lesleya: Uh-oh. I just clicked to a porn site at work. (It was an accident, I hasten to add, no thanks to Google.)

lesleya: @umbraco I had that idea ages ago, as did @darrenferguson: http://tinyurl.com/6y66rw

- Following-on from last month's MXR dist+ build, I've been reorganising my pedal board in preparation for future direction of [band]. Basically, I needed a mono mixer in rugged pedal form, with a footswitch to silently bypass the whole mixing process and route the unmolested guitar signal to the amp. This enables an easy switch between guitar/synth/tape/whatever mix, then just guitar. I wondered why no pedal makers do anything like this- it certainly seems useful to me. So it's a Maplin 'Soundlab' mixer, the circuit board of which I had to chop a little to get it to fit. Actually it was the second mixer of the same brand I bought for this project, as the first PCB was destroyed in an unfortunate box drilling accident.

It features:
3 inputs with level knobs
1 output
Master level
Cool blue LED
Little red LED to indicate clipping
True bypass stomper

Alright, help me out here. It's time to buy some hair straighteners. But how the hell can there be such disparity in pricing? When some ceramic straighteners are £20 and others getting close to £100? Is there something I'm missing?

lesleya: Really missed watching the Olympics this morning. Breakfast time just isn't the same. On the plus side, it did mean I wasn't late for work!

Дайте не над thy душой к скорбе; и afflict не thyself в thy собственном консультанте. Gladness сердца жизнь человека и joyfulness человека длина дней.

lesleya: Watching Cool Runnings

You know how I'm off work with stress / nervous exhaustion, right? And how I'm supposed to be relaxing and generally keeping away from all stressful situations?

HA.

Thursday afternoon
El Mog and I make a trip to the vet to see how his diabetes is settling down and for a few more blood tests. Now, while El Mog is excellent about going in his carrier and never makes a sound in cars, his good behaviour ends very abruptly when it comes to giving up a wee bit of blood. (I can't say I blame him; if I didn't have the intelligence to rationalise blood tests I'd behave the same way.) He struggles, he kicks, he claws. The vet nurse has to pin him down while the vet tries to get the needle into a vein in his neck. Once, this took four attempts. Today the cat decides to start struggling while the needle is in. Inevitably the blood vessel tears a tiny bit and he spends the next five minutes spattering globs of blood all over the diagnostic table and all three humans in the room have blood on our hands. Literally. I don't know what it is about blood that makes it leak at such an alarming rate from the smallest of holes, but I wish it didn't. It's quite traumatic.

Friday afternoon
The vet called me Thursday evening with the results of some of the blood tests, and it turns out that not only does El Mog have urinary problems and diabetes, he also has slight chronic renal insufficiency (that's kidney problems to you and me). Thankfully it's only slight and the unusual kidney activity actually decreased over the last month, but it's still not back to normal so he needs to go on medication. I go into the surgery to pick it up - it's called Fortikor. The vet also tells me that El Mog's glucose levels have been perfect for the last three weeks: it's official - he's stable and doing amazingly well. (By the way, I have to give a shout out to my vet, who has been absolutely incredible.)

Friday evening
I give the first Fortikor tablet crushed into the cat's food. A bit later on I give him his insulin shot. In the gap between The Tudors and QI I see if he wants to come in but he's happy surveying his garden. At about 10.40pm I open the back door and he comes in with a big "MEOW!". Then he pauses, mid-stride, on the doormat, back legs half bent. That's weird.

He does it again, and again, and again. I pick him up and flip him onto his back. He never lets me do that without a fight. His paws are twitching slightly. This isn't normal. I put him in front of his food but he just stands there with his back legs bent. I pick him up and take him to the sofa to get a better look at him. His eyes are clear and his head is responding but his body is really quite limp. I watch him for about ten minutes before I think, fuck this, I'm calling the emergency vet.

Emergency vet: That sounds like a hypo.
Me: But he's stable! The only thing that's changed is this Fortikor tablet!
Emergency vet: Mmm, I don't know. Maybe he's having a reaction. But you have to get sugar into him, now.

I get fingertipfuls of honey and he's alert enough to lick it off. I give him three or four, and bring him onto my lap until it starts to take effect. After ten minutes I lift his head up and it's heavy and dropping, his eyes are closing. He seems to be moments away from unconsciousness and coma. My heart and stomach are paralysed with fear but the arms are working. I give him some more honey and plunk him onto the sofa to call the vet back - and he suddenly sits up, jumps off the sofa and goes to get a drink. The sugar must have hit his system at that moment and the sudden movement probably helps shock him back into reality.

The emergency vet says to give him some more honey (after five minutes he's now well enough to scratch me for trying to do this, but he eats some biscuits) and also says that I need to give him small meals every couple of hours until I get can to the normal vet. I set my alarm for every two hours throughout the night and wake to give him either a handful of biscuits or a bit of wet food. The honey is on standby next to the bed. It's not needed.

Saturday morning
The vet can't believe it. The last thing he said less than 24 hours earlier was "see you in three months!". There's no documented case of a cat reacting like that to Fortikor, but he agrees it's the only variable that we know of. But, on the other hand, El Mog has a kidney problem and it needs treating. I'm going to get him stable and then try it again on Friday - half a tablet twice a day this time. And during surgery hours so I can whip him in if I have to.

Now
The cat is fine. I wonder if cats have an awareness of how ill they are at any one time, and if they retain any memory of events like last night. Or does he just remember feeling a bit sleepier than usual? If he remembers anything at all?

I am knackered. I am unused to saving lives armed with just a telephone and bee products. Bed, please.

EDIT:
Sunday afternoon

This photo was taken less than 12 hours after the hypo attack. Not the face of a kitteh minutes from death, is it? Actually it's more like the face of a kitteh about to rip a human's face off, but that's because my camera emits a red-eye-reducing red light before it takes a photo which I haven't got round to switching off. It makes his eyes narrow. That's all. Honestly not evil incarnate.

Finally an opportunity to post something about guitars!

A little while back, Tim dropped in his Hagstrom Viking. After a good deal of gigging round Germany, the neck was very loose, and shifting unpleasantly in the pocket. Closer examination revealed the neck block had slipped, and string tension had deformed the arched top and back plates. To return the guitar to it’s original problem would have been prohibitively expensive, but since the neck block seems stable, a carefully shaped shim will do the job to keep the neck in place.

Whilst it’s here, Tim also wanted to upgrade from the cheesy stamped TOM to an archtop style bridge.

The new bridge is shaped to fit a much more dramatic arch than the Hag’s, so it only contacts at the very edges - no way it can work well like this.

Out comes the blue tape, and the bridge is taped and the curve of the top marked onto it with a pencil. A quick trip to the disc sander, and a few shavings with a plane, and it’s already much closer. Still a way to go though - and gaps will lead to reduced sustain and volume so a perfect fit is the aim.

To get there, some 120 grit paper is taped to the guitar top, and the bridge is rubbed back and forwards until it had been sanded over the whole width. After the 120 grit, I repeated the process with 240 grit to refine the fit.

Et voila - perfect fit!

The job didn’t finish here, because the new bridge is significanlty taller than the original. So, I made a tapered shim to adjust the neck angle for a nice low action. The shim tapers from about 3mm to a feather edge, so the neck is fully seated on wood, rather than raised up on a shim at one end of the pocket. I much prefer this method to the old standbys like a folded business card or a matchbook, and think it’s beneficial to tone and (particularly important in this case) stability.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures of this before I put the neck back on, but you can see the results - with the guitar strung up, the action is spot on, with scope for adjustment in either direction. Should keep this Viking fighting fit for a good while longer…

Wulffmorgenthaler strikes again