Ian Benedict

I went to see Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck at the Air Canada last Friday. I was down in row 23, pretty close to the stage! Long story short, it was amazing to see both of them live. They both had pretty good individual set lists, and then they played a set together. Speaking about the set list, I embedded set list for the concert at the very bottom.

One song that really stood out to me was Jeff Beck’s cover of “A Day In The Life” by The Beatles. Here’s a video of the song from the same concert I was at.

Guitar practice is going pretty well. I’ve been working on my improvisational skills to be able to come up with my own solos, rather than just playing the same one over and over. It’s working out all right so far, but constantly working on scales is very dull. I picked up a slide as well, have been noodling around with it and haven’t really started practicing much with it. Also guitar-related I guess, but in another 19 days, I will be seeing Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton at the ACC from row 23 right at the stage.

I finally fixed my Macbook. It turned out to be a corrupt hard drive and not BIOS-related (phew!). Just about done installing the millions of apps I need to operate on a daily basis. It’s only yet another reason why I need to start shifting more of my data to the cloud (which I’ve been doing a lot thanks to Google). Also, I need to get into the habit of writing smaller, more frequent blog posts rather than giant word heavy ones once every few months. I guess I’ll make that a New Year’s resolution.

Upgrading this site to Wordpress 2.9 was an incredible pain. But I finally set it up with Google Analytics, since the regular stats plugin seems to have been borked.

This past week was my first week of work (yay!). Looking really forward to next week, which I guess is abnormal. After my first day, I dropped by the music store nearby and picked this up.

This songbook contains most of my Clapton favourites. The following list is the list of songs I plan on going through and learning, but there are a lot more in the book:

• Sunshine Of Your Love
• White Room
• Crossroads (Live at Winterland)
• Bell Bottom Blues
• Layla
• I Shot The Sheriff
• Cocaine
• Tears In Heaven
• Layla (Unplugged)
• Riding With The King

That’s a pretty hefty list. It’s going to take me quite some time to finish all of these. I might plan and do a youtube video for each one, but that’s a maybe. At the very least I’ll record an mp3 and post it on here.

The first song on the list is “Sunshine Of Your Love”. I pretty much have it down right now, just need to learn the solo and it’s done. I’ll attach a video at the bottom here in case you’ve never heard it before.

This has to be the prettiest guitar I’ve ever seen. The art is done based off of Jimi Hendrix’s Monterey Stratocaster. I would definitely get a paint job like this when I get my stratocaster.

Picture was found here.

I’ve found myself starting to appreciate music that I’ve never been interested in before. In particular, I’m really starting to resonate with the Blues style. Not only do I find it very interesting to play, it’s amazing music to just listen to when you want to relax.

As an aside, I also wanted to mention how impressed I am with Windows 7’s Live package of tools. I’m using the Writer right now to update my blog, and it seems to be playing very nicely (so far).

I’ve gotten back into playing the guitar and I figured I would talk about the pieces that make up my setup.

Epiphone Les Paul Special II:
This is a fairly basic starter guitar with a tone and volume knob, as well as a switch for the pickups. It has two humbucker pickups which don’t sound too bad. Overall, it’s a good economical choice to practice guitar.

Line 6 Spider III (15W):
A small Line 6 amplifier which features some good distortion effects. It’s a fairly good practice amp, but not for anything more than that.

Boss DS-1:
A cool distortion pedal that offers a variety of distortion effects. I don’t use this as much now that I have the following pedal.

ZOOM G7.1ut:
A multi-effects pedal I got last year. It offers a wide variety of effects and sounds that it can produce, making it great for getting the most out of your guitar. My favourite part has to be the USB interface because it can plug directly into your computer for recording and editing the effects patches.

Here’s a pic I took a while back of my rig with the only difference being some better cables.

2009 is finally here, though 2008 was pretty good to me. The holidays have ended (already) and the new school semester has begun. I don’t think many of the courses this semester will be too much of a pain so I should have enough time to get back into things like Kendo and guitar practice. As for new year’s resolutions, I think I’ll go with the general self-betterment plan this time around. I haven’t really had much to reflect upon this past year, but I guess it wouldn’t hurt to aim to become a better person.

I’ve picked up a few things over the break. I got a brand new high definition monitor from BenQ. It is the E2200HD model to be exact. It supports up to 1080p which is ideal for my Xbox 360. I’ve been rediscovering all of the games in my collection in glorious high definition. It’s also pretty stunning to see anime in high definition. I also picked up a copy of Watchmen, the graphic novel that I’ve heard so much about but have yet to read. I’ve been going through that at a steady pace.

Also, after playing through Persona 4 on PS2, I have to say that the soundtrack for this game is very well done. I find myself listening to it a lot during my commutes. Sometimes, even more so than my regular stuff. I guess it goes to show that sometimes art can transcend the medium.

Here’s hoping for a happy and healthy 2009!

The fall semester is drawing to a close with only a few assignments and the exams remaining. Overall, I think I enjoyed my courses a lot more than I thought I would. Computer graphics was a pretty interesting course and actually put those dull linear algebra classes to use. I hope next semester is just as good, if not better.

On the gaming front, I finally got my hands on a PSP slim. It has opened a huge door to multitudes of Japanese RPGs and an assortment of other PSP exclusive games. My favourites so far would have to be Crisis Core and Initial D: Street Stage. Being able to play PS1 games on it pretty much sweetened the deal for me. As well, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo: HD Remix finally hit Xbox Live! Being the huge Street Fighter dork that I am, I had to pick this up. This game has been rebalanced by David Sirlin, who is a competitive tournament player and Capcom employee. It’s a must-have if you’re into fighting games at all, and it’s available on both XBLA and PSN.

I’d better wrap up now and get back to studying.

The semester draws to its midpoint and so things start to get really hectic these days. Having a multitude of assignments and tests each week is stressful, but it tends to keep you on your toes.

Kendo-wise, practices are going really well this semester. There is an upcoming intercollegiate tournament at York University this weekend, and so I am very psyched about that. There is so much that you can learn from each of your practice matches that it is surreal. You learn a lot about yourself and your tendencies, in addition to your opponent’s. Even though I don’t have any high expectations for placing well in the tournament, just getting the notch on my belt and having that experience will be fruitful to my Kendo.

I haven’t really been playing playing many games due to not having the time. I may sometimes hop on Kongregate to do the latest card challenge for their Kongai collectible card game. One game I have just started playing, however, is Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia for the Nintendo DS. It seems to be the typical Castlevania fare (2D platformer with vampire slaying goodness), but the game is much more difficult than its other DS counterparts. This is good as far as I’m concerned since I found the previous ones to be too easy.

Other than the above, I haven’t really been up to much lately. This should change once the midterms blows over.

MMORPGs are unsurpassed at giving you an overwhelming sense of achievement. Being able to show off your character’s pimped out gear and abilities has been one of the draws of this genre, in addition to persistent awards for your achievements. The Xbox 360 has mastered this formula as well with the achievement system, even going so far as bringing out the dormant “achievement whores” in all of us. It’s a fact of life these days: we just like having markers for our gaming progress and love showing them off to friends. Enter Kongregate, a flash gaming website with integrated achievements in their flash games.

Kongregate has a great collection of flash games from around the internet, as well as some very high quality original games. It has popular games like Desktop Tower Defence, Portal: The Flash Version, Johnny Rocketfingers, and a ton more all with integrated achievements. My personal favourite of these is Kongai, an online collectible card game where you can gain cards by playing other games on Kongregate. It is surprisingly very well-balanced and deep for a flash card game, and quite addictive with online battling gameplay. I recently found out that it was created by David Sirlin, who is a high level SSF2: Turbo player and Capcom employee. He wrote a pretty interesting book called Playing To Win, which is available for free on his website, on the attitudes and mindsets that are common in all top players in competitive games. It’s a pretty good length and is an interesting read.

Overall, Kongregate is a great flash gaming site with games for just about anyone. It’s an excellent way to waste time and yet still track your achievements with most games.