Ryan Alford – Guitarist and Tinkerer

Ahh, the infrequent but familiar silence between releasing a longer-term design and the often tumultuous phase of testing and documenting its behavior. We can only hope that we’ll crack the champagne in a few weeks.

Over the years, I’ve heard a few horror stories of web-hosts losing large collections of data that they’ve been unable to retrieve. I’ve always fallen into the “that’ll probably never happen to me” category, and have never taken back-ups more seriously than compressing my important folders and exporting my databases a few times a year. But, as I’m now managing more than five websites for family, a few bands, and a business – being able to regularly and reliably back-up all of their data has become a priority.

In the past, my WordPress back-ups have been a tedious manual process. The most automation in scheduling my back-ups came from the monthly email reminder telling me it was that time again. Occasionally, I would run through my back-up procedure, dumping the MySQL databases for my sites, and packaging the files manually. But, between you and me, dismissing the email to worry about later was always the easiest way out. Even when I would go through with the back-up routine, the back-ups were not robust, as I infrequently pulled the database exports and compressed files down from my web host. What if my host went down, and all of my data was lost, including these back-ups?

Meet the XCloner plugin for WordPress.

This gem of a plugin backs up your files to a compressed package, drops the file on the hosted server, and provides options to beam it up to the cloud, via Amazon S3 storage, and also has the capability to send the compressed file to another location via FTP. With a cron-job, you can schedule XCloner to run back-ups automatically on any kind of schedule. The result is automated and scheduled WordPress back-ups of your MySQL databases and files, locally, and to the cloud.

Go check out the XCloner plugin. It’s free, and has thorough documentation and support.

This weekend Black Coffee has another run of shows, which wouldn’t be complete without the hot sun, a trip to Western PA, and a new venue – sandwiches and water too of course!

with Jim DeVoss at Black Coffee’s 2011 People’s Choice Festival Performance

This will be my third year at People’s Choice (my second year and show with Black Coffee), and I’ll be continuing the thirst-quenching tradition of drinking a fresh squeezed lemonade before the show. I picked up some new pedal gear last week which I’m hoping to try out Friday night in Clarion, but I may not have time to organize it before the weekend.

Saturday’s show at Club Cafe will be shared with Ricardo Iamuuri and our friends Aristotle Jones & The Like Minds, whom we met at the HMAC for the Millenium Music Conference this year.  We split the bill with them in Morgantown a few months back and look forward to hanging with these fellas again.

Fri 7/13 @ Peoples Choice Festival (Boalsburg, PA)
Fri 7/13 @ Toby Hill Bar & Grill (Clarion, PA)
Sat 7/14 @ Club Cafe (Pittsburgh, PA)
Sun 7/15 @ Lions Square (Connellsville, PA)

Details for these shows and more can be found at the Black Coffee website.

This post is part of the thread: Black Coffee – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.

It’s been half a year now since I made the purchase on a Squier Classic Vibe Tele.  With my Comanche being my primary road guitar, the Tele with it’s seemingly forever clean strings (by comparison) has been my choice guitar for rehearsals. As so, I’ve spent enough time playing it that I have good feel on how it compares to my G&L Comanche.

Subtle differences:

• The first time I gigged with the Tele was with Black Coffee. I immediately noticed that a Tele’s volume knob is a bit out of reach of my little finger for volume fade-ins and fade-outs. Obviously, this isn’t a manufacturing flaw, but it’s a quirk to acclimate to.

• The neck on my Tele is incredibly similar to the Comanche, but a fast guitar lick in 5th position (Earth Wind & Fire’s “Got To Get You Into My Life”) reveals that the neck is wider up there and the strings are spaced slightly farther apart than what my fingers favor. (It was a bit embarrassing to find this one out during a Hounds rehearsal!)

Things I’d change:

• I have yet to add a string retainer to keep the high E string from popping out on string rakes, but it’s still a problem. I’ve adjusted to it by playing this guitar differently. Holding back on the guitar is not cool, so this is still something I need to add!

• Finally, there is the lacquered neck.  It just doesn’t feel right. My fingers feel like they catch on the lacquer. I’m hesitant to use any fretboard conditioner on the lacquer for fear of a chemical reaction causing damage to it. Yeah, I know – it’s a cheap guitar and I should sand it off. I’ve considered it, but my other guitars have me sold on rosewood fretboards. I’d like to get a new neck that has a rosewood fretboard with a string retainer pre-installed on the headstock.

Pick-ups, pick-ups, pick-ups. I’ve been playing my Tele through my Barker and my Ampeg Reverberocket. Though, it’s seen more time on the Reverberocket (a helluva versatile amp, I must say! And sadly, as a result, the J12T hasn’t seen much play time lately). At this time, replacing the pick-ups is low on my list of gear priorities. In fact, I’m pretty damn happy with how the stock pick-ups sound! Though, perhaps I am not a *true* gear head? I find that I use the pick-up switch and volume knobs far more often than on the Comanche. With the Telecaster, I spend more time tweaking the tone at the guitar.  With the Comanche, I find myself tone-tweaking at the amp.

With all of that said, and no regrets, this guitar was everything I hoped it would be!

This post is part of the thread: Squier Classic Vibe 50′s Telecaster – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.

Black Coffee at the Harrisburg Jazz & Multicultural Festival (2011)

Today the Coffee crew begins a 4 day run! We’ll be putting on the miles this weekend, as the shows will takes to Pittsburgh, Morgantown, Harrisburg, and back to Chalk Hill (near Somerset, PA) for our second trip to the Christian Klay Winery (where’s the BBQ?!). Not suprisingly, the gigs over the last 14 months have already put 40,000 miles on the Jeep. Before I know it, she’ll need new tires again!

While all of this weekend’s shows are sure to be blast, I’m very much excited for us to hit the Jazz & Multicultural Festival in Harrisburg again this year, as it’s always good catching up with friends near my old stomping grounds. Joining us on bass for this show will be long time friend David Pfister (whom joined me in our old acoustic project, the Jackdaw Boys).

Here’s the low down:

Thurs 6/28 @ The Smiling Moose (Pittsburgh, PA)
Fri 6/29 @ Morgantown Brewing Company (Morgantown, WV)
Sat 6/30 @ Harrisburg Jazz & Multicultural Festival (Harrisburg, PA)
Sun 7/1 @ Christian W. Klay Winery (Chalk Hill, PA)

This post is part of the thread: Black Coffee – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.