Hippo, birdie, two ewes...

... to the fabulously talented unclechristo!! Have a good one.

Gear *L*U*S*T*

GIBSON HD.6X-Pro Guitar

The HD.6X-Pro features a hand-oiled mahogany neck, smooth frets and a comfortable profile for effortless playability, and classic Gibson humbuckers for incredible, traditional tone. Media-accelerated Global Information Carrier (MaGIC), an Ethernet with patented Gibson technology, carries bi-directional signals with low latency and no signal degradation over miles of cable. The HD.6X-Pro’s Hex pickup is composed of six small, patent-pending humbuckers positioned under each string at the bridge. The high-technology pickups send six individual signals to studio grade preamps, allowing the six signals to be immediately digitized. The incredible sensitivity of the Hex pickup and the high-definition signal stream offers dynamic range and sonic possibilities never before imagined. The Breakout Box, known as “BoB,” routes any combination of the six Hex signals to any assigned destination automatically detecting outputs and designations for ease of use and playability.

( this picture says it all )

(from Engadget)

Normally I prefer small-body Martin acoustics, but I have been known to make exceptions.

Must...not...drool...on...keyboard...

Noise-blocking headphones on the cheap

instructables : Jackhammer Headphones

These home-made hifi headphones work as well or better than Bose noise-cancelling headphones.
Cost: $20
Time to make: one minute.
Difficulty: none.
Unlike the Bose model, these block outside noise instead of cancelling it.

Basically you just buy good hearing protectors, and install the speakers from cheap phones in them. Not as good-sounding as my $99 pair of Sennheiser HD280Pro's, but 1/5 the price and probably better blocking.

Never could get the hang of Tuesdays...

Mom's iMac, her holiday/birthday present from my brother and me, arrived safely this morning. The UPS tracking info said "left at front door", which had me greatly worried; turns out that means that they deliver to the concierge desk.

Just fired off a fairly substantial order to JanisIan.com -- she has a sale every December, with CDs at half price or less.

I'm in the process of swapping CPUs (with motherboards and memory, of course) between my recording box and my fileserver. The recording box currently has a 1MHz Via C7 board that's fanless, but apparently doesn't have enough compute power to play more than about 4 tracks while recording. Hopeless. And the server is a lot more powerful than it needs to be, so the swap should be a win all around.

( techie details )