2005-10-26
18:46
NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month is an international event to write a 50,000 word first draft of a novel in a month – November, to be precise.
We’ve got a NaNoWriMo section here on PigPog – needs a bit of filling out, though.
2005-10-26
18:09
(A what? See our page on Line 6 Variax Guitars.)
I bought one recently, so it’s time for a mini-review. I’m in no position to comment on the accuracy of the modelled instruments – I don’t own any of them. It all sounds pretty good to me, though. Certainly nothing like digital guitars used to be – it feels and sounds just like any other electric guitar – it’s changing the sounds in real-time, not sensing what note you’re playing and then playing samples. It’s not cheap, and you could get a better guitar body for the money, but it wouldn’t be this flexible.
OK, we’ll start with the backstory – how I came to get this guitar. If you’re not interested, feel free to skip this bit.
Years ago, when I was at school, I had a Squier Strat, and had guitar lessons. I never became much good, but I had fun. In the end, I stopped playing whilst at university, and sold the guitar. I regretted it shortly after, but never really fancied taking it up again enough to buy another. My parents decided recently that a similar guitar would make a good surprise gift for me, so they bought me a Squier Strat kit – guitar, amp, leads, etc. I had a bit of fun with it again, but didn’t really get into it much.
Sam, on the other hand, took to it straight away, and soon wanted an upgrade. We couldn’t afford the Kirk Hammett signature series, so she bought an ESP M-50. A while later, I stumbled on the Line 6 Variax, and was fascinated. Further reading around their site lead us to the Pod, and Sam decided she wanted one. The Variax was far out of reach, though – far too expensive. I’d started playing a bit more by that time again, so I decided an upgrade might be in order for me too, if I could find something I really liked. The Ibanez AXS-32 looked like just the thing, so we went out to our local Ibanez dealer to have a look.
The didn’t have any, and after a good poke and play of various guitars, nothing appealed too much to me, so we bought the Pod and carried on to the shop where we had bought the M-50. By this point, Sam seemed to have developed a slightly surprising Telecaster fixation, but we’ll not talk about that here.
The next shop, Fox’s Music, had a Variax 500 second hand. For slightly more than our budget – £350. I had a play. I liked. Sam liked. So we figured the bank would get over it given time, and bought it anyway.
By this point, you’ve probably worked out that it’s a guitar. The clever bit about the Variax is that it can pretend to be lots of different guitars. It has piezo sensors instead of standard pickups, and the insides are filled with electronics to work out what noise your chosen classic guitar would have made, given what each string is currently doing. It sounds like it would never work, or it would work but would just feel wrong, but it does work. Really. It even picks up the sound of your fingers scraping along the lower strings. You can choose from various guitars, mainly from the 50s and 60s, including a Stratocaster, three different Telecasters, Gibson Les Pauls and Firebirds, Semi-accoustics, accoustics, resonators, and if you’re feeling in an odd sort of a mood, even a banjo or a sitar.
I’ve no idea, really. Sounds good to me, but I’ve never played any of the guitars it models. Other people who have seem to say it’s pretty good – not perfect, but close enough for most people. It’s certainly more portable and cheaper than 25 classic guitars would be.
Again, I’d have to say that I’m no expert on this. My experience is pretty limited, but it feels pretty good to me. Mine has a bit of buzz on some of the lower strings, but only in certain places, and only when treat fairly roughly. My Strat buzzes far more. It all feels quite nice and smooth, and the electronics don’t get in the way at all. I had a bit of a problem with the tuning drifting, but a change of strings seems to have helped a lot with that.
I’ll grab some pics of it at some point, but if you go to the official site, it’s the sunburst finish one in the middle of the pic.
Oh. OK. I got a couple of snaps of that earlier…
(Sorry, images are missing – I’ll try to get them replaced soon.)
Sweeney seemed to want to know what made it go too.
(Another missing image.)
Looks like the main stuff is all on the one little circuit board, with some extra boards on the controls and connectors. Everything’s nicely socketed, anyway, which bodes well for any potential repairs.
The future should hold even more interesting things for the Variax. Line 6 are currently working on their ‘Workbench’ software. This will come with an adaptor to connect the computer’s USB port to the guitar’s RJ45 connector. The software will allow you to pick from various different bodies, pickups, etc, to build your own guitar. It will work out how that guitar would sound, and upload it to your Variax. Impressive stuff. I’m guessing that once they finish it, people will start building models of all sorts of popular guitars and swapping them online.
Update: Workbench finally exists. We’ve seen it in a shop. Unfortunately, we couldn’t afford to buy it.
2005-10-26
17:58
I currently use the shiny silver version, as reviewed in The Gadgeteer. Before that, I have had two different models of the black versions – one the same as this silver, and before that, the more basic model.
It’s a four-in-one pen. The four features you get depends on the model you buy, but can include different coloured pens, .5mm or .7mm mechanical pencils, several colours of highlighters, and a PDA stylus tip in either white or yellow.
At the moment, mine contains a black pen, a red pen, a .5mm pencil, and a yellow stylus.
Works pretty well, and makes a fairly nice even line. Small refils, so won’t last long if used heavily, but they’re also small enough to keep spares handy. Check you can get refils, as they’ve become more difficult to get hold of in the UK now.
The mechanism in the pen I have now has lasted quite a long time, but I’ve had some of these mechanisms start to wear themselves loose after a while. I tend to use the pencil quite a lot, but they don’t seem to take the heavy use so well. May have been earlier quality problems, as the most recent one has been fine.
These aren’t much thicker than a ballpoint pen, but do make a nice bright mark that won’t cover existing text or writing. You have to scribble over something to highlight it rather than just drawing across it once.
Nice, fairly sharp tip. The only slight problem is that the pen is much heavier than the standard sort of stylus that comes with most PDAs, so it could be a bit heavy on the screen. I fine it easier to use than the short, fiddly, lightweight stylus that came with my iPaq hx4700, and much better than the stylus that came with the Sony Clie nx73v I had for a while.
This is the biggest problem I had with these. The first one I had was a basic model in black, and the labels to tell you how to open each ‘pen’ quickly wore away. This was followed by most of the black finish, leaving much of the pen shiny scuffed silver. A life in a pocket didn’t suit it. I replaced that with the black ‘executive’ model. I thought this one would last well, as the surface was so tough and thickly painted as to feel like it was enameled. It started cracking and flaking off after a while.
I still have that one, as it does at least look like it’s all brass underneath, and might look quite nice if I get all the paint removed and polish it to a good shine.
I’ve now had the ‘silver’ executive model for quite a long time, and it’s still working fine. Even the pencil mechanism is holding up to the use quite well.
I do love this pen. I hate the fact that I’ve had three of them, and probably gone through five pencil mechanisms, but the wonderful convenience of having a standard sized pen in my pocket that can do so much just keeps bringing me back. I also love the confusion when someone borrows it and just can’t work out how to get the pen out 
2005-10-26
15:03
The Isograph is an ink pen. Let’s get that out of the way to start with. There’s no disposable cartriges. You get the empty pens, and you get a bottle of ink. You have to put the one in the other…
We bought the ‘isograph college set’, which came with three isograph pens (.50mm, .35mm and .25mm), a .5mm mechanical pencil, a bottle of ink, a pack of spare leads, an eraser, a compass adapter, and a template that doubles as the lid…
The isograph pens make a very solid black mark. The ink flows smoothly, and easily, as long as you don’t try to go too quickly. It’s very good at what it’s designed for – careful technical drawing – line drawings, diagrams, that sort of thing.
At first, I thought these would only be good for technical drawing, and no use for sketching, but I’m actually finding myself using them more and more for sketching. They work nicely in conjunction with either pencil or Watercolour. The ink is water proof, so you can draw with the Isographs, then paint colour over with your watercolours.
The ink flows quickly and smoothly, and can cover areas without any of the ‘scribbled’ look that most pens will give. You can fill in plain black sections in a way that you just can’t with any ballpoint or gel ink pen. The fine metal point can give an odd scratchy feel to drawing, though, and the .25mm tip can feel like drawing with a needle.
On thin paper (like in a Moleskine Notebook) the ink can leak through to the other side, and even to the next sheet.
In the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing, these pens can do some amazing things…
The process of filling the pens with ink was less tricky than I expected – the ink bottle supplied has a very narrow neck, so you almost ‘inject’ the ink into the cartrige. Refilling seems to be easy enough too – just make sure you do it over some tissue or scrap paper in case of spillage.
Compare with lines from some other pens…
(Clicky piccy to see in Flickr in bigger sizes, and with notes and comments.)
The Rotring Rapidoliner was a kind of disposable version of the Isograph. The whole pen wasn’t disposable, but the refill extended right out of the top of the pen, so you replaced everything but the outside plastic sleeve and cap. Unfortunately, since Sanford bought Rotring, they’ve stopped making them.
2005-10-26
14:44
2004 was quite the year of discovery for me, and one of the many things I became aware and incredibly fond of is Moleskine Notebooks. I’ve always been a bit of a notebook fiend, buying whatever spangly and multi-colour leafed design caught my eye in the hope that it would give my creativity a much needed kick up the arse and prompted me to come up with my best work yet, only to be consigned to a heap when the story I’d be working on fizzled out.
Moleskine comes with its own folklore, cultural legends such as Ernest Hemingway, Henri Matisse and Bruce Chatwin swore by their Moleskine books, Chatwin himself is quoted as saying “Losing my passport was the least of my worries; losing a notebook was a catastrophe.” It is to scribbling what the Mac is to graphic design, the must-have for any person wishing to describe themselves as ‘creative’.
A Moleskine notebook is a beautiful object. Sleek, simple and cool. Even when it’s been half-soaked in tea! I spilled tea on the book I drafted this article in, and if anything it looks even cooler. It has that ‘long afternoons scribbling away in coffee shops’ look about it. It’s also well-built, hardwearing, can handle a working week bouncing around in my handbag, and can handle being absent-mindedly used as a coaster on the weekends. The paper, although the weight varies across the different types of book (more on that in a moment), is smooth and pleasing to the touch of a pen.
For every job, there’s a Moleskine. I currently have:
All books come with the handy pocket, bookmark (not in the Reporter) and elastic clasp.
I’ve found other notebooks to be either too small to be of any use or too big to take anywhere. The pocket Moleskine is the perfect size.
Any Moleskine should work fine with Pencils, but if you press on hard, the next sheet will be dented in the ordinary notebooks – the sketchbooks have thicker paper which work better. Coloured pencil works fine, though all but the sketchbooks have a slightly creamy coloured paper that may skew the colours a tiny bit – probably not enough to worry about.
Ballpoint and gel ink pens work fine in any Moleskine, liquid ink pens like the Rotring Isograph may bleed through a bit to the other side in the thin papered notebooks, but not too bad.
The paper in the notebooks is very thin, and tends to get misshaped quite easily with Watercolour. Although the sketchbooks have heavier paper that should be better suited (and are actually labelled as being suited to water-based media), the paper seems to repel water, and won’t take colour well. If you want good watercolour paper, look elsewhere, but if you value the portability and just want to do watercolour occasionally, you can get away with it. The notebooks work slightly better, but the sketchbooks can do the job if you break the surface slightly by either washing over fairly hard with the brush, or using Watercolour Pencils like Derwent Graphitint or crayons like Derwent Aquatone to apply the colour in the first place.
The Moleskine has a fair few fans, and most of them assemble at the Moleskinerie, to exchange tips, art and stories. Merlin at 43 Folders did a fantastic article on Moleskine hacks earlier in the year – and that article was the one that prompted me to order a couple and give them a whirl — thanks, Merlin!
If you want to find out more about Moleskines, check out these sites:
Since becoming more interested in sketching and using watercolours, pastels and other media, I’ve become less keen on the Moleskine. For writing, for use as a notebook, it’s still head and shoulders above the rest, but as a sketchbook, something to practice art techniques in, I haven’t felt happy with any of the Moleskines I have.
Look at all the Moleskine sites out there, like the previously mentioned Moleskinerie, and you’ll see many, many people creating beautiful sketches and works of art in theirs. I find that the smooth paper that is so nice to use when I’m writing isn’t so nice for drawing. So as far as the art side goes, I’m on the lookout for another book to fall in love with. Any suggestions? Let me know.
2005-10-26
14:22
I’m currently moving pages from the Wiki over here to Pages in the blog, starting with the most popular pages. As I’m going, I’m setting up redirects for the pages. Unfortunately, during the transition, there’s going to be a few broken links, as I move pages over that link to other pages that I’ve not moved yet. If I tried to leave all the links to the old part of the site, then change them after moving the pages they point to, it would take twice as long, and this is going to take quite long enough as it is.
I’ve been working on this for most of the day so far, and I’ve done twelve pages. There’s 345 in total.
It’s not as bad as it sounds, as a lot of the pages just won’t be getting moved, and I’m starting with some of the biggest pages. Anyway, please excuse the mess whilst we move…
Update: Problems! We’ve hit some problems with the process…
The last one is relativley easy to fix – styles can be modified, or themes can be changed. The first problem is a pretty serious bug in WordPress – it treats the Page’s slug as a complete identifier for the Page, but it isn’t a complete identifier. Wouldn’t be so bad if it enforced this, and didn’t allow us to create duplicate slugs, but it doesn’t, so it does.
The length of the Pages list is a pretty serious problem too – it can be worked around with some manual work, making intermediate pages to link to deeper levels, but it would mean a lot of manual work. We’re trying to avoid that by using WordPress.
I’ve removed all the redirects (thankfully, I had the sense to make them all temporary, so nothing will have thought they’d actually moved already), so everything is back as it was for now.
2005-10-26
14:09
Twist-action mechanical pencils, with 3mm (or wider – seen it listed as 3mm, 3.5mm and 3.6mm) lead. When retracted, lead is ‘hidden’, so these can be carried in a pocket without marking things or breaking the lead.
Nice and ‘chunky’ to hold, and pleasant to draw with. Available in H, B, and 6B – not a lot of selection, but enough for ‘convenience sketching’. The 6B makes a nice dark line, and gives even coverage quite easily. Not that I’m much of a sketcher, but they feel pretty nice to me. Only problem is that the lead is actually a bit too thick – thicker than a ‘real’ pencil. Good for doing areas, but not so good for any precise bits of drawing.
It makes marks like these…
(Clicky piccy to see in Flickr, with bigger sizes and any notes and comments.)
See this blog entry for a pic of writing with one of these next to some other pens.
Rough sketching, especially if you’re going for thick, dark, bold lines – the 6B does a great job of this. Filling areas is nice and quick, thanks to the thickness of the lead.
Even the harder variants are a bit thick for doing anything precise. You’d probably want to keep other pencils for fine detail, though you could just sharpen the Croquis.
Well, we bought a B and a 6B at first. I used the 6B and really liked it for a while. When I stopped using it much, Sam used it one day and liked it, so it went into her kit. I’ve ended up buying another one, as I like it too. My favourite is still the Staedtler Mars 780, but for the really dark bold stuff, the Croquis can’t be beaten.
2005-10-26
14:02
A clutch pencil. They were very popular before automatic pencils came along, much less common now.
Button at the top – hides a sharpener in a hole in the tip – pull the button out, push the lead in the hole and twist.
Knurled metal grip – not slippery at all.
Clutch mechanism. When you push the button, three arms push out of the front of the pen, and open out to release the lead. With the lead dropped back inside the pencil, they retract almost completely back in, but when gripping the lead, they stay forward of the tip. You position the lead by holding the button in, sliding it to where you want it, and releasing the button to grip it. Push the button in with the pencil pointing downwards without anything under it, and your lead lands on the floor.
I find it a little thin. The Pilot Croquis Pencils are shorter and chunkier, which makes them more comfortable to hold, but their lead is much thicker too. I prefer the Mars. The metal grip is very good – not at all slippery. The only real drawback is that it looks distinctly old fashioned. Still, that may well be because it is. The last pencil of this type I remember using belonged to my grandparents. Now, however, this is my favourite pencil.
The spare leads come in 12-packs, in one of the most splendid bits of packaging around. They’re laid out in six little compartments in a tray, two leads to each compartment. The cover of the tray slides back, and the bottom slides up a curved path like a roller shutter. The leads can then slide forwards out of the box.
In the top end of the box, another slider reveals a small plastic rod. Pink, it was, and I had no idea what it was for. Finally, I realised that it was the same colour as the band on the label with the lead hardness on it – 4B on the ones I’d got. Presumably, other lead hardnesses have different coloured rods in them. the rod can be fitted to the actual pencil as a replacement button, so you can tell which pencil contains which type of lead. You’d have to remember the colours, but I guess most people wouldn’t be carrying too many different grades anyway.
2005-10-26
13:31
Sam thinks I wasted half of yesterday by playing The Sims, but I was actually researching for this article. Well, if I manage to get an article out of it, I’ll use that as my excuse. Then play again for a while in the name of fact-checking.
It’s a game, from the same series as SimCity, SimEarth, SimTower, SimAnt, and so on. Unfortunately, it’s one that gets dull rather quickly, but I hear the later versions that are out now are much better.
Probably. Let’s have a go anyway. It’s my excuse for a bit more playing.
The biggest challenge in The Sims is fitting in all the things your Sim has to do. There’s no weekends in The Sims, so all the fun, all the socialising, and all the learning have to be done in a short bit of time in the evenings. They usually finish work relatively early, though, so it sort of balances out to be pretty similar to life. The trick to fitting more in is workflow – doing things in the right order, and fitting small jobs into the gaps. If you call a friend and invite them to pop round, you’ll have a few minutes before they arrive. You can fit a couple of jobs into this time – taking the rubbish out, or paying the bills.
As for order, if you need to take the rubbish out, and you need to bring the paper in, you can save time by doing them in that order. Whilst you’re out at the kerb putting the rubbish out, get the mail, and bring it in whilst you’re coming back. The same tricks work in life. In Getting Things Done, David Allen talks about collecting things into context based lists, so you do things that need to be done in once place all together to save time. If something needs to go downstairs, dump it at the top of the stairs, and take it when you’re going anyway. When you find something you need to speak to someone about, add it to your @Agendas list, with their name next to it, and by time you see them you may have several items you can get out of the way at once. Build the Happiness Bar up Before Working
Sims won’t work unless they’re happy. If you haven’t let your Sim play games or read a book for too long, they won’t study or work out when you tell them to. We have to play too, and we’ll work better if we’re in a good mood. So playing games could be good for productivity, in the long run. I’m making excuses again, aren’t I?
If you leave your Sim unattended, they won’t just stand there indefinitely. They’ll go to the toilet before they make a puddle. Usually. If they get really tired, they’ll go to bed and sleep. They’ll eat when they’re hungry, and play games when they’re bored. They will never, however, pay the bills or take the rubbish out. They’ll become distressed about the state of the room, but you have to intervene to get them to actually clean up. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty much an unattended Sim, when left to my own devices. I’ll play if I’m bored, and I’ll eat when I’m hungry. I don’t have to make any special effort to go and sleep when I’m tired.
When it’s Sunday night, and I know the alarm is going to be going off early Monday morning to get to work, I do have to make a special effort to go to bed a bit earlier than I would naturally. Jobs like paying bills or cleaning the house never get done unless I really think about it and make myself do it. Think of it that way, and getting your day to day work done is just as much fun as playing The Sims. Unfortunately, that works the other way around too
2005-10-26
13:22
GTD is all based on David Allen’s excellent books. You’ll get far more from reading the books than from any web site.
Recently, I’ve taken to using a single actions list, marked @WhenNext, rather than keeping separate context-based lists. It works pretty well as an alternative if…
The main benefit is that I don’t have to worry about what lists to have, and which list something should go in. Also, when I can do things from several lists, it’s quick to check for everything than if they were in separate lists.
The one list can get a bit long. I’m don’t have all that much that needs doing, and I’ve still got around fifty actions on my lists. I could imagine a busy manager having trouble managing everything in just one list.
Just merge all the action lists together, call it @WhenNext, and prefix each item with the context you could do it in. As long as your lists sort alphabetically, the things with the same context will all be together, and you can create and get rid of contexts as and when you need them. When you complete the last action with a particular context, the context is gone.
I’m using Outlook on the desktop, and Pocket Informant on my iPaq. These both handle long lists quite nicely.
I don’t think this would have worked with my old Palm Tungsten T3. It didn’t show enough lines on the display at once to make glancing up and down a list easy, and scrolling was always a touch awkward. On the Palm, switching between lists was very quick and easy. It also didn’t sort alphabetically, so the things in the same context wouldn’t have been gathered together.