I knew of Patrick Stewart from Star Trek: The Next Generation, where he played the inimitable Captain Jean-Luc Picard. He was a phenomenal actor and all round amazing human being, working with charitable organisations such as Amnesty International, Refuge, and Combat Stress, and campaigning relentlessly against domestic violence.

I rarely post about celebrity deaths, but I grew up watching Star Trek: TNG and his loss hits me hard. Many tributes have been made already and I’ve read about how a lot of people saw him as a sort of father figure to them. This resonates with me deeply.

Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

We left off part 1 waiting on a couple of parts—a single resistor that I forgot to add to the original part order, and some DIP sockets for the IC’s that I didn’t think I needed initially. Now those parts are here I can finish the pedal!

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I love building things, and I love playing instruments. I’ve recently been getting more into guitar and guitar pedals, and I now have a small number of them. A friend of mine loaned me his DIY SLO pedal based on PedalPCB’s Lead Solder Overdrive PCB and I liked it that I decided to build my own.

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On August 11, 1999, myself and a couple of friends took a trip down to Cornwall to get in the path of totality for the eclipse that was happening in the UK that day. Unfortunately, the weather was not on our side and we had wall to wall clouds which meant that we could actually see anything. We did experience totality which was an awesome and eerie experience.

This year, I knew about the eclipse happening across North America (where I now live) but didn’t initially plan to travel for it.

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I’ve been wanting to record this for a while. This is my cover of “Aurora” by Foo Fighters. Recorded as a tribute to the amazing Taylor Hawkins.

“Aurora” was apparently Taylor’s favourite Foo Fighters song.

From Classic Rock World:

“I’d say without a doubt, it would be ‘Aurora,” says Hawkins, adding, “I think it’s really, I love that side of Dave. I love it when Dave gets into his voice almost like a yacht rock and he doubles his voice very well. And that was the first drum track I did for the Foo Fighters that I was very, very proud of because I only played half the drums on the Nothing Left to Lose album because it was my first time in the studio and I was … I didn’t know how to record. Recording drums and playing live is very different and the errors are very polarized, once you are under the scrutiny of the microphones. You had to get it right.“