:::Ray’s Blog:::

For a good few weeks now I have been without a laptop as old faithful sadly died a horrible death. As you can see from the pic it got decapitated in the process. To tell the truth it was on its way out anyway, and so much so it was held together by duck tape. Still, being over 6 years old, being used and abused on a daily basis over it was speedy for it’s time: 2Ghz Pentium 4 CPU, 256Mb DDR RAM and 160GB HDD.

The only issues I ever with it where with the screen. Due to it being quite flimsy I had two replacements due to continual wear and tear….. not to mention the time when my cat decided to walk across the keyboard and in the process managed to snap one of the keys off in the process.

Loving memories included 4 years worth of college work (IT + electrical installations courses), creation of two guitar CD’s via mixing board software + guitar & equipment, playing the forever memorable game back hawk down and of course my endless spending on ebay.

Well, since then I have acquired a rather sexy, younger model of laptop. I’ve only managed to play around with it a little, but performance wise it’s excellent: AMD 2GHz dual core CPU, 2GB DDR RAM and 180GB GDD, 17” wide screen, webcam, remote control, DVDR drive, wireless built in…. and of course Windows Vista premium pre-installed (boo!). Even with everything installed and running (anti-virus, firewall etc.) only 26% of ram is being used in turn making things nice n’speedy!

Here’s to the next 6 years!….

P.S - Please can I just add that Business Post deliveries (www.business-post.com) are absolutely horrendous! Please, for your own good, DO NOT use them whatsoever for anything. Delivery of my new laptop was delayed over 1 week all because a lazy bum courier driver couldn’t be bothered to his job.

I was trailing my CD’s the other day and found one that I hadn’t listened to since I was about 16 years old. The CD was ‘Jason Becker: Raspberry jams’, a little project of demos and general tom foolery displaying Jason’s talent of the electric guitar… an exceptional talent I must add. I used to listen to this CD every morning for about 3 months, everyday before I went to school (and sometimes after school) hoping that one day I would be able to play the guitar to his degree.

For some reason something called ‘exams’ got in the way and more and more I started to listen to the CD less and less to which at some point I didn’t listen to it at all and eventually totally forgot it/ he even existed. So upon finding the CD with tremendous excitement remembering of all the great times I had listening to it, I once again put it in my stereo for old times sake and decided to do a google search to see what he was up to these days.

Upon seeing his website I was truly saddened and in turn exceedingly heartbroken…. Jason contracted Motor Neurone disease in his early twenties.

Motor Neurone disease is a disease which slowly disables every muscle in the body on the way toward total paralysis while the unaffected mind remains trapped inside a body that no longer responds. Eventually, breathing, swallowing, speaking, or any movement whatsoever is no longer possible. There is no known cure. At this time Jason is still able to move his eyes and blink.

So it is to this I homage Jason Becker. An exceptional talent, influence and overall legend.

I know I havn’t posted in a while, but I found this vid on youtube and have not stopped laughing since!!!

Kind of links into what Donkey and I have been talking about recently!…..

Nothing much has happened since my last entry 2 weeks ago, have just been tinkering with my little Ford fiesta Mk5, project ‘Fiesta Razor’. I’m really into my ‘boy racer’ phase at mo and addicted to anything car related! (talking of which, i’ve just purchased a pair of Lexus style rear lights off ebay to replace the current ones on the car. Hopefully these should arrive for the weekend)

I’m starting a little car diary over at cardomain.com with all the little tweaks and changes I have made so far. I will attempt to keep this updated when any form of change has been made. I will post the link at the side of the bog once I feel it is ready for viewing. For the time beings the above banner page gives a little insight into some of the changes that have been made so far.

Completed my pass plus course on Saturday. Basically it’s a driving course designed for new drivers to give them advance driving skills and exposing them to demanding driving situations. In turn the course gives discounts on insurance premiums.

Staying on the driving theme, I have since purchased my first car and have been customising it over the weekend as you can see

I’ve now been back in England for 5 days since my Holiday to Lanzarote (Puerto del carmen). I went for a week and a great time was had. It was sooooo hot and sunny, and in turn I have a slight golden brown colour to my once white complexion!

Highlights of the holiday included an excursion to Timanfaya National Park, Rancho Texas park and a voyage to the neighbouring canary island of Fuerteventura.

I now fill all fresh and revitalized and can’t wait for my next vacation! (Well at least there is a bank holiday this coming Monday

Gallery to come….

Saw Steve Vai at the Hammersmith Apollo last night. Still on a high from the show so thought I’d type my blog entry while it’s still all fresh!
I was 4th row from the front and got a fantastic view. The show was absolutely unbelievable.

Whispering a prayer was the song of the evening. Emotional is not the word. A truly brilliant piece of music. I had a knee-jerk reaction to jump to my feet with the rest of the people in the same row as me for the applause and thought I might look like a muppet for doing so. But upon turning round I saw the ENTIRE theatre was giving a standing ovation which went on for literally 10 minutes!!! Lets just say I wasn’t the only one who shed a slight tear :”) It was pretty intense.
I think the band thought someone had walked on to stage or something. Drummer Jeremy jumped on top of his drum kit and was looking at the crowd with a stunned “What’s going on?” look on his face, with the other band members looking at each other. You could see the band where honoured.

It’s still astonishes me how society does not respect or recognize true talent such as this but rather respect the likes of big brother rejects and blonde floozies’. True talent always goes unnoticed.

Anyways’, Steve Vai ROCK’S!!!! Roll on the next Vai gig….

Dear Blog,

Nothing much has happened since my last entry below, so I’m not to sure what to say really. Apart from my sister crashing up her car, Terrorists attacking the UK, Me starting to learn SQL, The new rocking Velvet Revolver album Libertad being released and Sarah getting a new job that’s about it for the past week.

For my shot of fun I did however go to the new liquid club in Uxbridge last weekend for a friends 21st birthday. Here’s a pic of a lady podium dancer who I met there…

What a ‘ROCKING’ (and muddy) weekend I just had! I went to the Hyde park calling ‘festival’ (if you can call it that) and it was excellent.

Two of my favourite bands/ musicians where headlining, Aerosmith and guitar god Joe Satriani. So as you can imagine I was twice as excited!! There where loads of other bands playing, but to tell the truth they where quite pants.

Joe Satriani was headlining on stage/ tent 2 but I hardly got to see the entire act as it was absolutely packed and the tent was bursting at the seams! But in the end I managed to squeeze to the front and get a good view (which I always seem to manage at a Joe show some how?!).

Once Joe had finished his act it was a mighty rush to the Main stage in the centre of Hyde Park in which Aerosmith where the last and foremost act. It may have been raining and so was muddy as hell but the show was brilliant. For about 15 years I had always wanted to see Aerosmith in concert and was getting more and more anxious due to their forever exceeding age and lack of UK concerts, but now I can say I am truly fulfilled. I even managed to get quite close to front of the stage!

Amusing rock quote of the night by Steve Tyler: “It’s raining because god is crying because you rock!”

**amendment** 29/06/07 21.55, A random youtube for Mr Nexus:

I had my actual driving test yesterday and I’m happy to report that I passed with flying colours! Overall I only got 2 minors which as I was informed by my driving instructor is the best score so far this year out of the whole driving school: out of roughly 500 pupils (not blowing my own trumpet or anything )

All I have to do now is sort myself out with some wheels.

I’ve recently acquired a Nokia N95 mobile phone as part of my due upgrade from 02. All I have to say is that it is the best mobile phone I’ve had. It really does make you think about the forever moving pace of technology.

The phone has 5 mega pixies (yes 5!) which the is roughly the same quality as a low spec digital camera and also incorporates satellite navigation (aka sat-nav) for those journeys in which you need to know where you are/ how to get to a place.

A truly nice bit of kit and looks sexy too!

I took Sarah to see Cats at the Wimbledon theatre on Saturday. The production came down from the west end for a short 1 month period and I was lucky enough to catch the last performance.

The show was amazing, the costumes and stage props where excellent but the story line had little to be desired, however all of the other things easily made up for this. A fantastic production over all, would definitely go and see it again.