Martin Dupras

I am amazed that, unlike consumer electronics manufacturers, musical equipment makers (in my experience) generally fall into two camps: the ones who go out of their way to help musicians, and the ones who just can’t be bothered (or who are too disorganised to offer any customer service at all.)

In the latter camp, we have Nobels, from Germany. I  like their products (I have several). They’re well built, sound good and are reliable.

I had a new idea recently: in my live bass rig, I’d like to put four distortion pedals in parallel (yes, really) and run them through a switchable loop; that way I can cut them all from the chain when they’re not on, and when they are I can use any combination of the distortions.

However, hardly anyone makes an active splitter that will feed four pedals, and hardly anyone (again) makes a simple high-impedance four-channel mixer suitable for a pedalboard. Except Nobel, who have just the right thing.

Here’s the rub: you can’t buy them.

Nobels has a list of UK distributors, none or which actually stock any of the pedals, and none of which have an online ordering system.

I’ve looked at European online dealers, and the only who has a website I can read it Thomann (which I’ve used successfully in the past) but they only list one of the pedals, which is not even in stock.

I’ve emailed Nobels from their own website to ask how and where I can buy their products, and they have not yet (one week later) replied to me.

You’d think they actually want to sell their products, but apparently not.

1) Actually parking in the garage.
2) Having a shower
3) Having a dishwasher
4) Being able to play Gears of War 2 at full volume
5) Having to remove excess kitchens and bathrooms
6) Keeping the guitars in the house.
7) Keeping the amplifiers, also in the house.
Not having to move furniture to make space for the christmas tree
9) Being able to leave something in one place, and not having to move it to make space for the next thing
10) Coming in the house from one street, and leaving the house on a different street.

Not so groovy:
- No internet access for one month (”NoooooooooooooooO!”)
- No phone for one month (”Oh well…”)
- No cable TV for one month (”Fuck.”)
- Doing one DIY job, which demands two more jobs.
- Textured wallpaper.
- Floral WC fittings
- Caramel tile in the kitchen
- Beautiful wooden floors interspersed with patches of concrete flooring.
- Trees growing through the garage roof.
- Triggering the alarm system, which could only be stopped after chopping down a small tree.

Oh what fun.

Pictures to come, following “No so groovy” item no.1.

I am dismayed, no mesmerized, no f*cked-off disappointed that California Proposition 8 got through.

For those who don’t know, it’s the new amendment that invalidates the previously acknowledged right for gay marriage.

It beggars belief.

First of all: if the rights were given in the first place, it’s because legally, morally and socially they were recognised as valid.

Second: it’s puzzling that a simple majority vote would be enough to reverse a law. What if, for the sake of argument, a state voted on an amendment to ban Heavy Metal? That the majority doesn’t like it should not be the sole governance of the law. I’ll let you imagine all the horrors that would follow.

But third: it is repugnant to think that revoking already granted rights can be done so easily. Even more so when one thinks that “Proposition 8″ is by definition an act of exclusion: it denies to a certain group the same rights as the collectivity.

Isn’t that, from an ethical point of view, the same rationale behind every war that America has waged on other nations?

I have played with my band at BSB waterside on several occasions.

At the one-before-last gig we played, the management tried to underpay us (i.e. pay us less than previously agreed.)

At the last gig, they simply refused to pay us, on the ground that there was not enough money in the tills. This was a on a busy Thursday night.

I don’t think they would find it acceptable if a punter ordered a drink and did not pay for it; yet, somehow they find it acceptable to treat artists this way.

May I politely ask you to avoid this place like the plague?

I have a long-standing relationship with Apple. I grew up with an Apple II+ from around 1981, and I used macs from the Macintosh 1MB (and several other along the way.)

Having said that I wouldn’t consider myself a Mac user per se. To start with I use many operating systems (XP, Linux and OS X mostly); they all have good things and bad things, and I’m fickle enough that at any point I’m happy to switch to the (momentarily) best choice for me.

What really gets to me though is that as far as design decisions (at least from the point of view of usability and compatibility) Apple makes some really good ones, and then does something really stupid to completely negate the advantage.

Example number 1:

On OS X, there is a search engine that searches through everything: inside files, email messages, etc. Great. But half of the time, the reason I’m searching that way is because I’m looking for another file in the same folder. But there’s not obvious way to find out where the file resides. I have found a work around: command-I will bring the “Get Info” window for it and you can then see the full path. But really: what I want is ctrl-click to bring a menu with “reveal in finder.”

Example number 2:

On OS X, searches can have selection criteria such as Kind, file size, etc. The other day, I noticed m disks were getting full, and my usual method is to search for really big files to delete. As it turns out, the search returns a list of the files that match the criterion (say file size bigger than 200MB.) That list has just three fields: Name, Kind, and Last Opened.

I’m after the size of the file you dummies. Why can’t I choose to display that field? It’s in every other window?

Example number 3:

I needed to make an audio CD from student work for an open day. I had to grab one file from an audio CD, and three files from a CD-rom. That, really, should be straightforward.

As it turns out, you have to bring these into iTunes. I really hate that because by default that populates my iTunes library (why would I want those in my library?) and by default they will be checked and will sync to my iPhone (once again, why would I want that on my iPhone.) So I uncheck those.

Now, to burn a disc, you need to make a playlist. (sigh…) Fine. But that won’t burn because they need to be checked. (Re-sigh…) Fine. Now when that’s done some time later, I need to remember to uncheck those again.

Example number 4:

iTunes sucks big hairy donkey danglies; we knew that, and Apple has a nasty habit of imposing it on the world. Not quite sure why really either because it as far as I understand them, it violates Apple’s own usability guidelines. But that’s by the by.

I’ve got an iPhone 3G 16GB. Fantastic phone, brilliant user interface design, love it.

I was until then quite happy to not use iTunes.

You need to activate the phone with iTunes. Why?

You need to use iTunes to sync anything: contacts, calendar, whatever. Whether that’s music or not. So I add one contact entry in the Contacts app, and to sync it to the phone, I have to launch iTunes and initiate a sync that will take forever and be a pain in the arse because it will try to sync everything including everything that’s now in iTunes and checked by default.

So let me ask you this: who in their right minds but Apple would make you do everything to do with their phone with a music application?

Apple: please just let me do what I want the way that I want with my hardware. The simple way was great, I’d like to keep it please.

I saw this poster on my office building today. Really wish I could go. Likely to be an ace gig.