Project Hugo

Well, it’s been a while between posts so time for an update.

Quite a significant one, after 13 years of being a Peavey Amp player (the classic range mostly) with the occasional toe in the water of Marshalls, Diezel and Hugh’s amps, I’ve finally changed my core sound. I’ve switched to a Marshall as my core amp.

I’ve purchased a JCM 2000 DSL 100 head with a 1960’s 4×12 BX cab and a 1960’s 4×12 BV cab (two cabs provide massive different tone). This has had a pretty reasonable change in my general sound and has altered my playing style a little, but for the better, big change after 13 years of Peavey. I’ll still use the Peavey classics and other toe dipper amps, but now when I’m out playing I’ll be in front of a Marshall rather than a Peavey.

Be interesting to see how this effects recordings and the more professional tones I used to use through the Peavey.

I’ll update as my change progresses.

Well, thanks to the theme designer wordpress theme is now fully fixed and working in version 2.2.2, nice job to Alex, and thanks. We’ll see how future upgrades go.

I can now start posting and using the site again now as I’ve got a working theme again.

It’s been a while since my last update, the good news is that’s because I found a builder, an electrician who could do the work for me.

I’ve now got a new living room with fireplace, decotrated in new colours, a slightly new layout, a new carpet and new home entertainment system, but I’ll detail that in a later post.

My gardeners are working well and the garden is a little behind schedule but thats due to bad weather mostly, and the electics in my conservatory has been totally rewired so I now have the correct socket and lighting configuration.

well, I’m gutted to say I’ve been let down by my builders. At the end of July I agreed to have some building work done, I was quoted a high price and told it would be the end of August before the building work could start. While dissapointed to be paying a high price and having to wait, the reputation and quality of the builders seemed worth it. The last week in August came, no returned phone calls on Monday, Tuesday, and eventually a returned call on Wednesday to be told it would be at least the 24th of September before they could start because (direct quote) “thats how it is”. This was a real let down to me as I’d not got any other quotes or looked for other builders in the 4 weeks of August because I was told the work would be starting. Woodgrain Construction in Bath have an excellent reputation, however I must say for me they where a big let down and unreliable, in my opinion they got offered a bigger job and just pushed me back, which is further backed up when I said I didn’t want to proceed with the job, there was no interest in why, or if it wanted to be pushed back, just an “ok bye”.

 Let that be a lesson to people wanting building work done, some companies don’t respect their word. Harsh lesson for me to learn.

As you will have read in the blog bellow I was recently burgled. The grand sum of the items taken was approx £2000-£2500. I WAS (note the word was) insured with Natwest home insurance, as a premium customer they gave me a good deal for the past 3 years. I finally had to make a claim, after two weeks they sent a loss adjuster round from the company “Cunningham Lindsay” The loss adjuster came around took note of the missing items, and printed me out a letter explaining that one of my laptops wasn’t covered as it was for business use and that I’d have to provide proof of purchase for the other items, this could be receipts, bank statements, photos. As the other 3 of 4 items where purchased online I offered to take the loss adjuster to my PC to show her my online account where the items had been purchased, she declined advising me to send photos or screenshots of the accounts. Approx 30 seconds after she left I sent photographs of me holding the items stolen a few weeks earlier than the robber, and a photograph of a laptop manual I’d found digging around for the stolen claimable laptop, and 4 screen shots of my online accounts with item cost, description, date and delivery address from Amazon.co.uk and Scan.co.uk to the loss adjuster company. After weeks of chasing I was then told that these proof of purchase items where unacceptable and had to provide “boxes” for the item, then courier them down to the loss adjusters head office in

Scotland. Despite the fact that their own loss adjuster had refused to look/take the proof of purchase from me, and the fact that I had a dated letter from their own loss adjuster telling me to photograph the items boxes/manuals/accounts and email them to the head office. After weeks of arguing it became clear that Cunningham Lindsay would not accept any proof of purchase other than an empty box (of a laptop 1.5 years old) or a physical paper receipt. After much arguing it became apparent the Cunningham Lindsay where not going to advise Natwest to “pay up” with any amount of ease. Despite the proof of purchases compilation, and the police crime incident report Cunningham Lindsay appear to reject all claims as much and hard as possible, drag it out as long as possible to cause as much pain as possible so you will go away. Well on this occasion they did just that, I managed to replace the items using my trade contacts for just over £1300 and I am now taking action against Cunningham Lindsay & Natwest home insurance for their treatment of me as a customer and their blatant disregarding of their own information

With the upgrade of wordpress (the software that runs this site) to 2.2.1 the get_links(); function has been depriciated . If your templates use this change it to wp_list_bookmarks(); and you’ll be fine.

The last two weeks have been an interesting two weeks with regard to BT as an ISP. I’ve had little issue with them over my many years as a customer, but recent faults customer service and scamming has now forced me to leave them as an ISP.

 1.) This year I’ve had a few technical faults that have caused serious service issues for me.

2.) I’ve just found out that one of the faults they told me was a “fault” was actually them applying traffic shaping and service capping that crippled my business connection for a month

3.) I’ve just found out that someone added a £15+VAT per quater service onto my BT ISP account allowing me to check my BT emails from anywhere, which considering I’ve never logged into my BT emails in all the year I’ve had the service I find an amazing scam.

4.) I’ve been told I can’t have the additioan service of £15+vat per quater removed as its been on my account for long than 3 months (November 2006 !!!) so not only have I been paying for a service I never asked for I can’t have it removed because I didn’t catch onto the scam quick enough. Now I’m being told I have to have it for a 1 year contract and mail (not phone as there is no phone number for complaints of course) to discuss the possible (possible ???) miss sale of a product.

With the exception of one BT customer service/technical contact the service and lies told to me from BT has been beyond belief. I’ve now started the process of moving my ISP to Zen and I’ve contacted my solicitor with regard to taking action against BT as I’m told I can’t cancel my contract (despite poor service - many faults, scamming account advisors adding things to my bill and being lied to on network traffic shaping an capping).  Lets see what the legal boffins can do with this. I’ve also been in contact with theregister.co.uk to see if I can kick up a stink for BT.

The hardware refresh has bugun along with all my building work.

 I’ve got rid of the Sagem LC27, despite that is is a really good TV the issues with the DCC info not being advertised correctly to PC’s is too much of a pain, plus the lack of onboard digital tuner and HDMI suggested that I jumped to early when purchasing this TV.

 I’ve now replaced it with a Panasonic TX-32LXD700 . I must say this really is the perfect gaming TV for realistic humans (ignore the nutters/liers who calim they are getting or have got 99” LCD TV’s mounted on the wall’s of their castles just to game on, while they live in their bedrooms) Take a look at it http://www.panasonic.co.uk/lcd-tv/tx-32lxd700/index.htm its stunning. So far I’ve only played my old SNES on it which doesn’t do it justice, but I’ll setup the rest of the kit with it later.

I’ve been robbed. Some total swines robbed me of two laptops and a digital camera, some hard disks and a few minor odds and sods, while managing to damage my couch and leave oil stains on my carpet. All this while I was asleep. Although this is gutting and a real pain, I have now invested in a top spec house alarm, something I’d planned to do for about a year but not got around to it, and I’ve taken the opertunity with the damage to start some building work that I’ve wanted done for a while.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

Well, this site has had 2 weeks of down time due to the old machine failing, and there being a bit of a delay in getting parts. As this is my personal web space I don’t really care about a high availablity host, more so after having 3 years of zero down time.  However in the 2 weeks it was down I had about 40 emails informing my that my site was down (however I suspect its down to some of the other resources on this machine rather than the site). Still its nice to be back up and running.