My home machine runs Windows Vista.  I know, I must have been bad in a previous life or something.  I actually  have no real problem with MS’s fancy new OS; the user account control is very much like the same thing you get in Linux so that doesn’t really bother me, and since service pack 1 the speed of certain directory listing and file copying operations have improved significantly.  Perhaps the people that complain about Vista are doing a lot of real work on their machine, whereas the most complex thing my Vista box gets to do is run Team Fortress 2.

And therein lies the problem.

I’d noticed that Vista wouldn’t go into sleep mode via the time limit set in the screen saver page.  Vista’s problems with sleep are well documented on the web (just google for Vista insomnia and you’ll see), though the symptoms of this problem were subtly different, in that I could manually send the computer to sleep and it would happily stay there, and recover without a hitch.  After fruitlessly fiddling about with the various power settings suggested on pages I found via google, I started to wonder if it was any of the background applications that prevented the machine from entering the idle state, and hit the answer first time: if you exit Steam, sleep mode works fine.

So there you go: gamers, if your computer is having problems sleeping, try turning off Steam.

I read the post over on Guitritus about getting a whole bag of new plectrums (plectra? Is it Greek?) with envy.  I’ve got a problem with guitar picks: I only like one.  There it is in the photo.  It’s pink and it’s a  millimetre thick and because I’ve had it for about ten years it’s got a weird wear pattern on the end and the logo’s nearly gone so I can barely read who made it but its mine and it’s the only plectrum for me.

Every time I drop it off the back of a badly lit stage I have to spend a horrified few minutes scrabbling in the mess of dust and cabling until I’m joyfully reunited with it.  If I was to have a signature piece of guitar equipment, it would be a plectrum: I’d have my original mapped to micron precision with lasers and recreated exactly, but even then I’d not be happy with the copies and would keep using mine until its worn away to a nub.

Believe me, I’ve tried others, but they’re just not as good.  Not quite the right flexibility, or too thick, or they’ve got funny dimples to aid grip, or (and here’s the catch) they’re just not worn in enough.  I think I need to buy some more, but file the ends down slightly to match what’s happened to my pick.

Seriously, Eric Johnson might complain about the brand of his batteries, but he’s got nothing on me and plectrums.

Acuphuncture played the opening set at Clare Ball on Monday night, at the work-friendly time of 9 til 10.30PM.  This of course meant that we played to an empty tent, because most punters arrive at a ball and immediately head for the food and booze; the biggest crowd we had was mainly thanks to the band who were on after us, The Anomalies.  Incredibly we even managed a soundcheck, thanks to the Anomalies finishing their check on time, however due to the usual fucked communications at a May Ball, the tech sheet we had submitted hadn’t been passed on to the sound guy.  This meant that Myke (our intrepid multi-instrumentalist and backing vocals chap) had to channel all of his musical output through the single remaining SM58 that the soundman had brought.  Irritating.  Our set up on stage was made even more complicated by the headline act, The Delays, refusing to allow any of their kit to be moved after it had been set up, resulting in us being perched in a long line across the front of an already less than generously sized stage.  The Delays are obviously cunts.  Still, the gig went ok, though our linear set-up meant that we had a few communication issues.

Casa kicked off this year’s May Week festivities with a gig at Hughes on Saturday night/ Sunday morning.  (Is it wrong to make a Phil Collins reference in a post?)  Booked from 1AM to 3AM, that was actually pretty much the times we played.  We were preceded by a pair of guys doing rock covers; both played guitar and sang, and used backing tracks to fill in for the rest of the band.  They were quite good, and I felt sure that if I’d challenged them with any guitar-based number from the 50s onwards they’d have been able to play it.  I bet they go down a treat at weddings.  They also had the gear issue totally sorted; both used a pair of mic’ed up 1×10″ combos combined with Boss multi FX units, and the tones they got were frankly ROCKING.  Size isn’t everything, kids.

The gig itself was good, though I was severely flagging towards the end of the second set.  In fact of all the things that happened on Saturday, by far the most remarkable was walking out of the underpass next to Hyde Park and being passed by the of the World Naked Bike Ride.  The word peloton is apparently derived from the French for ball.  It was never more appropriate.

Don’t wipe the sweat off your instrument.

Wise words.