Sallubrious

@zed240 - yes you do have to give them your number to set it up. Even though the traffic is sent over the web you still need a phone with a sim card. It won't work in a tablet or phone with no sim card. Whatsapp uses the signal protocol but their association with facebook was enough for me to pass on it. If asked by the feds fasebook will give it up like a drunken whore. There has been at least one case where the FIB (fuck in bum) subpoenaed open whisper systems (the makers of signal messenger) and they basically got fuck all info because there was fuck all to give them. This from http://thehackernews.com/2016/10/signal-messenger-fbi-subpoena.html In the article it states that the FIB asked for Subscriber name Payment information Associated IP addresses Email addresses History logs Browser cookie data Other information associated with two phone numbers and all they got was So other than the phone numbers there's not much data for them to get. I can see your point though, if you trust a VPN then that should give you more anonymity. But if you believe the Snowden documents most of them (VPN's)are all cracked now but he's still endorsing this.

I've never even heard of an Oud before, I've seen a few instruments on ebay a lot like that listed as Russian or European mandolins. Maybe it's so the listings get more attention, I can't see too many people doing a search for an Oud. I like the f style mandolin shape more myself, I've wanted one ever since I saw the band do a version of Bruce Springsteen's Atlantic City one night on a light night TV talk show back in the "90's. The mandolin snapped me out of my drug induced stupor and the tone has stuck in my head ever since. The song was mediocre but the tone of the mandolin has stuck with me forever. If the Universe ever slips a cog and gives me a break financially, I'll build myself a hand rubbed sunburst F style mandolin. I could buy a Chinese painted burst F style but it just wouldn't be the same.

@migraineur I came to the same conclusions too, Signal seemed a cut above the others in few different aspects, so I ended up settling on it myself. Having the messages backed up on someones server seems to defeat the purpose of these type of messengers in some respects. First it leaves a bigger meta data trail and as with all encryption it may be considered safe now but if google or the feds put a quantum computer to task they'd crack it eventually. Facebook runs an encrypted private messenger that seems secure at face value but to use it you have to give facebook permission to everything your device has to offer - microphone keystrokes and stored files etc. So the facebook system being secure is almost irrelevant, everything is logged and stored in metatdata and they have access to your microphone and camera. Then there's google messenger but I could really go off on a tangent there.

Yeah I'm sure it will be worth the wait. Horus is a wizard with any stringed instrument. I've been checking out mandolins lately myself @FancyPants , I've wanted one for years. I was planning on doing my guitar in a sunburst style like your Squire but the colour of the wood it's made from wasn't conducive to that, so I had to go a lot darker. Nice geode in the background too, I have a bookend pair that look remarkably similar to that I don't have a Unicorn yet though.

Here I go spamming Horus' thread out with shit about Strat copies - sorry Horus. I finished repainting the green Aria Strat copy & it turned out quite well considering how much blending I had to do to fudge in the different coloured pieces of wood it is made from. It looks black around the edges under indoor light but when the sun hits it looks more like an opaque burgundy colour because of the way I built the layers up. The tremolo bridge was stuck on the slot that was routed for it & the neck needed to be shimmed, so after after a few tweaks it's a better guitar now than it ever was.

Yeah true, I could have murdered him well over a hundred times. The electric fence healed our relationship, not waking up to garden full of dug up psychotrias and Acacias every morning allowed me to almost regain the sanity I lost doing it every second day for 5 years. So I have one part of the garden and he has the rest. He's destroyed thousands of dollars worth of ethno plants in pots and excavated almost everything I've ever planted out. The only way anything survives when planted in the soil is if it's behind an electric fence or caged off & has a mountain of bricks or something at its base that can't be dug up. He's taught me to relinquish any silly ideas of ownership or possession. After I finally gave up on the idea of owning anything or thinking I could create a nice backyard for humans to be in my stress levels came almost back to baseline. It's a wasteland out there but it's his wasteland. Now when I walk outside it's under the proviso that when I see the trail of destruction I won't let it get to me. Zen lessons from a dog.

He''s a purebred mongrel. His mother was a golden retriever and his dad was a kelpie X cattle dog. Smartest dog I've ever had & the craziest. I trained him to respond to facial gestures and winks ect when he was a pup and now he can read me like a book. Now he's about my age in dog years he's finally started to chill out and he's turned into the best dog I've ever had.

I stuck my head over the gate the other day & whacked the fence to see if my mutt was on duty. I was downwind from him so he couldn't smell me and he didn't realise it was me. He came around the corner growling with fangs showing and a ridge of hair standing up right down his back. I haven't seen him get his wolf on before, so it was surprising and funny at the same time. Anyone that didn't know him would have been intimidated and probably wouldn't come into the yard. Maybe he's earning his keep after all. About time too, all he did for the first 6 years was destroy everything I had a hand in.

I hope you've had a good fake or real Birthday mate. All the best mate.

If we're making requests for elusive rare beasts.. I want a fucken Unicorn dammit !!!

Some say the 3 wise men were Iranian fire mages/magi who gained their wisdom from lifetimes spent peering into the flames. No idea if it's true or not though. The flames certainly are hypnotic though & their form follows the rules of physics that govern our own biological processes - in many ways flames are a living entity like anything else that breathes oxygen on this planet. They start small, grow until they reach their peak and then fade into insignificance just like we do. I haven't been to a good fire for ages.

My grandparents owned a 60 hectare piece of land up near there @FancyPants , they were at Bonville. When they died it was divided amongst the kids (my Dad and his brother and sisters) and they sold it off cheap. I wanted a piece of it but I wasn't factored in to the equation. Now it would be worth well over 10 million. I would have rather lived up there in a tent than here in this shit hole.

^ If I was that bloke I'd jump in that Volkswagen and fuck off before that thing could eat me.

My 8 year old son said to me the other day I watched that "In hell" song today in scripture I said What the fuck are you doing watching toe tapping up beat songs about going to hell in scripture class? Then I thought hang on & said to him What the fuck are you doing in scripture anyway, we specifically asked for you not to go to bible bashing lessons. He replied I meant non scripture I said Well then it was probably appropriate for a non scripture class. My kids like this cover version from ChuKy Charles

Have you seen any of the smartphone guitar apps @FancyPants ? I've never had guitar lessons from a teacher, so I can't compare an app to a real teacher but I've been using an app lately & it's helped me enormously. I got one called Justin Guitar & in less than a week I've gone from making annoying noises to having sing alongs with the kids. It starts off really simple with just 2 chords where you only play the first note of each bar and then you move on to playing 4 notes per bar without strumming the actual rhythm of the song ( you just strum on the beat) but by the time you get to that stage it's like your subconscious mind takes over and starts playing the tune for real. The early songs don't follow the full chord progressions like the real song would, they are a simplified cut down version that's packaged into a lesson to get beginners strumming and having fun. If I didn't have the phone in front of me I'd be lost but when it's running the app and giving me a beat and showing what chords to play I can really have a lot of fun. It also has exercises and lots of video lessons. Justin is enthusiastic and gets straight to the point, so it would be hard not to learn while using his material. I saw another app called Guitar Tricks which seemed OK but they want about 250 bucks for the full version. I tried the free version and seemed to have a lot of content but the free stuff was like watching paint dry and didn't seem worth pursuing.

Sex with 3 girls at once. It's been all downhill from that point on.

It seems to be a javascript problem. I replied to one message with no problems this morning and then when I tried to respond to another I just got a greyed out dialogue box that wouldn't take any text input. I disallowed SAB with no script and a white dialogue box popped up & allowed me to write my message (sans formatting) but it seemed to work.

Kimura

Yeah that's the go. I'll start focusing on limited edition Strats from now on. One definition of psychedelic means manifest with the mind, so maybe I need some acid to help channel my intentions. I might have to manifest a neck for the first one I got, it seems to have a bit of a twist in it that I didn't notice before I pulled it off and measured it properly. The body is almost finished being painted so if I slap a ridgy didge Fender neck on it I'll have half Fender custom frankenstrat that should sound sweet after I rebuild the pickups.

It seems like I've been infected by Fender envy/cheap copy acquisition syndrome. I picked up another Chinacaster last night for $40 that is basically brand new and my old man heard I was interested and he got one off ebay for me. So in less than a week I've gone from not having an electric guitar to having 3 Strat knockoffs. Why have just one when 3 will do ? The one I got last night sounded like shit even when it was in tune but after good once over it seems like it will be a good entry level guitar for my boy to learn on. I think the bloke who owned it before sold it because of how it sounded, open strings were fine but the intonation was so far out that any fretted notes or chords sounded wrong. After tweaking the intonation and fixing the nut, string trees and the action it can be played without sounding offensive - even by myself. It's the best $40 I've ever spent.

I lost track of how many Salvias I sent to people on this forum and elsewhere when they were legal. They are a strange plant & they seem to choose their owners. It was almost standard for people to kill the first batch I sent them & sometimes the second as well. A few were lucky enough to be successful with just one plant.t Some people in what seemed like perfect tropical/subtropical climates couldn't get one to survive & others in the most hostile environments had no problems I had them for years and they grew like weeds and then when I lost interest in them it was like they gave up on me and last one I had died. A salvia and narrow qat smoothie was my personal favourite.

There's some good suggestions above. The McKenzie neck extension exercises work well for many neck problems. This vid about the man himself starts out talking about back problems but quickly moves on to neck pain and shows what to do about it.

I missed it, was it any good ?

Here's a cardboard see through Statocaster certified by Fender