I’m not into ‘why I haven’t blogged’ posts and try to spare you the exercise. For future reference, I write when:

1. I have the time
2. Something external (another blog post, news story, new site/service, etc) moves me and/or
3. I have something (fresh, preferably) to say or share

With #3 I’m being more challenged lately. This blog has well over 1.5 million published words and has covered a lot of different web terrain. Fortunately it isn’t niche, so finding something to make us both go hmm for the rest of my lifetime shouldn’t be rocket science. It’s not as easy any more, though because I keep getting literary deja vus. I’ve got to get back to more deeper web exploration.

You don’t care, I get it, just publish mon, publish!

I’ve found the editor in me getting much more picky about what gets published though. That’s really the problem. I just looked in the draft queue and see I’ve written around a dozen posts since April 2. Blame the editor, that’s it.

I digress. Recommendation: use the Hmm search or click the archive links from the home page to revisit the keyword(s) of your liking. There’s a lot of gold in them thar hills. I’ve been thinking about creating a couple pages with links to heavily trafficked past posts. Maybe one for the highest rated ones too, as that function is getting used more than expected. We tried a rating post feature here before and it bombed. I wouldn’t say the second time is a huge improvement, but more readers and visitors are using it. That helps determine what you like and dislike, so please take the time and rate every post that you read all the way through.

Providing fresh material should be every writer’s goal and I’m seeing — right or wrong — this blog as more like a book than a place to repeat something said days, months or [gasp] years ago. The five year anniversary for this site is fast approaching (July 4, 2008) and then I’ll need to make the call what to do the next five years, health willing of course. A few ideas are percolating. I might bring in some hired guns, what do you think of that?

Missing you
I do miss reading some of my friends when they don’t update their blog for awhile and wonder what they’ve been up to. I’ve been asked: hey, why no Hmm? Is everything ok? What’s going on? Those are questions that a 21 day off period don’t answer. I remember giving blog buddy Kent a friendly stick shake when he went AWOL and he’s been kind enough not to return the favor during my blackjack period.

The picture at the top of this post should answer where I’ve been — at least in part. Yes, I’ve been practicing playing my guitar instead of publishing blog posts. I have been writing a little bit here and there, but time where I’d normally be doing the blog exercise, I’ve been practicing so I can jam with the boys on Sunday nights offline. I’m hoping we get good or bad enough to shoot some compelling video because the Hmmcast is starting to grow some nasty looking cobwebs. It’s not much fun watching video, even in HD, of an average garage band, so that footage might never come to fruition.

The calluses on my left (playing) hand haven’t been there and needed to practice time to build up. This has turned me into one of those guys you see carrying around their guitar everywhere. I’ve always thought that was neat when I see people doing that. Every musician knows that practice is the only way to get better. Heck, any skill takes lots of practice. I’m stealing my writing practice time for guitar practice.

Oh, and couldn’t stand for playing live my 20+ year old electric guitar any more, so threw down for some Gibson Les Paul studio action at one of my new guilty pleasure stores: Guitar Center.

I’m a sucker for red guitars and this red wine style is a beauty. Oh, and it comes with a sweet case too.

What do you think? How many Hmm readers play guitar? I must admit with some embarrassment that despite buying this new guitar a couple weeks ago, it is still unplayed. I brought it home, told my kids they’d be cursed for life if they touched it, set the lock on the case and stored it away in a safe, dry place.

Now before you get on me too much, I bought it to only play live, not for practice. Maybe I’ll feel differently later on, but I’ve never owned a pro quality guitar. All my gear has been fairly low budget. I’ve wanted a really good guitar since I was 14 years old and the timing was right.

I also had a pickup installed in my Washburn acoustic guitar and it sounds great. I’m planning on bringing both of these guitars to our next jam session this coming Sunday night. I’m hoping to become regularly invited to the group which involves three other guys (two are younger, one is older). They asked me to play back after the first session so that’s a good sign. Much too premature to speculate on if we’ll ever get out of the garage. Last time I played in a band was back in high school, so lots of rust to knock off for me.

I’m compiling a list of songs I can play either in part or all the way through. Here’s the current list as of this writing:

Electric
AC DC - Back in Black, Dirty Deeds, Walk All Over You
America - Horse with No Name
Ben E. King (on bass) - Stand By Me
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Blue Oyster Cult - Don’t Fear The Reaper
Dokken - Alone Again
Iron Maiden - The Trooper
Judas Priest - The Hellion, Livin’ After Midnight
Metallica - Fade To Black, For Whom The Bell Tolls
Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train, I Don’t Know
Styx - Suite Madam Blue
Ted Nugent - Cat Scratch Fever
Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak

Acoustic
John Mellancamp - Pink Houses
Five Man Electrical Band - Signs
Ritchie Valens - Donna

Have you got some good guitar song suggestions to add? There are a bunch of songs I’d like to learn how to play and, in some cases, learn how to play again. The song list shrinks if you don’t keep practicing.

Bought a bass for son
You might have noticed in the list that I snuck a song on bass in there by Ben E. King. Stand By Me is a great bass riff and fairly easy to play. My son was having trouble learning the guitar so I bough him an Ibanez bass. He’s learned a few songs on there and seems to find it easier to play with his smaller fingers.

Our third Guitar Center purchase was a set of Simmons electronic drums and drum amplifier. They sound great and we’ve been jamming a bit with bass, drums and guitar. My son who plays bass is also working on playing the drums too. We got a double bass pedal for it.

Rock Band full albums
I think what has gotten me started back into this was the game Rock Band which I’ve given high marks in the past. And speaking of Rock Band, Harmonix which makes the game yesterday started offering the first complete album: Judas Priest most excellent Screaming For Vengeance available for 1,200 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live. We bought this and played last night for a little while. Great stuff, this could give the music industry something to cheer for as I can see fans buying their album multiple times.

Worked for Judas Priest. Last night we took our youngest to dinner for his birthday and then we went and bough a CD. Which one? Screaming for Vengeance, of course.

Not sure I mentioned it, but we’re on our third set of Rock Band drums now. The newest one seems more heavily reinforced and maybe (hopefully) will last more than a month or two.

Time for me to jump back into my reading list which shows 1,000+ in Google Reader and 1,446 in reBlog and grows by the hour. Before the day is done, I might cheat and mark all as read, but we’ll see how things go.

Please share in the comments below what you’ve been up to, especially if you’re a blogger. Are you publishing less blog posts these days? Playing music or some other hobby offline? It’s good to have some variety in your life.

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