So I’ve been trying to learn the dark art of shredding this summer. I found a great instructional book (well… comic book!) that has some pretty good lessons in it, plus it has a storyline!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shred-Boot-Camp-Book-CD/dp/0739052772/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253102960&sr=8-1

I’ve been using this in conjunction with a Guitar Techniques magazine I had lying around, and coupled with an hour of metronome practice a day, my playing is really coming on!

I recently ordered a DVD by The Great Kat for… inspiration… not very tuneful, but hell, that woman can shred.

On the physics side of things, I’ve just finished reading up on chromatic and monochromatic extinction in the atmosphere (the reduction of intensity of a source in the sky due to absorption in the atmosphere). I think that’s going to prove a nightmare to properly compensate for!

So yet another very long perdiod of absolutely nothing from me. I’ve ended up using twitter which is easier than blogging, which is partially why… that and I’m lazy.

So I thought of a new purpose for my blog for the next few months – blogging my masters project. Hopefully updates will follow this time!

So today I had to do the intonation on my d string, after noticing it was out by about 10 cents. It’s quite easy for the Ibanez S470.

Follow the steps in the manual that came with the guitar, but also:

• slacken the string you’re changing by a few turns on the tuning peg, before you change anything.
• note that screwing the intonation bolt in lengthens the string, and screwing it out shortens. So, if the octave is too high, screw in; if it is flat, screw out.

It took me quite a while to realise the second point! I hope that someone else finds this helpful!

So I’m kicking back on a (warm!! It was smeggin’ freezing in Brighton) train to York, with a nice cup of tea, after some partying down South.

I went down to Brighton yesterday for a mate’s 21st. Met up with a load of her mates at a nice restaurant – I only knew her, but managed to recognise more than a few of her friends from Facebook xD A few drinks later and it was easy enough to talk to bunch of almost complete strangers! The food was pretty awesome, lots of fancy nibble sort of things. I’m told they were called ‘callope’, or something similar and suitably French.

From the restaurnat we moved onto a club that was pretty good. A few hours of dancing (or drunken flailing in my case) and it was bed time. I was absolutely shattered by the time we got back and fell asleep pretty quick…and have spent most of today still trying to wake up!

In other news, I’ve been loving my touch lately (and not in a illegal way). Makes a great PDA. Recently got the app ‘Twitteriffic’ for it. Has a bug or two that could be sorted (eg loads your tweets and you start at the oldest ones, so you have to scroll up loads..there might be a setting for this…I should probably check!), but on the whole is pretty good. I wish more of my friends would use twitter!

My 3/4 leather jacket is most awesome. I can live in it.

Went to a mate’s party in Leeds last night which was pretty cool. Free homebrew ale and vodka fuelled a fun filled night and I got to see some mate’s I’v not seen for a while, which was good. I feel a little rought today, but not too bad, and should be heading over to octopush soon Slept under my jacket on the sofa and was most comfy.

This week is looking busy. Group projects, sport socials and a metal night all crammed in! Hopefully a band practice soon too. The band I joined had our first practice last week, but we need to keep it going regularly, so we’re ready to get gigging in the new year (it’s good to have targets! =D).

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks all over the place! I spent last week in San Francisco, which was awesome. I’m very grateful to my friends who let me crash in their apartment for the week! I did all the touristy stuff, like looking at Fishermans Wharf, Golden Gate Bridge, Miur Woods etc, and sampled some of SF’s finest coffees from various establishments. I also went to a range and used a Magnum, which was ridiculously awesome! I had a fantastic time. I’ll put the photos onto my Facebook this weekend.

I moved back into uni last night. I’ve almost finished unpacking everything. I’m in a bigger room this year, and having some space is quite nice. Anyway, I should get back to my reading now. Commutators in qunatum mechnics…

I got back form climbing Scafell Pike today. It was awesome! Drove up to a mate’s house nearby on Friday night, then we did the walk on Saturday and drove back on Sunday.

The walk started off ok, but there was a lot of cloud higher up, initially obscuring the peak. Also, it was surprisingly busy! There were loads of other people about, I was expecting it to be fairly quiet. The ascent was easy going, and there were still some good views about even though the cloud obscured higher parts of the mountains. We took the steep route up, which involved getting up a scree run followed by a slight scramble to reach the saddle between Scafell and Scafell Pike. By this stage we were in the mist, and visibility was quite low, but we could see the valley on the opposite side through a gap in the cloud.

From the saddle we started the last part of the walk to the peak. We eventually got there to find a huge amount of people! Some photos and food later found us starting to wonder back down the mountain, intnding to take a route down the other side into a different valley…but we missed the turning (partially my fault…) and ended up doing down a path that eventually joined the one we took up. Then we drove back to my mate’s, got some beer and Chinese and had a few laughs. Then drove back today!

I’m off to do Scafell Pike (the biggest mountain in England at 977m) this weekend coming with some mates from uni, should be fun! I’ve got most of the preparations done (map, route), and just need to sort out a place to sleep and a top hat now. I can’t wait! My trip to the Alps this year gave me a desire to bag a lot more mountains. =D