Fierce_LiNk

The guidelines around wearing a mask outdoors is rough around the edges, to say the least. The take-up on it is not great, from my experience. @Eenuh and I went into central Bournemouth for the first time in months a few weeks ago. Parked the car in the car park and put the mask on straightaway until we were seated at the place where we were eating. Must have encountered hundreds of people and I would hazard a guess that less than 10% of them were wearing a mask outdoors. Inside a shop or supermarket, it's a different story, as everyone or nearly everyone does this now. But, in larger outdoor public spaces, I was a little shocked to see so many not doing it. Might have changed over the last week or so.

That's savage. I love it. That's a great revenge story.

Unpopular opinion: It all probably goes to landfill anyway. (or most of it, at least)

I made a decision to watch the Barcelona vs Napoli match since I thought that had the bigger chance of an upset. Napoli's defending has been so, so poor. Barcelona had a goal harshly disallowed, but have already scored 3, with Napoli getting a penalty before half time. Barcelona will win this and I think they'll score more in this second half.

Look at that subtle metallic-grey colouring, the tasteful thickness of it. Oh my god...it even has two compartments.

That's a great sign. Well done! A fun thing to do is to try on clothes that you used to wear and see the difference. My weight and size fluctuates a lot throughout the year and I can go anywhere from feeling comfortable in a medium to feeling just about right/almost pushing it in a large, with even one or two small shirts fitting. We often hear about women's clothes having a huge variation in sizes wherever you shop, but I find that men's clothes are just as bad. A medium in one place is the equivalent of a large in another, plus you may have a large that fits well on the back and shoulders but then is too long or baggy around the midsection, or the opposite problem with a medium. It's almost a massive punt buying shirts online because there isn't a size between medium and large, and again there isn't one between large and XL. Trousers are another one. It's hard to find a pair that fit well, look good, without being too tight when moving around. Suit/smart trousers in particular. There's no stretch. Pro-tip: Sainsburys do AWESOME jeans. My best pair of jeans that I've ever worn for comfort and mobility have been from there.

It's to check that you are not all bots. Please can you check your fuel cells immediately.

What were your personal thoughts on the game after playing it to the end, @Dcubed?

Have you got much strength in your little finger? It's commonly the weakest finger amongst guitar players and is normally the one that requires a fair bit of work. It might be worth looking on YouTube for other finger strengthening exercises, like practising scales and using all four of those fingers. Playing notes that stretch your hand across a single string before moving to others, like playing the 5th, 7th, and 9th frets. A song which instantly makes my fingers want to cry is Every Breath You Take by The Police. Look at the tabs/score for that...THAT will alone get your fingers stretched and it's worth building up to that. (there's a stretch in there with the fingers 2nd, 4th, and 6th frets across multiple strings...I can manage this but it's never quite as clean as I want it) Where does the hand/wrist hurt exactly? Could it be a case of thumb placement on the back part of the neck of the guitar, for example? When I struggled with barre chords, I had to look at dozens of videos until I finally felt comfortable with it, so it is worth looking at info from a range of sources. My first thought would be to tackle some major and minor scales as that will use all of your fingers and help you to move comfortably along the fret board (up and down the strings, as well as to different zones of the guitar). I've not got huge hands, but the fingers will eventually stretch, especially that pinky. I can't tell you how valuable scales were to improve with my little finger strength and stretch.

That's a tough situation, @MindFreak. Sorry to hear about those struggles and the stress that comes with it. Good luck with the next batch of tests and hopefully it goes in your favour, or at least becomes a bit easier. We're all here for you and are rooting for you, your wife and family.

The Miku pedal is hilarious. I've seen numerous videos online where people have tried it and it's just utterly bizarre. Hilarious, but also (and unfortunately) insanely impractical. I want to try it for myself, but definitely won't be purchasing it. This guy turns all of his pedals on at once, and the Miku pedal is in that chain, too. It's around the 8 minute mark. You'll know when it kicks in.

I just tried folding over the corner of my laptop screen when viewing all of the purchases that I wanted online. I now need a new laptop screen but can't fold the corner of the screen to show which screen that I want.

I do agree with this. Flea always comes up with an interesting bassline that always makes his part of the song stand out. I quite like the way that the rhythm section worked for RHCP, with Flea and Chad on bass and drums sorta working in tandum, with John then noodling over the top of that with his own bits. There's "space" between the bass and guitar bits which makes the song feel big. The bass work for All Around The World for example. Still my favourite RHCP album. At the same time, I love how bassists like Peter Hook (Joy Division and New Order) Tim Commerford (Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave) and Justin Chancellor (Tool) approach the bass parts. For Tim and Justin, the bass parts are almost the crux of the song, with the guitar parts from Tom Morello and Adam Jones often following their bass lead before going off to do something else, whereas a lot of bands seem to approach it the other way around. (e.g. guitar parts first and then the bassist just playing the root notes) I've got to say that Rage and Tool would be muuuuuch poorer without those bass parts. Yeah, I've just downloaded the free version of GR5 and there is a way to output it in PreSonus, but not in the free version of it. The upgrade for PreSonus is about £80, so I will get on that at some point. Should be a similar sort of story with Ableton, I'd imagine. I'll give this a little go a bit later to see how it all works. Nice setup @drahkon. Justin Guitar is a good channel and quite famous. I've watched their videos a few times in the past and he talks a lot of sense. No better time to learn really with the amount of video channels, apps, websites and resources out there.

I've never ever heard of that. Sounds quite interesting actually! Strange as hell to see a film of that age using that style of filming. Will try and check it out.

Is that @Dan_Dare on the left? Great pictures!

You've got to follow it up with ET now, @Happenstance. One of my favourite films and it still feels as great to watch now as it did the first time. Also also also, how good is that John Williams soundtrack? A true magician. That combination of Spielberg and Williams is one of the best partnerships in film history. Just insane the amount of legendary stuff they put out together. A huge part of my childhood and teenage life.

Hahahahah. "Do we really have to kidnap this kid, boss?" "Sure thing!" "...why, though?" That gangly one at the end freaked me out as a kid. I also used to rewind and pause the bits with the little kid-like aliens to see what their faces looked like, as you mostly could only see the silhouette of them. Also still do that joke of piling up my mash potato in the shape of the mountain.

We didn't play well, but got the result that we needed to get that top 4 position. Delighted with our run since the restart, even though our performances have got weaker and haven't been great for a few weeks now. We haven't rotated the squad as well as we should have, mostly down to there being a sketchy sort of quality beyond the first 11. Hope we get some decent additions in the Summer! Overall, being in the Champions League next season is important, so I'm happy with how we have finished the season. Before Christmas, the performances weren't great and we didn't look anywhere near good enough to get into the top 4. Bringing in Fernandes has been a great move and I hope we can secure a few others in a similar mould to him. I'm gutted for Bournemouth. I would have preferred Bournemouth and Villa to stay up, but it's a shame that it ultimately came down to the two of them plus Watford. They weren't far off survival, but ultimately the form has taken a nosedive and only picked up in recent weeks. They ran out of games. Sad for them, but I think they'll be able to reappear again in the Premier League after a season or two in the Championship. I hope that Eddie Howe sticks with the club and that they stick with him. They need to add more attacking threat to the side, as they've struggled for goals this season, although it's picked up in recent weeks. Harsh, because they play good football, but the goals dried up. Well done to Villa for surviving! I don't feel bad for Watford at all. Stupid move sacking their manager and their recent results sucked them right into it. The end of season fixture list didn't help, but they were really the team that had survival in their own hands and then threw it away.

Cheers for the suggestion with Guitar Rig 5. I've never used anything like that before. Only software that I've currently got is PreSonus Studio One 4, and then I've also got access to Ableton Live 10 Lite, which is alright but I'm not too keen on. Tempted to download GR5 and have a look at it to see how it all works. Cheers!

Finished this game in the early hours of this morning. Basically, I loved it.

Loving the bass. I've given the bass a whirl with the Focusrite Scarlett and it hooks up like a dream. For a while now, I've been figuring out the best way of playing along to songs so that I can actually hear the song itself AND my bass/guitar bits at the same time. Scarlett solves that issue because you can output the sound from the bass and from the music (say, Spotify) to the headphone jack of the Scarlett, meaning that it's easy to listen to the track and play. I've spent the last two days just playing some old Rage, Manics and Smashing Pumpkins tunes and just relearning the bass all over again. Have to say that I'm really enjoying getting back into this. One thing that I'm really bad/not great with is fiddling with pedal and amp settings to get the best sound possible. I'm really inexperienced with the sound mixing so I'm going to put some time aside this week to get better at this side of things. Any help here would be great, if anyone can offer any suggestions. I guess that in itself is an art and it proves that there's more to each instrument than just playing the right notes.

Close Encounters is one of my favourite films from my childhood. Massive fan of that film. The last 30 minutes of that film are just magical.

That makes a lot of sense. Just the thought of running on uneven concrete is making my knees and shins cry. We do a crosscountry running event at our school and I'm amazed at how resilient the people are who run it because you are pretty much running on numerous different types of surface, plus many hills... Trainers are expeeeeeenssiiiiive. Especially a good quality pair. I haven't bought a pair in years but I'm badly in need of new ones. Wearing the old ones out as much as I can. Seeing what some of my friends have spent on running shoes is making my wallet weep. Could you get some sort of belt, clip or even a vest which the phone "sits" in? I'm pretty sure that I've seen solutions to this, because I would be terrified of dropping it.

I knew somebody who used to go barefoot running on the beach, as apparently that is better for the knees due to the softer impact? Any truth in that? I know very little about running. When I lived closer to the beach, I would sometimes go for an evening running by the seafront, which was quite nice actually. Only problem is that my shins used to ache, which I think is referred to as shin splints. It never felt truly comfortable to me. The paradox is that when I'm playing a sport like football or squash, I can keep going with that and have no problems at all. Maybe I'm just better at the sudden bursts rather than the continuous motions? I've noticed that loooooooads of people have started doing park runs and 5/10Ks over the last year or so. Seemingly everyone who I'm speaking to these days is into that. Very few seem to be interested with lifting weights or gym memberships. I guess the plus side of running is that it's free and you need very little to do it, apart from good knees in @Mr_Odwin's case.

You could definitely tell that one team had more time to rest than the other. We looked knackered in the last game against Palace and this was worse. Chelsea played better than us, for sure, but I do think we should have rotated a few more of our players. It's backfired because Rashford, Martial, Greenwood, Pogba, Fernandes, Matic, Wan-Bissaka, Maguire and Lindelöf all ended up playing...and we still lost the game. So, we didn't get a result and we now have further tired players who didn't get a rest going into the next game. Ole made a mess of it. I didn't mind the starting lineup too much, although playing Fernandes when he could barely stand after Palace was idiotic. The formation and tactics killed us, and Chelsea pressed us very high up and we couldn't deal with it. They deserve the win, although I think Arsenal will win the final. De Gea shouldn't have played the game for many reasons. Romero has been the keeper for the FA Cup games, so he should've played. De Gea is also off form and has played lots of other matches, so he could have and should have been rested with Romero playing in this game. Football is a squad game these days and Ole needs to be better with using that squad more productively. Glad that James came in as he does need opportunities, but Ighalo for certain should have started yesterday. What's the point in having Mata if we're also not going to play him in one-off games like this, either? He got a few things right yesterday but tons of things wrong for me. Hated the formation and the change in tactics as we just gave too much of the midfield to Chelsea. But, the errors that we made were crap and avoidable. Every mistake that we made, Chelsea picked up on it and fully deserved their win. They have a good squad and Lampard has got them playing good football. Deserve to get to the final and totally outplayed us on this specific day.