Hot Fuzz, Chinese Food, Farting and Second Life Crossdressing

Ironic that my post about Batman and Optimus Prime getting it on was my 69th post on this blog.

Sat through a remarkably dull course today, which was only enlivened by a colleague farting loudly during a particularly quiet moment and it being blamed on someone else entirely, causing much indignation on her part and hilarity amongst everyone else who (in theory) should know better. It was like being back in school, going red trying not to laugh. Then again farting is always funny, it's one of those universal rules.

The Hot Fuzz and Chinese evening was a great success. Myself, Will, Lorna and Em piled into Andy's house, armed with the Tai Wing Express menu and a copy of the Hot Fuzz DVD.

We watched some peculiar music videos while we were eating, including Kiss, Cradle of Filth, and Living on the Edge by Aerosmith. Also 'Dr Feelgood' by Motley Crue, again, a sad disappointment after 17 years. The food was great, between us we had Sweet & Sour Chicken Ball, Shredded Beef with Chilli, Szechuan Chicken, Chicken Fried Rice, and a whole lot of chips. And the free Prawn Crackers. I still feel full now. We asked for no vegetables with the beef, so to compensate they went insane with the garlic. I shudder to think about tomorrow.

Hot Fuzz stood up well to a repeat viewing. I'm not sure if I prefer it over Shaun of the Dead, both are excellent films.

Please can everyone take a look at the image of the bass guitar I have attached to this blog. It's the MusicMan Bongo and was designed by some BMW engineers. It constantly gets slated for its looks, often compared to a toilet seat, though it sounds amazing. I played one in January, and absolutely loved it. So what do you think? Toilet seat, or a good looking bass?

I accidentally applied a shape called 'Heroic Firefighter' to my Second Life character, transforming my carefully sculpted athletic figure into some bloatedly muscled retard with a huge chin. Took a while to get it back to normal, and for a laugh I put him into a silky black dress with matching high heels and 8-ball earrings. That caused a somewhat hilarious double-take and cry of 'Holy Crap!' from someone I bumped into while still in male clothing, and then again in the dress.

Tired now, must sleep.

Casio SK-1

Went to a car boot this morning and found a Casio SK-1. This was a very early example of a keyboard that lets you sample sounds. It can only record 1.4 seconds and it's low quality, but it's surprisingly fun. It cost £10, which was a bargain really as they still go for about £20-40. The main appeal is recording yourself making noises with your mouth/farting/burping/whatever, and faffing around with it. This is an example. It's also very, very clean and looks brand new.

There were various models that followed, but the SK-1 was the original. I already have an SK-5 which can hold 4 samples and has some more features, though it lacks portamento which the SK-1 has. All good fun.

I finally completed the second gang on Crackdown, after not playing it for a while. There was one particular boss which was driving me insane. You have to get across a quarry avoiding gunfire and rockets, to find a cave where the boss was hiding. My approach was to get into the Agency supercar and drive as fast as possible but usually I'd die just as I got to the cave. However I realised that the cave had openings at the back overlooking a highway and I was able to get in that way after some climbing.

Other than that, didn't really do very much today. I put flatwound strings on my bass as an experiment. They are smoother and have a more mellow sound. I quite like it.

When tattoos go bad

Tattoos are funny things. Once they're done, that's it, it never goes away. I think it's odd to see tattoos on people who have had them a very long time, their skin ages and the tattoo looks more and more weird.

So, what the HELL is this going to look like when this guy gets old!? It's bad enough as it is, the poor woman looks like an ancient zombified version or something. The guy who did it has several pages of his work and to be fair some of it isn't too bad, if you like mutant skulls bursting out of people's stomachs at least. Just...weird.

Today should have been the day that the Halo 3 beta became available. And this was indeed the case, unless you were a Crackdown owner. It looks like it will be tomorrow now. Of course all the idiots who bought Crackdown JUST to play the Halo beta are all crying 'waaaaah not fair'. Personally I love Crackdown and think Halo 3 will probably be shite, just like Halo 2 was.

The picture is of a Steinberger bass. As you can see it's rather small and compact. Many years ago I had a copy of this made by Hohner, which I got in 1995. It was basically the same except it was a 5-string and made of wood instead of the graphite the Steinbergers are made from. I used it with an extra high B string instead of the low B usually found on 5-strings. It was a really good bass, very light and easy to play. It had a good sound, but the strings could be a little hard to find. However like an IDIOT I traded it for a hideous Westfield thing. The Hohner was a far superior bass, and all it needed was a good setup. It's one of those things I absolutely hate myself for doing. It was worth far more than I got for it.

One of my pet hates in work cropped up again today - people treating their work machine as if it was their own. I hate that, they download some stupid screensaver or game that screws up the OS and then blame the machine for being crap when we come to fix it. So we locked down the user rights and of course then people were upset that they couldn't download and install their favourite games/media players/file sharing software. I think I'm a bit of a tyrant as if I had my way, they wouldn't be able to change any settings at all, not even the colours or background. One machine I visited had all the colours set to various shades of luminous pink and bright green, it was absolutely vile. And yes, there was another laptop dropped recently, with a smashed screen.

Oh, and the Discovery had it's MOT today. It failed, quite badly. It needs extensive welding to the rear end, several brake pipes, and radius arm bushes. And a bush on one of the rear shocks. Wonderful. Just recently I was telling someone that it wasn't too expensive to run, consdering. Oh well, it's still in good shape for a Discovery less than a month away from it's 17th birthday.

Bits of futon + Scorpio + Random guitar parts = 2 string lap steel bass

Today was an insanely busy day. I got up early to go to a car boot sale. It was pretty big, but when it's big it just means that there is a whole lot more shit out there. People really do try and sell the worst cack you can imagine. I did pick up a Nokia 9000i, one of the original Communicators. If you're not familiar with these phones, they're the ones that open up to have a larger screen and QWERTY keyboard inside. To be fair, this thing is huge. It works fine and came with the charger. It'll go nicely with my 9110 and 9210 models too.

Nokia 9000 Communicator

Today it was Farmer mode. I put on wellies and drove the Discovery around the fields sorting out some things. It was a rather satisfying day really, got a hell of a lot of things done and got all grubby and dirty and then had a really nice shower. It's great to have a shower when you're all dirty.

Also today I was watching a DVD I wasn't particularly interested in, and had the urge to create something. No idea why. So after some thought and seeing what was lying around, I hacked an old futon to bits and cut the wood up using a Black and Decker Scorpion, a scary electric saw that can also be used as a jigsaw. After some drilling and screwing (ahem) and attaching some random spare bass parts, I ended up with what I am describing as a 2-string lap steel bass guitar. It has to be a slide style guitar because the strings are so far off the neck. However, if you tune it to a powerchord and slide a glass up and down the strings, it makes some interesting sounds. Now I just need to find a spare pickup and attach it somehow. The wood is very soft so when the strings are tuned up, it starts to resemble a banana so it has to be detuned rather drastically. Oh well, it was a good learning experience.

Turns out this has been done before, Mark Sandman of Morphine played a 2-string bass with a slide. Interesting sound too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrx4EnkVj50&
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn8n4nLEYIw&

So all in all, quite a productive day.