Yesterday my new Variax 300 arrived in the post, ordered last weekend from Dolphin Music (they never did tell me when it was going to arrive). I’ve been playing it quite a bit since then, getting to grips with what it can do, and playing with the Line 6 Spider III 15 amp I got at the same time. I may not have had much experience with electric guitars (this is the first I’ve owned), but so far things are looking rosy.

For those who have not heard me raving about this guitar before, allow me to quickly explain what makes this guitar so different from most others you may have seen. At first glance it looks like any other electric guitar, with the red body and white pick-guard and traditional cutaway body shape. But take a second look and you’ll find something missing – the pickups. Rather than it being one guitar, this is lots of guitars in one, thanks to some clever modelling and a selector knob. Think of it a bit like the voices on a keyboard – hit the right setting and you’ll create a completely different sound. The Variax 300 has several guitars built-in, including a variety of electric guitars, some semi-acoustics, a handful of acoustics, and some fun instruments too (banjo and sitar, to name but two). It truly is one of the most versatile guitars I’ve come across.

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For some time now my Mac has had a problem starting up in the morning.  It’s complaining like a grumpy teenager, and refusing to get out of bed.  It started out as an occasional problem whereby I would flick the power button, the fans would whir into life, but nothing else would happen until I hit the reboot button on the front of the case.  Not a huge problem, and one I could easily live with.  Then it got to the stage where it would insist on having a 10 minute lie-in before doing anything – I would turn it on, the fans and suchlike would spin up, but it wouldn’t boot or show anything on the screen or even give that cheery Mac startup sound for a good 10 minutes.  This week it’s got even more lazy, and this morning it took well over an hour before it decided it was time to get up.

I’ve narrowed it down to the PRAM battery that might have got too old.  For those unfamiliar with Macs, the PRAM is the Mac version of a PC’s BIOS.  It holds all that really essential information about the construction of the computer, such as what the hard disks are, what the date and time is, that sort of thing.  Fairly basic stuff.  The battery is there to make sure the computer remembers all of that after the power is switched off.  It’s a rechargeable battery too, so that the charge can be kept up for longer.  I reckon the problem with my Mac is that the PRAM battery has lost its ability to keep its charge, and so it takes a while for the motherboard to charge the battery enough for the PRAM to work so that the computer can start.

So I’ve been looking for somewhere that sells a half-AA battery.  These are not very easy to come by, but I’ve discovered that Rapid Electronics actually has their base in Colchester, so I’m planning on going and picking something up straight from their collections counter so that I can get my Mac back to proper working order.  The only problem I’ve come across so far is that when ordering online for collection Rapid insists on a minimum parts cost of £5, and the battery is just under that, so I would need to buy something else as well!  Grrr.  Then again, they appear to have some microphones that might come in useful, though not as high quality as the Shure SM58 I have been using previously.  I’ll do some more research and see what happens, but hopefully later today I’ll be able to go and pick up a battery and… something else.  Whatever that something else turns out to be.

Those of you who know me will know that making decisions is a long and hard process at the best of times, even with something as simple as deciding what to have for breakfast (not a problem when there’s only one cereal on offer, but present me with a choice of six different cereals and it could easily take me a couple of minutes to decide which I want). So coming to a decision on something as important as which guitar to spend money on has turned out to be quite a monolithic challenge for me. Thankfully, I think the decision has been made. And I think it’s the right one.

Until this morning I had my heart set on the Yamaha RGX A2, which is a futuristic looking white guitar with some fantastic design elements and quirky features, including an LED in the volume knob and tuning pegs that are round rather than flat. In terms of looks, this guitar is awesome, right up my street. However, it is about £250, and having played it in the shop this morning it didn’t quite feel that much. Sure, it was fun to play, and allowed me to create some really cool rocky tones, but because it only has two humbucker pickups it’s rather limited in tonal variety, which is a shame.

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For those of you whom I haven’t told already, I’m in the market for a new guitar. A couple of years ago I bought a nice Fender Stratacoustic, which is effectively an acoustic guitar that looks like an electric, with the idea that it would be able to perform the job of both an acoustic and an electric at the same time, saving me a bit of money in the process. Unfortunately, as with most things that try to do too much, it’s only really mediocre at either. On its own the body isn’t really loud enough unamplified to fill a large room, and the action just isn’t set up for electric guitar licks, and can’t be adjusted because it doesn’t have the useful adjusters for tweaking the intonation and action. However, with my deposit due back from my previous house I shall have enough money to spare that I can go out and do the job properly and get a good electric guitar and amp. The problem is, I’ve got to decide what to get…

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You know, it’s useful to know who you are.  Now, before you all turn up your noses and scratch your heads in confusion, allow me to explain what I mean.  Are we defined by what we do?  Or what we aspire to do or be?  Or is our personality more important than our ability?  And can we ever really come to a conclusion without first reaching the end of our lifespan?  Big questions, and not necessarily easy ones.  Nonetheless, this is what’s been on my mind recently, and I think I’m beginning to come to a resolution at last.

My biggest problem is that I’m good at far too many things.  I made a list this evening of all the possible jobs or careers I would like to try, either from tasters I’ve had already or from sheer ambition and inspiration.  I managed to list 45 potential directions for my life, ranging from computer programmer to artist, professional guitarist to farmer, pastor to rally driver, novelist to teacher.  I also managed to rate those jobs in a rough order, to get an idea of which ones I most preferred, and thankfully the top ones were pretty much as I would have expected: (more…)

I have recently been thinking (*gasp*) a lot about this blog and where it’s going, and whether I can get more out of it.  The basic idea behind all this mental high-jumping has been to validate the time I spend blogging, as opposed to doing something productive.  I did look into the possibility of putting ads in so that I might earn money from blogging, but realistically this blog is too diverse and doesn’t have a wide enough audience for that to work.  However, a look at the visitor stats for my business web site showed a solution which might just be of benefit in a whole load of ways.

As I expect most of you will know, I’m a web designer, running my own freelance web design business from home.  This service is mainly directed at churches and Christian organisations, that being my mission at the moment – to equip and serve the Christian community by providing web sites at affordable costs without sacrificing quality.  So far business has been fairly slow, with only a handful of clients and many moments of frustration having nothing to do and no money coming in.  A look at the visitor statistics for my business web site showed a possible cause – hardly anyone even knows about the site!

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Having spent a fair amount of time recently writing some somewhat prolific blog posts (considering they were only supposed to be short rants – can a rant be short?), the thought crossed my mind that it would be handy if someone actually paid me to write this drivel.  You may say that’s wishful thinking, and no one in their right mind would willingly give me money to sit at a computer and write nonsense all day, but after a little research it appears there may actually be some degree of possibility in this rouse, courtesy of AdSense.

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I recently had the pleasure of watching The Queen, the 2006 film starring Helen Mirren, which had been very kindly sent to us by Amazon as part of their film rental service (which is hideously unpredictable, but that’s another story).  In concept it is dangerously true to life, showing those awesome and awful events surrounding the death of Princess Diana.  The danger is that not only were those events so dear to the public’s heart and such a tragedy for so many people who had never met her, but that the film revolved around real people, most of whom are still alive today.  To represent these real people in a way that is revealing, convincing, yet not overly comical, is a challenge few would take on.  Needless to say, I thoroughly approved of the film, its concept, and its delivery, and if we hadn’t had to post the DVD back to Amazon I would have enjoyed watching it again.

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While having breakfast this morning I happened to glance across the room at our new telephone.  We recently bought a set of cordless phones with some wedding money, and have set one up downstairs in the lounge and the other in the office upstairs.  They look pretty neat.  Except that the one downstairs appeared to be switched off.  Odd, I thought, I don’t remember switching it off.  Upon closer inspection I discovered that not only was it very definitely off but it wouldn’t switch on again either.  A distinctly iffy smell was detectable too, and when I took the cover off the back to get to the batteries I discovered that one of the rechargeable AAA batteries had exploded.  Not good. (more…)