What is new in your little world?

[Eraser]

Alyx kinda ruined VR for me. It's so much better than anything else I've played that the rest kind of pales in comparison.
Only the Red Matter games come close.

[Mat Linnett]

As you've got a Quest Kracus, give Lone Echo a look. It's a zero-G game, and it has the opposite problem Donny described; your avatar may be weightless, but you become aware of your own weight!
But the real reason to play that one is your first trip out of the station. Had me clinging to the wall IRL.

[Κracus]

I think I've heard of this game. Didn't they take the game down?

Yeah I think I found something about that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comment ... available/

[Mat Linnett]

Not sure to be honest, it was one of the first wave of games on the Oculus store.
There's a "Buy Now" button on the Oculus site:
https://www.oculus.com/lone-echo/

[Κracus]

I'll look into it. I heard it had Enders Game vibes to it and I've always been a big fan of the books.

I'm really tempted to get Skyrim VR next though.

[Whiskey 7]

Off soon to a country escape, a cottage up there in those hills, 'hinterland' the term. Pics maybe on return

Oh, and someone stole my beard today
I have to renew my licence to drive in the next days so thought .....

[Whiskey 7]

Off soon to a country escape.....................

Not a country escape, but the Sydney environs, to meet up with old friends then off to a quaint Australian location called Kangaroo Valley.

So, what's new in your your part of this small globe we live on?

[seremtan]

fun fact: a journey from the coast to inland is called an anabasis

the return journey is a katabasis

the moar u no

[Mat Linnett]

In the past, I've had a tendency to "make do" when buying new kit; an example of which led to me running the ethernet devices on my network through a poor little over-subscribed 5-port Ubiquiti router I used to carry around in my backpack for work purposes.

So I finally got my shit together this weekend and implemented a nice and simple layer-2, 16-port switch that has enough ports for everything in the flat that requires an ethernet connection.
That is fed DHCP by my Nest Wifi Pro, which gets internet from my cable router, which has been set to dumb modem mode, and now everything works as it should with no complicated routing required.
Edit: Oh yeah, I also bought new ethernet cables of varying colours, so I no longer have to guess what's plugged in to which switch port.
Sometimes the simplest things make the biggest difference.

Additionally, I bought several dual-gang smart sockets to replace the normal ones (one of which needed a bit of drywall cutting to accommodate), along with two 6-socket smart surge protectors and one 4-socket one.

So my flat's smart home integration is even better and more granular now, with presence sensing turning various sockets off and on when I leave or come home, hopefully saving me some money on the energy bill.
But besides that, it's just fucking cool; it really does feel like you're living in the future when it all works properly.

I run it all through Google Home, which is a bit irritating, as I would rather not be so reliant on Google.
I do also run a Home Assistant Green as a backup, but it's just a pain in the ass to configure compared to Google Home.
Despite having a pretty good user interface, there's enough of it that feels too linuxy, meaning various things feel half-assed and unintuitive because they've been developed by some neckbeard in his basement. Even their own Zigbee dongle that they sell as an add-on to the Green is a pain in the ass to troubleshoot.

I could probably get Home Assistant working just as well as Google Home, but it would probably take me a week of learning and fucking about, and I just don't have the patience for it these days.

I have also bought a Pi 5 (I just love these little boxes), but haven't come up with a use for it yet. Any ideas?

On the guitar front, while I've got a nice Blackstar HT20-R combo amp and pedal board set-up, I find that when I practice these days, it's mostly through my Spark Mini, which is a wonderful little desktop amp. Pokey enough to give good tone, with excellent and extensive amp (and pedal) modelling built in.

And I must admit, while I love my Les Paul, the Strat is the one that gets the most play-time these days.
I still play the LP when I want a chonkier tone, and it's still very nice to play, with a wider array of tones available (I love the almost fuzz-like sound you get from dialling back the tone knob for the bridge pickup). But my Strat just feels like it was made for me.
And unlike the LP, it doesn't go out of tune if I so much as look at it funny.

The unreliable G-string is a very real thing

[Don Carlos]

I have also bought a Pi 5 (I just love these little boxes), but haven't come up with a use for it yet. Any ideas?

Emulator!!!!

Also the network stuff sounds very cool; I went powerline mesh and it's good enough but I would love hard wired

[Don Carlos]

I am about 2 weeks away from starting some building work in my gaff; we have a few old out houses and a garage that are falling apart/subsiding. So they are coming down and a new garage being build, which should be big enough to fit a car in (3 meters by 6 meters internal) and the outhouses will be torn down, a wall knocked through and then an extension built to make a larger kitchen/dining area with a few extra things, like a pantry, utility space and a downstairs loo.

Prices are outrageous because of the foundation down the garage needs; I am basically pouting 30k into the floor. I will get some pics and keep you all posted on progress, as I am sure you all give plenty of fucks about this.

[Captain]

the moar u no

the moar no u

[mrd]

Network shenanigans...

On the guitar front, while I've got a nice Blackstar HT20-R combo amp and pedal board set-up, I find that when I practice these days, it's mostly through my Spark Mini, which is a wonderful little desktop amp. Pokey enough to give good tone, with excellent and extensive amp (and pedal) modelling built in.

And I must admit, while I love my Les Paul, the Strat is the one that gets the most play-time these days.
I still play the LP when I want a chonkier tone, and it's still very nice to play, with a wider array of tones available (I love the almost fuzz-like sound you get from dialling back the tone knob for the bridge pickup). But my Strat just feels like it was made for me.
And unlike the LP, it doesn't go out of tune if I so much as look at it funny.

The unreliable G-string is a very real thing

What's the LP? Standard model, custom shop, etc.? I have a 2008 Standard and once you put fresh strings on it and stretch them out, it holds its tuning very well. It's 100% stock except I did get a local luthier to put in an ox bone nut about a decade ago. Easy things to check for are machine heads and nut, hell even the way you string your guitar can affect tuning stability. I've been playing for over 20 years and the older I get the more I find myself gravitating to thinner gauge strings. The stock nut on the LP is probably best suited for 10s. Anything meatier is going to give you issues, as the string can bind in the nut and snap around. Some people run 8s (like 8-42 or so) but I find that too thin. 9-46 or 10-48 is probably a good sweet spot. Thinner strings have less inharmonicity as they are physically closer to the theoretically perfect oscillating string which has zero mass and a perfect harmonic overtone series. Practically speaking I find them more balanced. It depends what music you play though.

I'm a firm believer of "buy more guitars", not "change your one or two guitars every 3 days for different music". I have about five or six main axes and they're all setup differently for different music. For me the LP is a good all-around'er. If I want more gain / lower tuning, I use my Explorer which I run thicker strings and tune to C# standard. If I want to go even further I switch to my ESP Baritone which is in B standard. I've got a Strat and a Yamaha Pacifica (which is essentially a Strat knockoff but different radius on the neck) for when I want sparkly / spanking clean tones. For acoustic I have a nice dreadnought steel string then a Yamaha G-231 classical guitar.

I'd still love to get a 7-string acoustic or electric that isn't a piece of shit. I used to have a Stephen Carpenter signature 7-string and I ended up selling it because it sounded like hot garbage, which is saying something because generally I never sell music gear. Baritone acoustic would be fun too... or a 12-string... or a regular with a cutaway... :drool:

[Eraser]

In the motorcycling community, there's a saying which I guess applies for.guitarists as well: the perfect number of motorcycles (guitars) to own is the number of motorcycles (guitars) you own + 1.

[Mat Linnett]

@mrd, I think I noted it earlier in the thread, but the LP is "only" a Studio.

I got back in to playing during the pandemic, and despite cleaning up nicely, my old Washburn KC40V that had been in storage for 20+ years just wasn't cutting it. The electronics were constantly cutting out, and I know feck all about soldering, so I just bought the LP (along with a Blackstar HT20-R combi amp to replace my old and buggered Fender M80.)
At the time, I wasn't quite prepared to go all-out and buy a Standard or Modern, and the Studio offers a lot of the LP experience, just without some of the prettier embellishments.

I've always used lighter gauge strings, Super Slinkys specifically. Although since starting playing again, I've been buying the slightly more expensive Paradigm versions, which are fantastic.

I also play with metal picks, as I prefer their precision, but it also makes for a very distinct sound that I'm comfortable with.

The LP was my first experience with a dual-humbucker configuration, as well as coil-taps.

I was exagerrating a bit regarding the LP going out of tune. I just have to warm it up a little when I start playing it, and be prepared to pop the G-string back into tune after a few bends. But once that's done, it stays in tune for the rest of my practice session.

As for buying MOAR GUITARS, the temptation is always there, but I'm close to having paid off the mortgage, so I'll get that out of the way first


For smart home stuff, I can't believe it took me so long to twig that I could do it, but last night I finally hooked up my PC to my one of my Hue lights in the living room, and I now have active lighting that changes to reflect what's on screen when gaming, which is really cool. So I've splashed out on a strip for my main monitor and a pair of light bars which should arrive in the next day or so.

I was never really sold on all the lights inside PCs and on peripherals, but using smart room lighting to enhance gaming is fab.
Highly recommended!

[mrd]

@Mat Linnett

Hah, can't say I see too many people speak of metal picks! I have one as well, though it is quite worn down by now. It has a very, er... crunchy sound. I quite like it. I've found that the strings have ground material off the pick and formed it into a very sharp shape which now tends to "catch" in the windings of the strings and sometimes will stop me dead while I'm playing. It's a very bright, sharp attack. It sounds very cool for single note and double stop playing but I have a hard time with it for really fast chunky rhythm playing. I also have a pick made out of solid ox bone which is, I believe, 6mm thick and fucking massive. Some dude from reddit sent it to me probably 10+ years ago. I still have it kicking around somewhere in a box. It sounds pretty neat, almost glassy, very heavy. Tough to play with it though as it is incredibly thick and nearly twice the surface area of a standard pick. I usually go for picks that are 0.7 to maybe 3mm at most, so 6mm is quite a jump.

Soldering stuff in the guitar is (usually) not too difficult but it is tricky to do it cleanly unless you're practiced at it. I did it once in my Strat when I upgraded the pickups. It looked like hot garbage inside the body but electrically it worked fine and has held to this day (17-ish years later). A large problem I find these days is even top-end guitars have absolute trash components. My latest guitar is an ESP which was hand made in Japan and I waited over a fucking year for it to be delivered, and the pickup selector is literally a piece of plastic dogshit that crackles in between stages. Disgrace. Thankfully, it's easily fixable. It's on my to-do list.

One upgrade I'd highly recommend if you can stomach the cost is high ratio Gotoh machine heads. I recently outfitted my steel string acoustic with 21:1 ratio and I instantly wanted them on all my guitars. (something like https://g-gotoh.com/product/sgv510z/?lang=en) I think the standard ratio is 12 or 14:1 so it's a considerable jump in accuracy. I'm anal as hell about tuning and actually need to get a compensated fret guitar at some stage as the inability to perfectly tune a guitar across the neck drives me nuts sometimes (well-tempered klavier, and all that). See our resident Swedish nutball, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0urVqA4C49U (PS - he's a huge Hexen and Quake fan and has written songs inspired by, which are set to gameplay - very fun and amusing watch!)

Good to pay off the house first. Guitars are a drop in the bucket, relatively speaking. I was fortunate to be able to amass quite a nice collection of guitars and amps in my early 20's and I am still riding it with ease. I have five different tube amps from Mesa and Orange, enough tonal variety to keep me entertained for years. One day I'd like to get an Axe FX III or some super high-end modelling amp, mostly for fun. My tiff with them is the delay while they compute... even that few millisecond delay is a strange feeling under the fingers. Eventually I'd like to get some more nice mics and interfaces too, though I do have a decent setup now. This stuff is just a rabbit hole... expensive hobby. I think I enjoy the audio engineering and tone crafting aspect of this even more than playing, on some days.

[Eraser]

When you said resident Swedish nutball I expected an Yngwie Malmsteen video. Why wouldn't I?

[Mat Linnett]

@Eraser: Yngwie's Rick Beato interview was great, and really humanised him for me.

@mrd: Thanks for the recommendation on the Gotohs. If there's one thing I have thought about upgrading on my Studio, it's the machine heads, so getting advice on them is much appreciated.
Have you ever looked into graphite guitars? My mate Gary had a headless Status bass when I was growing up, but at the time, I didn't appreciate the tuning and intonation stability benefits of graphite; I just thought it looked really cool (hey, it was the early 90s.)
Unfortunately, while Status do make some graphite guitars as well as basses, it looks like they only do limited production runs these days. Maybe something to splash out on once the mortgage is done.

[Eraser]

I've seen it, Mat.

I never had a problem with Yngwie. He's kind of brazen and over-the-top, but the man is oozing with virtuosity and skill and has a deep, deep passion for the guitar. It's easy to mistake his brazenness for arrogance, but I think that would really sell him short.

There's a hilarious clip somewhere of Malmsteen, Vai, Bettencourt, Abasi and Wylde (my god what a lineup) having a repetition for their Generation Axe tour and it's Malmsteen who stops them mid-jam and complains that there's "too many notes" and the other guys just lose their shit laughing their asses off

[mrd]

Malmsteen is insanely talented. I remember years ago learning that he sometimes (or often?) plays with scalloped fretboards and my level of appreciation for his virtuosity went up an order of magnitude. It explains some of the wild bends he can pull off. My favourite clip of his is still that instructional video where he does Arpeggios from Hell and that rendition of Far Beyond the Sun. Shit never gets old.

Can't say I've ever heard of Status guitars or graphite guitars. It looks like the neck is made of carbon fiber? Odd! I wonder what it sounds like. Put in an order and check back in a couple of years. One day I'd love to get a Mayones guitar. I think they're Polish. Nice looking kit...

[Mat Linnett]

Found a good Youtube video of one yesterday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f89phZgyf8

(BTW, how do we embed videos on this new forum?)

[Κracus]

Injured myself on the motorbike.

https://youtu.be/cAX8veJ0ELI?si=zc20JxO1ipMaYPKT&t=101

If the timestamp doesn't work the injury happens at 1:50. Basically went trail riding and was going down a trail I had last been on in May. Strangely in May the trail was challenging but not muddy and when I went again on Monday it was very muddy. Normally I ride the center trail but because it was so muddy I opted to go into the rut because I was just sliding around stalling the bike. The grass hid a large boulder on the right and when you see the bike move to the left of the trail it's because the boulder is bending my right foot backwards against the bike effectively causing my foot to move a 450lb motorbike sideways.

When I stop I assume my foot may be broken, it certainly feels like it. Some have asked why I didn't turn around but the reality is that I already knew I wasn't able to stand on my foot so turning around wasn't an option so I make the decision to keep going through the trail with a broken foot.

Been mending since Monday and my foot is all sorts of black and blue.

If anyone trail rides, be weary of ruts and grass hiding things. Thankfully I wasn't going faster and it's mostly the top and front of my foot that took the blow, my ankle is sore but otherwise seems fine.

[Whiskey 7]

Bought a DYSON V12 Absolute. Amazing machine

It is the model with the green laser technology on the hard floor attachment. I was surprised when I unboxed after my normal Friday Floor day routine to see what it can and does 'highlight', the stuff missed

Friday Floor day routine involves sweeping the hard tile areas with the orange 'static' broom (dry mop really), I am sure you've seen them about and then, wet mopping the areas, changing the wash water at least twice; and we are a clean couple

I was gobsmacked at what the laser highlighted

The LED display is interesting too as it shows size and volume of the particles sucked up, again surprised.

[Foo]

For as poorly built in plastic as the Dysons are, they work really well and the design is great. I spent an hour yesterday replacing the busted trigger on our V11, because it was so resistant to repair you have to take (quite literally) every single component apart to replace the trigger. But whatever, it's still worth it. Every time I have to use a corded vac now it drives me mad.