Still on hold here rather,

still doing the eternal spring cleaning, still gigging at a rather reduced rate. Keen to make a record with someone, if you're interested :)

I've just been a bit busy, what with the final throes of recording the endless demo against all adversity, and arrival via adoption of a fine and six and a half-year-old ready-prepared niece. So it's all been a bit hectic here, and I'm not entirely sure that this will ease up for a while.

So here's the deal: I'm not going to do my usual trick of apologizing for a lack of content here. I'm going to simply say that there will be more stuff at some point, but I don't know at what point that will be. I'm not closing down here, or going away. I'll still be doing the Flickr thing (also neglected of late but not permanently I'm sure). Jimbobulous is the name to look for on Flickr. I am just snowed under rather, and I'll do what I can to change that in time.

Cheers!

Oh yes,

and I totally failed to attend to any of the property maintenance I had planned because my factotum developed an almost medical obsession with his genitals at the expense of doing the heights bits.

And I fought off a virus which had made my life misery for more than a year. Fantastic. I can do what normal people do now, which is a massive improvement.

I just don't necessarily want to.

Here we are again,

with what is increasingly becoming a monthly update...

It is bloody cold, and looks set to continue that way for a while. The only thing to be said for this is that I intend to go up to the Botanic Gardens in a while and try to convey that cold with my camera. I feel that I am making slow but steady progress with the camera as an expressive tool. I used to be quite happy with my little Olympus Stylus compact, but having the Nikon D40 has disavowed me of this, and ruined my contentment. Now I carry the large Nikon and a couple of lenses, which massively increases the paraphernalia I must carry. And I really need to get a tripod too, which will probably be the straw that broke etc. etc.

I prefer to use my energy to transport my capacious stomach, but needs must.

What else to say? Perhaps now would be as good a time as any to summarize 2007 chez Jimbo.

It was the year that I took my inability to create in any material way outside my head by the horns - although contrary to what tradition would suggest I do not actually have horns outside my head. I got myself a modest home recording setup based on an iMac to replace the Zoom 8 track I was using, which means I can fire ideas in quickly and edit them with relative ease later. I count this a relative triumph, although I remain unconvinced that the iMac is any more stable or productive than my PCs. It's prettier and more elegant though, and those who know me are aware that I set great store by this.

I largely ignored the attentions of various interested women, which I feel I may have done in error. This lesson is a hard one to learn.

I had a holiday that was marred only by internecine strife and illness on the part of a participant.

I avoided changing cars yet again and the hassle that goes with it. Not to mention the cost.

I gigged a fair bit, and this is very good. I could have worked more on recording others and profited by it, but things have been slow. It's terribly expensive to live here, and musicians of course seldom have any money.

I bought quite a few guitars and basses, and I even like some of them. I learned the value of buying ones which play well from the outset by not doing this. I could, after all, always set them up later. This proved somewhat incorrect, although I do seem to do a better job of it than a famous tech who shall remain nameless. Obviously more of an art than a science. Perhaps I am too fussy. At least all my amps and outboard are a delight, due to taking good advice from friends.

Clothing remained stable and functional.

I bought a decent bike which turned out to be rubbish, and I am very cross about this. I have not yet resolved the matter. I sorted out one of the two indecent bikes I had in rage and frustration, was pleased, and then some pikey stole it from my yard within days. I have now gone from two crap, knackered bikes to two crap knackered bikes via the expenditure of real dosh. Watch this space.

My neighbours the Maroc Deli are tossers of the first water, and will pay for their actions big time. If you give these people your money, you contribute to the sum of evil in the world.

I drank gallons of Lady Grey, and it was good. Hopefully Earl Grey will not discover this.

I repaired my mother's senescent word processor saving her a fortune on a laptop which can now be postponed. She can use this money towards some of the damage she has caused this year by mistaking her car and its replacement for battering rams.

I failed utterly to understand the first thing about MIDI, but then I don't really need it so what the hey.

I took a fair number of pictures I am quite proud of, and even got one published.

I did not blog much, but I'm afraid I don't care.

I spent a lot of time in Second Life, currently rather less. I made a couple of good friends there, and it was, and is, fun.

I made quite a few new friends in real life, and this has more than made up for setbacks in other areas.

And I had the craic. I really did. Here's to the next one.

And again

I emerge from the swamp. Yet again, haven't posted for a while. I suppose that I am just not as enraged as I was, just less likely to be sitting at the computer in the early hours filled with piss and vinegar, or bile, or whatever it is that causes the organism to kick off. Maybe this is a good thing, I don't know. I remain, of course, enraged. Just not writing it up as diligently as I should. Ah, the old times.

Cor, this "Raising Sand" - the new countryesque (I'm no authority) thing from Krauss and Plant, gets all Zep in places, with an ire-inducing stomp. I may be old and whitish and a bit fat and, as my friends all know, I'm openly pretty much from Maidenhead, but I don't really get the Zep thing. I mean, Lord knows I'd dearly love to do it to people. I'm just a little unconvinced about it as a spectator sport. Draw your own unspeakable parallels (no doubt about them L's).

The country bits are ok, actually. Miserable. Melodious. Quite nice. That's the Krauss, you know. But for me I'm afraid it'll still be other stuff. Than the Zep, and the Krauss-Zepelthing too.

Music. I've been concocting grooves from loops by hand in an audio editor. If that means anything to you, you can appreciate the pain. There's no separation per se, because yer loop is a stereo mix, so there's that. And if you replace something with something else then the lengths of the bits you are cutting and pasting have to match or you alter the feel. Which, sometimes, is what you want. But there must be an easier way. The way I'm doing it's like urban self-sufficiency. The warm glow is eclipsed by the fucking drag.

Ford Assist, eh? When I bought my newish secondhand Ford they threw in Ford Assist breakdown recovery. It's for Europe too, I'll have you know. It's the kind of thing that costs a lot. It's the kind of thing I want. So when I remember what it is that's tickling the back of my head about the car that I have now had for a year, I get out the wallet card for the old Ford Assist. I want to avoid the kind of scenario that has me abroad and motionally challenged and being told politely to get bent by my only friend, the Ford Assist. With splendid but unintended authority the card has no expiry date, or indeed anything else of a personal nature. Nothing at all. Could be your card, if you have one.

So I think I'll have a look on the web and see what the score is. The only mentions of Ford Assist - which has no web site as such - are on sites selling, yes, Ford's. It is, as I already knew, something they chuck in when you buy a Ford that is new (perhaps) or nearly so (for sure). No better information on the time period, which varies it seems, or the renewal details, or the cost.

Why do I think it will take me an age to find out the truth about Ford Assist? I'd get easier access to more details if I had my vehicle recovery with the Knights Templar.

Mind you, they're more sort of Mercedes boys I reckon.

Once again I've left it for ages between postings here

I suppose you can blame this on the increased amount of gigging and audio work going on here. And, possibly, the fitting of a rather frenetic social life around it. I think "don't hold your breath" is becoming the motto around here. I seem to have lost the will to rant on the internet, and to some extent in real life. Whether or not this is a good thing depends, I guess, on your perspective. These days a semi-rational urge to get away and an entirely rational one to get more done in the real world seem to be the priorities. So I am sat here pulling apart instruments, learning software, listening to a tide of remixes, watching Jonathan Meades and generally not doing much writing. Sorry to any disappointed souls. I have been sticking some stuff up on Flickr, which should be a partial consolation.

Well, here I am,

grounded temporarily by having to wait for my mobile phone to charge. And confounded in this by constantly needing to use it, therefore defeating the progress of the electrons. In any case it has taken up residence in bastardland these days, in that unique way these things do. The battery level indicator now bears little relation to the actual state of charge. Fortunately it's that time again, and Vodafone will likely give me another in an hour or so when I drop by. They want my contract renewed, they have to bribe me. It's (mostly) all good.

In other tech news, the Telecaster I was awaiting turned out to be nothing special, so I politely declined. I remain enmeshed in Strat evaluation and modification in any case, and I have a new Fender valve amp which sounds great.

My Apple Mac is, I have decided, bollocks. And slow bollocks at that. I am using it for jobbing audio work, but it doesn't seem likely to ever win a place in my heart as my main desktop system. XP is still by far the best thing for that.

I now have one and a half working bicycles out of three, so my range is a bit expanded. My enjoyment vastly more so.

Cool cat pics are up on Flickr. Link at right.


Epic stuggles with band mailing list of a couple of hundred-odd addresses are nearly over, after a log hard fight. I don't know whether to blame Thunderbird or the massed mail servers of the web for my troubles. I don't think many of the replies I got back from dead, suspended or otherwise bolloxed addresses told me anything in the least bit useful, but there you are. I was particularly irked when Thunderbird's reaction to any attempt to send out our updates to a large list including one or more dud addresses was to hang about for ages and then pop up a dialogue saying "SMTP server not responding". Possibly this is what happens when the one mail goes to loads of recipients under these circumstances, but it doesn't help me know which addresses are dud. And it turned a ten minute chore into an eight hour struggle. And dead accounts, eh? Surely as a clued-up person one's last task before changing providers or addresses would be to send a mail saying "don't bother with this anymore" to everyone in one's address book. It's not rocket science, is it? Just common courtesy.

Off to town. They have sandwich shops and record shops and phone shops. I'm there.

Why am I not in Belgium and Holland?

Will we ever get a sustained period of decent weather?

I posit not, at this rate. I hate this horrid chilly overcast weather. It's bad for lurgy, and it's bad for morale. I have turned to the rabid acquisition of Squier guitars, a largely indoor pursuit. So far I have got real bargains on a Strat and a Tele.

The Strat is a nice off-white late eighties or early nineties job with a maple neck. The methods for precise dating from serial numbers break down rather with this particular series, so we'll never know. It's old enough to have settled down, anyway, and it's pretty nice. It has ceramic magnets for the pickups, rather than the alnicos which are often found in Fenders and which have greater depth to the tone. This is assuming that the alnico pickups sir is wailing on are good alnico pickups, however. The ones generally found in the recent Squiers are utterly lacking in that elusive musical attribute that we shall term willy. So I'm quite pleased to have the ceramics really, and I have a seventies reissue Fender Strat with alnicos anyway. I think I'll end up using a ceramic at the bridge and alnicos in the middle and neck positions, in fact, for best results. Then again, I think I'll end up using a Tele...

The Tele should be coming today. It's going to be lovely, unless I have been mislead. It'll need a few parts, but I have the cannibals playground of decent Fender parts under my bed to plunder. It'll be an old one, and the older the better with yer Squier. I am looking forward to making this a bespoke instrument.

Little else to report. I am playing around with fuzzboxes and delays at the moment, having recognized that this is pretty much what I do. I also continue to play bass in the Talc Daemons, which is good fun. If I could fit it in the boot of the band Escort I'd get a decent bass rig, but I can't so I won't.