Virtualisation, Bass Surgery and violence.

Spent a quiet lazy day not doing anything after the overtime yesterday. Two main things I did were to play with virtualisation and swap the necks on my two main basses.

Perhaps I'm easily pleased, but I still think there's something slightly magical about virtualisation. To be able to run several operating systems at the same time and flip between them with a keystroke is still rather a novelty. Right now I have a laptop running a minimalist Ubuntu install, and on top of that it's running Windows 2000 and Windows 2000 Server at the same time (I know, but it's only got 1gb RAM). Both are running full-screen and you can flip between them using the multiple workspaces of the Ubuntu desktop. It's also really good for playing with network applications since you can have the virtual machines on their own private network. I've used it before to experiment with things like DHCP and network booting which could cause chaos on a real network.

In a fit of experimentation today, I swapped the necks on my main two basses, the Squier Precision Bass and the Squier fretless Jazz Bass. Mainly because I was curious to see how the Jazz would sound with a fretted neck. The answer was pretty good, and I prefer the ergonomics of the Jazz body. The Precision sounds rather interesting with the fretless neck, due to the upgraded Quarter-Pounder pickups. Actually swapping the necks was trivial and took less than ten minutes as they are exactly the same other than the fingerboards. The only irritation is a fair bit of hum from the Jazz so it needs some shielding added (cheap) and the pickups raised (also cheap). Ideally I'd like to get some stacked hum-cancelling pickups for it but they are £55 each, so no chance.

Also fired up the 360 and had a look for some game demos. Downloaded the trial version of the first Soul Calibur, which a few years ago was THE game of choice for hardcore gaming sessions in my flat. We spent many happy hours playing it on the Dreamcast, and led to us all getting Soul Calibur II on various platforms. It is probably still the only fighting game that I at all enjoy. Also played Duke Nukem 3D, which is good fun and some stupid racing game called Grid. An interesting feature in Duke Nukem is that it records your progress through the level and when you die, you can rewind it and choose when you want to respawn.

I'm actually tempted to get some Microsoft points for the first time.