Izdihar - Magic Kingdom Escapology

Well I suppose I never said this would be quick when I posted about my attempts to map out all the necessary data for the DR-880 - Roland Boss DR-880 Preset Data List. I'm now well under way with mapping out the individual sounds used for each of the preset drum kits. When I say well under way, I've now hand transcribed the instruments for 40 of the kits onto a form I've created, and I've now got 12 of the sheets entered cell by laborious cell entered into Excel - that's 720 so far from a grand total of 6,000 that are needed before this can be considered complete. I wouldn't mind quite so much, but there is a sizeable amount of duplication going on here, then again, as there are only 440 sounds available to map across those 6,000 locations, that's hardly surprising. In an ideal world there would be an easy way of telling where the bulk of the duplication is, but the only way to find out is to look at every last mapping on the DR-880 to find out. How dull? Still I'm sure it will all be in a good cause... yeah right!

Created with the help of Photojojo's guide on creating your own planet using a panorama. Give it a try...

Seems that all is still not entirely well in the Tweetosphere. Tweetdeck works, using Chrome works, bit.ly works, but not Firefox. What gives here then? Can I not have a simply Tweetorific time using my browser of choice? Apparently not. Right, I'm off back the the delightfully black and gold (unlike Wolves) of Tweetdeck for a bit.

Seems Twitter is getting a bit of a battering at the moment - Twitter Status - Ongoing Denial of Service Attack, which is almost certainly why the widget down at the botton right of this page has gone black. It's a bit of a bugger really as I had exactly 140 characters I wanted to communicate with the world...

On the positive site, The Daily Smoke is now accessible, having gone AWOL a short while back. Hi Ellie! :D

As far as I can tell, you're the first person to link your blog, The Daily Smoke, to izdihar.com. Hopefully you enjoy reading what I'm writing, as much as I enjoy reading yours.

probably too late to be writing this to be fair, so I may be brief.

The last couple of days have been spent haring off down the Damman highway, either there or back. It's a drive of about 400Km each way and is pretty much as dull as dishwater. Mile after mile of empty desert, broken only by the sighting of the occasional camel and the monotonous regularity of the petrols stops along the way. It's not a journey that you could describe as having recognisable landmarks along the way, but after a few trips that way, certain features do allow you to tick off the time as you go. There are a couple of checkpoints heading out of Riyadh, one after about 20 minutes travelling, another after an hour. The red sand dunes the road cuts through, then the "Desert Eye" - a bit like the London Eye but smaller and smack in the middle of nowhere in particular, surrounded by a half built compound of some sorts. A little later come the farm with the long wall - that's about an hour from the end of the Bahrain Causeway, and gives you a clue that you're over halfway there. Some time later, you see the big mound with a rock on the top and then cross over a bridge with lots of (presumably) oil pipes running underneath. Then bear off right where the highway splits - one road to Bahrain and Khobar, the other north and off to Jubail. The last landmark of any note is as you pass behind the Royal Saudi Air Force Base at Dhahran - it was outside here, at the International Hotel, that you'd have seen all the journalists reporting the progress of the 1st Gulf War to kick Saddam out of Kuwait. Lastly is the Causeway itself and across to Bahrain, but not this time...

No, not this time. Myself and a colleague of some 8 years standing now, were off to check on the progress of a project that's been under way for some time. The practicalities of getting there meant that we probably spent twice as long on the road as we did on the site, but such is the size of this place. It's just a shame that the geography of the Central and Eastern Provinces doesn't really encourage you to want to explore it, just get through it. Quite how a people came to decide that the place was hospitable I don't know. It was a constant 45/46C in both directions and not a place you'd like to be stranded in.

I'm back now and tired, I crashed out for an hour or so when I got back, and have done nothing much all evening (CSI: Miami, CSI: Vegas, Law & Order, Sky News... yes, when I said nothing, I meant nothing). At least we're now into the weekend, and although there is the fortnightly shop to do, I will likely do not very much for the next two days. This is a good thing...