Raw

Before WWW2007 I'd decided to treat myself if everything went ok there. I'd saved up for the trip and put a decent number of hours into getting the Dev Track programme together, so I reckoned I deserved something more tangible than woolly peer cred and another little bullet on my CV. While I managed numerous minor cock-ups there were no major disasters (could easily have been were it not for help from Paul and Paul - ta gents). As it happened the event was a pretty good reward in itself, my only minor regrets are just not having sorted out audio & visual recording of the presentations, and not making time to go up into the hills.

Any road up, I just got my planned treat, something I can noodle on in the office whenever I need a little break or while waiting for stuff to build or whatever. More stimulating than the usual kind of executive/geek toy.

A while back Caro talked me out of buying a semiacoustic on the basis that it'd be easier to learn on a single (shape of) instrument. With this in mind, when looking for an acoustic I searched for one with the same scale length as the Strat. By chance I landed on these reviews of the Epiphone DR-100. While I was willing to pay whatever was necessary to get something playable, this seemed to fit the bill perfectly. Thomann had it in stock and it's a remarkably good price given those reviews. The guitar (I opted for the natural finish 'NT' version) with a case, spare strings & shipping came to about £150. It sounds great & feels good, although it's going to take me a while to get a full tone bend on this thing, light acoustic strings being like suspension bridge cables compared to those on the electric. All I've got to do now is learn how to play the thing...

Also, last weekend I decided to bite the bullet and dismantle the Tinocaster and start the (hopefully) final bits of work on it. (Thinking now maybe I should call it the Vinocaster, someone's already used the name Tinocaster, heh: "Did you mean: doncaster "). With a bit of luck should have that playable again - and finished! - this coming weekend. Will do a write-up soon after. Soon after that, I want to get all the associated data up on the Semantic Web, ultimately it could make a nice little demo.