truetech

This is Sybil.

Isn’t she pretty? She’s a Parkwood. That’s Australian Blackwood on her.

I picked her up on December 30, and Guitar Center let me have her for the January price (which was significantly lower). I checked her out a couple days before that and pretty much fell in love.

She’s a hybrid (yes, I finally bought a hybrid), so I can get acoustic and electric sounds out of her with ease. And she plays very nicely. She uses electric strings, and I’ve been playing my Alvarez almost exclusively and neglecting my Rickenbacker for so long that she’s amazingly easy to play.

Tonight was the first I used her for more than just messing around. We had Worship Team practice at church, so I plugged her right into the PA through a direct box. She sounded great. The acoustic sound was fantastic.

While I was at Guitar Center and spending money as if it were no object, I went ahead and picked up a Floor POD, too.

So I have a pretty sweet setup right now.

Which is good, because Tom and I are finally working on some recording, which we’ve been intending to do but not actually doing for far too long.

Now the question is: do I keep the Rickenbacker or sell it off? I’m definitely keeping the Alvarez, for two reasons. One, I love its rich, dark sound. Two, I’d like to have a real, honest-to-goodness acoustic around, just in case. But the Rickenbacker…. I don’t know. I just can’t see where I’d use it in the foreseeable future.

Well, last year’s resolutions didn’t work out all that well. So this year, to save time, I’ll just use the same resolutions:
1) Drop 25 pounds (I actually did have a net loss of about five pounds in 2007, but I think that can largely be attributed to the stomach virus I got in late December).
2) Read the entire Bible. So far, so good. Haven’t missed a day yet. Grace wants to do it this year, too, so we’re trying to find time every day to do it together.
3) More sleep. And I’m adding: more exercise. Right now I mostly exercise at night, but I’d like to start doing that in the morning. So my goal is to get to bed by midnight every night, then be up by six to exercise before going to work. This is something I’ll have to work up to.
4) Oh yeah, and one new one: this website needs a graphic overhaul in a baaaad way.

What have you resolved to do or do better in 2008?

Go watch Dave’s promo video for the presentation he wants to do at the REAL World 2008 Keynote. Then give him a nice, high rating. Thanks!

Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror writes:
The next time you’re knee deep in arcane language geekery, remember this: nobody cares what your code looks like. Except for us programmers. Yes, well-factored code written in a modern language is a laudable goal. But perhaps we should also focus a bit more on things the customer will see and care about, and less on the things they never will.

Your customers don’t (or shouldn’t) care about certain things: what language the program is written in, how elegant your code is, how well refactored your code is, etc. But they will care when you can provide upgrades and bug fixes faster because your code is easy enough to maintain.

You know, sometimes you see something so obnoxious you can’t let it go. I just had a moment like that. I’m here at my desk, glancing through the latest issue of Dr. Dobb’s Journal, and I come across an interview with Craig Cumberland of Nokia. They’re asking him about widgets, Web 2.0, and other stupid crap. They actually ask him this question: “Can mobile widgets participate in mash-ups?”

If you take technology seriously, how can you read that and not cringe? Not want to punch the interviewer? Sheesh.

And here’s a great list of them.

To all you non-techs out there: trust me when I say that you fall into one of these categories. As a co-worker and I read the list, we effortlessly came up with several examples of each.

Terrible. Absolutely terrible. I love it.

Need some new tunes to listen to while you work?

TuneCore (which was already on my awesome list) is giving away 34 free songs.

Quite the variety, too. I mean everything from Public Enemy to Over The Rhine to Bill Medley (no, seriously). Check it out here: http://www.tunecore.com/freealbum

After you get your code, copy it, fire up iTunes, and click on Redeem. Then paste the code into the text field. Your songs will start downloading shortly thereafter.

I haven’t listened to everything yet, so I can’t vouch for the quality of the whole, but there are definitely a couple good listens in there. And for free and legal, it’s good deal even if most of the music sucks.

Well, here’s the epitome of Web 2.0.

It’s a fancy pants directory of Web 2.0 sites, done in Flash. And the UI is horrendous. To scroll through the apparently massive list, you click on the funky purple folder tab at the bottom of the screen. It doesn’t look like a scroll button at all. And once you start scrolling, there’s no feedback on how far you’ve scrolled or how close to the bottom you are.

Yep, it’s a perfect showcase for Web 2.0.

At some point in the possibly distant future, I’m going to buy a new guitar. The last guitar I purchased was my 12-string Alvarez in 1999. I rarely play this guitar. I skimped on it, and I shouldn’t have. It doesn’t hold its tune any longer than I can hold my breath. But I digress. Before that, it was my Rickenbacker 330 and my Alverez White Fusion, both in 1996. That was back when I was playing regularly in a band.

These days, I still play regularly, but it’s at church. On any given week, I play during our Wednesday night practice and during our Sunday service, so I still get lots of playing time in. For leading worship, I have almost exclusively used my Alvarez White Fusion. I can’t remember the last time I seriously played my Rickenbacker. But that’s okay, because I’ve grudgingly come to accept that I’m not much of an electric guitarist. I’m a solid rhythm player, but don’t ask me to solo.

So when I’m ready for a new guitar, it’ll be pretty tough to justify an electric. In fact, it’s pretty easy to justify trading in my Rickenbacker, although I’m still not sure I could bring myself to do it. But if I trade in my Rickenbacker for a new acoustic, that leaves me without an electric at all. I have not needed an electric guitar for a gig in nearly ten years, but rest assured, the day after I sell the Rickenbacker, I’ll get a call to play a gig where I’ll need an electric. Just the way my life is sometimes.

All of this leads me to ponder the hybrid guitars that are starting to come out. These guitars are, quite simply, amazing. They promise down and dirty electric tones or sweet and dainty acoustic tones at the flip of a switch. That’s just too good to be true.

As far as I can tell, there are three main entries in this category. The heavy hitter seems to be Taylor, who has never really been known for their electric guitars, but who makes a really nice acoustic guitar. Taylor’s hybrid is called the T5 (short for Thinline 5-way), and I’ve been lusting after it for months now. For starters, it’s an absolutely gorgeous guitar, clean and curvy and just a bit understated. Check out the video of Marc Seal playing it here. But all this flexibility doesn’t come cheap: you won’t find a Taylor T5 for less than $2,000, and that’s for the standard model. Expect to pay up to $3,000 for the custom or for a maple top.

While trying to come up with a way to convince my wife that the Taylor T5 was a necessity, I happened across the Ovation VXT. Like Taylor, Ovation has never been renowned for any work with electric guitars, but their acoustics have a fanatical fanbase. I’m fond of the Ovation sound, but not the round back they traditionally sport. But the VXT is flat. It’s a hybrid. Looks nice and sounds nice. The VXT blog has some videos worth watching. The VXT is more reasonably priced than the T5, weighing in at around $1,600 retail. But I had trouble convincing myself that this was the right guitar for me. The T5 has some natural reverb, but the VXT doesn’t look like it does (confession: I’ve looked at it up close but not played it).

Tonight, while leafing through the new catalog that Guitar Center sent me in order to keep me hooked, I found Parkwood’s new Hybrid Blackwood, which looks really, really sweet. See it in action here. This is much more in line with the feature set and styling of the T5, but get this: it’s retails for $1,000, about half of what the T5 costs. I honestly don’t have any experience with Parkwood guitars, but from what I’ve read, they seem to be well-respected and well-liked. This one is definitely worth checking out.

So which one am I buying?

Well, let’s just say that I’m currently examing the budget and leave it at it.