962 - bah, you only say that about halo 2 because of the soundtrack including music by everyone's favourite guitar doctor...

i've played a fair bit of multiplayer halo on x-boxes and although it's my favourite fps on those, i simply can't stand using gamepads for fpses- mouse and keyboard ALL the way...

spent all day today in a studio recording my 6 minute long prog rock song... still missing parts though which'll be done next week... it's a hard life when you're playing bass, doing rhythm guitars, solo guitars, keys and singing... at least i didn't have to press any buttons...

962 - my two experiences ordering from Gak..

1) I order a Line6 AX212 amp (Flextone II but a bit older and a bit higher end)... after about a week of hassling them they tell me they don't actually have any, would I like another one? Yes please I say, I'll have the old-school style Fender Twin amp which they were selling pretty cheap. After a week of hassling they tell me they don't have that one either. But they have the ney pro-tube one which is another £200 to me... I think about it for a bit and then say yes. (got it for £850, which is almost £200 less than their online price...)

2)i order an Ibanez bass guitar... after about a week of hassling them it turns out they don't actually have one. I ask for a different one and get that nice and cheap too... love the machine too...

6 year old - 0 ! - 0 putting green - 1 womanly, as the great one intended - 4

962 - Yeah, I'd go for it for any kind of saving... they'll be fine with you if they actually have the thing you order... good luck!

masteryoda - anderton's are also a rip-off... the bass i got from gak was being sold £250 more expensive there (350 - 599 UKP). I've been to albert's music yeah! and i totally get what you're saying... it has got that league of gentlemen feel... bought more there than at anderton's though (earplugs and a stringwinder, against anderton's feeble midi lead). Albert's have a good selection of Dream Theater tab books too, which gives them extra points...

Yeah, we really should meet up... whereabouts do you live and whenabouts are you free? you still somewhere off southway?

V-Amp Pro is nice... a friend of mine has one... I can't compare to the Pod version but it's very good for the money- loads of connectivity and pretty good tone... though you'd probably have to play with it to see whether it's for you...

almost forgot to say (actually I did, i'm editing now...)

artanis- that beard is great!

It's 7.34 in Guildford and I haven't been to sleep yet... I have to walk to a lecture in less than an hour's time...

962- they do actually have seperate stock at the two companies i'm afraid! that really annoyed me...

austin - already preordered the dt dvd (and the rerelease of once in a livetime etc. which comes out at the same time) ... tell me when you have enjoyed Jordan's music...

What are you saying about 9s? Personally I prefer the sound for my style...

that's not use - that's ABuse!

jblaze - i've said it before and I'll say it again...

Joe!

You can see lions... only in Kenya Come to Kenya we've got lions... You can see tigers... only in Kenya Come to Kenya we've got tigers...

Forget Norway...

any of you guys use linux? i could really do with some linux experts in my life...

clarky - http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/29/ is what I was referring to... was reminded of it by the numerous satch fans pleading for him to go to their countries.

cuthbert - well, i'm using slackware 10.0 (a linux distribution, closer to unix than most i hear...)- it's installed on my second hard drive... anyway, i basically can't get anything to work properly... all i'm trying is the sound card and my wireless usb device... trying to install alsa drivers as a module into the kernel... at the modprobe stage it always crashes and screws up some files on the drive (which are then fixed when booting.

cuthbert - i'm now on mandrake linux which has one advantage and one disadvantage...

Good point - I've got internet working, and it was all pain free and easy.

Bad point - I've now got to wade through all the settings changing things to work in a nicer way (Slackware is nicely setup, it just doesn't do anything unless someone who really knows what they're doing plays with it.

neil - can i audition to be your band's new singer?

teehee... not a good idea... you should get the drummer to sing... wait... history tells me that's not a good idea either...

Good music lovers amongst you!

Good evening (morning) from Guildford...

Neal Morse (ex-Spock's Beard) is soon to release a new album called ONE. I stayed up all night for the listening party the other night, and this album is phenomenal- it features the mighty Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater/Transatlantic/Liquid Tension Experiment/Whatever other band he happens to be playing in this week) on drums amongst some other talented musicians.

I cannot recommend this album strongly enough. Go to http://www.nealmorse.com and check out the samples if you want to know roughly what it sounds like- this album is soooo good.

what i don't get is why so many peopledo the stupid thing of downloading expensive software for free, illegaly, when there are good laternatives which are free and legal.

have you guys never heard of Linux? If you're truly annoyed with Microsoft, if you really want stuff for free without screwing someone over in the business, get Linux. Virtually every program for it is free. It's a little work in settingh up sure, but you get the added bonus of making Bill Gates unhappy with you. Surely that's worth it.

For musicians- Ardour is a high-quality digital audio workstation for Linux that is free and pretty much as powerful as ProTools. There are software synths, modular synthesis programs, drum machines, anything you dare to think of.

Instead of behaving like shoplifters and pretending that what you do isn't a crime, why not do something good? It'll benefit you, and the makers of the products.

</rant>

That sounds like a nightmare actually... or a hallucination...

curses to mr nick - i was going to do that... :P

do you know that SPAM backwards is MAPS?