Stevee T, thanks. making the routing jig was a real pig. Normally, if you're making a guitar body from scratch, you'll have a square blank (2-piece or 3-piece with thru-neck) with the body mapped out on it. This leaves spaces outside the area of the body which you can happily fill with holes for screwing routing jigs onto, and then cut off when you're done.

but, because the body on my guitar was finished, I had to make a jig that would be stable without fixing it to the body with screws. I ended up making a routing jig that had a rectangular plug on the bottom, exactly the size of the humbucker cavity by the bridge, and slotted it into there! All out of MDF! haha.

marimariSRV, yeah, I'll be going to Vai's London show, at the Apollo (i think), on October 19th. Have you talked to EJ much lately? Any idea what his expectations are with the new album? I can't wait, it's out in 4 days! WOOHOO!!!!

In other news, British Petroleum - BP - has funded and been in charge of the building of an American oil pipeline that carves it's way straight across Turkey to get middle-eastern oil, cause the US didn't want to have to do a deal with Russia, afraid that the Russians could just cut off the supply and hold the world to ransom (hahaha, yeah, really). The pipeline has been rushed and has been a budget-build, and it's already needing patching up. If there is a spillage the whole of Turkey, the East Meditterranean, Black Sea and Caspian, as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan, will be decimated.

BP, giving you the best of British

Delfino, if you really want to piss uni off, paint the room black! It'll take 15 coats to make it nasty prison-cell off-white again! MUAHAHAHAHA

VFR, oop, my bad! haha. Thanks a lot dude, I'd love to see the Ibanez 90th footage. Regards the Vai GIT bootleg....what's it like? Cliff sent me the tape of Satch and Vai and the rest in Seville, 1992, and Vai's set just didn't do it for me.

That said, I think I was put off by his pitiful outfit.....he somehow made it possible for Diamente or white Rhinestone to be more fashionable than something! haha. Have you seen the Seville 92 show? if not, basically, Vai's outfit was a suit (with no shirt) with all these horrible fake crystals hanging off it, swinging around, and generally looking tasteless, each one about 10cm long! haha.

FVR, I bow to you, good call on the Shakepeare definition, very interesting indeed. So, you've read a fair bit of Shakespeare's stuff then?!

Delfino, good call on Ghost Recon: Island Thunder. I love the beach mission! I've been solidly working on San Andreas since it came out last friday! haha.

I can't wait to hear Bloom! I preordered from musictoday and it was shipped on Saturday so it should arrive this week or next. I'm gearing up for it by listening mostly to EJ stuff at the moment. That means I have to listen to Venus Isle again.....I think I'll cope! hehe

Yeah, Vai in the UK - if you do come over, please make the London date, October 19th. That's the one I'll be going to. What else would you be doing while you're here?

And yes, we got the original Batman shows on TV. They were being repeated when I was a kid, so at the time no, I didn't wish there were expletives in there, but now I would be dying from laughter if I heard "holy fuck batman" or something equally ridiculous! haha.

VFR, hahaha, yeah I know the sort of day you mean dude! I always know it's going to be one of those kind of days when little things start f*ck*ng up rght from the word go....like I'll get up but have no pairs of socks left in the drawer, and then when I find some and I've got dressed, there's no milk left but I've already brewed my tea....man, it goes on! hehe

PhryDom, who is "Course Of Evolution"?

Clarky, right on, I was pissed enough and I was just watching it on telly. You've definitely got to feel for those guys who'd flown from Panama, not to mentiuon the 10,000 JPM supporters who'd travelled up from Columbia. I think it's outrageous that Max Mosely made the decision he made. I don't think Ferrari helped matters much, but it really is the FIA who's to blame.

Keniko, thanks for checking out the new tune! Thanks for your kind words too....guitar tones are courtesy mostly of the POD II! haha, and a bit of fiddling with Cubase!

VFR, "but why couldn't michelin get tyres across from europe to the states when they knew on Friday ?"....because they would have been in breach of five regulations! Can you f*ck*ng believe that?! The sport is so over-regulated, that if you find out that some asshole has resurfaced a track without telling you, rendering your tyres redundant, there's nothing you can do about it!

Sorry to hear those exams didn't go so well. That's so harsh that you couldn't answer the first question because of the way it was worded - I know exactly how you feel, I went through a few exams like that. I hate, with a passion, the sorts of people that write these papers! They're the same lot that write things like Customs forms, passport applications and Inland Revenue Tax Return forms! I don't think there is anything clever about wording a question really technically. Good luck to you anyway bro, keep us posted as to how things go...

Keniko, sorry to hear that bad news dude....it sucks. Are you sure it was methane gas? I didn't think methane was odorless....I know Carbon Monoxide is. Regardless, it sucks, and that kind of accident is never really the sort of accident you'd think of.

Update, I just saw your latest message....again, I'm sorry to hear the bad news dude. Peace and kind regards

Sweet, 3DS max and Maya Editor.....you won't be needin much else! That said, have you seen/used/heard of Lightwave? It's awesome. Years ago I used to download addon cars for Need For Speed 4 for PC, and one of the guys built cars using Lightwave. His car models were simply astonishing, far, far better than anything you've ever seen on Gran Tursimo 4, Project Gotham, Colin McRae Rally or anything. Yeah they require a high polygon count, but with today's technology that doesn't matter.

Delfino, good luck with the job hunting. I hate doing it, it's so demoralising, I hope you get lucky and someone actually looks at your application!

Also, I want to hear "Delta Halo" but at 5.2mb it's a bit big for me to listen to. My connection has been shit lately, but if I get a good one over the weekend or something I'll download the track!

Stevee T, danny K, thank you both for checking out Powerhouse, and thanks for your feedback...I'm glad people are diggin it!

Some poor f*ck*r actually paid a good couple of hundred bucks for that! haha.

does anybody know when the sale of Vai's UK tickets ends? I thought, when they first went on sale, I saw something saying they'd be available until the end of this month, but I can't see anything that says that now, and it would surprise me greatly, considering the shows are in October.