:17:00.000+01:00

Today, the building of the new Klaus has officially begun. General Klaus is one step closer to existence. I went to a little hardware shop where I could get individual sheets of sandpaper rather than a pack of 20 (which I won't need), and I got a few sheets of 120, 150, 180 and 220 Grit. They were 20p each.

So, this afternoon, I assaulted Klaus with a Black and Decker Mouse, armed with the 80 Grit pads I got from B&Q. It took more effort than I thought it would to get it off, especially the clear, hard shiny outside bit. Once the outer coat was off, the paint underneath just melted off.

So, here is Klaus after I attacked him with a sander:

Here he is again, but after I brushed off the main bulk of dust. I thought I'd put some of the stuff on to see what it looked like. I think it's smoo. The wood is a better colour than I thought it would be, and it is less pink (like salmon) and more wood coloured (like... wood).

Imagine how spiffing it would look with my leather pickguard...

^ Click to embiggen

There's still a few orange patches on it, and also the edges and most of the sides haven't been sanded properly yet, so from here it's going to be all by hand. The Mouse is back in the box, and it's time to bring out the wooden block and some sandpaper.

Not a Good Sign

2010-05-14T15:19:00.000+01:00

A few days ago I posted about the latest update to Bucketheadland, and how the front splash page has changed the first time since last year.

Well, Bootsy Collins assured us he was still alive via his Twitter account, but today there have been a few more messages posted from him, also relating to Buckethead.

This one was posted yesterday, May 13th, on Buckethead's (now confirmed) birthday:

Okay funkateer's I Just wanted to say Happy Birthday to my best friend Buckethead, say a prayer for his speedy recovery, he's doing better!

I don't like the term 'speedy recovery'. What has happened? Nobody apart from Buckethead and apparently Bootsy know what's happening...

Then, just after that, he posted this:

Been going though some skeletorial Pain that has set him back a few notches but with yalls support he will bounce back.

Oh. The plot thickens. In a bad way. Skeletorial pain doesn't sound like much fun at all... (I think Bootsy means to say 'skeletal', 'skeletorial' isn't a real word.)

Today, Bootsy then posted this:

teh The Road will beat you down even when you take care of yourself, Pain throughout his body, Doc don't know yet what it is!

It isn't looking good on the Buckethead front. Whenever a Doctor doesn't know what's wrong with you, you know it isn't good.

All we can do is hope he gets better. Bootsy already said 'with yalls support he will bounce back.'

Obviously Slip Disc is trying to stop Bucketbots from having big fun.

The Rejuvenation of Klaus I

2010-05-12T15:33:00.000+01:00

I have finally begun dismantling, disassembling and de-soldering my Telecaster, Klaus.

I bought it with the sole intention of modifying it, and getting to know how to do some businesses with a guitar, and maybe a power tool or two...

So anyway, step 1 was to take the actual thing apart. This meant taking off the strings, unscrewing the pickups and unsoldering the connecting wires, and organising everything (and the appropriate screws) into piles, and then into labelled bags, such as 'PU Neck', 'PU Bridge', 'Control thing' and 'Strap holders'.

Then I took the neck off, which was surprisingly easy as well... I thought there would be more than just four screws holding it on.

So then, it looked like a trip off to ye olde B&Q was in order. I needed to get a few grades of sandpaper, ranging from 80 Grit at the coarsest and then 150 Grit, and finally down to something around 180-200 Grit to smoothen the wood before putting the new layer of lacquer over it.

I'll be getting this Light Tint Gloss Lacquer from Steve Robinson who owns and runs Manchester Guitar Tech, who makes all the lacquers himself and sells them on to normal people as well as Fender and Gibson.

Hopefully, after all the lacquer has been applied and has dried (well, I hope), I also intend to buy a custom Leather Pickguard from Doug Halliday at Layli.net, who fashions all kinds of amazing stuff from leather. Luckily for me, I'm feeling the simpler, cheaper option of PG-13, but most likely in a darker, more 'antiqued' looking colour. I contacted him and he got back to me saying that Pickguard in a different colour would be $38 in total, which includes shipping to the UK. I'd say that was pretty good for a custom made leather pickguard.

Here's a picture of my 'workshop' in my garage and the disembodied Klaus, sat next to his own neck and a box full of his organs:

^ Click to embiggen

The Election

2010-05-06T17:48:00.000+01:00

"What is Democracy?"

"S'got something to do with young men killing each other, I believe..."

"When it comes to my turn, will you want me to go?"

"For Democracy, any man would give his only begat son."

I don't care about the election. I don't care who gets 'into power' and when, and I barely know the difference between the 'other two' parties. (Those are the ones who aren't Gordon Brown, I forgot the names.)

I don't really believe that people have any say over what happens, despite living in a 'democracy', and I think that the party which gets into power has already been decided, and no matter what votes and numbers say, nothing will change that. They only let people vote so that they feel like they have a choice and think that they are making a difference, but really they aren't.

I also think that all parties and politicians are the same, and no matter who gets into power it will still be the same outcome. (See Nineteen Eighty-Four.)

My reasoning of backing this up is that if the 'Cannabis Party' got the most votes, i.e, 99%, with their one and only policy of legalising cannabis, do you really think they would get any power at all? There is no way that it would be allowed to happen, despite what the 99% of votes have said. 'They' wouldn't let that happen.

Also, the Royal Family are all Lizards, the Moon Landing was shot in a garage in Arizona and Lady Ga Ga is an Illuminati puppet.

I didn't vote.

This was a pretty serious post, so I'll lighten it up with a little game:

What rhymes with 'Election'?

Have a thinky, and highlight the below text to find the answer.

Reflection.

Never saw that coming, didja?

Bucketheadland

2010-04-30T17:17:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I visited Bucketheadland and discovered that the main page has changed from the Michael Jackson Tribute song, The Homing/Landing Beacon, and is now replaced by a billboard type sign post thing, and it looks like this:

Look at that. He appreciates me. He is clearly talking about/to me personally, considering I am his Number 1 fan.

Who knows what it all means...

Perhaps he's having some time off, perhaps he's planning something big like another Limited Edition album or ISOT Part 2 - Maybe he's found 'The...'.

Maybe he's getting a new passport so he can come to the UK...

Maybe all he means is that he'll be updating the site a bit more often now (The Michael Jackson tribute has been there since June 2009), and we all know how Greg couldn't handle the maintenance of the Slaughterhouse.

I s'pose I'll have to just wait and find out.

Maybe Bucketheadland 3?

The mind wanders...

Update:

Bootsy Collins wrote this on his Twitter yesterday:

Doing a track for "Buckethead" on my new album right now. If u thought Buckethead was incredible before, wait til you get a load of this!

Ahh, the plot thickens. Perhaps it actually is another Bucketheadland CD, considering Bootsy was on the last two and did bass and some voices. Maybe he means its another Praxis CD.

Snarly D - The Definitive Review

2010-04-28T16:47:00.000+01:00

I finally got me a Snarling Dog. I'm feeling it. Like I might have already said, I got it used off eBay for £36 and £5 postage. I can't believe postage was this cheap - The actual thing is made of solid metal and weighs about 3KG.So that's a pretty good dealio as far as I'm concerned. I would have liked to be able to get a Mold Spore with the few effects on it, but those are pretty expensive - Around £100 used.

So anyhow, it's used. What the guy on eBay didn't put into the description was that there are a few scratches in the paint (which I can deal with) and also that the battery cover plate is missing off the bottom, and to fix this, he has put a strip of duct tape over it. I'll try to find a cover that will fit, but the tape does it's job I s'pose. I also need to get a new cable to go between the pedal and the amp. Currently I'm using a double-ended 3.5mm headphone jack cable with two 6.3mm adapters on each side. Crude business.

Also, the Dog's face glows in the dark, which I didn't know. Also, it's eyes light up when you step on it/turn it on, so despite the crude use of tape, it still looks better than that silly Vox I was going to get. (Also, my liking of Vox has dampened a bit since the last 'incident'.)

So... I might put a video/demo up of me displaying my mad skills on the guitar and Wah-ness. Then again, I might not.

I hate Keys.

2010-04-24T10:27:00.001+01:00

Last week I won a Snarling Dogs Wonder Wah off eBay, and it arrived today, 6 days later. The only problem is, I missed the item, and the Royal Mail guy drove of before I could get the door open. This was entirely because I couldn't find any keys, and for some ridiculous reason, the door was locked. So I now have a stupid little card saying they missed me, and I have to collect it on Monday.
Monday.
I can't understand why the door had to be locked in the first place, and the worst part of it was that I saw him driving out the street as I opened the door. Missed him by about 4 seconds.
Now all I have is a condescending little card looking at me with the word Monday on it's face. I hate those cards. They are the bringers of hatred and death.

Also I can't understand why most of the time I get parcels delivered I miss them after the Post Office has actually closed. Why can't it stay open like everywhere else? 12:30? Really? Also it should be open on Sundays like almost everywhere else. I't not the middle ages anymore.

One more thing, why does it take 24 hours for a parcel to be returned to the Post Office about 4 miles from my house but that very same parcel can travel 5000 miles from America in under a week?

Gears of War 3

2010-04-13T12:12:00.000+01:00

In the video he says it will be released on April the 8th in America, so we'll probably get it in November 2011 or something ridiculous.
I tried to embed the original clip from some talk-show in America on NBC, but it posted the wrong video.
This will be the final Gears game, until it turns ridiculous and makes spin-offs like Halo did... I reckon that Colonel Hoffman is actually the Locust King... And Earth is the Final Halo, which must be destroyed!... That's the wrong game...

Update: The game has been announced as being released on April 5th, 2011. Yay for three days less!

How to Make an Album

2010-04-11T14:34:00.000+01:00

If you are struggling to come up with a good name for an album and a good picture to put on the cover, try these three easy steps!

Step 1. Click on a Random wikipedia article. Th title of this page will be your Band Name.

Step 2. Go to flickr.com and copy the third picture in the most recent photos for the picture of your album cover.

Step 3. Go to randomquotes.info and use the last 3 to 5 words of the quote to make the title of the album.

I got some good ones:

Twilight Theater

2010-04-10T12:02:00.001+01:00

Today I got the new Poets of the Fall CD, Twilight Theater. I ordered it a few days ago and it has come already... I was expecting it to take at least a week, considering it was coming from Finland.

Anyway, I got it from a place called Record Shop X, and I would have bought it from the POTF website but the ones they recommended sold the CD cheaper than they did, and with less postage costs.

The album is very good. I don't think it's as good as Signs of Life, but it is easily as good as Revolution Roulette, which is brilliant as well. The highlight of the album is easily War, which is also going to be in the soundtrack for possibly the best game since Serious Sam: Alan Wake. I discovered POTF by playing through Max Payne 2, in which the soundtrack was Late Goodbye from Signs of Life, and Alan Wake is being made by Remedy too, so I am expecting good things to the same standard as Valve games...

The only thing bad about this album is the name and the artwork. The name sounds cheesy and the cover is very, almost dangerously similar to a certain Mr. Aphex Twin...

Slaughterhouse on the Prairie, A Real Diamond in the Rough Pre-Order

2010-04-09T18:04:00.000+01:00

If you are reading this Blog, you are a cool dude. So cool, in fact, that you should like to buy some new Buckethead albums.

A Real Diamond in the Rough and also Slaughterhouse on the Prairie can be pre-ordered by going directly to TDRS's Bandcamp page, where you can buy the CD, and will get it sent to you as soon as it gets pressed. Until it does get repressed, you will receive a lovely FREE download of the album as consolation for it taking so long. This can be downloaded in a variety of formats, including FLAC, Ogg and High-Quality MP3s.

You can get A Real Diamond in the Rough from HERE,

and you can get Slaughterhouse on the Prairie from HERE.

Both of these are great albums, and I want them, so people need to buy a few before they'll get repressed. I know nobody is going to read this, but maybe I'll become an internet phenomenon overnight, with 10 Trillion views of this post in under 24 hours.

Thanks to Bunghole30 for making this video.

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

2010-04-09T13:53:00.000+01:00

Today, it was announced that SSHD:TSE will be definitely released on XBLA. I always thought it was anyway, but apparently it was only going to be put on the PC due to a relatively small fanbase on the 360, and not many people actually buying it. It's a real shame that ignorant fools shun SSHD as it isn't Call of Duty, but I don't care - It means I don't have to deal with them when I'm playing online.

But anyway, SSHD can also be pre-ordered now via Steam (which is coming to the Mac soon :D) and is available on the 28th of April, with the Xbox version coming out later. I don't know when exactly... Croteam hasn't told me.

And, SSHD:TSE will also have a load of new online modes, improving on the first's co-op only, and will have Deathmatches and various other gametypes, as well fantastical HD-ness.

...And now, we wait...

YouTube has turned PooTube

2010-04-02T01:46:00.000+01:00

YouTube has a new page design. I don't like it.

The Star-based ratings system has been replaced by an awful, Facebook reeking Like/Don't Like button, and videos which I 'Like/Don't Like' will be put into a list for me to review later. I don't want to have to review a list of videos that I don't like.

The Commenting system has changed too, and it is now directly under the video, along with the description, which should be on the side. Also, the name of the person who uploaded the video is now where the title of the video used to be, and it now is all squished together in one, messy little stump.

Related videos column has also changed, and is no longer a scroll-bar. It is now simply a pile of stationary videos which extend to the bottom of the page. The column which used to have the 'More from this user' label has now moved to the stump above the video, and now requires me to press a button, which animates a drop-down thing and shows me all the videos in a grid.

I have made many, many points about my slow internet, and now it takes at least 10 seconds to load this drop down menu of related videos.

Another speed-related issue is that all of these videos I have just watched are setting themselves to be in 480p resolution. I can't do that. I struggle trying to load the 360p version, never mind the 480p.

This is just like the time when the Xbox Dashboard changed from a perfectly functional, good looking, child-unfriendly and warm place to the Wii-ripoff based mess its in now.

I might even send them an email out of hatred and anger. I don't like having things changed which I can't customise myself. I don't like being forced to use a new system, because Facebook is popular, and I don't want to have to put up with bad YouTube performance because apparently the rest of the world has internets speeds which can cope with it.

Here's a help page about all the new 'features'.

Get it sorted, YouTube. When I moaned about 1Password here I got a personal reply from Dave Teare, AKA Mr. 1Password himself, so make of that customer service what you will, even though you are only a faceless corporation.

In case you haven't seen the trend, I don't like change. It never leads to a good thing.

New Desk, Poster Business

2010-03-25T21:51:00.001Z

Yes. This post is about me getting a new desk. While it may seem that my Blog posts are getting more and more boring, I should tell you that they are most certainly not. I just don't follow the traditional crowd when I'm writing... I'm too individual, man...

But anyway, I have a new desk. It almost looks like I'm a professional something.

Also, news on the Serj Tankian, Signed Poster Elect the Dead Symphony bundle thing from UKUndercurrent. My poster was supposed to be signed by Serj, but it turned out that it isn't, so as compensation, they rang me up and offered me a free Serj Takian T Shirt instead. I'd prefer a signature, but a shirt is equally as good, considering I was thinking about eventually getting one anyway.

I'll be dingling them tomorrow so I can order it.

Modern Warfare 2

2010-03-22T18:43:00.000Z

All of my dislike for Call of Duty has been based on two games: CoD 3, (yes, it really did have games before Modern Warfare!) which, incidentally turned out awfully, and Call of Duty 4, which was a good larf to begin with, but once the dreadful campaign (sans that sniper/stealth mission with the Ghilly suits) had been finished, there wasn't anything left to do. The Multiplayer was OK, but nothing compared to games where teams actually matter like Rainbow Six: Vegas.

My definitive review of CoD 4 is: Fun, fun, less-fun, repetitive, tedious. In that order.

*This 'review' will be controversial. If you don't like controversy, don't read. You suck.*

I got to have a goose at Modern Warfare 2 today. I probably had about an hour on it, and I only played it due to curiosity, thinking, it had to be a step up from CoD4, and also I played it in the interest of comedy, and the writing of this award-winning journal.

I played the first three missions on Veteran.

The training was fine. It was in Afghanistan, I shot some targets and was shown how to control stuff. I can't slap a review on this bit. The target-practice/timed assault course sucked in comparison to CoD4.

The second mission involved me shooting blindly into the air with a grenade launcher, trying to hit people on the other side of a river. I got two achievements at once here. Then some guys appeared on the bridge, so I shot them. Then something almost fun happened: I got in a Jeep and shot more stuff, only with a minigun. To sum it up, I drove about, shot stuff, got out of the Jeep, went into a school and killed some more guys, all of which died with the same animation, similar to in CoD4.

Then I met up with some other guys and the mission ended. Not the best opener to a game, I thought, but I soldiered on (I hate puns) in the interest of... boredom really.

Third mission teleported me to some frozen mountain, and I was with Captain 'Soap' MacTavish from CoD4. He isn't called Soap now, and I think he was only Private Soap in CoD4... Anyway, I had to climb up this sheet of ice using awkward controls (RT, LT, LT, RT, RT, LT, LT). I died twice doing this. First two deaths were by falling off a cliff. Whod've thunk it?

Anyway, some more badly scripted 'danger' happened, where I 'almost' fell of again, only to be rescued by Captain 'Soaperman' MacTavish (Sorry, that will be the last one).

After a while he went away and I had to go and put some explosives onto a fuel tank. That took me two tries because apparently people can see through walls when they are driving trucks.

Anyway, I planted the C4, met up with MacTavish and surprisingly, explosions ensued, and bad guys came out to see what the commotion was.

After a bit of shooting, some guys on very convenient snowmobiles came along. A fast bit happened, where I had to shoot people who were chasing me on their own snowmobiles. I seemed to stay in the air for ridiculous amounts of time after going over a jump.

Finally, a badly scripted tree fell over, and me and Captain MacTavish drove away into the sunset.

I realise that three levels of a game probably isn't the best thing to base the whole thing off, but I would expect the first levels to be good so I'd want to keep playing.

☆☆

+1 Star for having really good graphics.

+1 star for having good sound effects

-2 stars for sucking

-1 star for having a disappointing Training Level.

The End of the Xbox 360 Hard Drive Mess... A bit.

2010-03-18T18:35:00.000Z

Microsoft has announced that in the next update for the 360 they will allow people to use their own External HDD to save games, store music, videos, Arcade Games, DLC, Games on Demand and everything else that you can get off XBLA. However, there are some conditions that they need you t agree to. Firstly, you can only have up to 16GB of space that the 360 uses. Second, it needs to be set up in the right way, which means you need a few partitions of various sizes for it to save System things to.

All the information I have about it is on here, Engadget. A lovely place.

I've never seen the point of people moaning about the 360 HDD being only 120GB. I would still be quite happy with a 20GB, because all I have on there is Serious Sam, Fallout DLC, Gears 2 DLC and save games. The only reason I have games installed on there is because they load a bit faster. I don't really care about it though if I only had a 20GB.

Anyway, right now I'm downloading the Splinter Cell: Conviction demo. It was released today, and I expect to get it in the 'near future'. Hopefully before it actually comes out.

The Definitive Review of 'Taken'

2010-03-10T21:48:00.000Z

It is very good. As good as The Bourne Identity, better than any James Bond film.

Just get it seen.

If you want to sign up to LoveFilm, clicky on the button I made on the right for some extra sign-up goodies (a free month of subscription, £20 of vouchers or something like that) because it'll think I've recommended a friend.

☆☆☆☆☆

I repeat: Very good.

Welcome Back, me!

2010-03-06T16:22:00.000Z

It's been quite a while since I posted last, but there is a really valid reason for that: I've been revelling in the joy of faster, more reliable, beautiful, smoother tubes. I have been caught up in trying to hunt down all lost information that I missed out on during those dark times when I was tubeless.

Anyway, the main reason for this sudden re-arrival is I have news on the guitar front. Remember how I got that lovely Vox VT15 amp a while back? Yeah, well I had to take it back to the shop because it didn't do what I told it to do, and it got all uppity when being told to be quiet. So, ampless and tubeless, I suffered. Unable to cry me tears over the internet, I had to weep while using Ye Olde Yamaha to make my noises with. (It's called a Yamaha GA-10. It actually stands for 'Guitar Amp - 10 Watts'. )

I looked at a few other amps; I wanted one that had a few effects built in, and also wasn't rubbish. I have been told to avoid Line 6 amps at all cost, so that really left me with two real options: Peavey Vypyr 15 and Orange Crush 20LDX.

Cutting to the chase, today I got me a new shiny Orange. I'm very impressed by it, and from what I heard of the Peavey when I tried it in Guitarguitar the other week it sounds a lot more 'tubey' despite no tubes being in there. (I sound like I know what I'm talking about... I don't really.)

So that's that.

In other news, I've been playing a lot of Serious Sam. I'm now going through on Serious difficulty, and by the time I've finished that The Second Encounter will be unleashed. Which means Corridor Of Death all over again!

Here's a demo of my new amp:

Day 19, Sunday 31st January (< 1 Day to Go (until Serious Sam))

2010-02-24T18:42:00.002Z

Well, here it is. The End of the Line. New consequence machine, burn through all your gasoline, asylum overtime, never mind… The connection will happen between the two midnights. Then, tomorrow, the new router will turn up, and when I come in I will connect and enter the up-to-date world again. I can scavenge the depths of the Internet for hidden Buckethead-related gems, research the new iPad, heck my emails, buy CDs… Most importantly, have a look and think about LoveFilm accounts. My weekend has made me want to see all these films that I have heard are good, but might not be ten years old yet. DVDs are so expensive and Digital Downloads are certainly not the way forward. Not until everywhere is capable of it. You got that, Gordon? Upgrade all the pipelines first and then enjoy your HD YouTube. Let me enjoy HQ YouTube and the iPlayer before you say that your Internet needs upgrading. Its things like this that makes me wonder why Communism is generally considered on the same level as Nazism. In theory it sounds like a great idea, so why didn’t it work? If everyone was equal, and nobody had something better than anyone else, why is that a bad thing? Unless the government owns stuff that you have actually bought on your equal-wages, such as TVs, CDs, computers etc., in which case I can see it being a bad thing.

I’m going to start my own country, with it’s own Laws. The Republic of ~~Dave~~ Alex. The law will be based on Communism, but with adjustments accordingly. The new national currency will be Doubloons. There will be no rubbish on our TV, Radio or newspapers. Everyone will use Macs, and only Microsoft-based items approved by me personally will be allowed in. The Daily Mail will be outlawed and held in the same basket as the KKK, Charvs will be banished until they reform or die. Criminals will be treated ‘an eye-for-an-eye’, where if somebody beats another person with a stick, the offender will be beaten with a stick in the same manner. Public humiliation will replace ASBOs, where the offenders will be spanked by The Chuckle Brothers and Keith Chegwin on national TV. National Laws will be decided and voted upon by real people, not socially-blind politicians, and there will be an uprising against various existing laws implemented by the aforementioned. There will be no more pollution, no more car exhausts or ocean spillage… From now on we will travel in tubes! Get the scientists working on the tube technology immediately. Also, there will be no more money wasted on silly films for silly people. Michael Bay will be exiled, and Peter Jackson, Wes Anderson and Guillermo Del Toro will be hailed as geniuses. More money will be spent on real causes: Uncovering the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle, UFOs, Teleportation and curing incurable diseases and such. 5% of all remaining Tax money will go to the TDRS Donation page, and in return, Buckethead must tour “The Republic” at least once per year. VAT and the BBC License Fee will be abolished. Ginger beer must be made available in every drinking establishment by law, and any breaking of this law without viable reason will be punishable by Public Humiliation on National TV, and said drinking establishment painted pink. Our national flag will be a flannel, and each time it is put up it must be soaked it hot water beforehand. Finally, the NHS will be global, funded by every single tax-paying person on the planet.

I might submit this proposal to Number 10. I’ll be able to email it directly to numer10.com tomorrow. Gordon will be so blown away by it that he will instantly resign and grant me the role of PM without a second’s thought.

So that’s it. This is possibly the last entry in this diary of my journey into the depths of technology. There will be a final update tomorrow detailing the new Internet setup, speed tests, reliability… all the usual dull, nerdy business. And then it’s back to normal. Hurled back into the 21^st Century so fast it will cause mental whiplash, like Japanese Tourists visiting Paris.

Day 18, Saturday 30th January (1 Day to Go (until Serious Sam))

2010-02-24T18:42:00.001Z

One. Day. Left. I never thought I would make it this far with my mind intact. Now that I have no revision to be doing, I can basically play on the Xbox all day – Which I did. I played a bit of Fallout 3 and started ‘Into the Pitt’, which will have to wait to be finished because I then started on Dead Rising again, aiming to get two achievements: Transmissionary, where I need to answer all calls from Otis, and also get 50 Survivors out of the Mall. I’m almost half way through it now on the second day. I thought about trying to get the Indoorsman/Outdoorsman achievements to but I couldn’t be bothered to just leave the Xbox on while I stand in the Security Room or on the roof.

I have had nothing else to do today, so after a few hours I was getting a bit bored of zombie slaughtering, so I turned it off and decided to watch a film.

After a bit of deliberation, I decided to watch Hallam Foe, which I had never seen but it had been sitting downstairs for ages. Turns out it is actually really good, if not a bit strange. Not to ruin the ending, but afterwards I was left with a sense of ‘What just happened?’ similar to after I watched Fight Club, Pulp Fiction and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for the first time. After that finished it was about 8:30, so I watched Seven. I hadn’t seen that either, and it had also been sitting there since forever. I remember getting Seven, actually, and on the same day we also got Terminator 2, all of the Wild, The Mask and something else when we bought the first DVD player ever. It must have been a package or something. Anyway, I thought Seven was absolutely fantastic. I can’t believe that I had missed out on it for so long. This always seems to happen: I manage to avoid seeing great films until they are more than ten years old. Seven reminded me about Condemned (I love Condemned, just in case you didn’t know or I hadn’t mentioned it before), but that might have only been because it was about serial killers and CSI type stuff, but even so, I really enjoyed it. What a co-inky-dink that just the other day I thought about my Serial Killer nickname, and now I watch a whole film dedicated to serial killers…

I then started watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which I got 50 minutes into and was so bored I had to turn it off. The last time I did hat with a film was 10,000 BC, which was a pile as well.

Then I floated about on TV for a while, I can’t remember what I watched but it was something ridiculous like a bad copy of ReBrand or similar. Then I watched an episode of Peep Show and eventually went to bed after I got bored of that as well. While sleeping I leveled up and upgraded my Endurance and Willpower.

Day 17, Friday 29th January (2 Days to Go (until Serious Sam))

2010-02-24T18:41:00.001Z

Some good news on the old Intertubes front! I turned on my computer just now and lo and behold, two new networks have been detected! I have picked up two more networks under the names of BTFON and BTHomeHub. This could be one of two things: Somebody else has got a BT router today, and now I can see it, and it isn’t encrypted, or BT have connected our wires so we have technically got the internet, but it can’t be used because we don’t have the HomeHub thing (the one with the phone with a router stuck on the back). This means, we might, might have some tubeage before Monday. If the router turns up tomorrow in the post/delivery, I can get it plugged in and hopefully connect to some kind of network. Good times. Unfortunately, the HomeHub probably won’t arrive until Monday, when it’s supposed to. I don’t know why I would have two new connections. One for the broadband (which I’m assuming it the BTHomeHub one) but why is the BTFON one there? Like I said, it’s probably somebody else getting a new BT router.

Ahead of me lies the last great stretch, the calm before the storm, The Grand Cathedral, The Green Mile, The Long Road to Ruin, The Final Countdown, The Hall of Scalding Vats… In 48 hours time I will be living in the 21^st Century again. On Monday I’ll appear in a ball of electricity, scare a trucker and begin hunting for John Connor before the T2000 Model can get to him.

These final few hours is going to be the hardest part. The fact that I can almost taste my connectivity isn’t making anything better. I can see myself going insane this weekend. I’ll visit the funhouse and experience a Linear Sequence of Scares, start chanting lines from Address Unknown and consider myself to be on the same path of righteousness as Agent Thomas. We are doing the world a service! Serial killers must be killed in the same way as their victims! ‘This looks like the work of a guy we’ve been calling ‘The Matchmaker’… Strangles young women violently and then places them in grisly tableaux with male department store mannequins.’ << That was word perfect, yo.

I thunk a thought today about Serial Killers: If I was going to become a Serial Killer, what would I like to be known as? Jack the Ripper is taken, and my name isn’t even Jack, so that one’s a no. The Matchmaker is taken and was used in the above reference… So I thought about how I would do my killing and try to get a name from that. The best method I could think of, without getting caught, would be to stab people with an icicle. By the time anyone found the body, there wouldn’t be a murder weapon because it would have melted, and there would be no fingerprints because it’s just a puddle now. My nickname would be ‘The Ici-killer’™ – See what I did there?!

I can see no flaw in this plan whatsoever, unless I was busy doing bad murders in Alaska or Iceland or something, in which case I might get caught because it wouldn’t melt.

To provide my icicles in the summer I could make an icicle shaped mold from a block of polystyrene or clay and put it in the freezer. I would have to be quick, though, because otherwise it might melt before I get to my victim, unless I carry some Liquid Nitrogen with me… This murdering business is becoming a bit of a farce.

I also watched The Darjeeling Limited, which is a great film, so I recommend gooseying that. One thing to remember, though, when Adrian Brody’s character (I forget his name) is running for the train in the beginning, you can see that behind him is just desert, but once he is actually on the train you can see that it is in a station, surrounded by other trains and a fence.

Day 16, Thursday 28th January (3 Days to Go (until Serious Sam))

2010-02-24T18:40:00.000Z

Today is much lighter than yesterday because I got my Theory of a Deadman CD in the post – a whole 5 weeks ahead of schedule. It is the Special Edition, which I didn’t know, so I got a bonus DVD and a load of extra tracks. I haven’t listened to them yet, but on the DVD are all of their videos up to now and a few have ‘Making of…’ type things on them. It has all their videos from the other albums too so it also includes Santa Monica (probably my favourite song after Witches on the Heath) and that absolutely disgusting, despicable Hate My Life. I can’t stand that song. It is as bad as Rockstar by Nickelback, which is the straw that broke the camels back in terms of them losing all credibility and firmly placing them in the ‘pop-rock/appealing-only-to-12-year-olds’ category.

I have also gathered a few CDs from down stairs from my Mam and Dad’s collections, so now I have a few more albums I need to listen to. I got The Four Tops: The Ultimate Collection (I’ve seen The Four Tops when I was in Spain. I can’t remember it because I was only about 4, but that isn’t the point), Eric Clapton: Unplugged, Jump Back by the Rolling Stones (It’s a best-of CD, so I’m expecting it to be better than any other of their albums), The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac (again, a best-of) and The Simon and Garfunkel Collection, which is a 5 CD and 1 DVD set in a nice little box. I already have Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits so I’ll have to avoid tracks from there when slapping them onto iTunes. I’ll start listening to those today, and I’ll do them in chronological order because I’m that sad, starting with Wednesday Morning, 3 AM from 19/10/1964. Another little discovery is that Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme was released on my birthday, 10^th of October, in 1966. Co-inky-dink, no?

As from what I said yesterday, the DVD I decided to watch was none of the above. I watched Russell Brand: Scandalous live at the O2 that I got for Christmas but hadn’t watched because went to see him on that tour. It annoyed me that some of the things I thought were just stupid people turned out to be scripted, like the loudly-laughing woman, and some people standing up and saying they had left something on the stage but hadn’t. Damn you, Russell for tricking me! Damn you, Guillotine! Your Hand is useless now! It’s never going to work again!

Day 15, Wednesday 27th January (4 Days to Go (until Serious Sam))

2010-02-24T18:38:00.000Z

Today is rubbish. It’s Wednesday. The worst day of the week, soured further by the fact that it is only half way through a depressing sequence of days, along with the grim realisation that January has 31 days. Why can’t it only have 30? January’s rubbish, so why would anyone want to make it longer? Again, all blame falls on that idiot Gregory who designed the calendar. Its clear the Chinese have the right year layout. They are miles ahead of us in terms of technology, so maybe that’s because Gregory wasn’t in charge of their design. People have more sensible times to do stuff. I wish death upon Gregory and his stupid months.

I have also discovered today that Buckethead, again, has snidely taken stuff from one album to make a song on another under a different name. This time he has used the Slaughter Zone Entrance/Exit from Bucketheadland 2 in Track 14, The Ravines of Falsehood, from the Cuckoo Clocks of Hell. It feels like he’s getting lazy. Obviously it’s impossible to remember all of your individual tracks after 70-something albums, but this is just silly.

I’m starting to enjoy the Cuckoo Clocks of Hell. It’s much better than Funbus.

I need something good to happen. Nothing has happened this week. I might lighten up today by watching a DVD. Not even Serious Sam can beat a good DVD when one is needed. I might watch The Devil’s Backbone or Pan’s Labyrinth, or maybe something a bit ‘deeper’ like The Darjeeling Limited or Rain Man. The Darjeeling Limited seems like the best option, but then again, I might want to watch Donnie Darko by then. I think that’s one of my favorites along with the LOTR Trilogy. (Extended and special edition, of course.

Day 14, Tuesday 26th January (5 Days to Go (until Serious Sam))

2010-02-12T19:42:00.000Z

I gots me lots of news today! Things are on the up! The BT guy came over to check our already installed pipeage to make sure we could handle the new router. Surprisingly, we could. Anyway, he came in and said “Let me have a Binge” I give that girl you know, a bingin’ til’ she twitches… Oh Yeah! Gotta get me on a binge and grab. That’s the one for me, I must say, she keeps lookin’ walkin’ talkin’ smilin’ my way, oh yeah, gotta give that girl a binge and grab.

Then he checked the connection and said: ‘OK... That’ll be fine’. And pretty much just left. At least I’m safe in the knowledge that my connection will be returned as soon as it can be, and there shouldn’t be any more stupid ‘mistakes’. Why doesn’t the Daily Mail pounce on that one? Mistakes made by silly companies. I can see it now: ‘PUBLIC OUTRAGE AS //Company X// HATES IT’S BRITISH CUSTOMERS, SUPPORTS CANNIBALISM AND DIABOLICAL MP EXPENSES’. I despise the Daily Mail. It’s such a ridiculous paper, and possibly the closest thing Britain has to a legal KKK. I don’t know how they are allowed to actually print such lies without any consequence. There’s so much hate in the Daily mail that it should be printed in the roof of a barn on Apple Seed Orchard and cause the vengeful shooting of Leland Vanhorn when he’s in the boot of Malcolm Vanhorn’s car. (ß That was a reference. I haven’t given clues for any others, but this one is exceptionally good. I’ll even put the keywords in bold. Look it up.)

I have had some silly problems with my iPod today. When I plugged it into the USB connector it would sync as usual, but then it wouldn’t actually charge at all. It would have that silly plug symbol to say it was fully charged but after I ejected it the battery would still be the way it was before, no matter how long it was plugged in for. First I tried a different connector cable. That made no difference. Then I thought about changing the USB port it was plugged into on my Hub thing, which also made no difference, so I plugged it directly into the back of the computer, which fixed it. I then investigated the USB hub, and plugged my mouse and keyboard into it. The mouse moved as normal but couldn’t click, and my keyboard couldn’t type numbers or symbols. So I put that back where it was and now everything is good again, except I now don’t have a printer connected unless I change some plugs on the back. At the moment I have the iPod cable, the USB Hard Drive and my mouse and keyboard, with the extra hub and printer just dangling there without a purpose.

Criticism 1 to Apple: The iMac is a fantastic gadget, but why did you go cheap on the USB sockets? Everyone uses at least three, don’t they? Two of those could be filled by the Mouse and keyboard that you provide, and I know that on the new iMacs there is the astronomical number of four USB ports, but I reckon five is a nice enough number, unless you bring FireWire back to kill USB. Make it so, Mighty One.

Day 13, Monday 25th January (6 Days to Go)

2010-02-12T19:40:00.000Z

Nothing has happened today. It has been pretty dull and boring, and there has been nothing of particular noteworthiness. I haven’t even had a chance to check my emails today; I dread to think what a mess that inbox will look like by tomorrow. Probably just like it did a while ago: like war-torn Russia. Although, now that I have finished all of my exams for the moment, I can stop doing so much revision, and possibly even play a bit of Far Cry 2, maybe even do something crazy like finish it. Whod’ve thunk it?

I like Far Cry 2, despite it’s somewhat negative reception. At first I thought it was a bit boring and far too big, especially as there was no ‘fast travel’ option and no ‘save anywhere’ feature, but I just learned to deal with them. You don’t need a save anywhere feature unless you suck at it and keep getting killed, but even if you do, you can get your Buddy to help you when you get killed. You don’t really need a fast travel option either because if you plan ahead you can get pretty much everywhere quickly enough. You just need to look at the map and pick the most direct route, which will include boats, buses and boats. Don’t bother with following roads; just go ‘as the crow flies’ or as close to that as you can. You can walk, run, and crawl through the paths, trails, tunnels, tombs, bushes, woods, alleys, streets and ditches. You can travel the park in a spiral. Some would choose to wander, stumble, roll, ramble or rampage… It’s harder when you’re gagged, tied or blindfolded, but how often could that happen?

I also saw a good advert today. It was for Specsavers and it had some farmer/yokel/West-Country cider type of guy wearing Aviator sunglasses, and he was moaning bout some UFOs floating around and annoying him. It was set out like a documentary on Channel 4 probably named something ridiculous like UFOs: Should they have gone to Specsavers? Silly business. Anyway, he was talking about how they keep coming down and ruining his fields and how he felt like they were bullying him. In the end it zoomed out and showed you that they had been making crop circles saying ‘Should’ve gone to Specsavers’. It was better the first time.

‘Kettle’s boiled, Ted. Should we put it on and let it boil again?’

‘No. I liked it best the first time.’

I might change the title of the next set of diaries, maybe to something that shows more urgency, like instead of looking at it like 6 Days until I get my internet back, but more like 6 Days until I get SSHD. This is the worst thing that’s happened to anyone, ever. I have irreparable emotional damage. BT, prepare for that lawsuit and some anthrax-ridden mail to come through your dirty little letterbox in the next few days.

Day 12, Sunday 24th January (7 Days to Go)

2010-02-10T20:04:00.000Z

Here I am, standing on the brink of existence, with little but one week to go until I resume my day-to-day life, and everything returns to normal. There won’t be any more scuttling around trying to plan ahead, for there will be constant connectivity, and I will be able to check up on pretty much anything, anyone, anytime, and it will be brilliant, for I am the Internet Wizard.

But that particular premonition is still seven long days away, 0.019164956 years, 168 hours, 10,080 minutes, 604,800 seconds. If you are really sad it could also be 6.048E14 Nanoseconds (I don’t know what the ‘E’ means here, but either way it’s a stupidly big number). [Those stats are courtesy of Apple’s Unit Converter Dashboard Widget]

Today I am crushed. My hopes and dreams shattered like a broken mirror. As you piece it together, your image keeps shifting, and you change with it. It could destroy you, drive you mad. It could set you free. I can’t play SSHD until my connection returns, next week. I took my entire Xbox to ‘that pervert’s house’ and got everything connected, and I was allowed to play it as though nothing had happened. All I had to do is connect to XBL. I hate this. I was convinced that I could play all other XBL Arcade games offline. I’m pretty certain I have played Marble Blast Ultra offline before. Ridiculous. I hate Microsoft. I also hate DRM, slow Internet, clogged tubes and Pop Music.

I’m feeling some pasta today. I’m thinking of maybe Tomato and Chili. I have to take my days in little chunks in order so I can slowly begin to function without any Internet. It is a painful task, requiring lots of careful planning and thought – Both of which I have none of.

Day 11, Saturday 23rd January (8 Days to Go)

2010-02-10T19:57:00.002Z

I slept a lot today. Trying to escape the light of day like some kind of Vampire tied to a chair on the beach while the sun comes up. I have also received a new shipment of Tropicana Orange Juice from Asda. It almost makes up for the lack of Internet, almost.

To fill today I have been playing on Serious Sam again, on the last level, The Grand Cathedral. I have got a lot worse on it since I last played it, and its like its much harder even on Normal. Before I could finish the game on SERIOUS difficulty without ever letting my health get below 50 but now I get killed quite a bit. I must have been such a nerd…

I also installed Painkiller again. I forgot how good it was to just kill endless monsters and never seem to run out of ammo. It’s basically just the same as Serious Sam but less serious. Nothing is seriouser than Sam, obviously.

I put my Xbox on because I felt like some nice offline Fable II, and the Xbox got confused because without any connection, the date just resets to 2005 – Three years before Fable II actually came out. It didn’t know what was happening. Oh, the pus! The pain! The Black Voodoo! The wet jigsaw puzzle! For days I was in a trance, but when I came to, there it was! A thumb! A thumb of gigantic proportions, like a fleshy maraca! I thought it might give me minus-rent money but it didn’t do anything. Strange business. I thought I could set the date on the Xbox to the year 2050 and then see how much money I would get then, but I didn’t because I couldn’t be bothered to navigate the dreadful menus and also I have so much money on Fable anyway it would kind of be pointless considering I’m never, ever going to run out.

Day 10, Friday 22nd January (9 Days to Go)

2010-02-10T19:57:00.001Z

Finally, I have survived up until the single figures of my epic battle using my one-way ticket to Hell and Back. 9 Days. Wow. So it will be a Sunday when my tubes are unblocked and I can bask in the light of joy. Why not a Friday so I can bask for 48 non-stop hours straight? Damn you, Gregory! I knew we should have hired a different guy to take care of calendars!

Some good news for today, though, is that Cuckoo Clocks of Hell arrived, five days before it was supposed to. Apparently it has been sent from Amazon.de in Germany but I’m not sure why because I ordered it from UK Amazon. Maybe they ran out of packets with English writing on them so they used German ones that they found in a box in the warehouse. I’m listening to it now, and its on track 10 of 17, Beaten With Sledges. So far it is pretty loud and looks like Buckethead just made as much fast, loud noises he could in the time it took for his backing track to run out. It’s going to take a few listens, but I don’t think it will be as good as Inbred Mountain or Pepper’s Ghost. Note: In the time taken to write this, Beaten With Sledges has turned out to be great. So has track 11, Woods of Suicides.

This album also has Spokes for the Wheel of Torment, which has a fan made video on YouTube, which is surprisingly good, and is based on a painting called ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ by some geezer called Hieronymus Bosch. I recommend having a Ghandi of both the painting and the video.

I now face the second of three dark, 48 hour long completely disconnected weekend. This time I don’t have an excuse to fidget with a new amp, so it might be a big one.

I’m going to watch Shaun of the Dead now. I have found that its much better to watch DVDs on the Xbox while not connected to Live because you don’t get those stupid notifications bleep-blooping all over my film, usually during the suspenseful bits. I know how to disable them but I can’t be bothered. The menu is so clunky I’d rather not have to deal with the stress of flicking through the menus. Sounds like a distant memory from my Windows days… I’m so glad I escaped that black hole. They reckon that Black Holes have so much gravitational pull that not even light can get in or out, hence why they’re black. But the light of Apple, later to be known as the Light of Joy, penetrated this particular Black Hole. The Microsoft-made Black Hole was rubbish, just like Windows. I went there.

Day 9, Thursday 21st January (10 Days to Go)

2010-02-10T19:55:00.000Z

Today has been pretty dull. I haven’t done much at all today concerning my battle with sanity. I finished Serious Sam: The Second Encounter on the computer today. I have played through on Normal so I can get it done quickly because all I wanted was the last level, The Grand Cathedral. I played that level on SERIOUS. Fun times.

I have also been trying to get good settings on my amp to make it sound similar to what Buckethead uses on Big Sur Moon. After a while of fidgeting, I found something similar, but now I need to learn to play it.

I also tried to work out the music from the final boss battle on SS: TSE. That factoid is very sad, and it may not reach it to the Blog when this gets posted. I wish I had Serious Sam HD… It would make my life complete for the moment, unless SSHD: TSE comes out, which hopefully it will, very soon. Come on, Croteam. Make it so!

Please?

Day 8, Wednesday 20th January, (11 Days to Go)

2010-02-08T20:00:00.000Z

A lot of stuff happened today. I’ll start with the most important: Serious Sam. I phone up the Xbox guys and had to talk to one of those silly automated things that can’t understand me, so I had to speak with an American accent for it to understand what I want. Stupid. Then, after about 10 minutes of ‘I didn’t catch that. Can you repeat that please?’ I finally got through to some guy with an accent I couldn’t even understand. Touché, Microsoft. So I finally managed to get the ‘agent’ on the phone to understand that I don’t actually have the Internet, but still managed to download an Arcade game and have a Live Profile. I kept telling him that I took it to my friend’s house and used his Internet and his Xbox. This charade took about 7 minutes. He then said: “You need to transfer the license to your Xbox”. I need to go to Xbox.com then search for Transfer Licence article, and it will let me put both Xbox’s serial numbers in and then it should work, and update my console when connected to XBL next. But I can’t connect to Xbox Live. I kept telling him, but he couldn’t understand that some people really don’t have the Internet at their house, and he kept saying stuff like “Yes, but you downloaded it so you must be connected”. The Xbox Helpline is very good service, but there’s some pretty dim people working there. Also, the hold music is dreadful. “Why do Nuns always have such terrible hold music? If I hear ‘Avé Maria’ one more time I’m going to kill something”

So, by the look of it, I need to Transfer the Licence then connect to Xbox Live. This is getting silly. I might have to take my actual Xbox console to the Pervert’s house, unless I wait until February, which I don’t want to do because I don’t know if the Licence business expires or whatever... Best not to risk it. On the Plus Side of today, the Trial Game of SSHD is fantastic. It’s going to take some serious persuasion to make me want to buy CoD: MW2 now.

In other news, both of my CDs have been posted from their respective warehouse things. Amazon has sent out the Cuckoo Clocks of Hell, so that will be here within the next 5 days. Also, The Omega Order has despatched my Theory of a Deadman Scars & Souvenirs CD with Signed Artbook. I’ll see that in 3-8 weeks. I’ve already discussed my shame in buying that CD, and the reasons why I did so a few days ago. I’m not going to do it again.

Now I’m going to kill some hideous Trial Monsters on Serious Sam. I have also installed Serious Sam: The Second Encounter on my Dad’s computer. I have all the cheats in because I want to get through it quickly so I can play the Grand Cathedral level. That’s the best bit, and the music is the soundtrack to my childhood. Its best to play on SERIOUS (Are you serious?) difficulty, MENTAL is too hard, but Serious is nice. I can’t deal with flashing monsters.

Life would be so much easier if I had some tubes… Internet should be free for all, so none of this silly business could happen. Gordon, if you read this, sort it out. In Finland it’s a human right to have broadband. You don’t want to be known as a Dictator, do you? Nobody likes a selfish Dictator. I can easily expose you as a member of the Oro. I’m sure the Daily Mail will love that scandal. Some very influential people are in the Oro. I remember when the President got handed a piece of paper during a speech saying ‘The Remedy is among us!’ and had a heart attack. You don’t want that, do you Gordon?

Day 7, Tuesday, 19th January (12 Days to Go)

2010-02-07T16:33:00.002Z

That ‘Mysterious Parcel’ that arrived yesterday was in fact the TakTalk router. I’ve already had a goosey at it even though I cant use it, and it is actually made by D-Link, which makes TalkTalk a bunch of liars because they said it would be made by a company called ‘Huawai’, which from their website, looked like a small Chinese eBay company who make iPod cases and sell them for £0.01.

I checked my emails today at school. It is a sorry place, like war-torn Russia, with women in capes escaping to Gondor. I had quite a few emails, a lot of which I couldn’t actually see because they are made from pictures which are apparently offensive so they have got a stupid ‘YOU HAVE BEEN PROTECTED’ banner along with a badly cut-out Angel of the North. I don’t want to be protected from my own emails. Stop protecting me, Learning Network. I ran the risk of my entire life being hijacked by the shady organisation known as the ‘Technicians’. Like Fontaine, they’re ‘as crooked as a dog’s hind leg’. All day, every day they just sit there, touching wires and disabling cameras so they can get into Casino Vaults. The problem is that they always forget to include the logo on the floor, but by then its too late and they have their money. Danny is a happy guy those days.

It’s a shame they can’t fix a Dell. Oh, wait, they’re broken as soon as they come out the factory. A Har! A Hardilly Har! I went there.

I also am sick of the head of Sixth Form, constantly handing out excuses for why he is ‘too busy to talk’, ‘battling with the cold’ or he’s ‘in a meeting’. The last excuse was said while he was sitting in his box, on his own.

While listening to my daily slice/fix of Buckethead, I have discovered that Botnus from Enter the Chicken is very similar to Magua’s Scalp from Pepper’s Ghost. Not exactly the same, but similar enough to be a copyright violation if they were two separate artists. Buckethead, you sly kitten. He has been known to remake songs under different names in order to ‘fill’ an album, like on Colma in 1998 when he reused Danyel and the backing track to General Butterfly from1997’s Pieces collaboration with Brain, and he reused Hook and Pole Gang from Bucketheadland and named it Gorey Head Stump 2006: The Pageant of the Slunks on Crime Slunk Scene. The odd thing was, though, he had a track called Gory Head Stump on Bucketheadland as well. I don’t know what was going on there.

I’m listening to the extended Forgotten Trail from Albino Slug, another one of my favourites. I’m going to make a list of the top however-many Buckethead tracks. Although, I might not because it’s like all those other projects I try to do. And somebody’s law states that ‘Work expands to fill the time its allowed’, meaning that if you give someone 5 days to do something it will take them 5 days, but if you give them the same task but only allow them 2 days they will still get it done in time. Strange, innit?

I went to ‘the local pervert’s house’ to download SSHD. Yay. It’s a shame that now I don’t have Live at home, it won’t let me play it and says that it’s only a trial version, despite it having charged me the 1200 Points. I’ll ring the Xbox people tomorrow and moan.

Day 6, Monday, 18th January (13 Days to Go)

2010-02-07T16:33:00.001Z

A mysterious package got delivered today. Unfortunately, nobody was in the house to get it, so we got one of those little red cards through he door. Thos cards annoy me so much. Or rather, the Post Office’s rules do. The time on the back of the card was 2:14 this afternoon – The problem with that is that the post office closes at 12:30. How am I possibly supposed to collect what I missed if it was not delivered until the Post Office is closed? Stupid. And also I have to wait 24 hours to get it before I can pick it up. That’s another stupid rule. How can something potentially get from America to my house in a week take 24 house to go 10 miles to the Post Office?

This parcel was send by Royal Mail Recorded, so it is probably a router from TalkTalk, but the current options are as follows:

1. The TalkTalk Router that they forgot to order but then ordered when we were phoning them last week.

2. The BT Router that is supposed to come on the 1^st of February. This is the most unlikely option.

3. My Theory of a Deadman Scars & Souvenirs CD. I ordered this last week but it is from America and is supposed to take 3-8 weeks. I paid $8 for that postage, and it still takes up to 8 weeks. I pay $6 from Travis and it takes 2 weeks at the most. I wouldn’t have bought that CD normally because it is seriously god-awful, but since it was $16 and I got a free signed artbook, I thought it was worth them shame of owning it. After all, the previous albums were really good… then they turned to post-Rockstar Nickelback/Busted Pop-Rock rubbish. I hate ‘Pop-anything’, especially awful pop-rock.

So that’s that parcel analysed. Next!

I have been giving Enter the Chicken a lot of ear-hole time lately. I have tried to enjoy Funbus, but it is seriously ridiculous. There is no way that that kind of music is supposed to be taken seriously. It sounds like a guy with a throat infection angrily whispering words. The worst part of it is that at 0:07 he literally just makes a ‘Naaaaaaa’ sound like he needed to fill a gap but ran out of words. Apart from Funbus, Enter the Chicken looks good to be one of the better Buckethead albums recently. Obviously it won’t match up to the classics like the Bucketheadland(s) and Giant Robot, but it’s good in comparison to his more recent adventures like Forensic Follies and Needle in a Slunk Stack. I’m not feeling the chop-up stuff.

Serj Tankian is a good guy. Everything he does is good (except Serart, but that was in that dark period just after System of a Down went on their permanent ‘hiatus’), and Elect the Dead is fantabulous. So much so that I bought it twice: Once was the regular version and the second was the special edition red version with the bonus booklet and disc. (It was £4.99. That is a dealio.) I can’t wait for the next album. Or a follow-up to Enter the Chicken.

Another thing that annoys me is the rumoured Slash and Friends album. Was this a rumour name or something done to annoy Buckethead people? If it was called Slash and Friends it would look like a childish attempt at him saying something like ‘I’m more Guns N Roses than you! I wasn’t blamed for bad album sales because I’m too weird!’

Surely he can think of something more original? Buckethead kind of suits it because he’s odd. Slash doesn’t usually go for the ‘oddball’ look. I doubt it will actually happen. It was probably started by the Buckethead-haters to annoy people like me. It worked.

This Internet business is starting to take its toll on me. Its sapping my strength and energy, and I can’t do anything. What did people do before the Internet and Xboxes and computers? Play board games? It sounds like a mess of society. That’s why things like teleportation never got done. All the brains of the world were so concentrated on inventing ‘something that is like a series of tubes carrying stuff to everyone’s TV…’ If they had invented the Internet instead of floating stuff up to the moon in 1969 we would have been teleporting all over the shop by now. I wouldn’t have to wait 3-8 weeks for a CD. It could just get it zipped to my house in 5 minutes, or I could zip myself down to the actual Studio and buy it from Travis personally and demand a signature from Buckethead. “I know he’s in there, Travis. He practically lives here.’’

You nerds are all working on the wrong things. Get my internet sorted, then teleportation, then you can float stuff up to Mars when you can ask yourself: ‘What else have we got?’

While making silly noses on my new amp, I have snapped the small E String on my Telecaster, known as Klaus to his friends. I can’t even look for new strings online. Sucks.

Day 5, Sunday 17th January (14 Days to Go)

2010-02-05T20:24:00.000Z

I can’t believe the news today. I can’t close my eyes and make it go away. How long, how long must we sing this song?

Yes. It is Sunday. The end is nigh on my darkened and cold weekend in the pit of disconnection. Today was a lazy day. I got up late, pottered around, fidgeted with my new amp and drank quite a lot of Tropicana. I’m probably going to end up as a block of Vitamin C by the end of this ‘experiment’. From today’s schedule it would appear that Tropicana consumption has replaced internet browsing, but I can see tat soon I will have had too much of it, and won’t like it any more, which would be a shame. I reckon there’s one or two more glasses left in the carton. I’m going to have to ration them out for a bit. It’s a good thing that they are currently on special offer at Asda for 2L for £2 or something like that. I’ll have to make a trip there and stock up in case there is a sudden unannounced Nuclear War.

I got the chance to use my next-door neighbour’s Internet today because I had to book some University applicant open days. Despite the fact that it was on a Dell, the sweet taste of World Wide Loveliness came at me like a hot flannel. Luckily, his laptop had Safari for Windows on, so I used that instead of Internet Explorer. This made me as happy as you can be whilst using a Dell.

I also, got a bit distracted while doing this, as I had to sign up my email address to log in and get all the features of Northumbria, I think it was, and while waiting for the confirmation email to come through I floated over to Amazon and might have accidentally bought a little bit of Buckethead… It was the Cuckoo Clocks of Hell. £9, new and with free ‘Super Saver’ postage. (I would have bought it before the 1^st of February anyway because I’ve been eyeballing it for a while, so I might as well take advantage of any tubespace I can while I have the chance.)

Look forward to that. I’ll keep checking my emails at school for when it gets posted. I would have bought it from school using the Internet there, but I don’t trust the IT Technicians… They spend all their time in a tiny cupboard filled with keys, and have silly jeweller’s glasses on making endless keys, hoping to find the right one for every door in the world. But obviously, it is understandable that I risk my bank details and identity fraud when you see the original Bucketheadland brand new in cellophane for £14. That’s worth the risk. See the post(s) I wrote about it and how I now own one of the Buckethead equivalents of the Holy Grail.

I have also played/witnessed/experienced the Serious Sam HD Trail Game on the local pervert’s Xbox. He invited me into his house to play it on the condition that I gave him my old guitar amp. I will take my Hard Drive round there sometime and get the full thing so I can play it at my house while drinking lovely ginger beer.

The formula for ‘Smoo’

Ginger Beer + Serious Sam HD = (A Great Day) + (Teed³)

I doubt that I will ever get round to fully ‘polishing’ this series of articles detailing my holiday in the abyss. By that I mean I probably won’t get the chance/am too lazy to link to the things I reference, masterfully disguised as regular speech. Of course I speak in rhymes and poetic verse and quotations, for “Now I am become Death; The Destroyer of Worlds”, which would be a pretty chilling thing to have creeping into your periph after seeing the first atomic bomb explosion.

Day 4, Saturday January 16th (15 Days to Go)

2010-02-04T16:02:00.000Z

The counting down of days is becoming tedious. Tedious Medious. I feel like its October 1988 and my small town is about to witness the end of the world. Is it wrong to check Grandma Death’s mail?

I floated over to Newcastle today and got myself a shiny new amp. Mmm. Lots of buttons and dials and stuff. Looks like its going to take a while to find some settings I like because at the moment I don’t really know what I’m doing and a lot of the sounds it makes are pretty ‘thick’. I was only in Newcastle for less than an hour, so that meant I had to face the cold and baron techno-death that was waiting in my house. As it turns out, the amp does in fact work without having to be connected to the Internet, which is surprising because it exists.

Enter the Chicken is a nice slice of album. (That wasn’t a Max Payne reference. You would probably only get that if you were a serious nerd and knew the name of the fictional pizza delivery company, which I do, obviously.)

The Hand is a good track. A bit strange, but good. Anything with Maximum Bob is going to be good. I think I might end up writing a one of my patented full in-depth definitive reviews on it. Especially as I can’t get distracted, but it also means that I can’t research into any hilarious references to insert, despite them mainly getting wasted on most of my demographic, so I’ll have to use ye Olde Brain to dig up my thoughts from instead of letting Google think for me.

My Referencesè

-----------------

^Your Head^

Writing these daily summary things makes me feel like I’m in a rehab centre for addicts. Like I have to write a daily diary to avoid succumbing to more drugs. “I am a slithering knot of neurosis, a tumour of tumult. Incapable of the merest social encounter, my days are a series of embarrassing ordeals, strung together with miserable introspection. The grim weather, but for its potency, reflects my maudlin soul.” (Yeah, work that reference out, melon head.)

I think that this diary thing has helped me deal with the initial shock of dis-connectivity. It’s almost therapeutic, but despite this diary being 100% historically, scientifically and anatomically accurate, it is unlikely that many people will read it all.

I have seen people crumble when they run out of minutes or texts on their phone, or they are on the verge of suicide when Facebook is down for maintenance for 18 minutes at 4:30 in the morning. Facebook is just one website. I’ve been stopped from all of them like some sort of dirty old man who lurks around in Primark.

Day 3, Friday January 15th. (16 Days to Go)

2010-02-03T19:14:00.000Z

Enter the Chicken has arrived! Wooo! More Buckethead to feast upon!

I can’t download any album art. AAAAAUUUGHHHHHH!! *Insert tangible anger here*

I feel like a Heroin addict. No Internet connection is a seriously difficult affliction to live with in the 21^st century. Everything is online. So much so that I constantly forget that I am essentially living in 1980 but with an Xbox and an iMac. “Marty! 1.21 JIGAWATTS!” I am getting seriously bored. I am so glad that I downloaded almost 4GB of Russell Brand Radio shows ranging from the three shows he did in 2006 with Karl Pilkington, then the BBC6 Music set, and also every podcast from the ill-fated Radio 2 show. Hilarious business. Or at least it would be, if I wasn’t in a swirling pit of despair due to my lack of tubes.

Currently the only thing I look forward to is getting to Soundslive tomorrow to get an Amp. I don’t need the Internet to use an amp, do I? But I do for the instruction manual, which, will likely not come with it. Maybe I could have a Weekend in the City… Or I could drive to Brighton…

At school today I visited all the sites I might need over the long, dark, disconnected 48 hours that lay ahead of me. I collected various phone numbers for Soundslive, Windows, GuitarGuitar and a few other places I can’t remember. In my 20 hours of ‘living on the edge of modern existence’, I have learned the hard way that living without the Internet requires a lot of planning ahead and scheduling.

On the bright side, however, at least I can get some revision done without risk of distraction, but on the other side of the ‘Coyne’ I need the Internet to do some extra revision that I might need explaining a bit. I never realised how much my life depended on the Internet. Do you realise, that you have the most beautiful face? Do you realise we’re floating in space? Do you realise that happiness makes you cry? Do you realise that everyone you know someday will die?

Now, ahead of me, I face the first Saturday of disconnection. I feel like if I take one more step, it will be the farthest I’ve ever been from home. I can’t even use the Dells at school… It’s going to be a rough 24 hours. I await the kicking legs with a roll of Duct Tape and a mouthful of toothpicks…

Played Far Cry 2 on my lonesome, offline yesterday. I don’t need the Internet to roam Africa and kill stuff, so that was the same as it was last week. I have also got a bit more Fallout 3 to do, so I could waste my days on that as well. And actually, I don’t think I finished Ninja Gaiden II… Fun and Games! Goblins and Ghouls!

Day 2, Thursday January 14th. (17 Days to Go.)

2010-02-02T15:37:00.000Z

Started phoning up some Broadband people. This was after I did some research on the school computers for providers with Unlimited Download and also under/around the price that we had for the old Tiscali connection. Virgin said that my postcode could get ‘up to 20MB Fibre Optic Broadband’ but that was a lie. After ringing them they said no. BT has a package for unlimited download, 8MB broadband (which I can only use >1MB of) and free unlimited calls. We also get one of those silly phones with a box on the back like that guy on the adverts out of My Family. I would look up his name but I don’t have any Internet.

So eventually we got signed up to a BT thing, and we’ll get a new router and all that, but it will take until THE 1^ST OF FEBUARY. What am I supposed to do for 17 days? I already had cold sweats last night when I couldn’t check my answers to my past exam questions.

I have been taking full advantage of the Internet at school today. I checked my emails and tried to contact ‘my contacts’ but those sites have been blocked because Gateshead School Network believes them to be dangerous.

I wish I had an iPhone. I could tether it to my computer as a 3G router… I’d have to pay extra but it would be worth it for now. Or a Pay As You Go 3G dongle…

I just tried to look it up on the Internet. Can’t.

I have a Biology Exam on the 25^th. I need to get on the school’s learning portal to access files. I can’t do this on the School’s network because they are Flash Animations and Dells can’t download stuff using Window>Activity because they suck. Life would be a million times better if everyone used Macs.

17 days to go. It’s going to be a tough ride. I could revolt, cause a ruckus, knock over a bin in the street, slap a baby, kill a duck with a loaf of bread and kick a goose. If anyone tried to section me I would put up a fight and spray ink on them… But on the downside, I’d probably get lobotomised.

At least I have Buckethead to keep me company. As he once famously said: ‘A seemingly doomed and dismal future is approaching nearer and nearer, unless the force of Cruelty can be conquered by an influx of fun designated by a monstrous shipment of dolls, robots and toys made by Japanese Technicians dedicated to unbelievable, colourful novelty and delivered exclusively to Buckethead’s Toystore – A true wonderland of Joy… Even Rude Ralph agrees.’

Day 1, Wednesday January 13th (11 Days to Go.)

2010-02-01T20:52:00.000Z

The Internet got snipped today. This was expected because the awful Tiscali are being bought out by the not-so-awful TalkTalk. I am waiting for delivery of our new router to allow me to apparently get faster speeds. Can’t see that happening really because of the suckiness of our pipes.

The router hasn’t turned up. We rang up TalkTalk and it turns out that the router hasn’t even been ordered yet, and the cables are rewired so that we can’t use out current router. This is to prevent people getting better Internet than they are allowed. That router probably sucks anyway.

Been on the phone to TalkTalk for about 2 hours. Customer service is as bad if not worse than the already dreadful Tiscali. While explaining why we are phoning, asking where our router is, why it can’t connect to the current router… Also, we kept on getting transferred back to people at the Tiscali Call Centre in some nameless country – despite Tiscali technically no longer existing. Finally we got some guy who understood the problem and was pretty helpful. He said that it would take at east 11 days for the new router to be ordered and delivered, but after being on the phone getting nowhere for two hours, we just cancelled the whole thing.

I have been without Internet for all of today. Why is it that today of all days that the Internet is snipped? Serious Sam HD came out today. I can’t download it. I could sue BT/TalkTalk/Tiscali/Microsoft for irreparable emotional damage. This is exactly the reason why download-only media is NOT the way forward.

They took my Internet, and my chickens, away. And I’m sad. What will I do?

The Internet Diary

2010-02-01T20:50:00.000Z

I have not had any internet for the last couple of weeks. Due to this, boredom and hatred forced me to write the following diary documenting my days in the Pit.

This is going to be a daily diary of my disgusting experiences dealing with the complete end to my Internet connection. After I die (likely to be from boredom), the forensics guys will look at this and see it as a brilliantly narrated descent into insanity from the perspective of the person in question. Hopefully it will help Medical Science in the future once the government finds out that lack of Internet is a direct cause of a slow, painful death.

As a silly sub-plot, I will be putting a load of nerdy/games/music/film/TV/Buckethead/General Knowledge references** in these entries. There ~~might (not)~~ won’t be a prize if you find them all.

**Note that you will have to be scarily like me if you find all of them.

I Need 5 Minutes Alone

2010-01-08T19:39:00.001Z

I got this album today after ordering it from Amazon for a very cheap £16. But was it worth £16?, I hear you ask, well, you'll have to read my in-depth definitive review to find out!

Pieces - I Need Five Minutes Alone, 1997

The Peesez Monologue is a silly intro, set up the album and made me think instantly of Bucketheadland 2. It sounds like Herbie singing Silent Night.

Pieces seems like it would be more at home on one of Buckethead's solo CDs, a looped, distorted riff and an electronic drum beat, along with what sounds like soundbytes from a bad horror film.

Danyel is the first song I heard from this album, and I remember it well: The same day that Lebron and Lebron's Hammer were released under the album title of Home for the Haemorrhage. There was a YouTube link to a video that claimed to be the only recording of Buckethead singing. This made me think that Buckethead was just having a joke on, writing a song about a porn star, and then singing, not very well (but I've heard worse). This track is the same chords as Wishing Well from Colma, but with Brain adding some bongos in the background.

Ginger is where the album takes a completely different turn. It swaps from the slow calmness of Danyel to something that I think would be one of the easily-forgettable tracks from In Search Of The... It is mainly Brain repeating a loop, and Buckethead doing some strange noises.

8 Diagram Pole Fighter is just Buckethead doing fast bursts of... fast, and a delay effect on the guitar. Again, something easily forgotten from ISOT.

Scoop Rack picks up the pace again. Buckethead doing some bass, and Brain doing drums that sound similar to Funnel Weaver. This one has a nice chorus/repeated bit in it. Eventually the track gets faster, it changes into a similar sound to before only more complicated and busy. OK, but a bit repetitive.

I'll Wait is Buckethead singing again. Except it isn't really singing, more saying the words "I'll Wait..." repeatedly over the top of a few chords. Probably written while Buckethead was told it would take about an hour for his pizza to get delivered.

Carl Junghole sounds like the blueprints to a future album like the Elephant Man's Alarm Clock or Inbred Mountain. Some seriously deep muffled bass notes on this that when turned loud can move furniture. Buckethead and Brain doing fast bits... Not much more I can say.

Twice With the Sledge sounds like it would be an EMAC style song to me, going along with Beaten With Sledges, but it would actually be more at home on Colma. I'm surprised this didn't get carried over like Wishing Well/Danyel did. I like this one.

Hazelnut Cream Pie reminds me of something like Chicken Boy from Giant Robot [NTT]. Pretty bare, not much to it. As it progresses it sounds like something that was recorded but then scrapped when Electric Tears was being made because he couldn't think of a backing loop to put with it. The song picks up in the second half when the slow drum beat kicks in. Either way, I like this one too.

Slapatron is one of the better tracks. Buckethead playing Bass while Brain Bongos. That's pretty much it for about a minute until some chords come in in place of the Bass. Then is ends pretty suddenly. I think Brain might have suffered a heart attack.

Bobafi Crucify is not too great. It is somebody rapping but I can't make out what they are saying, if anything at all. I also don't know who it is, possibly Brain. I think this one will eventually score highly on the 'Skip List'.

General Butterfly, I think, is a great way to end the album. It's slow, reflective and leads perfectly into Buckethead's next release, Colma in 1998. It is the same as Ghost Part II from Colma. Buckethead is talking in this one, except I can't really hear what he's saying because he is whispering and is a bit breathy. I can pick out occasional lines where he is talking about Butterflies and Mermaids and how someone left him and never came back. I looked online for lyrics but got a load of rubbish French sites...

Overall, I quite like Pieces as a whole album, but it is difficult for me to pick out individual songs and say; 'I like that one', and I think a few tracks on here won't get much air time on my iPod or CD player. Its an experimental album, and it let Buckethead do some tests before making a full album like Colma compared to what he had been known for (Bucketheadland, Giant Robot).

5.5/10

The Strangest Video on the Internet

2010-01-02T01:04:00.001Z

I think I might have stumbled across one of the oddest, randommest (?) videos ever to have existed. It is basically a montage of very odd clips from seemingly everywhere, from Japanese game shows, Kung-Fu films and 80s TV Infomercials.

I don't think I can explain anything else.

If anyone reads this, I don't want to see anything you class as weirder than this, or any videos for that matter. Remember: Don't open it up around Pinchy. He does that nervous tick thing when he sees that stuff. The Buns of Steel video really hurt him...

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

2010-01-01T19:24:00.000Z

*There may be a few spoilers in this 'review'.*

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a fantastic film. Based on a true story, it is about a guy called Jean Dominique Bauby, or Jean-Do, and the story begins with him waking up in hospital, and we find out that he has suffered a massive stroke and has developed a rare condition known as 'Locked-In Syndrome'. This is where your mind, thoughts, brain etc. work perfectly well as though nothing has happened, but the majority of your body is paralysed. In this case, only his left eye could move. The story is about how he is learning to live with the effects of this disease, and how he can learn to cope with lying in a hospital bed all day.

He then finds a way to speak to people by using a special version of the alphabet, which lists the letters in order of frequency in words. Somebody then reads out each letter and he will blink when the right letter is reached. Using this technique he manages to talk to his family, to the doctors and eventually write a book based on his experiences called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Each day he would have a writer come into the hospital and write each letter individually, and when she was not there he would plan and organise the next section to be ready when she arrived the next day.

It is one of the best films I have seen since The Orphanage. The fact that is is also based on a true story about an actual guy who actually wrote a book using his left eye makes it better.

Overall, it is a film I would recommend, and is great if you can read or speak French. Even if you can't, watch it anyway.

General Update

2009-12-30T22:08:00.000Z

This is the first update since Christmas, and I have missed out the annual 'So, what'd you get?' post.

But this post is to say that I will be doing my 'Definitive Review of 2009' post shortly, and will also post some reviews on some DVDs that I got over Christmas. These were: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Rain Man, The Midnight Express and Extras.

After months of waiting to see my list of films, I get to see them all in the space of a week. I have also restarted my daily Prison Break marathons, in which I watch a disc of episodes per day until I don't have any left. I'm onto Disc 3 of 4 on Season 3, and it is getting pretty exciting, but I can't help but constantly think that everything is too convenient. Oh well. I still enjoy it. It also means that I'm going to have to find someone to sponge Season 4 from... I can get all 4 seasons on DVD fro £50 in HMV, but that's £50 that could also be spent on something worthy... like Buckethead CDs.

Expect a few posts in the near future...

The Beautiful Ones

2009-12-17T22:17:00.000Z

I have recently been listening to a lot of Poets of the Fall. And I mean a lot. More than Buckethead this week. That is some feat...

It's because I was on their website checking up on progress from any new albums they are doing. Turns out, they are, and it will be out in March 2010, and they are working with Remedy again to put some soundtrack to Alan Wake, also released in Spring next year. That track is called 'War'.

Coming from the absolute fantasticness of the last three albums, and almost everything I have heard by them, I have high hopes for it. I found a track that I had never heard that was released as a single with Lift from their first album called The Beautiful Ones. I could have bought it on iTunes, but despite my love for all things Appular, I got it from Amazon MP3 for the same price without any stupid DRM. As it was downloading I thought: 'Yeah, iTunes, your DRM regime is over! Suck it!'.

I got The Beautiful Ones and a live studio cover of Chris Cornell's You Know My Name, for 79p each. They are worth it. I strongly suggest everyone who reads this has a goosey of them as soon as possible.

My love for Poets of the Fall is as much as Buckethead.

I also watched The Midnight Express the other night.... I might put a review up soon. Might not.

The Heaviest Metal

2009-12-14T17:59:00.000Z

This is the name for my latest work. The Heaviest Metal. It involves me making noises and recording them into GarageBand, then formatting them as MP3s. So far, my debut album has got two tracks on the 'Keep List'. A third I have saved, but is unlikely to actually make it into the MP3 stage. The tracks I have currently are called The Splat of Pegasus and The All-Seeing Eye.

I have designed myself some fantastic Album Art, and I have put my current tracks into iTunes and set up all of the labels and fields etc.

Artist: Alex Richings

Album: The Heaviest Metal

Genre: The Heaviest Metal

Rating: *****

Eat your heart out, Buckethead.

Click to embiggen.

Here they are in my Public DropBox Folder so you can download them.

The All-Seeing Eye

The Splat of Pegasus

Google Chrome for Mac

2009-12-08T19:14:00.000Z

I got an email today about Google Chrome finally being released in Beta for Mac. I downloaded it, taking somewhere in the region of 20 minutes, and got it installed.

It asked me if I wanted to transfer all of my setting and stuff from Safari. I did, and it imported all bookmarks, history, favourites and passwords, apparently.

First off, the Passwords didn't happen. So I had to try to remember what they all were for iGoogle and GMail etc. (See my post on 1Password). So after all this business, I started to have a goose at the settings.

I wanted to have the bottom bar on so I could see where a link would take me when I hovered the pointer over it. There is no setting for this, but I found that a web address appeared in a bubble after holding the pointer over for a few seconds.

I also wanted Chrome to gather all my logins from Safari. It didn't. I had to try remembering them. After failing this, I thought of 1Password, and then came back to good ol' Safari.

I also didn't like how the Tabs bar is above the URL bar. This happened in the Beta for Safari 4, and that turned into a right mess. There is no option to change this. I also found that I had to actually click the '+' symbol to open a new tab. I am used to just double clicking anywhere in the Tab Bar. And for the 'X' button to close a tab to be on the left, not the right.

The Bookmarks Bar is also a bit big. It is the same as Safari, except it has a logo of the website next to the name. This makes it much bigger, and I could not fit all of my buttons on the screen without them being messy, confusing and squished.

When a new Tab is opened, it opens a Popular Pages screen, similar to the default in Safari, except this cannot be changed as far as I can see. I would have preferred my Homepage to load as it does in Safari, and every other browser I have used.

There is virtually no ability to customise the Toolbar, other than adding/removing the Home Button.

Also, after using Safari and Adblock for so long, I cannot understand how anyone can go without it. There are adverts on websites I never even knew had adverts. However, since Chrome is Open Source, a similar add-on may still happen eventually.

I understand that this browser is still in Beta, but for the wait I was seriously expecting something better than this. It's like the awful Safari 4 Beta, but all of the rubbishness was taken out of the final build, except from that blue loading bar that I loved in Safari 3. Sadly, in Safari 4 they decided to get rid of it.

You can download it from here if you want, but I would recommend just waiting for the Beta to end and the final public version to come out.

When they base the whole Chrome OS on this style, which they are, I can't see myself being a customer.

Chrome Browser [Beta]: 4/10.

Not as good as I'd hoped, but it is still in Beta so there is time for it to improve.

A few Slices of Good Internet

2009-12-02T15:41:00.002Z

I found this website (Panoramas.dk) where you can look at flash animations of panoramic photos from all over the world.

On there they have The Grand Canyon in Arizona, Death Valley, Mat terhorn in Switzerland (I've been there), Monument Valley, Ayer's Rock (not as good as it could be)... The best ones I found are 360º panoramas of the peak of Mount Everest and The Great Wall of China. I can't embed them, so you'll have to deal with the links.

Today is a good day.

2009-11-28T20:26:00.000Z

As the title says, today is a good day indeed.

First, I got myself some killswitch action on my Ibanez. It is not really a killswitch, but a Shadow Kill Pot, which acts a a switch but still uses one of the volume knobs so I don't have to drill a hole or do anything dangerous. I was too stupid to know how to do the electronics of it, (especially with the Active Pickups) so I went to Soundslive in Newcastle and got Neil the Technician to fit it for me. It only cost £20, and it works on both pickups instead of just the one, which I was expecting. I recommend Soundslive. It is a good place. Neil will never read this, but thanks anyway.

Also, I got BUCKETHEADLAND on CD. As seen in the previous post, I was expecting it to come late next week considering I opted for the super saver free delivery. Two CDs of fantasticness, for only £14. The chances are against you if you find that for around that price again. The majority of times its sold for anything between £40-60. It's a good deal.

So yeah... A good day.

Bucketheadland

2009-11-25T18:04:00.000Z

I have been looking for a cheap way of getting the Bucketheadland 1 CD since... Ever. And now, I got it for £14 from Amazon this morning. I cannot believe it. As soon as I saw it I bought it instantly. And I know it's not a copy or a scam because I bought it from actual Amazon, not one of those independent people selling through Amazon. And I got a discount from my student card. Note that the original Bucketheadland is like the Holy Grail to Buckethead fans. This is big news.

It's normally £40+, so I think that's quite that bargain.

Speaking of bargains, I also got the Fallout 3 GOTY edition for £20 from Gamestation today. Game were selling it for £50. Rip. It was £25, but I traded my original F3 in and got a fiver for it.

These two things make me a happy bunny.

Caught in the Web of the Combine

2009-11-14T23:35:00.000Z

I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for the first time today. It's going toneed a second viewing, like Fight Club, Pulp Fiction and The Matrix Revelations. It's some weird business.

It's about a mental institution, where Jack Nicholson is sent because he wants to get out of prison work. Turns out that Nurse Ratched doesn't like him much and everything goes downhill after that. I will definately have to watch it again, it was a good film, but it was odd, and the end was a bit abrupt.

That is about as much detail as I can give without ruining too much for those who haven't seen it. I'm not that good at describing what happened in films without giving away the whole thing.

This only leaves a few films in my list to see...

-Rainman

-The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

-Midnight Express

-A Clockwork Orange

-The Godfather set

-Cronos

-Trainspotting

More Buckethead, Flaming Lips, Travis.

2009-11-09T20:54:00.000Z

This is just an update to say that I'm still alive.

Also, that I got a few more Buckethead CDs from TDRS, which is always a good thing. I got Albino Slug and A Real Diamond in the Rough, and both are very good. ARDitR is great, but as expected, no match for Electric Tears. However, there was a bit of trouble with the postage. Not Travis's fault, but the Post Office's. Stupid Royal Mail. I had to pay a 'Customs Charge' of £12.11 because it was over £35 in value. Gay. So in future I'll be buying my CDs in smaller bundles.

On the plus side, however, Albino Slug was actually signed by actual Travis. I would have preferred Buckethead to have signed it, but beggars can't be choosers, and Travis still does something on the album apparently. If/when I get the Chicken Noodles albums I'll ask for them to be signed again because he plays keyboard all the way through them. I now wish that I got Population Override from TDRS, because that would be a good one to have signed.

I also got The Flaming Lips's Embryonic Super-Special-Ultra-Radical Deluxe Edition. Which is a larf.

Here is the signed Albino Slug cover. A good album. It says "Thanks for your support! Travis Dickerson". It's almost like having a hand-drawn In Search of The...

A Real Diamond in the Rough, also a good album.

Embryonic, two music CDs on the left and centre, and a 96K DVD with 256 times the normal resolution of a standard CD. And some weird furry case thing. Ooh.

Here's something good for you to feast upon until the next time Buckethead does something. Because that's basically what my posts revolve around.

And remeber: Don't fake the Funk or your nose got to grow, Bobbo. Yeah.

Squid, Buckethead

2009-10-30T12:50:00.000Z

I got me another guitar. I think it's the so-called 'guitar-buying syndrome'. It has now elevated from Guitar-looking-at syndrome to a full blown case of GBS.

Shame.

It's a Squier Affinity Telecaster in Butterscotch colour. I'm calling it Squid. **Update - I have changed it's name to Baron Klaus Nottingham** I got this guitar mainly to do experiments on that I'm too scared to try out on my other guitar, 'Iby'. I got it yesterday through the post from the Soundslive website. It'll be like Frankenstein's Guitar. A killswitch will be the first modification. On the chrome volume/tone/selector switch panel thing. I think it'll go between the two knobs.

I have also finished my pumpkin carving for this year. It is, obviously, Buckethead. Here is a picture of that:

Yeah, it's not great, but I'm still quite proud of it. If a kid knocks on the door tomorrow and says something like "Is that Buckethead from Guns N Roses?'' I'll think, 'Wow... He knows who Buckethead is.' Then I'll kill him because he said 'from Guns N Roses.'

New Design

2009-10-23T10:46:00.000+01:00

I felt like a change to the way that all of these posts were organised. I liked the old 'Blue' layout, but I felt that the post column was a bit too small, and often my images and YouTube embedded videos would have to be snipped from the side because they were too wide. So I chose to use this style, 'Minima'.

After applying it and tinkering with the fonts and colours, I found that even though the whole thing was now a bit wider, it was still very narrow when you began to reach the bottom. It was now that I took matters into my own hands, and began fidgeting with some very dangerous HTML code. Obviously, I wanted the main column to appear wider by a few hundred pixels.

After some extensive Googling, I found a few other Blogs that wanted to so the same thing as me. They had posted their HTML codes to the article so I could copy them. I tried that, it made a mess. So I had to find way of making certain parts wider by doing some manual tinkering. Here is the code I eventually ended up with:

The red parts are the areas I had to change in order to get it the way I wanted. I had to increase the size of all of them, and then I had to make the sidebar move to the top right.

I have also changed the banner on the top of the site. It now has a small border around the black square, and i think it adds a bit more neatness. So I hope that all of the Blogoshpere is working smoothly. Any problems that you find, leave a comment and tell me what it is. I might try to fix it.

Shiny, Shiny, Shiny...

2009-10-21T21:16:00.000+01:00

The other day, a new line of iMacs were released onto the Apple website for people's buying pleasure. They are all new, but they still have the same-ish design as the older model. It just had some plastic surgery on it's face.

At first the actual design is still pretty similar to the older model, except the black screen border reaches the very edge of the case, and the 'chin' is a bit smaller beneath the screen. The processor speed has also been increased, as well as most of the hardware has, up to 3.06Ghz. I think, the most important new addition to the design is the SD card slot on the side, below the DVD drive. It's about time.

So, other than improvements in the insides and some little tweaks on the appearance, it's fairly similar to mine. There are some things that I was expecting to see in a new model, but haven't happened: A Blu-Ray Drive would have been a welcome addition to some nerds like me, considering there's now a full HD screen waiting to be christened with HD Matrix Trilogy. I also expected to see some more options on the screen - as in, glossy or matte displays. There is also an upgrade to the Mighty Mouse. It is now called a 'Magic Mouse' and has literally, no buttons. It is the first commercial multi-touch mouse, meaning that you don't have to move any scroll balls, because it can sense when one, two or three fingers are on it. Swipe left to go back, swipe down to scroll down a page, tap it to click.

None of these things matter to me, really. I still love (my now ye olde) iMac 20". However, I still need to upgrade to Snow Leopard, and I might even get one of these Magic Mice. Then again, for £55, maybe not. Also, they are all wireless, which I don't really like, because wireless means batteries. And I'm not a fan of buying batteries.

My philosophy is that anyone who thinks that PCs look/are better, has either never even seen/used a Mac. Or they are just denying the truth. Either way, these people are stupid, people can't be trusted. People also voted for Hitler, and look at what a mess that turned out to be.

Autumn II

2009-10-14T14:06:00.000+01:00

Remember a few months back I said that Witches on the Heath by Buckethead reminded me of Autumn? Well, I had a taste of the actual thing. I was walking home from school yesterday, and I usually go through some woods to cut off a corner that would take an extra 10 minutes to walk. I was walking through leaves, crunchy ones, and my iPod was just on random shuffle all. Baptism of Solitude came on, and while it isn't Witches on the Heath, it is still a similarly 'feeling' track.

I felt like I should seize the moment and take some pictures of the woods I was in when the song came on. I took them on the highest setting my phone can do, also known as 'Mega - 1152x864'.

Fotolia - An Elitist Platform.

2009-10-07T21:56:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I signed up to a website called Foltolia after seeing it on the Gadget Show on Monday. It is basically an online image store, where people can upload their photos and sell them, and then gain about 50% of the money. That is, of course if your pictures are good enough. Mine weren't, supposedly. I uploaded one of my favourite pictures that I took in Honduras on the beach - It is of a hammock in a tree, with the sea behind it. An excellent picture, if I do say so myself.

I then had to wait for approval. That was fine. I then got an email saying that my picture had been rejected because of 'one or more of' the following problems:

Blurry or out of focus
Over/Under exposure
Framing problem
Over or under saturated colors
Problems with contrast
Noise or Pixelation
Quality of routing
Interpolation problem

Now, I'm going to go through that list to check off what I have:

Not blurry or out of focus.
Not under/over exposed.
As far as I can see, no framing problem.
Over/under saturated colours, none.
Contrast is fine.
Noise? No.

Not sure what 'quality of routing' is, but I bet I have a very high quality.
Interpolation? Nothing has been added, if that's what it means.

I then tried to upload another of my favourite pictures, taken of Derwentwater in Keswick, in Autumn-ish time, the sun was low. Nice. They say it is too small, but it was taken on a 6 megapixel camera, and the minimum requirements are 4 megapixels. Joke.

So I decided that they obviously are too good for amateur photographers like me. They only want the elite, perfectionist photo-journalist willing to go into a zombie infested mall and write a scoop. (I didn't make that up.)

Here are the pictures I tried to upload...

The first image, rejected for the above reasons.

(Obviously, the watermark was not actually in the file I submitted, it's there to stop you stealing it, and not giving me a reason to sue yo' ass.)

The second image I tried to upload, failed because the image was 'too small'.

A third image I wanted to upload, but found that I couldn't because Canada Dry is a copyrighted trademark, and I would basically be advertising it.

Although, it is very nice.

So there you have it. My hopes and dreams smashed into a pile of unwanted binary and 'out-of-focus' pixels. Cast down by a load of snivelling little nerds, sat in Foltolia towers, rejecting real art in photography in case it puts them out of business.

PS, I've watermarked these images because I took them. If you want a copy of any of them, leave a comment and I'll consider it.

Just like my ISOT pictures.

The Intertubes

2009-10-04T21:12:00.000+01:00

Today, my internet connection reached an all-time low. It was running unbearably slow on pretty much every page, and I couldn't even load Google in less than a minute. So, I managed to crawl my way to the BBC iPlayer Speed Test website, where it basically, tests your speed. Wow. I got this result:

If this is too small to read, it says the following:

Download Speed: 236 Kbps

Streaming Speed (1): 91 Kpbs

Streaming Speed (2): 0 Kbps

Streaming Speed (3): 95 Kbps

Overall, that makes my internet speed around the 64 Kbps mark. Unsuitable for even radio streaming from the BBC website, let alone TV programmes. I would need 54 times the current speed to just be able to stream HD TV. That is disgraceful. Poor show, Tiscali.

So, after getting those awful results, I went to another website to check the speed using another program. this time it was SpeedTest.net. I got this result:

If this image is also too small, then the results are:

Download: 0.17 Mbps

Upload: 0.10 Mbps.

They say it will take me 4 minutes to download a 5MB MP3 file, 28 Minutes to download a 35MB video file and 642 minutes to download an 800MB movie file.

I think that those numbers are pretty optimistic.

There was also a little 5-Star rating thing for my ISP at the bottom. I gave Tiscali 1 Star.

Look at the speed I should be getting compare to what I actually am. Seriously?

Seriously?

It's 2009.

Come on. Sort it out, BT. I'm dying here.

Just to point out, Dial-Up internet, like off of the 90s, is 56 Kbps.

56. I'm on 64. This isn't Broadband.

A Real Diamond In The Rough II

2009-10-01T22:01:00.000+01:00

I know that I have said a few times that 'the next Buckethead album will be Albino Slug...' and then it never happens? Well, it looks like it is going to be put off again. The next album will be A Real Diamond in the Rough. I have just been listening to it on YouTube, and I never realised how good it was when it came out, and I wrote about it here. It's my birthday in 8 days as well, so I can hopefully go on a Buckethead rampage with my new monies.

As for the last CD he released, A Needle In A Slunk Stack, I am not a fan. Of the two tracks currently on YouTube, they both sound the same as Forensic Follies. All snippy and badly glued together again. One of the comments from Clee3421 for the track 'Needle in a Slunk Stack' said this: "Forensic Follies was a test album, him playing(hence follies) around with this whole remix idea. It's choppy and stitched together, and uses no original parts. He was simply testing the waters, saying "I'm gonna try this crazy shit, and document it in CD form"

Now with Needle in a Slunk Stack, he's made the pieces smoother, recorded some cool new guitar and percussion, and gave it a more "Buckethead" title, saying "This is what I was aiming for, my finished product". Follies was the blueprints."

I think that's a good way to put it. Let's just hope his next CD is more to my taste. Bear in mind that 'my taste' is most of Buckethead's stuff. I have actually warmed to most of ISOT, and a lot of it is still just awful frequencies.

The Deli Creeps

2009-09-30T15:00:00.001+01:00

I got the Dawn of the Deli Creeps CD the other day, and even after listening to most of the songs on ye olde 'Tube, I am still surprised at how good most of the songs actually are. They are all good tracks with the exception of the ones where Maximum Bob is just talking about stuff and the last track, Random Killing. The best track on there is probably either Can I Have a Ride?, Dream Girl, Found Body or Buried Deep Stays Buried Still. It is also a little bit annoying that there was never a Deli Creeps version of Binge and Grab recorded in a studio, so the only version we have is a live performance from 1991 or something. In the same order, I also got Decoding the Tomb of the Bansheebot by Buckethead. I would say it is one of the better albums... Along the same style of Albino Slug and Pepper's Ghost. The best tracks on here are Asylum of Glass, Ghost Host, Checkerboard Incision, Sail on Soothsayer and Stretching Lighthouse. I know that in a previous post, I said that the next Buckethead album I got would be Albino Slug, but as I was scrolling up the TDRS page, Decoding the Tomb was in the list before the Slug.

My Weekend

2009-09-29T16:57:00.000+01:00

This weekend I was away again. I was disconnected and internetless for two days - enough to start getting the shakes. I was staying in a cottage for the weekend somewhere in Bedale in North Yorkshire. It was a larf, I suppose. But, the people who owned the cottage must have known I was coming, because they actually did offer internet connection over wifi, but I would have had to pay for it, and it was £6 per day or £20 for the week. So I braved the cold, baron and empty wastelands of boredom of years gone by, where boring old TV is classed as 'entertainment', and people nearby are scared of technology, naming it as witchcraft rather than technical wizardry.
We went into the nearest town on the Sunday. Turns out that there was a sheep fair on, with people trading their sheep for a set of magic beans, judges wearing tweed suits and matching hats, a marching band wearing clogs and bells, sheep covered in rosettes, naming it 'The Best Sheep in the Land'...
Also, I went to the Black Sheep Brewery and looked around the gift shop. I was going to buy this shirt, but they had none in my size. If i remember rightly, I think that happened last time but with a different shirt... I didn't go into the actual brewery because a) I'd been in before, and b) it was swarming with people. So I left.
After this, we were heading back to the car after some food in a cafe, and I decided to go back through the sheep pens to get some photos.

If you don't live in the UK and are reading this, I'd just like to say that this 'sheep fair' is not a regular part of my life. I know that these pictures only add weight to certain images of 'The English' but I am not the kind to wear tweed and regularly attend sheep fairs.
The whole ordeal made me think of that Father Ted episode where Ted has to help Chris the sheep get back on top of his game after being scared by 'The Beast' in order to win a competition.

Needle In A Slunk Stack

2009-09-25T22:15:00.000+01:00

Guess who has a new album out. It's only my favourite guy, Mr. Buckethead.

It got released yesterday on TDRS, and I have no idea what it sounds like because as of yet there are no videos on YouTube of it... Probably because Travis can't do next-day postage to people.

I'm hoping it returns to the usual Buckethead, keeping away from the Forensic Follies scandal.

I suppose I'll just have to wait and find out.

The only know existence of it is from the world's biggest Buckethead stalker, Bunghole30. He uploaded this video earlier today.

Zattoo

2009-09-18T23:43:00.000+01:00

I downloaded a little App called Zattoo the other day. It is basically just a TV tuner, but with only certain channels that it can pick up... These seemingly being BBC 1, 2, 3 and 4, ITV 1 and 2, Channel 4 and Five. All the rest seem to degrade into rubbish or stuff that I didn't know existed, and things that I don't really care if they existed or not. Like Bloomberg, Red Bull TV, and the God channel (The London and European versions, in case you're feeling exceptionally religious).

It also annoys me that I cannot record anything from these channels, because it's coming from the internet, onto my computer, and when it stops to buffer, it carries on from where it left off rather than skipping to where the Live feed would actually be.

The main problem I have with Zattoo is the same that I have for the iPlayer, 4OD, YouTube...My Internet pipes (or lack thereof). In a previous post I already moaned consistently about them, so I won't go on abut them again for now. But anyway, it probably stops to buffer the next section of video every 15-25 seconds, and as the video is live I can't stop it and wait for it to load as I would with a YouTube or 4OD video. So although it is a great little app to have handy, I wish that it had more channels available, such as Dave, E4 and maybe some of the +1 channels. Film4 would be good, too but I imagine there will be lots of copyright issues going on with films and the like.

So, I might just uninstall it because I can hardly watch it in 20-second bursts... I might just wait for the programme that I want to go onto the iPlayer/4OD website/ITV Player. Then again, I might keep it just in case BT want to treat us. Maybe they can recycle some phone cables from 1990? They'll be newer than what we have now...

Stupid Internet Pipes. Ruining my life. Oh, and more great news... I think my router is knocking on Death's door... It keeps cutting me off and disconnecting randomly and has to be turned off and on again before it comes out of it's little tantrum. If I have to get a new router, it will have to be dual-band capable, and also have the power of 802.11n, so I, the resident Mac user, can take advantage of 5Ghz and super-fast sub-0.4MB 'Boradband'.

The Evils of 1Password

2009-09-15T17:59:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I downloaded a rather highly-thought of program known as '1Password'. Its job is to store all of my passwords for logins, and then either keep them safe or replace them with complex and impossible to work out ones such as 'Hjs7bGy6s7GI'. This is all good, unless the program decides it hates you, and then it changes the passwords willy-nillily to what it finds amusing. It then laughs in your face as you fail to log in to your accounts all over the internet, and then guffaws and 'ROFLs' at you when you can't crack it's codes that it uses as passwords.

I learned not to trust it the hard way: Being locked out of my Google Account. It was the first password I changed, and turned out to be the most kerfuffley slice of time I have ever wasted. Once you cannot login to your GMail account, Google says: 'Neh. We own the Internet, and that password is in charge of your Youtube, Dropbox, iGoogle, Blogger, Bank Accounts...' So I was locked out of all of my most used applications and logins.

The solution: Try to log into iGoogle. When that fails, click on the password recovery page. Then, answer a few questions, and an email will be sent to your second email address. Luckily for me, I forgot the password to that one, too. So, I used my very, very old Hotmail account, from 2004, to log into my emails. In there, I had another email from Windows Live saying that there had been a new account created in 2007. I went to there, logged in, hoping to find the Google email. No. I found another email from Windows Live, saying that a third email account had been made in 2007 on an '@live.co.uk' thing. I logged into there, taking me to another email, only this time from Google, but from late 2007. This had been made for my first 'test' GMail account, which had a ridiculous name which I couldn't really put on any sensible documents. After logging in there, one final email that was unread from Google, supplying me with a link to reset my original password.

What a farse.

There are three morals to this story...

1. Don't use 1Password.

2. Remember what your secondary email address was.

3. Use the old fashioned, good old mind for passwords and the like.

^^Stay away from this logo^^

Population Override

2009-09-13T21:42:00.000+01:00

When I got Population Override a while ago, I never actually got around to posting a review of it up here. I don't know why that was, but it never happened. Also, I have noticed that it doesn't have that much recognition in my Blog as I'd like it to.

In the last few days, I have listened to it about five times, and I can't actually believe how good it was without me really noticing it the first time round. I remember comparing it to some of the tracks on ISOT, but other than that, it hasn't ever really been mentioned. The standout tracks on PO are Unrestrained Growth, Too Many Humans, Cruel reality of Nature, Earth Heals Herself, A Day Will Come, Clones and '...'. That's seven out of ten tracks are really good, and considering that a lot of Buckethead's albums have got a lot of filler in them, that's quite a good ratio. Even the three that aren't as good are still above the average standard of said 'filler', and are easily passable as good songs on their own.

Dropbox

2009-09-12T17:52:00.000+01:00

The other day I signed up to a Dropbox account, mainly because I like the idea of MobileMe's iDisk thing, but not so much the fees that came with it. Enter Dropbox, a website that pretty much offers the same thing, but for free, and it seems to do a very good job of it. Although I'm limited to 2GB of space at the moment, its still very useful. I have moved all of my big-ish files into the Dropbox folder on my computer, and now I can access them from anywhere. This should be useful for transferring files to and from school when I don't want to use a memory stick. The only problem is that I have to wait hours or even days for the files to be uploaded to the 'cloud' before I can get them anywhere else because of my awful internet connection. At the moment, it will take me about 8 more hours to upload 14 small to medium sized files... Because my broadband speed is horrendous. On a very good day I'm lucky to get 1MB broadband speeds. The fastest I have ever seen it is about 28KB/s, and the slowest at 3, so compared to my other speeds, 18.2 is quite fast. I have also been reading forums about the upload speeds, and some stupid melon is moaning about having to wait four minutes to upload a 200MB file. That same file on my connection would likely take four days.

I await the day when I can download a HD film on the Xbox without having to plan two weeks in advance, or watch the BBC iPlayer without having to click pause for an hour beforehand, or even click on the HQ button on YouTube and have it stream the way it should..

Damn you, BT.

Damn you, Tiscali.

Damn you, crappy phone lines.

I'm always happy to accept more space, too, so if you feel like signing up, click THIS link or leave a comment and we'll both get an extra 250MB if I send a referral link to you.