... And we're back.

Service at psimpson.net is now back to normal; do not adjust your set.

To follow up the Muffin Men post below; I did get to see the Muffins at Liverpool - full access all areas 'cos I was part of the camera crew filming the gig for a possible DVD :-D

Muffins in Leeds

Went to see The Muffin Men at The New Roscoe in Leeds on Thursday - excellent as usual. Carlo surprised me by breaking a guitar string during the last song - first time I've seen him do that on stage, anyway - but he managed to get it fixed in time for the encore. I'm going to to try and see 'em at Liverpool next week too.

North West Guitar Show

Spent Sunday over in Manchester for the purposes of The North West Guitar Show. I've been to the last four of these events and come back with a guitar in some form every time. This year I was on the lookout for a nice old-fashioned Fender Strat. No big deal if there weren't any suitable ones, I'd just had my eye open for one for while.

After navigating central Manchester (which resembles an organised traffic system in the same way that I resemble Jo Guest) I met up at Tribeca with Ian, Trev, James and Rick. After a top-notch feed and much coffee we set off for the main event. The show itself was ok... lots of stands, lots of gear for sale. Met up with Dave Ward, chatted to Tony on the JJ Guitars stand (who I later discovered plays bass for Frank Gambale) and generally browsed. Didn't bother with the gear demos this year after the generally poor standard last year. There weren't any Strats that caught my eye, until we were about to leave... I spotted a couple of nice specimens on a stand near the exit. Tried the first one - crap neck. But the second - wow! Tried it through a nice Fender tube amp and and it just sang. All the right noises, felt great to play and the price was an absolute steal. I talked the price down a bit with the guy who was selling it and left with a nice new guitar and a big smile on my face. By the time I'd bought it Trev had found an old Boss Chorus pedal going cheap that Vinny had been looking for, which was pretty cool.

After catching up with Liz and more drinks back at Tribeca and the Salisbury we went for a Chinese at a restaurant recommended by Rick, which as usual didn't disappoint. Some great food and conversation was had before it was time for me to head back over the pennines.

Phone pictures from the day are here.

The Book of Wireless, Chapter 1

In the beginning there was dial-up, and it was crap.

And the Father and the Son did say "Let there be broadband", and there was bandwidth all around, and it was good.

And the Father did say to the Son "And make sure my PC can get on the internet too, while you're about it. I'm paying for half of this connection."

And the Son did bodge together a (barely) working network from a couple of old network cards and a bit of crossover CAT-5 cable, and it was... well, it was ok.

And the Son did put down cables all over the place which would snag in the hoover, and did reinstall XP occasionally, and updates from Microsoft did b0rk the frail network, and this did cause much woe unto the house of Simpson; for all this would cause the net access to cease.

And the Son did say, "Sod this for a game of soldiers, we need a wireless network."

And he did set forth and purchase a wireless router and some network cards, and he did toil both night and day to get the damn things working (and he did say to those who chose to follow him down this path, "don't be a tit and forget to type in the DNS server addresses for your ISP when you set up your router").

And finally the network did spring to life, and there was great rejoicing, and the old cables and modem were cast aside, and once more there was fast internet access all around.

And it was good.

And a hell of a lot tidier than it was before, I can tell you.