PigPog

Sinfest shows us why. Mew.

As Christmas Dinner, lovingly cooked by Michael, works its way through my system just enough for me to contemplate cracking open the chocolate orange my mate Barbara bought for me, I have decided to break from the age-old tradition of crashing out in front of the TV by blogging instead.

Michael’s parents are currently sunning it up in Sri Lanka. They like to get away from it all at Christmas, and who can blame them? I stopped going over to my family’s for Christmas as soon as I had a good enough excuse not to. Although I have a good relationship with Mum, and a fairly good relationship with Gran, there are other relatives who, how to put this politely, I don’t much care for. So as soon as I had a better place to be than listening for the umpteenth time how I’m letting myself down for this, that, and the other reason and expecting me to be all smiles and good hair I was off.

Old family christmases used to start with the presents, wrapped as lovingly as they deserved, and greetings scribbled directly on the wrap (why waste money buying tags?). Then there was the dinner, where we’d gather round the best table that was only ever brought out for Christmas, laugh at the increasing senility of my Grandad, laugh at Mum forgetting to serve the stuffing, and watch with awe as Gran would declare herself full to bursting after one slice of turkey and a sprout. It was the same every damn year. The venue changed a couple of times, my Dad was replaced by some hideous creature that couldn’t keep his hands to himself, but as long as Grandad was there being daft and Auntie Hazel kept calling fizzy Country Manor ‘champagne’ and stood up and saluted when the Queen’s Speech came on, Christmas was Christmas was Christmas, whether I was 8 or 18.

Grandad died in 1993, and Auntie Hazel now lives in a care home and barely knows her own family. Mum and the hideous creature parted company a few years later, and I flew the nest and found a new family set up – Michael, me and the cats. We are very fortunate when it comes to our family Christmas. We only have ourselves to entertain. We don’t have to worry about keeping children amused, parents impressed or distant relatives at bay. Christmas for us is like going into hibernation. We came back from a visit to Michael’s Gran on Thursday, closed the front door and vowed to not set foot out of the house again until we had a damn good reason to.

Whatever you and yours are doing today, enjoy it. Christmas greetings to you all from the PigPog Hibernation Hole

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger: “Hey, what are you doing reading blogs? You’re addicted too, aren’t you?

Heh. Caught you.”

Damn, caught out. Hey, not just reading blogs, but writing them too.

I just received a spam offering me custom engraved Christmas decorations. Too late.

Happy Today Jolly Everyone.

Top Ten Tech Predictions for 2005 (Chris Pirillo): "5 – eBay will eBay itself on eBay"

Chris’ predictions for 2005 are excellent, but just two posts later, he claims that "Too much sugar makes me a little wacky.". Do you live on a diet of pure sugar, Chris?

Marc’s Outlook is one year old today!: “Today marks exactly one year since I began blogging with my friends here at OfficeZealot.com.”

Happy blogday to Marc! The GTD Zone on OfficeZealot is still one of the biggest referrers to PigPog, since Marc kindly linked to my articles on GTD (Introduction, Methods, and the PigPog Method). Things have gone pretty quiet around here about GTD since then. I still use the system, but not really very well. I was better at writing about it than actually doing it. I think my problem is sticking too many things into my system that I know I should be doing, but don’t actually want to do, which makes me avoid looking at the lists, so I don’t get them done. Not only that, but I then miss seeing the things that I really did want to do. Time for some good honest culling of things I just can’t be bothered with.

On the subject of all things productivity related, though, some of the best articles I’ve read recently have been from Steve Pavlina. If it’s productivity stuff you’re here for, head over to his blog and have a read – it’s quite splendid.

Fine Contemporary Craft meets Medieval Technology

I really want to know how you first got into this. I’m sure you didn’t wake up one day and decided to sell miniature Guillotines.

There’s a risk of half the stuff in this blog coming from sensoryimpact, but it’s their own fault for finding such splendid stuff. Like this interview with a guy who makes miniature medieval devices. He saw an opening in the market for a desktop trebuchet, so he jumped on it. The opening in the market, that is, not the trebuchet.

…a rapid fire pencil gun (art-deco styling not withstanding) just didn’t say ‘Lady Eccentric Genius’ like I was hoping.

Started an article that hopefully will become a useful resource for people, like me, just starting out on the guitar.

Want to learn how to play guitar but don’t fancy going for lessons? Well, here’s how I’m doing it.

The Instrument to Start Out With

The trick is to buy a guitar that cheap enough for you to not feel intimdated about playing it, but not so cheap it sounds terrible. The best guitar to start out with is the Squier Strat. For about £200, it’s possible to get everything you need in one purchase – guitar, amp, leads, strap, video and instruction guide. And once you’ve got all that stuff laid before you, you need the best help you can to get you started.

The Help

The Complete Guitar Player by Russ Shipton

Starting out, this book is absolutely essential. It gets you straight into the heart of the action, learning chords and playing classic rock anthems (well, Mull of Kintyre anyway). It’s the perfect launch pad to learning tab and getting cracking with the fabulous toy that is…

Guitar Pro

I have to admit I was sceptical about Guitar Pro at first. It looked like a program for viewing tab on the computer, something that could be easily achieved by opening the tab .txt files in Notepad or something similar. Then I tried it. Once you’ve got to grips with reading tabulature (click here for a handy how-to guide on reading tab), Guitar Pro is the perfect playground. Through the website mysongbook.com it’s possible to access tab for over 30,000 different tunes (and new tunes are added every day by its users) and run the files in Guitar Pro. There you can adjust the tempo, play along with backing, and even attempt to sing along if you’re feeling brave. *Update:* Be wary of mysongbook.com – it’s a mass of popups, and we’ve just had problems with it attempting to install unpleasant software without asking us too – best avoided. Once you’ve got Guitar Pro going you can try just about anything. If you want to go into the theory more, there a books, flash cards, chord dictionary programs all designed to fill in the gaps in your knowledge. However, if your the impatient, impulsive, easily bored type like me, you’ll be wanting to get stuck straight in with learning songs rather than chord names, and you might be in the market for a new instrument to pose with.

The Instrument to Make Your Own

Once you’ve picked up the basics you may feel like you want to buy a guitar to live with, rather than learn on. A tried and true instrument that never lets you down. And that instrument is…? Well, it’s different for everyone. As I got into playing (and I am still very, very much a beginner) I wanted something with a bit more clout than the Strat. I ended up with an ESP M-50. A gorgeous, black, cheaper relative of the signature series of a certain guitarist of a certain ‘veteran’ heavy metal band. OK, I admit, I bought it because I couldn’t afford any of the guitars from the KH series, but after trying it in a music store, it was love at first strum. The only other instruments that caught my attention that day was an ESP Viper and a Fender Telecaster. Maybe I’ll expand the collection again with a Tele in a few years’ time. Hopefully I’ll expand on this article again in the not-too-distant future. This is a subject I’m still learning myself, so as I pick up tips, tricks and useful tools, I’ll post them here

Any comments/suggestions/tips, let me know.

Boing Boing: Mayor of Bogota uses mimes for public behavior control: “Initially 20 professional mimes shadowed pedestrians who didn’t follow crossing rules: A pedestrian running across the road would be tracked by a mime who mocked his every move. Mimes also poked fun at reckless drivers.”

FOXNews.com – Foxlife – Out There – Man Loses, Regains Self: “A 54-year-old Wisconsin man, missing for more than three months, logged on to the Internet and discovered his own identity.”

Keep scrolling down the page for more – a staged shooting prank that want wrong, the splendid story of a man who spent years paying child support for an imaginary child, a drug deal done in front of the sheriff-elect’s house, a thief duct-taped to a pole, and the menace of the cookbook-clipper. (Via Techdirt.)