You have arrived at Dio Bach's Web Fun - mainly being a random compilation of digital photography, writings, art, web design, personal moments and opinion by Welsh webmaster and artist David Lloyd - aka Dio Bach.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Coming Out Of The Closet... The Guitar I Mean!

I'm getting the old inklings again, I want to make music. I miss not making tracks and songs, and last week I picked up a little practice amp for a tenner at the New Hedges car boot sale. It doesn't help that I've been working on updating my guitar site either, looking at loads of lovely old Fender Stratocasters. It's driven me to envy - so my old guitar has come out of storage this morning, and is now awaiting some new strings and a bit of attention.

What's more, I've decided I'm going to go for lessons. I've never really learnt how to play the guitar, and what I can do with it, I do badly. I haven't practised for must be 5 or 6 years at least. I think it would be good to actually learn some proper stuff for once, rather than the pluck and hope I used to do. It's surprising as well how much the music I like has changed since the last time I made music, and I would hope some of that could come through in any future pieces I might put together.

That said, I think I will spend time actually learning before I start laying stuff down. I'm half tempted to look for a four track recorder on eBay, I like that method of working, rather than doing it via the PC. I've already picked up a stand and tuner. Now I'll need to start looking for some dodgy weird effects and toys. All this from a quick chance trip to local car boot. I dunno, it's cheery me up after feeling well pissed off after finding out I was embroiled in a scam yesterday.

And looking at these lovely guitars I've been putting my site together about, it's making me hope the accountant can work wonders with my figures and cut my earnings down considerably, leaving me with more tax saved than I actually need to pay. If he does, I may just treat myself to a strat at some point. I've never had a pukka guitar, always cheap jobs, so it would be nice to get a bonafide classic for once in my life.

Posted by Dio Bach at 12:16 | 1 comments | links to this post
Thursday, April 24, 2008

Sonic Youth And The Ramones Covers Like You've Not Heard Before

Or maybe you have? I don't know - these videos have been up for a while. That said, I've not spotted them before now and I just happened across them doing some bingo related research. Anyway, basically these are two covers by the Young@Heart Chorus from Northampton, Massachusetts. They are a bunch of senior citizens who do live theatre and songs and videos and more. Their speciality is belting out covers of classic rock / alternative tracks like the following.

First up a cover of the classic Sonic Youth track Schizophrenia. It kind of has than magic that Johnny Cash doing Nine Inch Nails' Hurt does.

Secondly, a rather fun video of them doing a cover of The Ramones' I Wanna Be Sedated.

I don't know what it is, but there's something both poignant and magic about hearing such old voices do such songs. It also means I don't have to worry about hanging up them old rock 'n roll dreams I still have just yet.

Posted by Dio Bach at 10:54 | 0 comments | links to this post
Monday, April 21, 2008

Photoshop Disasters And WTF Costumes

Just a quick note to feature to new favourite blogs that have been added to my blogline. First up is Photoshop Disasters, a site that pretty much does what it says on the tin. Bad montages, mixed up perspectives and more the site is full of posts that have had me chortling and smiling. Perhaps my favourite of the many favourites is this recent one. With out leaning on UK and Eire stereotypes, it's entirely fitting that this be from an Irish newspaper. Funny on a few levels.

Keeping it whimsical, WTF Costumes is another site who's name says it all. They don't update it very often, but when they do it's usually worth the wait. A couple of my favourites include the sanitary towel ninja and well, I'll probably go to hell for the trouble but this one too. I can't say costumes ever really interested me previously, but the stuff that pops up on there is outrageous.

Posted by Dio Bach at 14:55 | 0 comments | links to this post
Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Day Trip Media V2.0

After nearly two years, I've finally done something with my business related domain. Day Trip Media has been languishing unloved as I was to busy actually making a living to actually worry about that site. Originally it was essentially going to be an online CV of past photography, video and stuff and a brochure for a range of services I didn't actually want to offer. As it wasn't a money maker I left it slide rather than consume my time on a vanity site.

Well, it's a quick win on my year's To Do list, and I thought I should do something with it as I wanted a space to talk about some of the more affiliate and web design stuff I do that wouldn't go down to well here. So I cut the plans for loads of dead and boring galleries of past glories, and made a small site that will have some blogs about the work I do, a highlights package of sites I've produced and some background about what I do.

I can't tick it off my To Do list until I do the page on photography, but I've got to get paperwork done now for the account, so I'll leave it for the time being. That also means I'll be keeping the old Web Fun a bit more photographic and personal as I can do the business side over there.

Posted by Dio Bach at 21:00 | 0 comments | links to this post
Monday, April 07, 2008

Strange Weather And A New Site...

The weather has been pretty strange the last couple of days. I woke up to snow yesterday morning, then an hour later there was blue skies. Then it was hale stones, then snow, then bright sunshine again. I can't keep up. It's doing the same today, snow, hale and now bright sunshine. What with Cardiff winning a place in the FA Cup final (as opposed to merely hosting it) things seem a bit surreal to say the least.

And speaking of Cardiff City, after last nights post I impetuously put together a site based on the one I did for the Grand Slam. So, here's my latest quick affiliate marketing site - Cardiff City Final. It will be interesting to see if it can quickly pick up the traffic the Grand Slam site did (300+ unique visitors a day within a two days of launch), it should be a bit busy for the next month or so. I had to act quick to get it done, as I have to have my year's paperwork as near done as possible by Wednesday as I'm off to make the accountant earn his keep.

Posted by Dio Bach at 11:45 | 0 comments | links to this post

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