Monday, February 26, 2007
This week's gig is cool!
Friday, February 16, 2007
Playing at Turtle Creek Saloon this weekend
Friday, February 9, 2007
My sweet newly completed guitar project
Great for steel-guitar sounds, and other crazy note bending effects. I then added Fender custom shop pickups, which I custom wired with a 4-way switch to achieve series and parallel configuration (basically, to get 4 different tones instead of the standard 3). I also installed a custom neck from here. I bolted up the neck yesterday (with the help of a friend) and it is SMOKIN'. You may not be interested, but that's a chance I'm willing to take.
Truth in Shredding
This blog is a personal blog, in that all entries that I witnessed were posted by the same author. It is a filter-type, with links to news and other guitarist-related happenings (record deals, new albums, performances, etc.)
Informing guitar music lovers of the great players featured is the intended purpose of the blog. This could be portrayed as informative, from the standpoint of the blog viewer, or as reputation building, from the standpoint of the guitarist featured. Obviously, there is also a self-expression element contained in the choice of who to feature, as well as musical style choices.
This is a guitar blog focused solely on great guitarists, and what they are doing. It provides good background information on the individual artists featured, who they've worked with, and things of that nature.
Interestingly, while it is focused on chops (technical ability, speed, etc) it does cover a wide variety of genres. Most often, insanely fast guitar playing is associated with metal, but you can find traditional jazz, fusion, and even flamenco styles within this blog. Definitely a must for those who appreciate skilled guitarists.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Strat-O-Blogster Guitar Blog
The sidebars of the blog are full of links to guitar-related material, and there is an extensive guitar-driven blogroll as well.
This blog seems to be mostly of the informative nature, although both self-expression and reputation building attributes are there as well. This blog seems more focused on the guitar as an instrument, rather than the people who play it. The blog author's intentions appear to be to provide information and generally cool stuff for guitar enthusiasts to drool over. Worked for me. Check out the guitar security vault featured in Wed. Feb. 7th's post. Very cool.
The content is largely gear driven, in that it is focused on equipment for guitar players. The author usually provides some commentary, which is sometimes quite extensive. This blog seems to be of the personal nature as well, maintained by one individual. It is consistent with its posts, posting daily on most occasions.
All in all, a very cool guitar blog, at least for my tastes. I am more interested in guitars and gear. I already am familiar with many great guitar players that are featured by bloggers. However, I can't get enough gear talk, and can always learn more about what other guitarists are using or what's new.
Guitar Blog
The blog has been around since August of 2002 (according to the archive) and has an interesting blogroll of other guitar and guitar-music blogs.
The author of the blog also provides information on his own guitars and guitar projects. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to have been a posting since November. I would imagine that this is the end of the road for this blog, but I may be wrong. Nevertheless, the links still lead to interesting tidbits, at least as far as guitar addicts such as myself are concerned.
The blog author's description presents the blog as being focused on the guitar, but it seems to be more focused on famous guitarists and news about them. This blog serves the purposes of information giving and reputation building. The links to news and new products are to provide information, and the info on the author's personal projects provide both information, and credibility in the guitar community, by showcasing skills in guitar building/modification. I would also venture to say that the site serves as self-expression as well, as guitar playing is a form of self-expression, as is writing about it and building/modifying guitars.
The blog appears to be of the personal nature, maintained by an individual. Many posts resulted in comments, so it appeared to have been a somewhat active place when it was used. However, the site seems focused on mostly news within the guitar community, an emphasis somewhat different that what I believe the author intended originally.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Ambition
I think I need more coffee.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Cold
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Comments on "The Weblog Handbook," and an attempt to justify having one of these blog things
As a new blogger, I have (as you can probably tell) a rather weak sense of what a blog actually consists of, and am still somewhat unsure why someone like me would have one. (If you do not know already, this blog is a requirement for a class I am taking at Bemidji State University.) In Rebecca Blood's "The Weblog Handbook," she makes a statement that I found rather interesting. It is as follows:
"One of the strengths of the weblog is its ability to contextualize information by juxtaposing complementary or oppositional documents and information. The Web allows easy access to numerous documents from a single source. When highlighting an interesting article, the weblogger can attach a primary source, a related news story, or a contrasting interpretation simply by adding a link."
"Too often, mass media represent only the views of the powerful, ignore important context, or even misunderstand crucial facts."
A blog, accompanied with the power of the Internet, equips the average intellectual, (or the less-than-average intellectual, as the case may be) with the tools needed to publicly support or attack almost any claim or position, with decent credibility. As a student of journalism, I find this quite interesting. With the terrible homogenization of news that has come about due to media consolidation, this kind of tool is invaluable. The news community could use a system of "checks and balances" if you will, and blogs could definitely provide some accountability in that arena.
Well, with that said, maybe I shall use by blogging powers for good rather than evil, to battle poor and inaccurate journalism. I could take on the world with one of these things! Or I could continue to post whatever random thought that happens to pop into my head while I am staring at the "create post" screen, with absolutely no direction in mind. Hmmm.... I'll have to get back to you on that one.