First post of the year! Exciting! I totally meant to delay the post a day so it can be posted in the new year! I wasn't completely blasted last night or anything!

This week's post is going to be different to what I usually write. I didn't really do any 3D stuff this week (I need like, four skeletons that move each other just to make a rig the way I want....), but I have something that I think would be interesting.

Some time during the start of the week, my dad unearthed his old record playing setup from the shed! As well as a turntable and amplifier, there was also an equaliser, tape deck, and radio tuner. It was quite the find! And I'm quite happy to use the turntable for music. However, I did know that I wouldn't have been able to use all of the bits that were found. Considering that I only have one more power point available, I chose not to use the equaliser, tape deck and radio. The equaliser would have been fun to use, but since it wasn't essential and I have very limited space in terms of power I had to forgo it. They were also in a nice little shelf with a door that I'll be using to hold everything! It was incredibly wobbly when we pulled it out, but my dad drilled in some extra screws and now it stands like new.

A problem did occur when taking out the parts. All of it was completely filthy. Because of the general disarray of the shed (which is more of a garage to be completely honest), plenty of holes had appeared and dumped dead and dried leafs in the shed. Near the set up was a bird's nest! That's how bad it was. That meant that I had the gross job of cleaning everything up. The turntable luckily wasn't too dirty, just a little bit of dust. The other parts weren't so lucky however. For instance, the amplifier was dirty with webs and dust all over it. There's also some weird spotted rust or something on the top of it. I first thought it might have been some sort of bird poop, but poop isn't resilient enough to resist a wipedown three times over. I eventually got through everything and gave all the parts that I wasn't using a quick wipe. All of this in the night in the driveway. I could only think of what a passersby would have thought.

After the clean came the carrying inside. For anybody who doesn't know, a turntable and amp are VERY HEAVY, even when they aren't carried together. Because of how heavy it was, I didn't put it into my room (and I still haven't yet...Soon though!). I set up the turntable and amp on the couch for the time being just so I could check if everything worked. We also had a large choice of speakers in the shed. There's so many that I haven't picked what I want to use! I'm thinking of using the smaller speakers in there. After an embarrassing amount of time figuring out I was turning on the wrong sockets on the power brick, I managed to get it all turned on. I put a record on the turntable, turned on the amp...And nothing happened. There was some popping and such, but no audio was coming through the speaker. There was also the more pressing issue of a burning smell coming from the amp. I obviously turned it off as I smelled it. I did eventually get a nice amp from a second hand shop, but that's not really an interesting part of the story.

I knew that I was going to use the turntable, so on Boxing Day my dad, my brother and I went into town to have a look at some record shops. It was very lucky that all the record shops weren't at all crowded when we went. Every other shop was obviously, but it's good that records are a niche interest. To my dismay however, none of the places that we went to didn't have any of the albums that I wanted. I was looking for Quebec or The Mollusk by Ween or Rob Zombie's Hillbilly Deluxe. I'm not surprised that the shops that had mostly new records didn't have them, but the second-hand shops not having them was quite a surprise. I was hoping to find at least one of them, but nada was found!

After getting some more wire (which turned out to not be a high enough gauge for some of the speakers....) and looking around for a new amp, on Tuesday I tried having a look around at the record shop that was closed on boxing day. To my surprise, this one did have something that I wanted! It wasn't particularly high on my list, but I still wanted it anyway. It was the Blade Runner soundtrack, and while I haven't listened to all of it as I want to listen to it in my room, the small amount I listened to to check if everything worked was very good! The output was incredibly clear and loud, with a little bit of crackling, but that's just how it is. I'm happy that I was able to at least get one albums I wanted from my wish list.

Thank you for having a read of something that different than my usual posts! I did plan on doing some sculpting in Zbrush this week, but the record set up appearing was a very sudden and exciting new thing that I was hyped to get ready, so that took precedence.

Thank you, Happy New Year, and good-bye for today!