Many of you will know that I am a keen musician.  I blame this partly on my parents, who insisted on taking me to a brass band concert before I was even born.  I didn’t stand a chance.  Church helps too, there’s always music there.  And so it was that I started taking up musical instruments left right and centre, starting with the piano, moving on to cello, and not stopping thereafter.  The list isn’t exactly endless, but it’s fairly sizeable.  The main problem with this, though, is being able to afford the instruments themselves, which don’t come cheap, especially if you want something decent.  So for many years I have had to get by without certain things, in some cases just the accessories, but in some cases the instruments themselves.  I’ve never owned a saxophone, for instance, much as I’d love to.

My first bass guitar was a pink (probably used to be red, but faded in the sun) Squier with a warped neck, which made playing anything but open strings uncomfortable and bone-jarringly out of tune.  Still, for £100 it wasn’t bad, considering it came with a whopping 80 watt amp.  The bass was replaced several years ago, thankfully, with a wood body Aria (I’d give the actual model, but since it’s a “Research and Development” model I think it’s more of a one-off, so comparing it to the mass-produced model that resulted from it might not actually be particularly useful).  The Aria is a dream to play, and has a lovely warm tone to it.  The amp, however, was always pretty ropey, so it wasn’t a huge tragedy when it stopped working.  It was something electric, I know that much, and it just played a very loud humming noise while it was turned on.  So I left it turned off, gathering dust in the garage.  Until just before we moved, when I took it to the dump.  Sad, but somehow very therapeutic at the same time.

Imagine my joy, then, now that I have a working bass amp again.  After much research and reading of reviews, I finally bit the bullet and bought myself a Laney RB2.  It’s only 30 watts, so it’s by far the smallest and least powerful bass amp I’ve ever used, but it should serve my purposes.  To be honest, I’ve always thought it odd that whenever I’ve played bass it’s been using a 60 or 80 watt amp, and never needed to turn it up beyond 2 or 3 on the volume dial.  Always seemed a waste to me.  So, a 30 watt amp it is, and it’ll be used properly too.  Sure, it’s not the most powerful box in the world, but it’s got a DI out so it can be plugged into a PA system, so it only really needs to be loud enough for me to hear myself on stage over the drums and the rest of the band.

The real test will come at the end of this month, when I take the amp to camp.  It’ll only be used in a relatively small theatre, seating around 80 people, so hopefully 30 watts should be enough.  We’ll see.  It sounds promising in the lounge at least, which is encouraging.  It’s got a fairly good tone to it, assuming you whack the gain knob up a bit, and while the built-in compressor isn’t quite as powerful as it could be it does work and gives a nice bit of punch to the sound.  The EQ controls are good too, and allow me to play around with sounds and tones a bit more, which is very nice indeed.

So, that’s the amp.  There is more though.  I may be in demand again as a musician, now that we’ve settled on a church.  Yes, that’s right, after several weeks of ‘church hunting’ my wife and I have finally decided that St Paul’s Shepton Mallet will be our church.  On Sunday we ended up going to three services, confirming our choice.  First up was the 9:25 Parish Communion service, which was fairly traditional (includes sung liturgy and a procession and everything).  Not quite my usual worship style, but that’s no bad thing – variety in worship is always a good thing in my opinion.  After a quick tea break we were off to the 11am service, which was very relaxed and informal, and featured a few worship songs, a ’sharing’ time where people talked about what had been going on that week, and then a group discussion time.  Very different indeed.  But quite similar in feel to some of the Anglican Chaplaincy services we did, so not entirely unfamiliar.  Then in the evening we went to the 6pm youth service, which was led by the young people.  Apparently they do that every month, and thoroughly enjoy it.  It’s amazing, it’s an evening service that actually works, and people want to come!  How refreshing.  The music was good, and the sermon (preached by an 11-year-old) was surprisingly inspiring.

Discussions after each of those services inevitably revealed my collection of music instruments, and Ellie’s drama background, and we were both pleased to hear that they were in need of what we could offer.  Eyes widened in excitement when I said I could play drums and guitar, and Ellie’s dramatic heritage was greeted by one person physically jumping up and down.  I think they like us.  We certainly like them.  We’ve already been invited to a birthday party, so that’s got to be a good thing.

Finally, I would like to announce that I’ve finally got myself onto Second Life.  Yes, yes, I know, that’s so last year, but it always takes me a year or two to accept new technology, which is why everyone else was on Facebook before me.  I’m still trying to get to grips with how it works, and while I’ve found some interesting places I’ve yet to actually get into a conversation with anyone.  Not least because I’ve struggled to find anyone there at all.  Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places.  Or maybe it’s because everyone who plays is in America and is therefore asleep when I’m online.  Anyway, if you happen to be on Second Life, let me know and maybe we can meet up and laugh at each other’s avatars.

Well, here I am in sunny Somerset, sitting on the sofa in our new home! Right now I have no internet, so I’m writing this offline and will upload later. It’s quiet, light, homely, and generally makes me smile. We’re back in the countryside! Yay!

This week has been pretty exhausting, preparing for and accomplishing the enormous upheaval of moving across the country. Monday was spent packing. Since Ellie isn’t able to do any heavy lifting at the moment that left me to pick up the slack, which meant I was off to the recycling centre mid-morning with a car chock full of odds and ends that no longer worked and needed chucking out. So it was goodbye to my old bass amp, which hasn’t been working for years (and to be honest it wasn’t a great amp at the best of times), farewell to two CRT monitors (which was a little sad because both of them worked, I just couldn’t find anyone who wanted them), my first Mac went out too (dead motherboard, too old to do anything with anyway), plus a dead printer and a dead microwave. It was heavy work, carting each item to its appropriate recycling container, but in some ways it was quite therapeutic, getting rid of a whole load of ’stuff’ that had been cluttering the house.

The rest of the day was spent packing everything else into boxes and bags, ready for the move on Tuesday. We bubble-wrapped and papered all sorts of things, carefully stacked items in tall boxes, wedged and rearranged things to get a better fit, and all the while tried to keep in mind that the removal men still had to be able to lift the boxes once they were sealed up! It was so tiring, and I reached my limit and had to lie down for a bit later in the evening.

Tuesday morning was the big day, and the removals men came at 6am. That meant a 5am start for us, so that we’d be ready in time for them. Not everything was going in their van, as I’d insisted that I would be taking the musical instruments – not because I don’t trust them, but because I’d prefer to have them with me, so I’d know they’d definitely be safe and not get crushed. I was amazed at how those removals men could lift such heavy furniture without really thinking about it! I know it’s their job, but they just didn’t seem to have any limits. All our bedroom furniture was carried out of the house and into the van complete with all our clothes still inside them! They must have weighed a tonne! But they had insisted that that was the way they preferred to do it, as it kept the furniture stable in the van, so we didn’t complain.

In the end they only just got everything in the van. In fact, there were actually a few items left that they forgot, some of which we managed to squeeze into our car and some of which we’ve had to leave in a friend’s garage until we can collect them. Once the van had left we swept, mopped and cleaned the house, dropped the keys in at the estate agent’s, and finally left for Somerset about an hour and a half behind the van.

And what a glorious day! The sunshine was strong and hot all the way down, unblemished by cloud. We were grateful of the air conditioning in our car actually – it’s a luxury we’d not really had cause to use before, but that day it was on pretty much all the time. Thankfully the roads were pretty clear, aside from a little traffic on the M25 and some roadworks here and there, that meant that the fuel efficiency was kept reasonably high, offsetting the aircon. I was pleased with how the car coped with travelling so heavily laden, and even managed to overtake up a steep hill on the A303.

When we arrived the van had already arrived, and the men were nowhere in sight. Apparently they had arrived about an hour before us, and they were living it up in the local pub, which was probably a good idea given the strength of the sun. I certainly didn’t envy them carrying all our furniture into the house in that heat, but they didn’t complain – we provided them with cold drinks every now and then and showed them where we wanted everything, and they just got on with it. Ellie and I just sort of sat around and pondered intellectually where was the best place for everything. By the time they left it was mid-afternoon, and we were hungry – having been up since before the crack of dawn (pretty much) our eating pattern had been shifted out of kilter, and we were very much ready for a good meal by 4pm. Unfortunately the local pub didn’t serve food until 6pm, so we wandered into town to find a McD’s. We were surprised to find very little in the town centre, and eventually had to settle for a takeaway pizza and chips. We’ll have to investigate further at some point to see if there’s a whole other part of town that we had missed.

So that pretty much bring us up to now. We’ve unpacked some of the kitchen, but that’s about it. Today I expect will be taken up with unpacking more boxes, moving odd bits of furniture that we decide would be better placed somewhere else, and generally trying to keep out of the sun – yes, it’s hot again today. And at some point today we should be receiving a fridge, freezer and washing machine, but we don’t know exactly when yet. Hopefully it won’t be too long before the house starts to look sensible, and I’ll need to set up broadband before too long so I can start work again. But we’re in, we’ve moved into our new home, we’ve got several “welcome to your new home” cards already, and I’ve had a cup of tea or two. Home. Nearly.

Now, it may appear from this post that I have nothing better to do with my time at the moment than waste countless hours sat in front of a screen twiddling knobs and tapping incessantly on keys without really achieving anything productive.  And they may be a modicum of truth in that hypothesis.  However, I can assure you that the time I have spent playing has been (for the most part) well-chosen and has not adversely interfered with the normal running of my life.  It has of course been lots of fun.

First of all, I recently acquired something I have wanted for years – a steering wheel.  No, not for my car, but for the computer.  And since all my games are now on the PS2, it had to be one that I could plug into that.  An hour or so on eBay and a handful of reviews culminated in a purchase of a Logitech Driving Force EX steering wheel, which was plugged in and tested as soon as I was able (i.e. the evening of the day it arrived – see, I didn’t skip work for this), driving my current favourite game: Gran Turismo 4.

It took a while to get used to, having learnt all the basics of the game using the standard controller, but it wasn’t long before I was hooked.  The steering wheel provided good feedback, with resistence and vibration like a real car, and actually made the cars a lot easier to drive with precision – which is what that particular game is all about.  More recently I’ve even started playing around with drifting and controlling cars on off-road courses, neither of which I could master with a normal controller.  I’ve also found myself preferring to turn off the traction control systems, opting to drive ‘raw’ and more in tune with the car, and that’s rewarded me with a much more pleasing feel to the drive.  And aching arms.

Unfortunately the Driving Force EX isn’t without its faults.  I soon discovered (and later found others who had found the same) that the “flappy paddle” gear change buttons on the back of the steering wheel don’t work with my version of GT4.  Apparently it’s a known issue with that particular steering wheel and my particular release of the game – in other countries it’s absolutely fine.  I’ve scoured all sorts of forums and suchlike, and the general consensus is that there is no solution.  The error itself is in the wiring of the steering wheel, and the option that would usually remedy the situation is bemusingly disabled in PAL versions of the game.  So I’m left with no alternative really but to keep the game in Automatic transmission, missing out on that final piece of absolute control.  Well, I say no alternative, it seems you can get the flappy paddles to work, but only by unplugging the power supply to the steering wheel and using it as if it were a normal controller, meaning you get all the right buttons in the right places but no force feedback.

Still, I’ve had a whale of a time with the wheel so far, and it’s been incredibly addictive.  I’ve spent many late hours screaming round various tracks, wearing tyres ragged and inevitably smashing into my fair share of walls too, but even so there has been the satisfying reward of some awesome corners and moments of superb and flawless control.  The trick now is in reducing the number of accidents and increasing the occurrence of brilliance.

Meanwhile, up on the Mac, I’ve rediscovered (again) my love for Transport Tycoon.  Or, to be more precise, OpenTTD, which is the open-source version that is still being developed and tinkered with by people who refuse to let the game die.  This all started (or restarted, as the case may be) after a trip to London, and my mind got all creative and geeky looking at train station configurations.  So I downloaded the latest version of the game and started playing again, and after a few false starts I’ve got a rail network going now that’s pretty efficient and elegant too.

Something that’s fairly new in the world of OTTD is the idea of “Path Signals”.  There’s a wiki that goes into a little more detail than I can afford here, but basically it’s a type of signal that allows a train to reserve a route through a section of track.  The advantage is that you can have multiple trains using track that would otherwise be limited to one train at a time with the other signal types.  It’s very clever.  In its simplest form it means you can have a really disorganised mass of track, whack some path signals in the right places, and let the trains sort themselves out without worrying about them crashing into each other.  Marvellous.  Obviously it’s a little more complicated than that in practice, but it does allow for much more elegant track designs, with more crossovers, less track, and fewer bottlenecks.  I love it.  I’d show you some screenshots, but the number of people who’d actually find that at all interesting would be so limited that I’d be wasting my time.  Still, at least I thought about it.

EDIT: Due to popular demand (okay, one person, yay Phill), here are some screenshots of my current OpenTTD game.  I’ve hidden the trees to make the track a little clearer.

[View with PicLens]

And yes, I am a geek.  Thank you for noticing.

(Sorry this post is a little belated, I’ve had a lot on and haven’t got round to writing this up).

Ahead of our cross-country migration at the end of this month, I’ve been having to schedule in some goodbyes.  Significant amongst my friendship groups is the Colchester Mini Club, both the cars and their drivers.  I’ve been a member of the club for as long as I’ve owned a Mini, which is several years, and last Wednesday was my last opportunity to go to a club meeting.  It was a night of fun and excitement, even if it was tinged with sadness.

Something else that made that night a little more difficult was that my Mini was going to be there.  I’ve been going to the meetings each month in the Escort for a while now, while Neddy was off the road for the winter, but there was a very different feel on Wednesday evening driving there knowing that I was no longer a Mini owner, especially given that the car was going to be there anyway, belonging to someone else.  Selling a Mini really is like selling a close friend, and there’s a lot of emotion surrounding it.

I was pleased to see Neddy sitting in the car park though, still in more or less the same condition I sold it in.  Inside the pub there was a fair-sized group present, all cheery and chatty as usual.  I put a brave face on it and settled down with a pot of tea (which amused them all no end).  Before too long James stood up to do the announcements, or so I thought – the only announcement at that point was that we were all going for a drive as a final farewell for me!  And to make things even better, Rod gave me the keys to Neddy and let me drive!  Woohoo!!

As much as I often complain about the sub-standard quality of countryside in this part of the country, the lack of hills and the timidity of the country lanes, there are actually a lot of very nice roads in the empty wastelands north of Colchester.  Not hugely interesting on their own, perhaps, but as we drove along in convoy none of that mattered.  Most of the time I couldn’t even see the Mini at the front, there were that many of us!  I drove with the window down so I could hear the engine roar, threw it into the corners (enthusiastically yet cautiously – it’s not my car any more, after all), and had a permanent grin plastered across my face.

I’ve no idea where we went, but we saw very little in the way of civilisation.  The pace was a little quicker than our usual club runs, which was good fun, though a couple of people ‘commented’ on it afterwards – not everyone likes to thrash their cars.  The B-roads were good fun though, plenty of bends and the odd pot-hole to avoid, and it was warm enough that I didn’t freeze with the window down the whole time.

Neddy thoroughly enjoyed the ride too.  All those little changes I’d made over the years came together, holding the car on the road, providing perfectly adequate acceleration, making a very pleasing noise.  It bounced along the uneven roads, leaped over a hump-back bridge, and squealed round some corners.  So much fun!  It reminded me once again of just what it is that sets the Mini apart from other cars – it’s retained its inherent simplicity from the early days, so even the newer models still felt like go-karts.  It’s not an uncivilised ride, nor is it filled with computer wizzardry, it’s just simple fun.  And when it’s that simple, there’s not a huge amount to go wrong.  Driving in a Mini you feel everything, you know exactly what each wheel is doing and you learn to refine your driving technique to get the most out of the car.  Very different to my Escort, where everything is so detached I feel almost like I’m having to control it via telekinesis.

When we got back we carried on chatting away, and I got to know a couple of new girls who had just discovered the club.  It was good fun, even though of course I’ll never see them again.  Still, it made them feel welcome, which was the main thing.  The club also gave me a big ‘good luck’ card which a lot of them had signed, which was very touching, and James formally thanked me for my input in the club over the years.  I had to hold back the emotions somewhat, I have to admit, because going round hugging everyone just isn’t the right thing to do amongst car enthusists – people who are more at home under an oily car than expressing themselves physically in a non-sexual manner.  So I said thank you and left it at that.

So that’s the close of another chapter in my life.  I’ve promised to keep in touch with them all via the forum, and to pop in if I’m ever in the area.  Hopefully I’ll see some of them at future Mini events too.  Co-ordinating meeting up might prove difficult though, simply because of the number of different groups of people I’d have to see in one go – I’d have to go to St Margaret’s on Sunday to see them, see other friends in the area during the week, and get to a Mini club meeting on Wednesday evening.  It’s possible, but not easy.  We’ll see.  But that’s thinking way off into the unforeseeable future, so I’ll stop there.

A big thank you to everyone at CMC for all the help and friendship you’ve shared with me over the years – I’ll miss you guys!

Bank holidays always seem to creep up on me and take me by surprise.  I can’t quite put my finger on why, but where most people live for their days off and eagerly anticipate any excuse not to go into work, the novelty has never really hit home for me.  As such the day never really gets noticed in my diary, and it usually takes someone to remind me that it’s happening for me to realise that I don’t have to do any work that day.  Maybe it’s because I work from home.  Maybe it’s because I’m just not very observant.  Maybe it’s because I don’t do enough with bank holidays for it to be special enough to look forward to.  Maybe.

Anyway, on Monday it was a bank holiday, and since Ellie had reminded me of that fact I just about remembered not to do any work.  Which was a good thing, because we’d arranged to go round to Anne-Marie’s house to watch Takin’ over the Asylum, a BBC series from a couple of decades ago starring a very young David Tennant, set in a loony bin mental health hospital with a would-be DJ trying to get a hospital radio station up and running.  It wouldn’t work today, of course, which explains why it was never repeated, but now that’s it’s on DVD (mainly due to David’s popularity, no doubt) it’s become a quick favourite among Tennant fans.  So Anne-Marie made us invited us to watch it with her on Monday.  All of it.  All 6 episodes of it.  And it was hilarious.

It was an interesting insight into the sort of people in such mental institutes, and the complications they face every day.  Not only do the residents face their own mental struggles, but they face discrimination from ’sane’ people who treat them like children, and conflicting feelings about where ‘home’ is.  As was demonstrated so powerfully in The Shawshank Redemption, long-term confinement is something some people get used to, to the extent that being ‘released’ is a sentence in itself.  For many, their prison cell is their home, the walls that keep them in are their safe sanctuary.  Being released into the public is like being kicked out of your home, and for some it’s something they just can’t bear.

What I found particularly interesting, though, was how the audience (or maybe it was just our group of friends watcing) were able to identify more with the loonies than with the sane people, and that sometimes the line was so fine that either side could be exchanged for the other.  Mentally disturbed people have their lucid moments, just as normally balanced people have moments of insanity.  Looking at myself, and my group of friends, it could easily be argued that we all have some form of insanity, all with some level of mental misalignment somewhere.  Whether it be irrational fears, obsessions, physical ‘ticks’, multiple personalities – we have them all in some form.  At least, I know I do, and I know several others who would readily admit to it too.  But then, I guess you could say that’s what makes for balanced people – having both sides in equal measure.  Pause for thought.

I got two things out of watching Takin’ over the Asylum.  One was that David Tennant has apparently been a fantastic actor for many years, and in some ways it’s a shame we’ve not seen more of him before now.  The other thing was actually more of a challenge, inspired by Anne-Marie when she put the DVD back into the cupboard, making sure to maintain the alphabetical order in which they had been arranged.  And so, starting today, I shall be alphabetically sorting my blog posts.  Today begins with A.  My next post will begin with B.  And so on.  Not a massive revelation, granted, but it gives me something to do, and gives you something to check up on.

We’re all mad.  Yes, you too.  The only difference between us and them is that we haven’t been caught yet.