Pedal to the Metal

I recently purchased a new Kustom amp, and to all you music lovers, I can tell you its a great buy for its price range and size. I rarely even turn the volume up past 25%, coz' even at 20% its so loud and sweet.
However I have encountered a minor setback, that is, even on full Gain the distortion is somewhat subtle and light. I typically jam to bands like Avenged Sevenfold and Trivium, so it doesn't seem to fit the situation. Being hard rock and metal inclined, an add-on is required to enhance the audio to get the sound that I want. That add-on saved my life. Its my brothers Digitech RP50.

 
With 40 preset combinations of various amp models and effects such as Delay, Reverb and Compression, another 40 customizable presets to mix around and have fun with, the RP50 saved the day. All I had to do was dial in my desired amp model and turn up the Compression to the max, and I had a tone that completely blew me away. Switching to another preset just takes the push of either of the blue over-sized buttons, which I use to instantly switch to my own custom Acoustic preset. With a brand new quality amp like my Kustom, the RP50 turned it into a crunch monster ripe for the shredding. Simply righteous.

However I did encounter a slight problem: an annoying background humming noise created when I turned the Compression up to full. My brother suggested buying a Noise Gate(not sure exactly what that is) which is supposed to remove this undesired background noise. Well, it sounds costly. Maybe I'll look into it when I'm done with my exams....

New AMP :D

Its finally happened. I bought my first GUITAR AMPLIFIER!! I have been long consulting people and asking friends about a good brand of amplifier to get. One of my friends Behringer amp was quite attractive, another recommended Orange. But I decided to go with something different, to try something new....

So heres the story, I went out yesterday with my brother and two of my friends, Hakim and Suhaib. We were just chilling, planning on checking out a movie and playing some pool. We were wondering around 1Utama for a bit, and we came across this music store. It was the coolest store I'd ever been to. They sold mainly LTD guitars, and they had Alexi signature guitars! (The guitar used by Alexi Laiho of Children of Bodom that is)

So I was looking around for an affordable amp. I asked the nice sales guy to let me try some as I was interested in buying. He was a real sport and let me try 3 different amps, each one bigger than its predecessor, but still in my budget! :D

After sampling and listening to him play some sick riffs and solos, consulting my brother Yusuf even (cause hes like the technical pro guy), I decided on the biggest one. Well, in comparison to the others it was big, but its not like it was a huge cabinet or anything, but no matter. Not only was it in my budget, I got 10% holiday discount! That was sweet. My final decision was a KG112FX amplifier, as you can see below:

Moderately sized, super lightweight, 20 watt Kustom amplifier. It has Gain(always wanted that :D), super loud volume capacity which is incredible due to its size, switch between Reverb and Delay effects (not sure what these are honestly, but I cant wait to find out!), and the typical switch between clean and distortion, as well as the Bass, Middle and Treble knobs. 20 watts means its got real depth and sweet awesome sound. I experienced a real nice tone when playing around with the settings, and the sound quality is crisp and ..and... well, just outright RIGHTEOUS BEBEH!!

Street Performers

So there we were, me and Suhaib, waiting for our ride to arrive. All our stuff was there in a pile on the roadside, including Suhaibs guitar. We were waiting for quite some time, and were expecting a while longer. SO, we decided to pop out the guitar and play some stuff ON THE STREET SIDE.

OH yeah, i felt so COOL. Playin some sweet tunes and all ~~ I took out my phone and snapped some shots of us. We were hoping for a little attention, perhaps for a musical enthusiast to pass by and say like "Rock on, little dudes!", or maybe a few of those Nursing Students to pass by and be like "woOOWw"....xD

But alas, there was close to zero attention....It might have been due to the fact that there was nobody around like, at all... Oh, but there was some pak guard a few yards away. He might've appreciated our little show (if he wasnt sleeping). I could have sworn a cat showed some interest :D (or i could have just imagined that last part)
... t'was QUITE the experience...

Happier Time...

I just finished my exams. ISM practical was child's play.... OK maybe not, but maybe an equivalent for me. I liked it and I was pretty confident with my answers ;D
Stress of exams has been temporarily lifted.... Mid term break has started. YAY
Most people already went back home. It was a handful of scattered individuals roaming the so-called "campus grounds" and a noisy Ferrari circling the area. It was then i felt calm... The feeling of isolation (even not in its extremity) and the absence of worry made me feel, well, just about right.

Before taking off, i decided to have some dinner with my dorm mates, Suhaib and Firdaus (better known as Kitty), and we went to the Food Station restaurant. After taking the orders, we just sat there in calm silence. Some cheesy old music was playing in the background and thats when I realized it. It was one of those precious Happier moments that one recalls later in life, regretting that they can never go back to that point in time. Those moments we remember and look back on dearly. That, was a Happier Time...

Hacker....?

Theres nothing more satisfying than sabotaging a fellow dorm mates Facebook or Blog.
I say this from experience. Many have already fallen victim to such treacherous messages appearing as their status or posts. My personal favorites include falsely testifying "new found gender preference", if  you catch my meaning....
It just fills my heart with joy to see their expressions when they  find out, screaming in dismay and new found terror and frustration resulting in laughable stress and their following behavior to attempt to undo any damage causes to their reputation. Though I'm sure most people who read their messages would understand that they couldn't possibly have written these messages by their own free will, that it must be the work of a mischievous prankster int the midst who some managed to find themselves in the convenient position of holding power over their victims next PUBLIC post on the INTERNET. So, I dont see what the big deal is. Its just a cheap laugh. Or is it...
Many refer to this intrusion of privacy as "hacking" a persons FB, but the term is incorrect. Sometimes peoples accounts are available for use by retrieving their password from the Web browsers stored passwords or cache, or if that person just happened to leave their account logged in.
So far my known victims seem to be more careful with their Internet usage, so I might say that I have in fact done a favor for them. Its all how on perceives it I guess. ;D

Epic Pantun Raya

A friend once text messaged me this before. An astounding piece of Malay literature.

Nikmatilah pantun raya ini:
"ada beberapa kucing sedang berlari, lama2 kucing tu penat.."

FIM!!!11!!!1!111111!!!!

This morning was the FIM 1113 exam. It basically is about Understanding Islam, but the questions in the exam were so flippin hard $(*%*&$*@&$)@$)^)

Im not happy... Hopefully I'll do better than last sems FIM though, i managed a B final grade, hopefully i can get at least A- this time round. Well its good to know I'm not the only one though, most of my friends reported similarly frightful and dreaded experiences. One of my friends, Khairulanam, actually went out early! Im not sure if it was because he was overconfident with his answers or just gave up. I almost gave up, but decided to at least write some gibberish to squeeze at least one or two points out my heap of garbage I jotted down. I pity the lecturer who's gonna mark my paper.... Maybe if he has the right mind, he'll just straight up gimme an F :(