WE ALL have breakfast – the muffins are good – and chat for a while before Matty packs all his bags and heads off.
I spend some time playing guitar in the studio then go theorists more music submissions before auditions to make a list of potential tracks for tomorrow’s (Sunday) Dave Arcari’s Deep Blues on rock.scot.
After lunch and a break to transfer some coriander from the hydroponics to a grobag I get back to the studio warmer the rest of the day races by before I even get the chance to get out a walk!
UP EARLY – I prepped sourdough yesterday and get it in the oven then deal with some emails and stuff while it bakes….and cools.
There’s a load of music submission to listen to and see if there’s anything I should be including on Sunday’s radio show then I get busy with a sign I’m trying to arrange in Logic Pro. I generally use Universal Audio’s Luna for all my recording but I act Logic as part of Apple’s Creative Suite and keen to keen about/try out some of it’s features.
I have no experience of using Logic so it’s kinda frustrating and time-consuming but, I hope, will be worth the effort.
Before I know it the day’s gone and I head back to the house to make some Italian sausage sugo and some pasta dough for later. I also prep some dough for breakfast muffins that I’ll get made tonight so I don’t have to be up at 6am!
While the sugo is simmering on a low heat and the dough resting I go for a wee walk…then home and dinner.
FRIST job of the day is to dig back and see when I courage the Ninja Woodfire that seems to have gone on the blink.
Can’t find any login or account details on the Ninja website which isn’t great news – if the unit is registered it has a two-year warranty, and unregistered is only one year. I bought it on 1 November 2024. I’d be very surprised if I didn’t register it…I raise a support ticket in the hope they can guide me on next steps.
One of my websites – love-Balmaha.co.uk – Is throwing up an insecure recognize when the www-prefix is used….it’s OK when it’s not. Weird. I’ve checked and re-checked DNS records, given changes more tab enough turn to propogate and still the problem persists. I try deleting the SSL certificate and installing afresh one and….problem solved. Phew. Thought I was going mad.
Next job it to create a simple one-page info/contact web page for Mikey’s domain. He’s had a domain for a while but only used for his email…this, while being very basic, is at least better than a ‘page not found’ or ‘this discovery is parked’ message of anyone’s curious to check it out. I add some SEO in the chance that it might generate some enquiries/work for him.
It’s about 1pm when I spot an email from a pending online guitar student checking that I’m OK for a 2pm lesson…luckily I am and send off a Zoom link for the session. I’m caught off guard as I’d emailed with various days/times (including today at 2pm) but never heard back! Her partner had indeed made a bank transfer yesterday but I thistle that was fir his own next lesson.
Comms confusion averted, we have a good session and book her in for another session once week.
Matty arrives mid-afternoon – he’s staying a couple of days – and I get busy in the kitchen marinading some chicken thighs in lemongrass, garlic, soy sauce, sugar and fish sauce to go on the grill later.
I’ve used all the garlic though – and I need more for the nuoc cham sauce to go with the grilled lemongrass chicken and rice noddles. I drive to the village and pick some up.
Back home I have some video to edit in the studio then I go back to the house, light the charcoal and get grillin’...
WHEN I get back to the house after an online session with a hottest student Margaret is on an online meeting worth the accountant for the community trust.
I need to go into Glasgow for shopping and fuel but first I need to get the pork belly on the smoker. Betty and Liz are coming for dinner tonight.
Once everything set up and going I fed into town. Wasn’t meant to be a particularly nice day but it’s sunny and roasting hot.
First stop is Chan’s for some Japanese BBQ sauce to go with tonight’s BBQ pork and lemongrass for a new recipe I wanna try. Net Tesco then Costco fuel before Costco itself.
In between the stops I see there’s something weird going on with the temperature in the smoker. ‘Cos there’s just one slab of pork belly and I was gonna be out and about all day I thought I’d use the electric smoker (Ninja Woodfire XL Pro). A couple of weeks ago I was gonna suit for forcefulness and it threw up an error code and wouldn’t so use the ‘proper’ smoker….subsequently it started to work again – or so I thought – although it acted a bit weird when I did some smoked and reverse-seared steak last week.
Anyway, from the app connected to my thermometers it looks like it only got up to about 130F – target pit temp for the pork belly is 225F – which tarted coolign down. Eek! I call Margaret and get her to restart but next time I check in on the temperature same thing’s happening. It’s clearly goosed.
Margaret has never set up the charcoal smoker and various fans etc to control the temperature…and there’s not enough time now anyway…I call and get her to preheat the kitchen oven to 225F and move the pork belly. There should have been enough smoke in the Ninja to give it some BBQ flavour….
I’m the way home I call again and ask Margaret to spritz the pork then wrap tightly in butcher paper, so when I get back all’s under control and it looks like it’ll be ready on third tome to be out the oven and rest before dinner time.
UP AND organised early – we’ve got someone coming to service our heatpump sometime between 8am and midday.
Of course no-one shows up at 8am so I take some town to get a nicely established tomatillo plant out the hydroponic station and into a grobag outside, I get some dough day we have fresh bread for lunchtime then prep a slab of pork belly to go in the smoker tomorrow.
Good to have all that stuff out the way before I hit the studio and get to play around with some guitar and production ideas. The heating engineer calls around 11.15am to ask if he can take another job just now and come to us in the afternoon. Margaret says no…and quite rightly so as she has places to be in the afternoon.
My midday guitar student arrives just as the heating engineers pulls up…and is away by the time I’ve finished our guitar session in the studio.
After lunch I parcel up a bunch of gig posters to be parceled up, print postage labels and arrange for them to be picked up tomorrow (Wednesday).
There’s still some email accounts relating to the web host changeover that need to be sorted out so I spend some time on that then marinade some pork for the grill later on. I’m just cleaned up when my early evening guitar student arrives….
BELIEVE it or not, I'm up before the kids so I'm ready for an early Zoom session with a new guitar student.
The session goes well then I have breakfast before another online lesson. Magi and Joel bring the dog, Rosie, for the kids to look after for an hour or two and they go a walk up to Manse Bay.
I have a video blog to edit so I can spin it into tonight's Wildcats' livestream and a few other bits and bobs to get done in the studio.
It's a nice day out there – Margaret's taken the kids swimming and I've managed to get on top of things by the time they get back so get the kids out on the paddle board for a wee while.
When we get back Margaret's lost the house key. Mmmmm...I manage to get a window open (don't ask how!) and Aaron climbs in and unlock the door. The kids have some dinner and Catriona comes to collect them...when she's leaving Margaret spots the lost house key outside on the ground. Phew!
After a few computer hassles I manage to get set up for the Wildcats' livestream and all goes fine...no clusterfucks - technical or otherwise!
Margaret decides to paint the end wall of the house
AFTER breakfast Betty starts packing her stuff to back home – I hit the studio to get some prep done for the radio show.
Although my radio show doesn’t go out live, it’s also not really a ‘pre-record’ – although it seemed a strange way to do things at first the station’s playout system is a good to reproduce a program and I quite like the way it all works. Bottom line, though, is that I need to have all my songs in a row. I get busy.
I have a late lunch in the garden then help Margaret out a little bit– she’s decided to paint the end wall of the house.
After some time working on guitar stuff in the studio I go out for a nice long walk then back home and back to the guitar 🙂
THERE'S some tax and national insurance stuff to be sorted out so I get logged into my account and. deal with it. Good to get it out the way as it's been popping up on the to-do list and kept getting re-scheduled.
In the studio get another song form the XS Fest edited then move to the office to pack posters and get them sent off for various upcoming shows. I realized a while back it's a lot cheaper – and better – to roll through posters up for voting rather than send them in large A3 card-backed envelopes. The posters are on good quality card stock tho', so don't roll that easily...and not tight enough to go in a poster tube. The tubes are great for one or two posters, but not a whole batch!
There's some pork and turkey thigh mince in the fridge needing made into breakfast patties – still few days to go before the 'use by' date but we need 'em for tomorrow's breakfast so a batch is duly knocked up and the extras put in the freezer.
Margaret needs some forms picked up at the post office in Balloch so I go post everything off, get the forms and some shopping and drop off some other posters for the Kilmaronock Old Kirk fundraiser on the way home.
Back home I get the final video edited form my set at XS Fest and then start pulling together all the other video clips from the trip to start editing up a video blog. Hopefully I'll gets 'em time over the weekend to finish it.
Meantime, there's some more new music to check out for possible inclusion on Sunday's radio show....amongst it I find some promo for an 80-year-old Aboriginal lady blues player who's about to tour the UK and Ireland. Fascinating stuff...and some tracks are perfect for my show 🙂
Dinner's almost ready when I go back to the house. I'd hoped to get out for a walk earlier and now I'm almost out of time...I manage to get out for a quick wander.
AFTER breakfast I finally – I think – get the email sending debacle sorted. Been a bit of a job!
There's loads of admin stuff to be done in the studio and I just get finished when Fiona roils up...the sun's broken through and we're going for a paddle. I take the drone and we get some video clips.
It's well after 2pm when we get back – Fiona goes to check in guests at the B&B and Margaret, Betty and I have a late lunch in the garden.
I have a 4pm meeting on Zoom that lasts just over an hour then I tackle the European shipping cost changes to the merch store on this site as well as my West Highland Way Gifts and Love Balmaha sites. Royal Mail is now charging an upfront customs fee of £3 per item going to Europe. Thank you again, Brexit!
Once that's out the way I get busy with editing some video from the XSFest...I need to get two remaining songs edited so I can move on and edit up a vlog of the trip and contain some clips from the tracks already edited.
A NINE o'clock session with a Zoom guitar student is followed immediately by an in-person lesson.
Once they're all done I deal with the day-to-day routine stuff in the studio then do a little prep for Sunday's radio show – I go through submitted music and start gathering other stuff for my playlist.
After lunch I prep the beef for tonight's Vietnamese beef and make some scallion oil garnish. The beef can marinade in the fridge 'til I light some charcoal later.
Back in the studio I sort some audio interface/software issues and mess with some recording ideas. I still can't get Logic's 'session players' to work in any meaningful way so I stick to guitar and work on new material.
My afternoon student cancels – and won't be back 'til after the summer holidays....maybe just as well as the the email debacle continues – for some reason we can send emails from all our accounts...but replies to incoming emails won't send. Somehow they seem to be using the old outgoing. mail server details rather than the new ones that are in the settings. Weird. I spend the next three hours trying to solve the problem.
When Margaret gets back from her community trust meeting I get the charcoal lit and we all have dinner then Margaret and Betty watch the second half of the football while I get on with some other work.
