Media - Page 57 | virtualwolf.org

A photo of the bottom of my guitar pedal board. There's a large silver power supply attached to the bottom with lots of cables coming out of it, with a FAR smaller black one (the old one) sitting on top. Just eyeballing it, by volume I reckon the new power supply is probably like six or seven times larger, if not more.

I bought myself a new and properly chonky power supply for my guitar pedal board, because the old one had five outputs and I had eleven pedals and was doing lots of daisy chaining and if I had the looper and MIDI controller pedals going at the same time as everything else, the voltage would sag and the volume would massively drop.

Check out the size different between the two. 😅 (Old one on top, obviously.) The new one has eight outputs, but the price increase to go up to the one with twelve was significant so I didn't bother. It's got a USB-C out so I can run the MIDI controller off that instead of taking up an output, and the daisy chaining isn't a problem for the noise suppressor/overdrive/distortion/fuzz pedals because they collectively use a TINY amount of power compared to most of the others.

our house darkroom guitar pedalboard

Posted on 2 May 2023, 13:22

A photo of a birthday cake in the shape of an electric guitar. The body of the guitar is a rich turquoise colour with a white pick guard, and the pickup, neck, and headstock are chocolate icing that's been totally darkened with black food colouring. The volume and tone knobs are yellow M&Ms, the frets are just regular chocolate icing laid across the neck, it's also got six pegs that the strings would go around made out of the same icing, as well as three tuners on each side of the headstock that are made out of marshmallows attached to toothpicks. There's also four strings on it, just made from cotton.

Growing up in Australia in the 80s and 90s, nearly everyone's parents had a copy of the Women's Weekly's Children's Birthday Cake recipe book.

I had multiple cakes made from it, but the most distinct one that sticks out was actually one my sister had for one of her early birthdays, it was a swimming pool that was filled with jelly and had little figures swimming in it (#18 in the link above). Mum used my Lego figures for it and I remember being very annoyed about them being dunked in jelly, so mum made that same cake for me for my 30th.

I figured for my 40th I should have another cake from the birthday cake book, and they actually have a guitar as one of them! It's an acoustic though, which I have absolutely no interest in, so I asked mum if she could make it an electric one instead, and boy did she deliver! 😂

darkroom food mum and dad's cake

Posted on 30 April 2023, 19:07

Dirty Orange

And the end result! 🎉

I used the "dirty" channel of my amp, with both the amp EQ and the EQ pedal with scooped mids so it sounds a bit more on the metal side, and I actually ended up recording a whole different guitar track today from what I was doing originally because the first one was very boring (I realised upon playing it back that I was just playing on every quarter note with basically zero variation). I also had to go in and copy/paste in a handful of sections in the bass track fix some cocked-up notes on the bass guitar that ended up being REALLY obvious when playing it back, oops.

The guitar track is still a bit repetitive since I'm playing all of three notes on each of the low E, A, and D strings — I guess four if you count the open string as well — but in my defence I'm still working my way through the basic chords part of my guitar course and haven't done ANY of the play-awesome-lead-guitar parts yet. 😛 I definitely notice I'm getting much better at keeping in time now too.

music guitar drums audio bass guitar ibanez jiva10

Posted on 29 April 2023, 16:23

A photo of a long and narrow white cardboard box with an image of a stainless steel Apple Watch on the front of it.

New Apple Watch!

I'd been using @yayKM's one since mine died as she can't wear hers regularly so it didn't really matter, but she's going to be going into the office more often now and it's super-handy for notifications and such. I was going to wait for the Series 9 later this year, but on reflection I was fine with the Series 5 as it was and @yayKM was going to need her old Watch significantly before the expected September release date of the new one.

The backup and restore process from the old Watch to the new is slick, I was up and running with the Series 8 within a matter of minutes with all of my configuration and data exactly as it was on the old one. The physical size of the new Watch is only 1mm larger (41mm versus the 40mm of the old one), but there's much less bezel so the physical screen area is significantly larger, 904 sq mm for the new versus 759 sq mm for the old and it's very noticeable. I can only imagine how comically oversized the 45mm Watch would look on my dainty little wrists (or better yet, the Apple Watch Ultra).

our house darkroom new toys apple watch

Posted on 28 April 2023, 14:52

A photo of an electric guitar and bass guitar propped against a wall, sitting next to a bass guitar amp and a regular guitar amp, with a pedal board filled with pedals sitting in front of the whole lot, and cables going everywhere.

Current status. 🤘🏻

our house darkroom guitar guitar amp pedalboard bass guitar

Posted on 27 April 2023, 21:21

A photo of a British Shorthair cat with striking yellow eyes lying on our driveway looking totally unconcerned.

I went out to do the grocery shopping this morning, and when I got back home I was greeted by this handsome fellow.

our house darkroom cat

Posted on 27 April 2023, 11:25

A photo of an espresso machine portafilter with wooden ring around the top of it, sitting behind the WDT which is essentially a wooden handle with a bunch of long, very narrow, almost needles coming out of the bottom of it.

I ordered some espresso machine goodies from Etsy at the start of this month, a dosing funnel for the portafilter and a WDT tool. They arrived today and are very handsome, looking forward to seeing the difference with my coffee tomorrow!

our house darkroom coffee

Posted on 26 April 2023, 15:06

Drums and chords and bass

First recording with my new bass guitar! 😁

The Orange Crush Bass 25 amp I have doesn't have a direct output but it DOES have a headphone jack with a speaker cabinet sim built in, so I plugged it into the audio interface and recorded through that. This is the same song I posted back in December but with a shiny new bass track now. It's definitely a different feeling strumming with your fingers versus doing it with a pick like I do on the regular guitar.

music guitar drums audio bass guitar ibanez jiva10

Posted on 25 April 2023, 15:20

A photo of a small scruffy blonde dog lying on his side with his back firmly against the side of my leg. I'm sitting on the lounge and there's an Xbox controller resting on my leg.

Beanie is keeping me company while I play Diablo III. (I didn't put him in this position, he came up onto the lounge and snuggled against my leg.)

beanie our house dog darkroom

Posted on 23 April 2023, 22:34

A small plastic container with foam in it and two individual guitar strap locks, each made up of three pieces. One piece screws into the guitar itself where the existing strap holder does, one goes through the hole in the guitar strap, and the third screws into the other side of the previous piece to hold everything in place. The combined bit attached to the guitar strap then clips over the head of the piece that's screwed into the guitar, and you can quickly unlock it to swap straps around if needed.

Had a lovely birthday lunch at our local pub with a bunch of friends, and I got a very thoughtful gift: a set of properly-good guitar strap locks!

our house darkroom presents guitar

Posted on 22 April 2023, 18:04