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Yeah, but it's the different shades and dynamics that give impact. It's like when you see a little old granny in a nice floral dress and white apron, scowling, and suddenly coming out with 'dammit', after years of clean language, or seeing Tom Araya in a crisp, clean, three piece suit.

Seeing Tom Araya rock out Angel of Death in a clean three piece suit would be a refreshing and even more kick ass statement then in the usual metal uniform of jeans and a black t-shirt with bandlogo. It's for that reason that in my last band I ditched the jeans and band logo t-shirt in favor of a three piece suit.

Yeah, well, once a certain idea manages to worm itself into the public's brain you will find that you can argue until you are blue in the face

....and it's a vibrato, not a tremolo! I don't care how long it's been...

LOL! 

Came across Nightwish's cover of "High Hopes" by Pink Floyd. I don't like it.

The Floyd's studio version of High Hopes always had that English quality of understated wistfulness to me. It's about reminiscing of things long gone, dreams you once had but never fulfilled in the day to day grind of getting by and looking after your family and friends, and looking forwards and realising that now, the chances of you fulfilling those dreams are even less than they were when you were eighteen, knew everything, and completely believed you could conquer the world. Part of this was conveyed was through Gilmour's understated singing -- a lot of the verses, he doesn't stray far from the original key, and in the chorus, even though he lets his voice soar a bit more, it's still not very far from what you could imagine a workmate in his fifties venting about at the pub.

Nightwish's live version I  saw was overblown emo in tone, to me. The singing was too polished, and the whole production was 'everything louder than everything else', which doesn't really fit the song.

Yeah, well, Pink Floyd always was a restrained (as in not balls to the walls rocking it out) rockband. Lots of subtlety in their music. Metal is just not known for its subtlety and restraint. It's either ALL ANGRY ALL THE TIME or symphonic note overload. That's why we love metal in the first place, we're not subtle people. 

He mentioned Smashing Pumpkins, which made me think creamy dreamer.

A Big Muff is not the "Smashing Pumpkins sound". The whole creamy dreamer thing was a complete fiasco, but it's nice to know it is still alive and well as "the way to get the pumpkins sound, brah!". Billy Corgan will never be able to break free from that one:
http://kitrae.net/music/Music_Muff%20Inspired%20Pedals%20and%20Clones2.html#CreamyDreamer

Yeah, well, once a certain idea manages to worm itself into the public's brain you will find that you can argue until you are blue in the face, like a virus it just will refuse to die. This goes for the Creamy Dreamer, to anti-vax, to flat earth and history in particular. To this day my grandmother is utterly convinced the Netherlands was betrayed in WW2 by pro-Nazi sympathizers during the German invasion. This idea was popular in the Netherlands during the war, because the Netherlands capitulated after only 5 days of combat and people preferred to pass the blame unto a small local Naziesque party, rather then accept that the Dutch had been woefully unprepared for modern war. It has been disproven by historians, pretty soon after the war that local Nazi sympathizers played no role whatsoever in the Dutch defeat. But try explaining that to my grandmother. I think I must have tried a dozen times. Now I just give up.

Ideas are like viruses and logic and facts are not vaccines to them. The only way to get an idea out of someone's brain is with a different idea.

Lovetone pedals are awesome, and I wanted them SO BADLY when I first saw them. Until I got a few clones and realized way too many knobs. It's like going to the store to get peanut butter and finding 50 different brands, types and flavors. 4 is about my max with knobs these days, less is more, especially with mod pedals. LOVE the one knob MXR and EHX phasers.

(looks behind him at the synth-cable-palooza)

I have no idea what you mean by this 

As for favourite -- I'd give this two options. If we're talking reliability, grab'n'go, I've-got-to-play-in-five-minutes!, I'd say Boss. They aren't the world's trendiest, but they're built like brick sh!thouses and are nearly always pretty decent. If we're talking bedroom, I'm-having-fun, then Lovetone. The more time you have to mess around with them, the better they get.

Thing is, maybe this is just me, ultimately after all that experimentation you gravitate towards a single sound, in which case all those knobs and switches might as well be set and forget trimpots and dipswitches. Unless you're Radiohead and you need a ton of weird noises. Although even they seem to have ditched their Lovetone pedals. Ed used to have a Big Cheese, Ringstinger and Meatball on his board(s).

Lovetone pedals are awesome, and I wanted them SO BADLY when I first saw them. Until I got a few clones and realized way too many knobs. It's like going to the store to get peanut butter and finding 50 different brands, types and flavors. 4 is about my max with knobs these days, less is more, especially with mod pedals. LOVE the one knob MXR and EHX phasers.

EHX makes fun stuff, even today they are pushing the envelope. I just wish they would use smaller enclosures. But my biggest love was and still is Boss. Ever since my formative first guitar playing years in the 80's I've been hooked hook line and sinker on the small colored boxes. And modding Boss pedals was what got me into the hobby. I've had EHX pedals that I don't use, I've got Boss pedals I don't use. I will sooner part with my EHX pedals though, as I do love to collect Boss pedals. Yeah, Boss is a little more conservative in its extreme sounds then EHX, but you can drop any Boss pedal from a tower block roof, use a Boss pedal to hammer a zombie's brain, and they will survive. The old EHX pedals look flimsy in comparison. And sometimes you need simple straight forward bread and butter pedals. Plus Prince LOVED Boss pedals, he had a great guitar tone and was a great guitar player, so they can't be bad.

Honorable mentions go to Line 6 pedals, because the 4 modeler pedals are awesome value for what you get and offer some great use for effects abuse. And their smaller pedals aren't slouches either. Especially the Echo Park is a very underrated delay pedal.

[were]

This is probably a really stupid question, but the band named 'Live'... (always wondered about that... "I'm seeing the band Live tonight!" "Which band?" "Live!" "Well, of course it's live, what band is it?")

Is it pronounced live as in "Performing live tonight!", or as in "Live long and prosper" ?

That's just weird. Try searching for a band you saw during a gig and thought was cool which was called 'The Music'. Have fun googling that.

There's been several English dubs of those -- Asterix in Britain was my favourite.

I mean like a blockbuster

By French standards those were blockbusters. I reckon it would be hard to make them work like that as the action would be cartoony and the humor very European. Lots of European leaders, artists and prominents from the 60's and 70's had cameos in Asterix. Hollywood would just f*** it up. Like they always do. And throw in some gender and race swaps to boot.

people in the US don't know the character at all. I'm only familiar with him from seeing a few (emphasis on few, they were very uncommon) comics at comic book stores years ago.

I was always intrigued but never had the money to buy them.

I grew up on this stuff. All this American superhero stuff was as alien to me as Asterix is to you. I knew it existed but I never saw it at the time.

After watching far too many BosnianBill and LockPickingLawyer videos, I picked up a set of progressive training locks and lockpicks from Sparrows.

The part that gave me the shits was finding out that the lock I'd used for my bicycle all through intermediate and highschool was about as hard as the three pin training lock with no security pins.

When I went to university we had the introduction beforehand, where senior students would help you to show you around the place. The group went out for a night on the town, the senior student locked his bike to mine with a big chain, and when we came back our bikes were still there, only the chain had been stolen.

When I still built pedals I LOVED Tayda. It allowed me to build between 4 to 6 pedals a month. AND build up stock as well. There's no way I could have done so with using parts from Musikding or Smallbear, let alone that as a European shipping from the US is prohibitively expensive. Really expensive because of the double whammy of both shipping costs and customs duties. Whereas Tayda would 19 times out of 20 sneak under the customs radar if you only ordered enough so they would use the padded envelope. A box, that would get hit, but usually never the envelopes. And I could still built 2 pedals on average on parts with the envelope.

Tayda was an enabler. Allowed me to feed my pedal addiction at a reasonable cost. Wouldn't use them for professional builds for others, but then again I only built for myself. If I still did I would get my pots, switches, resistors, caps, most diodes and the common IC's from them still. And let's not forget their enclosures. Cheapest 125B's I could find at the time, my box of choice. Only the really rare IC's and transistors I would source elsewhere.

I find it anything but funny. Well, kinda, but it was one thing when Islamic hardliners were tearing down statues and smashing them up in Afghanistan and Syria, to see it happen here in the West is terrible. As a former student of history it breaks my heart and make me fear for more crazy is to follow.

Having seen a lot of drone shots from the guys at advchina I have been kinda long term lusting after a drone myself. Winston made amazing footage of massive Chinese cities when they were still there.

Seeing your vid where you describe following the signal path on the schematic I can't help but think how helpful it would be if the signal path was also shown with a similar colored line or tiny arrows on a pcb.

[anything]

I bought an Axe-FX in I think 2016 and started using it a year later (manual cold feet mostly), but once I did start to use the number of pedals I built has dropped down to less then I can count on one hand. It used to be that I could excuse myself building 4 tot 6 pedals a month was okay, because one of them might end up on my pedal board. Now no pedal makes it on my board anymore, as the Axe FX can literally do anything, so why bother building pedals any more?

For the lulz you might say? I also build guitars, so I'm still building things so that urge still gets scratched. If anything getting an Axe FX only makes your guitar collection explode. Which makes sense, right? You don't need amps or pedals any more, but you can always use a new guitar.

I'm set and forget too. Does it melt the solder? Fine, good enough, never ever hit the settings again.

I reckon I must have missed something. Like in cute kittens. 

I don't think the cure will be worse, but it's not going to be good.

Ever watched somebody go through cancer treatments? Trust me it's not pretty, but when the alternative is dying then the choice is a little less difficult, but honestly, not always that clear.

Oh, I think it will be very bad. You can't have the economy shut down, businesses collapse and then after the lockdown pretend like nothing has happened. Shit will be hitting the fan on a scale similar to 2008, if not 1929. And if its not that bad, good, glad to be wrong, but it never hurts to be prepared.

And yes, I have watched people die slowly from cancer. Both my mother and one of my grandmothers. It's not a fate I wish for everyone. But if the choice is between having some people die horribly from a disease or the majority suffer from hunger, I think most people will take their chances with corona and start to loot. The economy has to restart again because when there's no food to buy you can't eat money.

The thought occurred to me today that Toyota, Nissan, and the other major car manufacturers (like Suzuki, etc) need to bring out electric sports cars.

Not a hotted-up Prius or Smart, but a case where the Nissan Skyline team are given carte blanche to come up with an Electric Skyline. Something fast, sexy, and with a historical name behind it. Tesla have made a good one, but... they aren't wellknown as a carmaker, more as having a CEO who has a sideline of agent provocateur.

Because, IMO, just selling electric cars as 'eco-friendly' isn't going to get you the kind of market share it needs. You need aspirational cars -- both superfast voomvoom cars, and also luxury (with two g's... luggxury) of the kind that Maybach can pull off. As well as the greenies, the wider populace needs to buy into this on a mental level, rather than seeing it as being an 'eco-mentalist thing'.

I dunno. People who love thus luxury cars love them for their looks, and that glorious sound you make as you rev up the engine. You won't get that with an electric car. It's always going to be a case like with digital vs. analog. Some people will ALWAYS prefer the sound of analog over digital, so why would that be any different with fast flashy cars?

Besides, those cars are just a tiny tiny fragment of the total car market. If you want to end polution from cars you have to do like Ford did, not design high end cars, but one for the common man. The regular Joe may lust after a Ferrari, he's never in a million years going to be able to afford one. But he still needs something to drive from A to B, one that is affordable, reliable and economic. You're never going to get the masses to drive electric by designing electric super cars that they could never afford anyway. But build something that is cheap, reliable and cheaper to drive then gasoline and if you build it they will come. I for sure would.

This was brought to mind by some photos of New Delhi, before and after lockdown, and what a difference no cars made to the polluted skyline.

New Delhi is like the most polluted city on the planet? That or Beijing. Or Tehran. In the latter you can taste the pollution. I reckon this may be one of the good things to come out of this crisis. People having to work at home and not commute. And discovering that they may actually like it. And companies discovering you can operate that way. I reckon if after this crisis is over, and provided the economy hasn't melted down, a lot more working at home will take place. If only on average we'd all work 1 day per week at home that alone would probably be a big savings for the environment.