Delfino, don't you have even an AGP on that motherboard? It must be ancient, if not!

If you do get a new motherboard you'll probably want to go for PCI-E rather than AGP. AGP is still great, but PCI-E is going to greatly surpass it within the next few months.

juju, haha, when I read your post about "steering clear of Katrina" I thought you were talking about a dodgy messageboard-member who I'd completely failed to notice! Then when I saw PhryDom saying about "keeping out of Katrina's path" I made the link!

"I'm sick n tired of America babysitting the world only to get shit on "......when did "the world" ever ask to be "babysat?"

"Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen?"......yes, not even the President Of The United States Of America can stop the weather doing what it wants to do.

"We must rebuild New Orleans, the city that gave us jazz, and music, and multiculturalism."....and black people.

I guess the spotlight is off aid for Africa then?

Cuthbert and Keniko, points well taken brothers. I knew my comments might cause a stir, but things like "did this have to happen" always end up getting turned around and construed and contorted so it's possible to say "THIS person is to blame for this", which is ridiculous 'cause nobody is responsible for the natural cycle of the planet.

Then again, if we didn't all burn so much fossil fuel and pump so much sh*t into the atmosphere, the global weather systems would be more stable.

However, I completely understand that the context of that quoted comment was, of course, that warnings and damage limitation plans could have been put in place but weren't. And yes, it is Mr Bush who you can point the finger at. If he pulls all your troops out of the gulf to come home and stop the looters/help rebuild New Orleans, then he proves that he never really was interested in liberating/protecting "the Iraqi people". If he leaves your troops there, then he proves that all he really wanted was the oil, so he can't win, which is cool, 'cause he doesn't deserve to win.

"The little people always have to pay for the govenments mistakes."....yes, but hopefully next time there is an election, the little people will vote for someone who actually gives 2 shits about the nation he is in charge of.

The latest news report that had me creased up laughing/crying, was that the US now wants to import fuel (gasoline) from Europe. This is the same US that, not two years ago, put an embargo on trade with Europe, especially France.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that anybody deserved to get hit by a hurricane.....the footage and photographs of the level of devastation are shocking.....but it just seems that everything is turning really sour now that the US is realising the things that the rest of the world has been telling it for the last 5 years.

Keniko, oh I can't blame you.....I'd certainly have my rant key stuck on if I was in your position! hehe.

I got "Ski Racing 2005" today, been playing it quite a lot. It's cool....very simple, and obviously from a low-budget studio, but the gameplay is great. It's nice to have soemthing unusual in the collection!

Clarky, time to start externalising different instruments to see if you can keep the power and defnition without loosing the spread.

This is something interesting to note if you play an old Joe album on a surround sound system, and then put ITLIS on afterwards. Even though neither have been mixed in 5.1, the new recording is more spacious and you can easily concentrate on just one instrument, but when you choose not to, it doesn't remain dominant in the mix. 3D mixing is cool.

marimariSRV, I tried using autofocus on night portrait mode and it came out blurry, so I switched to auto mode and used the autofocus the whole time, so I could pay attention to Paul rather than focusing! It worked nicely though.

Try heading here to check out a few shots of Paul.

Alexandre, good to see you hombre! No news here, other than I got my Vai tickets! Yes! This will be my 6th Vai show....crazy! That's great that you're going to two in a row, I'm sure you'll have an amazing time! Take it easy bro, hope the doctors can get you some answers!

michelle, cool, thanks for checking out the photos! I'm enjoying having a decent camera to play with!

I tried snowboarding once! I was crap at it....nearly died, so I switched to skiing which I found far easier!

But yeah, if you used to skateboard, you should be fairly ok with snowboarding....you'd just find that it's very easy to quickly pick up a lot of speed, and the technique for slowing down/stopping is completely different!

Morning all! New song uploaded.....it's the first thing I've done for quite a while, and I kinda like it so I uploaded it.

Delfino, cool, thanks for checking it out dude! Thanks for the feedback :-)

Stevee T, thanks for checkin out the tune, and thanks for the feedback! Yeah I'm quite pleased with some of the phrases....it's the first time I've actually gone to the effort of modal phrasing, and thinking about where to switch modes.

A lot of people have given me pointers recently and I feel like I've taken another step up the ladder of understanding. I like modes now!

marimariSRV, yeah you gotta love how "normal" these guys all are (especially Joe!!)......it's completely the opposite end of the spectrum to egocentric twats at the top of the charts, who think they're royalty just 'cause they're famous! haha.

I won a Nikkor 70-300mm AF lens off ebay a couple of days ago......I'm hoping it'll arrive today. I'll let you know how it works out! Yeah I'm looking forward to meeting at the Vai show too!

Delfino, "I can play the guitar like a motherf*ck*n riot"......dude, what song is that from? And what's the name of the band? All I know is they're a Mexican ska/rock band and I really want to know what they're called so I can get their CD's! Another cracking line of theirs is this one -

"daddy was a rolling, rolling stone.....he rolled away one day and he never came home"

Delfino, "SUBLIME"!!! That's it! Thanks loads dude, that's been bugging me. I'll have to go looking, their stuff rocks. How's the UBER computer working out? :-)

edit:

I just found some Sublime albums on amazon. I thought someone had told me they're mexicans but they're not....they're from Long Beach! haha. Also, the lead singer died in 1996.....that sucks.

Delfino, yeah, it blows man....seems like he was a cool dude.

That's pretty ace that Oblivion is out soon....that's something to look forward to. I've been following the progress of PGR3...it's looking good, but I'm concerned that it's going to be rendered at 30 frames-per-second. That's not enough....60 would be excessive, but somewhere in-between would be nice! Oh well, I shouldn't judge until I've played it!

Keniko, thanks for checking out "The Jester", and thanks loads for your kind comments bro! Yeah your description was spot-on, that's the image of a Jester that I had in my head.....I'm really excited to think that someone is easily able to visualise my ideas when listening to what I've recorded, it's all good progress for me!

Hope the auditions go/went okay tonight! Take it easy dude, kind regards :-)

DCK, wtf? This - "We hope that Gibson will now compete in the marketplace and not use litigation to obtain unfair advantage." - is such a load of bollocks. They obviously don't want to admit that Gibson makes guitars other than the Les Paul that are very succesfull. If it wasn't for the 335 they wouldn't have had enough of a business to build on with the Les Paul.

GARTRIANI, no I disagree. Well, sort of. I mean, I totally dislike the concept of the premium tickets/platinum experience....I don't think anybody should be able to buy a better experience than anyone else....it should be about idle luck. But it's nothing that makes me annoyed at Joe or Steve. And because you have all the albums and all the DVD's and all the G3 stuff and so on, do you think that makes you deserve a free backstage pass more than someone who has saved and saved and has only been able to afford 3 albums so far?

I've got all Joe's albums and all Steve's albums, but I don't think I need any recognition for that! However, I do think it is very unfortunate that Vai has now stopped giving away free backstage/aftershow passes 'cause the people of his web community bitched, moaned and whined too much. That's a good indicator of what his fanbase is like though....not nearly as sociable and easy-going as all the great Joe fans you'll find here on T2J!

dakook, I'm still not sure I like the whole platinum ticket thing, but it doesn't matter.....it's nothign to hold against Joe! And also, I suppose everything has it's special edition.....it's just like collector's CDs or collector's guitars.....not everybody can afford them, but there's no reason why those who are keen enough shouldn't be able to pay for them.

I was one of the lucky people who randomly won an aftershow experience with Vai before he stopped offering them....as a result I got to meet Joe and Jeff, and having had interesting conversations with both of them and just being generally amazed at what genuinely nice guys they were, I have to admit I probably would pay to do that again. I'm just waiting for the next Joe tour!

I missed out on the Vai premium tickets this time around....they sold out too quickly....but I did want to get a premium ticket for my sister for her birthday....oh well :-(

Say you've got some important notes in your bass riff that are being whitewashed by your kickdrum......you could move your kick backwards slightly so it's still the same volume, still the same tone, resonance and so on, but it's not occupying the same virtual space as the bass. I guess a better example would have been keyboard and rhythm guitar, but you catch my drift, I hope?!

Only thing is, I only know how to do it if you're using computer software to mix....if you're using all hardware and none of it has software-plugin compatibility, then I can't help. Although I guess you could use 3D panning and move things forward and backward. Does any of that make sense?!