I am looking into somehow getting one of these three mandolins, hopefully used:

Gypsy Vagabond:

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Redline Traveler:

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Big Muddy:

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Also just because I'm always curious about other people's takes on instruments, which one do you like? It's subjective of course...and they will sound different just because of the different musicians, different video ( Read more... )

I have so much respect for luthiers...in my next life I want to be one:

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I went away this weekend and took about 250 photos with my digital SLR. In going through them, I'm noticing about a 50% "keeper" rate; i.e. 50% of the photos are worth keeping once I weed out blurry pics and duplicates ( Read more... )

I want to go to fiddle camp this summer.
Anyone have any suggestions?

I'm looking at several, but have no knowledge of how to choose.
Caveat: It should not require me to buy a plane ticket.

sir_graeme, I think you in particular will really appreciate this:

Palin makes it into the opera.

YES. WE. DID.

try your hand at budget cuts here.This is a pretty interesting "game" to see what it would be like to cut the state budget if question 1 passes in massachusetts. what's particularly disturbing is that on many measures, cutting X amount only saves a small percentage of X, since the state would lose additional money in fees, tickets, etc ( Read more... )

So apparently Sarah Palin (the real one) is going to be on SNL this Saturday? This should be....I'm not sure what. Funny? Interesting? Hilarious? Painful? Looking forward to it, in any case. :-)

This is a better interpretation than I'll ever be able to do.

30 Reasons to Vote for Obama

*disclaimer: Even if you don't think there are any good reasons to vote for Obama, I still think the political poster format is cool.