It's been well & truly over two years since my last journal. Wow! Has it REALLY been that long? Time flies!

Well, 2020 is at my doorstep & I'm armed with my trusty .357 to tell it to get the Hell off of my property!

In all seriousness, here's what I have planned for 2020...
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First, things first, I have decided (for now) to revert my writing color from cyan to default white. Mainly because I don't frequent F/A as often as I used to, & every time I do, I have to re-teach myself F/A's coding syntax.
Put this on top of the other coding languages I have to remember (C, C++, C#, Lua, Git, HTML etc)... yea. To make it easier on myself (& hopefully, on YOUR eyes), I'm stickin' with this color for the time being.

I have made quite a sizable post over on my FaceBook page with regards to what I have in store for 2020.
That is, I am going to be restoring some of my guitars, as the move to Ohai (now, two years ago) had left them in a sorry state of neglect.
As far as my YouTube channel is concerned, there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding YouTube currently, & I find it very discouraging with every time Google updates their terms & what constitutes "monetizable content" - IE Google does not want to pay content creators the money that they deserve.
As a result, I have been holding off uploading regular shit to my channel since 2012 & I still have my reservations about uploading to my channel.
By the way things are going, I don't see myself uploading to my YouTube channel any time soon; as much as I would like to do so, it seems to me that any time I plan to, Google throw another spanner in the works.
I am even iffy about SoundCloud & BandCamp, as whatever Google does to YouTube (& by extension, content creators), it has a flow-on effect throughout nearly every other facet of the internet.

I also haven't been uploading my music here, for similar reasons.

In recent years, I have turned my attention toward software engineering. That is doing things like programming microcontrollers for electronic devices (based on the Arduino open-source prototyping platform), script work for Garrys Mod Train-build, etc. A lot of that is going to be uploaded to my GitHub page.
With having saying that, it looks as though I am branching out of F/A. That's not entirely true. I have always treated F/A as my central hub, for everything that I do. IE There's links on my main profile to appropriate parts of my side of the internet. Be it my FaceBook page, Tumblr (which I no longer use), Twitter or my YouTube Channel.
I have also used F/A as a sort-of showcase for what I do, & in an indirect way, a social network.

I will still keep my F/A page here (& by crikey, I need to keep it updated more regularly).

Aside of that, I hope y'all have had a good new year & holiday season.

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---> Click here to visit my page. <---

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I have a new FaceBook Page for those that would like to follow me.
However, I'm trying to keep furry content on my page to a minimum. Because that's what THIS site is for.
I still rate my page as "Mature Content", because I post a lot of political commentary & unless if you're 18 or over, you simply wouldn't understand it.

Content includes (but not limited to):
> Anarcho Capitalism information & general rhetoric.
> CAA & promoting aviation safety - Particularly in the sector of drones/UAVs/UAS/RPAS/Model Aircraft.
> Drones/UAVs/UAS/RPAS/Model Aircraft.
> General political commentary.
> GoPro footage of various road trips that I've done.
> State of the Nation & current issues regarding New Zealand & her politics.

Be advised that it IS my personal page & as much as I still like to maintain a degree of professionalism on it, occasionally I let one rant or two slip & I'll REALLY let loose when I feel like somethin' needs to be said - filtered or not.

At this stage, I haven't enabled YOU lot to publicly comment on my page, but y'all can message me directly & I prefer to keep it that way.

OK, this one caught me by surprise. Now, given that I personally don't use Patreon or PayPal for that matter, a guy that I am subscribed to over on YouTube, RCModelReviews (AKA Bruce Simpson) has run aground again. This time, PayPal seem to have frozen his PayPal account. The money in his account has come from his supporters on Patreon (for those that aren't familiar with Patreon, it's a community-based donation service where one can donate money to somebody that they wish to support & in return get a few extra perks from the person that they are donating to).

PayPal have sent him a letter suggesting that he modifies his website slightly at their personal request & as it appears, stopped Bruce Simpson from accessing the money that Patreon have transferred into his PayPal account. Now, how does this correlate to us? Well, I see a few of you guys are already signed up with Patreon & PayPal appears to be the norm for commissioning artists on here. So, I'm wondering if PayPal have pulled a stunt like this with any of you or any of the artists that you follow?

Spread the word.

Short answer: I've lost interest in it.

Long answer:
Well, as much fun as I do have playin' my guitar & playin' my favorite songs, among a select few that I have written. It just seems to me that it's all for nothing if it's just either going unnoticed or if I post it to places such as YouTube, I just get nothin' but negativity from what little of a "fan base" I have.

Like, don't get me wrong though, when I played up at FurCoNZ, that was a blast for me. But, at the moment, 'cause I'm still just by myself IE I'm not in a band (& I'm probably in one of the worst places in New Zealand to even attempt to form another metal band).
It makes me feel like it's a wasted talent.

Not only that, my inspiration for writing music is practically non existent right now. Every time I pickup one of my guitars right now it goes a little like this...
> Warm up with a couple of covers.
> Try to come up with somethin' by layin' down a few riffs & maybe toss in some leads here & there.
> Record it (If I even feel up to doing just that).
> ...

There are a couple of ways that I write songs: 1.) Pickup my guitar & play. Spend 3+ hours writing it in Guitar Pro so that I won't forget it later. 2.) Spend 3+ hours writing it out in guitar pro... lose interest & move onto something else. Only to let it disappear into the bowels of my hard drive to never see the light of day again. 3.) Come back to an old song that I wrote possibly three to four years ago that I never finished & go "Wow, I wrote THAT!? That sounds amazing." Then go "Oh. THAT's why I never finished it." & then leave it alone forever.

As far as teaching myself new covers or even after I have written out new music, again, I just quickly lose interest in learnin' how to play it all for the aforementioned reason.
The way I'm starting to see things is that it's not worth doing if it's just gonna go unnoticed & for too long my music & my guitar playing has done just that. It's also been an accumulation of nothing but negativity in just about everywhere I go with my music, be it everything from apparently using "crap gear" (Ya know, guitars, amps, effects) or just generally being told to "fuck off."

Now, just to clarify, I don't use crap. When I pick out my guitars, I literally walk into the local music shop & spend an upward of two hours going through every guitar that they have until I find "the one" (being that it has that sound or that feel or that special something that fits the bill) with the exception of the Great Southern Trendkiller.
That particular guitar is a total scratch build that my dad & I worked on & I have only just recently decided on a paint scheme & how I want the headstock to be shaped. So, my dad's paintin' it & cuttin' that headstock to my spec. More on this axe later in this journal.

My "main two" guitars are a prime example of what happens when I spend about four hours in the Rock Shop to look for that specific tone. They are the Blitz "Cuban Cigar," a Gibson Les Paul copy so aptly named because of its tobacco sunburst & art deco "Al Capone" era style. The second being the Jackson JS-23 "High Voltage Super Strat" so-called because it's made of Indian maple & is finished in a clear lacquer, giving it an industrial look. Plus, it sports a bright yellow "Warning: High Voltage" strap. The former is usually my rythm guitar & the latter is usually my lead guitar. My cover of ZZ Top's "Rough Boy" features both of these guitars.[/url That very song was how I came up with my "Afterburner" lead tone that you guys know & love today. Albeit, I've perfected it a little bit more, but it's largely left unchanged in the four years that I've had that tone.
The Great Southern Trendkiller; AKA the BCR-500 is my "Swiss Army knife" guitar. It works well FOR ME in both rythm & lead roles (as you've heard in my version of God Defend New Zealand). Not only that, when I was looking for a new guitar (before building this one), I wanted to break away from the "Les Paul," "Telecaster" & "Stratocaster" shapes that appear to pop up everywhere I turn my head. Now, I've played Strats, Teles, SGs, LPs, Flying Vees & even Dimebag Darrel's lightning bolt ML. Yea. Ya read that right. I was in Whangarei & the Rock Shop were sellin' it for 15k & I got to play it for free.
It was then that I decided that I liked that particular shape. I liked it because, unlike a Flying Vee, it didn't have the tendency to fall outta my lap all of the time if I tried to play it while sittin' down. I didn't wind up with "Tennis Elbow" after playing it for two hours, like I would get with Telecasters, SGs & some Stratocasters (Both Fender/Squier & Gibson/Epiphone ones). Also, that lightning bolt shape was so radically unusal... it fit the bill nicely.

I can't justify paying fifteen grand (NZ$15,000.00) for a guitar that I would probably play only once or twice & put back up on the wall, only to gather dust & never to see an amp or a studio or a stage ever again. ESPECIALLY seeing as it was one of Dime's guitars; I felt it deserved a better player. Yup, I told the guys up in the Whangarei Rock Shop that "I'm not worthy of such a guitar." So, that sparked (har har. Pun intended.) the idea for the Great Southern Trendkiller.

I personally found that the lightning bolt shape of Dime's guitar felt "too straight" & didn't reflect my "feminine tendencies" *coughs*androgyny*coughs* in the same way that my previous guitars had done. Now, I think that a guitar is an extension of the person that is playing it & I think that it should be a reflection of a few key aspects either about them or their "stage persona."
Now, all of my guitars are curvy per se & I wanted to carry that on with the Trendkiller.

There's a few reasons why the BCR-500 has a long-winded name: The obvious one being a salute to PanterA & one of my favorite albums of theirs bein' The Great Southern Trendkill. The other one being that this axe looks less like a guitar, but more like an axe. Kidding. But, it breaks away from the conventional Stratocasters, Telecasters & Les Paul guitars that I see everywhere. I mean, let's face it. EVERYONE has or has owned a Strat, or a Tele or an LP at least once & the BCR-500 to me was a complete paradigm shift. This guitar even has a Floyd Rose locking system in it like what Dimebag Darrell had in his guitar that I played at the Rock Shop in Whangarei.

Say what you will about Floyd Rose systems. I think they're the cat's whiskers when they're setup PROPERLY. Keep in mind that I have an engineer's mind. Not a guitarist's mind. IE I have the patience to actually set one up where most guitarists would rage quit & give up.
But, yea. Floatin' bridge/locking nut system. Yea. Best thing I've ever put in a guitar & the most versatile thing in terms of playability. 'Cause with that guitar, I can either be a badass with it, I can make peoples' ears bleed with it OR I can make an almost ethereal racket with it. All kinds of fun. =^/.^=

Before I say anythin' further, I'll give y'all a short history about my dad & why he's so awesome.
He used to build animatronic creatures for movies such as Hercules & Xena, The Truth About Demons, King Kong, The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. In fact, that Uruk Hai sword he made was literally a ten second design & he made it at the very last minute while he was workin' on set. He's made animatronics for various New Zealand TV ads & he made the laboratory sets & Michelle Rodriguez's helicopter for James Cameron's Avatar. He's made massive iceberg & glacier sculptures for the Hukawai Center down Franz Josef/Fox Glacier ways.
He's built custom guitars for various New Zealand guitarists (Don't ask me who they were, I don't even know, myself), he's built various hot rods (three famed ones were "Tertle," "30 Koop" & a Fiat Altered that he used to drag race up at Meremere). He also used to X-ray weld the major pipelines 'round Taranaki way & as of 2011 he builds custom valve guitar amplifiers, custom (& some resto jobs to his dislike) British motorcycles such as Triumph, BSA, Norton etc.
In short... my dad's a clever guy & he knows his shit.

As far as my amplifiers go, like the BCR-500, they are custom built from the ground up by my dad to my specifications. What he & I did (particularly with the Mississippi Mouse) was he based the preamp stage on a Fender Champ & the power amp stage is something that he designed himself.
He used off-the-shelf components in the sense of local availability EG if the 6L6 or the tiny ECC83 goes kaput, I can hit up the Rock Shop for replacement valves.
The Mississippi Mouse only has two adjustment knobs on it: Master Volume & Gain.
I usually run bugger-all gain on that amp ('cause it all comes outta the ME-25 now). But, in the off chance that I crank the gain on that little sucker up... It's "the Mouse that roared" as my dad would put it. Don't believe me? Ignore my crappy singing in it & listen to my cover of Joe Walsh's Rocky Mountain Way.

My father is just about finished with my custom amp head (the big 80 that I keep talkin' about), just awaiting parts & gettin' $$$ together.

An older amp that he made for me was the Texas Cat. That was a 14 watt tube amp that he had based on a Bad Cat Xtreme distortion pedal... but all-valve. This amp had two distortion channels: One of which he & I spent a lot of time fine tuning the circuitry to get that "Rolling" distortion that ZZ Top had. The other was still a distortion channel but we both called it "the dirty channel" because it was purposefully not clean enough to be considered a clean channel & it didn't have enough drive in it to be as full on as the first channel (Think the start of ZZ Top's "La Grange").
Third: The Texas Cat had a valve-driven tremolo that was fully adjustable from rate, depth & level.
Oh & did I mention that that amp also had a "third channel"? Ya, that essentially combined both distortion & dirty channels for an all-out grunge fest. Good for some o' that "Teen Spirit," ta get ya into that state o' guitarist Nirvana, eh?

I also very rarely play through an old Fender Deluxe '85. That's an 80 watt transistor amp that (according to them) Fender "never built." By far it has got to be THE closest sounding amp to a tube amp that I have heard in my life (& that's also up against a Fender Mustang IV; my go-to amp at the Rock Shop when I am trying out new guitars).

My Line 6 Low-Down 15 does its job nicely for what it is. It's a 15 watt digital (solid state) bass amplifier (& "my" bass guitar is an LTD B-50FM). I usually have this amp sitting underneath the Mississippi Mouse, coupled to the above amp via my Boss ME-25; my multi-FX unit.

Chances are, you've all heard the 'Mouse, the LD-15 AND my ME-25. Ya know, that sound I have in just about every lead solo I play? Ya know that really chunky/ballsy sound I have on just about every metal riff I've played? Ya know that smooth clean sound that I play from time to time on my more mellow-er songs? That's all comin' outta the ME-25, mate.

Another thing is my work seems to have displaced my music production over the last few months too. ESP this month, where I've been asked to build a rather high tech "proof of concept" for a local guy here, in Picton. Honestly, this thing has a lot goin' on & for it. I'm controllin' four brushless DC motors with one Arduino UNO as the "Master" unit. I've spent the majority of last year just researching the technology behind these fantastic motors. Mainly on account of having a couple of projects of my own in the pipeline; a UAV & a motorbike.

My vision with my electronics work is this: Open Source Hardware and Accessories.
Which means that I have started out with the Arduino development platform. But, Spy vs Spy-style infighting has pushed me to branch out from the Arduino brand of boards. Keeping within the Open Hardware umbrella, I'm now turning to Adafruit & Sparkfun for various bits & bobs here & there & I'm also gettin' my more complex components from Mouser.

So, that's why I made that hint about teachin' myself C. So I can type up firmware for my Arduino boards. In effect, I have created another Tumblr blog that is specific to my projects. Be it electronics, 3D modeling to engineering. It's all gonna go up there, so check it out!

Shiftin' house, that's where. I'm still in Picton, however just in a different spot. It's down on one of the main roads amongst all of the "commoners."

Dammit, I miss my little home up on the hill that's RIGHT next to the forest. =</.<=

Enough o' that now, I have some new gear:
> Playstation 4. Yessiree. I have a PS4 & I've been playin' Infamous: Second Son on it this past month & I enjoy every second of it.
> I have a surround-sound system.
> I also have a 50" HD LED TV that arrived damaged. Minor annoyance there, so I'm griping to the shippin' company AND the store I bought it from.

...If I was gonna have a gamin' console, it'd always be a PlayStation. In that case, I do & my PS4 is finally here. WAHOO!!! =^/,..,^=

So, anyways, I've beenplayin' Infamous Second Son on it & that's one hell of a kick ass game.
I also have The Order: 1886; Back To The Future: The Game; & MineCraft: PS4 Edition. Why Minecraft ya may ask? Because it's obligatory, that's why. Oh & UI think it may run better on my PS4 versus it runnin' on PC. 'Cause I've found MineCraft to be a massive CPU hog on the PC version, granted that it runs JAVA.

Later on today (as in the day I wrote this journal), I'm gonna go see Deadpool with down at the Picton Cinema & I'll write a follow-up on how that went. Fingers crossed that I won't get hassled about Flash (My service dog in case y'all had forgotten).

So, anyways, there's not much else to add here apart from updating the replacement circuitry to my bladeless fan & carryin' on with designing this miniquad. Well, I actually thought I was a month BEHIND schedule, when I'm not supposed to start this miniquad until March. Which means I'm actually ahead of myself.

...I am now on my way back home late tonight/early tomorrow mornin' ('round the 0200Hour mark) back to Picton.
I have probably spent the bulk of my energy bein' the lively liger that I am at FurCoNZ & on playin' my guitar & hangin' with some awesome fuzzies. No, I did NOT wind up in the fungeon, but I was morbidly curious as to what was in it. =^/.~=

So, I am now tired as & my insomnia is comin' back to bite me as I was too amped to sleep at FurCoNZ, or was it because I forgot to bring my sleeping bag? Hmmm. Eggs for breakfast? 'Cause it may be on my face. Either way, it would have been far too hot in the night for it anyways, 'cause it was steifling hot during the day. I feel a great deal of pity for the poor souls that were in the fursuiter's parade. I salute y'all for braving the heat.

I can not wait for the next FurCoNZ, whenever that may be, I plan on registering both myself & as sponsors as we'll get put in the "plush" cabin, which is all fully contained, has air conditioning & also has proper beds & disability access. This just means that the other sponsors will have to put up with my lightnin' fast shredding... mwuh ha ha ha haaa!!! \m/ =>/.<= \m/

One more thing... I'd better get to workin' on this miniquad fast, because I wanna bring it to the next FurCoNZ. Oh & I also have some recorded footage of both the fursuiter's parade AND the music video that I, among a few other furs featured in... from my point of view, no less. So, I'm now waitin' on TuiCat & Canon to send me their footage so I can dub in my guitar work on it & probably brighten up the audio in it a bit.

OK, so paintin' the BCR-500 before FurCoNZ was a bust & I won't be bringin' it with me to show off to any of ya.
Nevertheless, I have a backup plan & I'm still bringin' a guitar with me, along with my full sound rig.

Again, I won't have any internet or cell-phone access (because there's no coverage whatsoever at the venue).
I will also mention that I have shifted house in Picton, so again, I won't have any internet access for a while until I get that setup when I get back to Picton.

A couple more things, yea, my laptop's power supply lead has shot itself (I think I may have told you guys that a while back, if I didn't, well, I'm tellin' ya now). So, I don't have any access to Guitar Pro & FL Studio. IE My sound production is on hold until I can find a replacement PSU for my laptop.

Other than that, I'm still workin' with my electronics as all of my resource files are in cloud storage. Yay!

So, if I don't get back to y'all on either Monday or Tuesday, I won't be back this way until further notice & y'all know why. So, bye for now.

WAHOO! Yush, FurCoNZ has crept around again this year & by crikey, it came fast (get yer minds outta the gutter!).

So, it's in Wellington -- Same place as it was a couple o' years ago & I'm gonna be in Wellington until February 9. Those of whom I wanna catch up with, ya know hwo ya are & I have yer cell phone numbers. So, watch out. =^/.~=

Yes, I am bringin' my entire sound rig & no, Flash will not accompany me this time around. Who knows how he'll react to strange people in fursuits, judging from how my fiancee's service dog reacted to her partial suit, I'm not game enough to bring Flash to Wellington with me, let alone FurCoNZ.

...and yes, I have been awake all night (again) & I'm gonna try to get to sleep as it's 0538Hrs at the time of writing this. =x/.x=

So, FurCoNZ... Here I come! I'm takin' OVER this town.

Yessiree. As the title says, I've asked Kiraki ----> to marry me & guess what...!?
SHE SAID YES!!! HA HAA!!! I couldn't be a happier liger. =^/,..,^=

OK, so here's one for outside of the F/A & over on my more formal Tumblr page. Just a short detail about it:

It's a quad-rotor radio controlled racing helicopter that I am building.

That is all. See? I told you, it was a short detail. =^/.^=

OK, so a few o' you guys asked me over on Y/T about how I've screwed my right leg up. So, I'm gonna write about it here before I film an update over on my YouTube channel.

So, fair warning, this journal's not for those that are squeamish. Here we go...

Here's a short history of my interest of radio controlled helicopters: 'Round about 2007~2008, one of my dad's colleagues lent me his SJM-450 to use as a reference for a high school project of mine; a LASER-cut acrylic helicopter. After that, I swapped it for his Hirobo ZX Shuttle (the biggest heli in the lineup; with the ugly orange/green canopy).

After about six months trying to get the engine started, tuning & going through two glow plugs & about a couple of liters of nitromethane later, this old bird sprang to life at Avalon Park. It was a very gusty, typical Wellington day, on that day & no sooner had I had the helicopter spooled up (ready for takeoff), a gust of wind picked up the old bird & dumped it onto the deck & into what's known among the NZ RC Heli Fliers as the "Funky Chicken." A dangerous situation (as depicted in the related video) where the helicopter's engine fails to shut down & consequently, the helicopter literally beats itself to death straight after the initial crash; nitro helis are particularly notorious for this when they crash.

So, the Shuttle's on the deck, doin' the Funky Chicken. I leaned into the flailing mess to shut the helicopter down manually - pinching the fuel line under the engine's carburetor. This is the gory part. Squeamish folk better look away now. The following is what played out while I was trying to shut the old bird down...

One of the main blades snagged my right forearm as I was reaching into the airframe to try to grab the fuel line, whipping the tail boom around my right shin & the tail rotor dish (the tail rotor - still spinning at full noise) cut into & chewed up a good chunk of my calf muscle. Half of it was gone.

I did shut the helicopter down in the end. Tidied up my field equipment & limped back to my home in Belmont Domain. Once I got home, I left the helicopter & my field equipment at the front door & went straight to my first-aid kit & sorted out the wound myself. Thank you, ATC & my Junior Leaders' Course for that.

So, why didn't I go straight to the hospital? Well, for one thing, I hate hospitals (mind you, who DOES like hospitals?) & two, I wasn't too fussed on somebody else fucking up my injury even further & three, I was hoping I would have bled out & died on the walk back home.
But, one thing DID happen & it was after I had dressed my leg, I passed out on my bed & didn't wake until the following day (or, at least what I THOUGHT was the following day). My friend came around & when he got to my place, he mentioned about the blood trail from Avalon Park to Belmont Domain.
Whatever the hell happened, whether I had died or not, nobody will ever know. But, as far as I am concerned, I did die & I came back from it. Don't ask how, 'cause IDK how I did it, but I can tell you that this isn't the first time.
The only other time that I have overcome my own death was when I was little & in a car crash in the early 1990's.

Now, the wound is all healed up, I still have only half the calf muscle that SHOULD be there in my right leg & it acts up... frequently. It even gets to the point where I'm unable to walk at all.
The best thing that I have been doin' with it since that crash was riding my mountain bike to & from my high school every day for the three years that I was there.
Some days, I would ride from school all the way up to the Wellington Model Aeroplane Club field or even further on into Upper Hutt.

The distance from Belmont Domain to Taita College for me was about 8km (5mi) & took me approximately 30mins to get to school, depending on where the wind was goin' & how strong it was.
One time, I tried to ride in a northerly gale & it took me an hour & ten minutes JUST to get to the rail bridge (which is just a quarter mile north of Taita College). So, yes, I DID turn around & rode back home & didn't attend all day.
Other times, I'd be riding, get to the rail bridge & go "fuck it! I'm not going to school today." & carry on riding all the way into Upper Hutt.

I suppose riding was easily the best thing for my right leg, to help the healing process & work out what little muscle I have left in that leg. I also still have a massive scar in my right forearm where the rotor blade hit. <--- THAT is why I am always wearing some kind of arm brace on my right arm, because that is what's under it.

Unfortunately, the story about my right eye is nowhere near as good as my RC heli crash. My right eye's just a birth defect. BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Anyways, I can only see about 5~10% out of it. IE I can only recognize color & shapes. Outlines are blurry as fuck & I can't read Jack Schitt outta it.
This means that I also have difficulty with judging distance & depth perception? Forget it. That's non existent. Everything appears flat to me & not three-dimensional like it should. Oh, & before I forget, I often experience a phenomena known among the engineering crowd as "parallax."

Parallax is where a perceived object's position or direction appears to change (despite not movin' at all) when viewed from a different angle. A perfect example of this is when I'm flying one of my RC helicopters, particularly in a hover. So, the helicopter's sittin' about six feet off the ground (my eye height) & is sitting "left-side in" (left side of the bird is facing me). I see things like the landing skids & the main rotor dish around the opposite way to how they actually are.
In this instance, I think that the helicopter is coming toward me & tilt it in the opposite direction to stop it. But, the heli was already in a perfect hover & it just gets away from me. :3

So, how does that affect my life in general? Good question. Obviously not a lot if I hadn't noticed it until 2012, when I went to the Wellington Trades Academy at WelTech for my mechanical engineering course. I just got around it by making sure that the machines I was workin' on had digital readouts & all of the things I made, I made them with a higher precision - which in turn took slightly longer to machine.

Now, it's affected me a lot more now where I'd walk into things (like street lamps etc) without knowing it or thinkin' they're further away from me. This is where Flash comes in... Well... his main job. For those of you who don't already know who Flash is, he's a border collie & my 4 year-old S.D.I.T (Service Dog In Training). Now, technically speaking, I am not blind. My eyesight is just somewhat limited. Flash is a "second-set-of-eyes" for me & steers me clear of almost anything that I would otherwise collide with. Flash also alerts me to my panic attacks (which happens when I'm either in a huge crowd or when someone's standing behind me & out of my line-of-sight).

So, I know this is a bit of a wall of text for you guys. But, for those that have read it, thanks for takin' the time to check it out & I hope this gives you a little bit of an insight too. I'm gonna film an update vid for this too. So, if you don't wanna read this journal, ya can check out the video over on my Y/T channel instead. [Check back here for the link]

...WE DON'T WANT NO CHRISTMAS, WE'VE HAD ENOUGH, WE QUIT!

Kevin Bloody Wilson aside...

First thing I wanna say is HAPPY TWENTY FIRST BIRTHDAY, KIRAKI! Welcome to The Age of Blackjack! =^/.^=

Second is... the power lead to my laptop has finally kicked the bucket & I'm goin' through the process of orderin' a replacement.
I'm now back into drawing vector graphics in Corel Draw again. Which is bloody awesome, 'cause the last time I used Corel Draw was in 2011. I stopped 'cause Corel somehow managed to stop access to any of their pirated programs. Oh, bugger. Nevertheless, I have Corel Draw workin' again & I'm rather rusty in it.
So, I'm startin' off small by drawin' some electronic components for an electronics program that I work with on a daily basis: Fritzing.
At some point next year, I might put a few of my vector graphics up here 'n see what y'all think.

I'm on the list for FurCoNZ 2016. WAHOO!!! So, keep an eye out (more like an ear out) for me & my guitar. 'Cause I'll be tucked away in a cabin somewheres with my amplifier cranked & jammin' some southern metal. \m/ =>/.<= \m/

What else is there? Oh, yea. The BCR-500 is in pieces right now & I'm havin' to replace the bridge & nut as I managed to strip the heads of a couple of bolts in the bridge & I stripped the thread in the nut.
I will be comin' to Wellington about a week before FurCoNZ to go over to a friend's place to help me paint the BCR-500 & shape the headstock on it & have it ready to go for FurCoNZ.
I may also bring up my High Voltage Super Strat or my Blitz Cuban Cigar as a backup guitar & some replacement strings in case the inevitable happens half-way into a song.

Oh, and my insomnia, my right leg & my back are kicking my ass lately & I'm also startin' to notice that my eyesight in my right eye is progressively deteriorating. Honestly, I would not be surprised if I go completely blind in that eye by the end of next year, 'cause that's where it's headed.
Flash is better than ever, alerting to my panic attacks (5 to 10 minutes before they happen), guiding me & stoppin' me from walkin' into just about everything too.

So, that's pretty much it from the last month up until now. I'm gonna keep this space updated more regular, so keep an eye out 'n make use o' the comments section. THAT'S WHAT IT'S THERE FOR!

PS: As much as I hate it, I'm gonna say it 'cause it's obligatory... HAVE YOURSELVES A HEAVY METAL CHRISTMAS, YA FUZZY BASTERDS! Rock on, light 'em up, 'n' drink plen'y. 'Cause it's gonna be a hot one.
\m/ =>/.<= \m/

I've tweeted this.
It's up on my dashboard too.
DropBox Screenie 1
DropBox Screenie 2
DropBox Screenie 3
DropBox Screenie 4
DropBox Screenie 5

So, as you can see, FaceBook is askin' for my formal identification (Driver's license, 18+ card, credit card etc...).
When I heard that this had happened to a friend of mine, about three months ago, I decided to roll under the alias: "Panthera Noctis" over there as an experiment. Turns out, thar askin for my identification too. Well, FUCK OFF FACEBOOK, YOU FUCKING PRICKS!!!

There is no way that I will ever provide my 'real name' on the internet... EVER!
So, either I create an entirely new account or I'll just abandon FaceBook entirely. I'm thinkin' of doin' the latter. Reason being is because they don't even give a proper explanation as to why one must give them their ID.
I could understand if it were required by law EG under the Sale of Liquor Act 1989 I am required by law to provide evidence of age. AKA my "18+ card" when I go down to the Bottle-O to buy my Wild Turkey.

FaceBook on the other paw "require everyone using Facebook to use their authentic name and birthday. This way, you always know who you're connecting with."
There is no legal requirement for me to give FaceBook my ID.

-End of line.

PS. Has FaceBook pulled any crap like this on any of you guys? Lemme know in the comments section below.

This is from my personal FaceBook page (not my "ZZ Cat" one).

Crashed my skateboard twice today.
First one was partly my fault/partly Flash's fault:
He took off too quick & I leaned too far forward. I came off & landed on my right side, breaking the security chain on my wallet.

Second crash was because one fucking pebble jammed itself under my front right wheel. I went forward, landed on my hands & knees, smashing my haematite ring to pieces & broke my black shades.

All in all, I'm still in one piece. Everything else on me is fine. But, I'm fucked off to shit that my shades broke.

In this Journal:
• Guitar Pro has been fixed.
• New album comin' out next year.
• Mothballing two albums that were meant to be released two & three years ago.
• New Arduino electronics project.

Read on...

Alright! Now that I've sorted out Guitar Pro & FL Studio, I'm gonna start writing some metal to go on a new album that I'm workin' on. The album's called "Hell To Pay!"

So, I've decided to mothball both "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be" & "The New Generation" for the time being. I still have all the tabs & .mp3s of the stuff I've recorded for both albums. But, I feel a lot of the stuff that I wrote for those two albums aren't to my current standard in terms of writing, playing, & recording.

I'll re-visit those two albums (plus an old demo-tape of mine called "Stray Cat's Blues.") & record them under my current standard.

Aside of that, gonna wedge that in with the first phase of an electronics project of mine.
This is a scale-model hybrid-electric system that will use the Arduino open-source development platform & brushless motor technology.
This model will serve as a "proof-of-concept" of mine as part of the development of a much bigger project that's been in the works since 2006.

Okay, folks. It's 0430Hrs & what does the '0' stand for? Oh my god, I have been awake all night again. Fuck you, insomnia! Ruinin' my sleep since 2012! Anyways, I'm bored as fuck, so I'm writin' my set lists in this here journal.
So, here goes:

Covers in order of their respective bands:
• ^{3 Doors Down}Kryptonite.
• ^AC/DCBack In Black.
• ^AC/DCThunderstruck.
• ^{Alice Cooper}Feed My Frankenstein.
• ^{Alice Cooper}Poison.
• ^{Avenged Sevenfold}Hail To The King.
• ^AngelsAm I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again? (No way, get fucked. Fuck off!)
• ^{Black Label Society}All For You (Complete with "LIMP BIZKIT SUCKS DICK" at the end of it).
• ^{Black Sabbath}Iron Man.
• ^{Black Sabbath}Paranoid.
• ^{Black Sabbath}War Pigs.
• ^{Black Veil Brides}Fallen Angels.
• ^{Black Veil Brides}In The End.
• ^{Black Veil Brides}Rebel Love Song.
• ^{Blue Oyster Cult}Don't Fear The Reaper.
• ^{Chris Sawyer/Rollercoaster Tycoon 2}Css36 AKA Rock 3.
• ^ColdplayClocks.
• ^{Dire Straits}Money For Nothin'.
• ^{Dire Straits}Walk of Life.
• ^DragonApril Sun in Cuba.
• ^{Fleetwood Mac}Albatross.
• ^{Five Finger Death Punch}Bad Company.
• ^{Green Day}When I Come Around.
• ^{Iron Maiden}Hallowed Be Thy Name.
• ^{Joan Jett}I love Rock 'n Roll.
• ^{Joe Walsh}Rocky Mountain Way.
• ^JourneyDon't Stop Believin'.
• ^{Judas Priest}Breakin' The Law.
• ^{Marilyn Manson}Sweet Dreams Are Made Of These.
• ^MetallicACall of Ktulu.
• ^MetallicACreepin' Death.
• ^MetallicAEcstasy of Gold (S&M Version).
• ^MetallicAEnter Sandman.
• ^MetallicAFor Whom The Bell Tolls.
• ^MetallicAFuel!
• ^MetallicAMaster of Puppets.
• ^MetallicANothin' Else Matters.
• ^MetallicAThe Memory Remains.
• ^MetallicAOrion (Through The Never Version).
• ^PanterABecoming!
• ^PanterACemetery Gates.
• ^PanterACowboys From Hell.
• ^PanterADomination.
• ^PanterAFive Minutes Alone.
• ^PanterAMoment Of Truth. Yea, I know that's a Damageplan song, but it's PanterA with a different lead singer & a different bass guitarist.
• ^PanterAShattered.
• ^PanterAWalk.
• ^RammsteinDu Hast. Yes, I sing that in German.
• ^RammsteinFeuer Frei. Yup, that's in German too.
• ^{Sisters of Mercy}Vision Thing.
• ^{Steve Earl}Copperhead Road.
• ^{Thomas Bracken}God Defend New Zealand AKA New Zealand's National Anthem.
• ^Tool10,000 Days (Lost Keys/Blain Hoffman).
• ^ToolStinkfist.
• ^{Turbo Ratz}He of The E (Fuck Off! No, YOU fuck off & tell yer mates to fuck off too!).
• ^{Turbo Ratz}In & Outta Love.
• ^{ZZ Top}Arrested For Drivin' While Blind.
• ^{ZZ Top}Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers.
• ^{ZZ Top}Blue Jean Blues.
• ^{ZZ Top}Brown Sugar.
• ^{ZZ Top}Chartreuse.
• ^{ZZ Top}Cheap Sunglasses.
• ^{ZZ Top}El Diablo.
• ^{ZZ Top}Fool For Your Stockings.
• ^{ZZ Top}Francine.
• ^{ZZ Top}Gimme All Your Lovin'.
• ^{ZZ Top}Got Me Under Pressure.
• ^{ZZ Top}Heard It On The X.
• ^{ZZ Top}I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide.
• ^{ZZ Top}I Thank You.
• ^{ZZ Top}I Need You Tonight.
• ^{ZZ Top}Just Got paid Today.
• ^{ZZ Top}La Grange w/Sloppy Drunk & BBQ.
• ^{ZZ Top}Legs.
• ^{ZZ Top}Pin Cushion.
• ^{ZZ Top}Rough Boy
• ^{ZZ Top}Sharp Dressed Man.
• ^{ZZ Top}Sleepin' Bag.
• ^{ZZ Top}Stages.
• ^{ZZ Top}Tush.
• ^{ZZ Top}TV Dinners.
• ^{ZZ Top}Velcro Fly.
• ^{ZZ Top}Waitin' For The Bus/Jesus Just Left Chicago.

My stuff in order of song title:
• ^{ZZ Cat}Cruisin' For A Bruisin'.
• ^{ZZ Cat}Into The Depths of Hell.
• ^{ZZ Cat}Park Flyin'.
• ^{ZZ Cat}Rage o' the Liger.
• ^{ZZ Cat}The One For Me.
• ^{ZZ Cat}This Life (Of Misery).
• ^{ZZ Cat}Who Am I?
• ^{ZZ Cat}When I'm With You.

One day, I will get around to uploadin' the whole lot on here. Slowly but surely, they will appear on here.

@ ZZCat_The_Liger <--- That's the name. Go follow it, ya miserable basterds!

So, I was playin' some guitar earlier on today & I had this blues riff goin' on.
I thought this: "What happens if I drop this into standard B (Baritone Tuning) & rather than playing power-chords, tri-tone them & kick in my "Panthera Liger" overdrive?"

Turns out, that it sounded somethin' that Immortal would write.
It kinda blew me away, considering black metal isn't what I would normally play. So, I'm gonna record "Into The Depths of Hell" & upload it here for yer listenin' pleasure!

OK, so I've been doin' a bit of thinking about my playing style over the past month & this journal is going to consist of my stance on heavy metal, who my influences are & a brief history into how I became the guitarist that I am today.

When I first picked up a guitar in 2008, I never thought I'd be playing any kind of metal what so ever. In fact, I used to turn my nose up at the subject. My original direction for music was blues, jazz & hard rock.
ZZ Top played a huge role as my inspiration for not just guitar, but my vocals also. With Billy Gibbons' smooth, yet somewhat raspy singing coupled with a heavily overdriven guitar rang true to me more than anything I've heard before.

I remember going to see AC/DC's Black Ice concert in 2009 which opened up a whole new world for me.
In 2010, my dad & I went to a battle-of-the-bands competition at The Angus Inn where I saw two thrash metal bands & a death metal band... which scared me a little bit.

It wasn't until a friend of mine introduced me to MetallicA when he played a couple of tunes off of their Black Album & I learned to play Enter Sandman. I only learned to play James' role as at that point, I couldn't shred for nuts. I was still playing like Gary Moore where my playing emphasized sustained notes & pinch harmonics.

I had taught myself just about every song ZZ Top had written up to their Afterburner album & a handful of songs that MetallicA wrote in their Ride The Lightning, Master of Puppets, ReLoad & Symphony & MetallicA albums.
My interest was turned to the late Dimebag Darrell when somebody sent me a satire YouTube video of Shred Durst pointing out the difference between good & bad vibrato.

So, I got into listenin' to PanterA with their Cowboys From Hell album. This was another eye-opener for me because these guys were (in my opinion) where ZZ Top meets MetallicA & then some. It also turns out that in their early days, PanterA delved into glam metal & they would rather forget it.

Everyone has that ONE thing they did that they would rather forget & I am no exception. From 2009 to 2011, I delved into gangsta rap during high school. That started as me sittin' in class one day, goin' all-out with Eminem's The Real Slim Shady & Eazy-E's Easier Said Than Done. This earned me the nickname "Slim Shady" all through high school. But, I much prefer "ZZ Cat" because it sticks to me REAL roots; blues & neoclassical jazz.

Since 2014, my tone has been getting heavier & my shredding has been getting faster. My style now entails drop-tuned chugging riffs loosely based on the I-IV-V progression with emphasis on tri-tonal chording.

I now have a well-rounded lead tone that involves insane amount of high-speed shredding, "clamp-and-hammer," "fake-echo," & "tap-hammer" techniques. Here is where a lot of my harmonics shine through, whether intentionally or accidentally, they are there & it fits. With the BCR-500's Floyd Rose bridge, this has allowed me to make some piercing harmonic squeals that are so characteristic of what Dimebag Darrell used to do.
I also make use of my thumb-ring as a miniature slide to get some borderline alien sounds outta my guitar.

Pretty much what I am doing here is taking some key elements of blues, such as the I-IV-V progression & the blue-note scales & coupling them with aggressive down-tuned riffs, short interludes between verses & lead solos that are beyond sanity.

My vocal style has always been harsh & somewhat forced. However, singing is not my strong point & I am still teaching myself how to do it properly & less "forced" & more "relaxed."
As I am now older, my voice has also gotten deeper compared to how I sounded at the age of 16. So, this means I can now naturally distort my voice a lot easier.

For a while, I thought my voice was limited to the baritone range, but I've found that after a lot of practicing & one drunken night at the Angus Inn, my voice ranges from A2 to F5.

So, I am going to add power metal vocals into my little version of metal while I am at it.

I'm calling it "Blues-Metal" because my music doesn't fit in any other category that I have seen nor heard of & I haven't heard of anyone doing this before.

But, apparently there's been an influx of "alternative metal" genres out there & in my opinion... Fuck 'em! They are bringing nothing new to the table. Or at least from what I have seen, they aren't.

I've said enough, I've already blabbered on about myself for too long in this journal & I already hate it. So, lemme know your thoughts 'n shit. Gimme a note, gimme a comment or whatever. I lose track of what site I'm on & what features are specific to which site.

So, that's that shit about my guitarring. I might write a follow-up to this explaining some of my playing style in further detail, such as my technique if any o' y'all are interested.

I'm also gonna try to post another episode of "ZZ Cat's Skateboarding Excursion" on the next fine day (it's supposed to be this Tuesday, but the weather is gonna turn to custard tomorrow).