Way back in the mid to late 90’s, a guy called Tom Davies used to host a talk-in show on TFM, imaginatively titled “Tom’s Talk-In”. After ad breaks, etc, he used to play bits of music, usually announcing the telephone number to ring in and other bits of information like that.

All (or at least most) of these tracks were edited versions of different songs from the 80s and 90s (including my much-loved “Downtown” by One 2 Many). I knew a few of the tracks, but not all of them. There was one particular one I loved, and didn’t know the name of. At some point in 1998, I got Chris to phone in and ask its name…

“You can’t buy it”, was Tom’s 4-word response.
“What’s it called, then”? Chris asked.
“It doesn’t have one”.

I didn’t quite believe this, and still don’t obviously. A few people had rang up in the past, and asked what a certain piece of music is. Sometimes he’d help, sometimes he’d say it didn’t have a name, despite the fact I knew what it was.

At some point after this, Tom crashed his car into a field after swerving to avoid a fox, and the minidisc containing the show’s music was lost or destroyed. Some of the original music returned, but this particular track didn’t, and I never heard it again.

Luckily I found an old C90 with this particular tune on, and I was able to ask a few people whether they knew it. Unfortunately, nobody did. To this day, I still call it “The Unknown Song”.

And now, dear readers, this is where it comes down to losing £1. I know of one website on the internet that allows you to “phone in” the song you’re listening to, and they’ll identify it for you, out of their database of “millions”. If they don’t recognise it, they don’t charge. Ooooooo. I was bored, my mobile was in my hand, and I’d loaded this particular sound file. So, I signed up, called the number they gave me and pressed play.

The call disconnected, and I sat patiently, waiting for a text message. Within seconds, the phone beeped, and I grasped it, hoping for a result.

“We couldn’t work out what that was. Make sure the music is loud, don’t sing and don’t hang up”.

Bum. Well, at least they didn’t charge me.

I gave it 4 more goes, each with the same result, despite trying it at different volumes. Bollocks.

On the 5th attempt, I got this…

RESULT! Er, well, it was *a* result. Not the correct one. This particular track turned out to be some foreign track, and not even close to what I wanted. Arse. 50p down, then.

I gave it one more go. This time, the result was even worse than the last one. It thought it was “Winter Wonderland”, by The Kenny Lee Sound. Somehow, I have a sneaking suspicion that’s totally and utterly incorrect in every way, shape and form. Now, I suppose it’s my own fault, I’m not exactly giving it a lot to go on, 17 seconds of audio, taped off the radio, on a cassette, dating from the 80s with audible tape wear, and possible edits all over the place. Therefore, I’m not blaming the site - I’ll probably use it for something else at some point, and be absolutely delighted with it.

The MP3 I played it is located here if you want to have a go at IDing it yourself, or if you’re just curious to what I’m whittering on about. If you do find out what it is, for god’s sake, leave a comment or something.

Technorati Tags: help, identification, instrumental, mp3, Music, radio, tfm, tom davies, unknown song

Well, here it is. the new site. There are a couple of new things I’ll draw your attention to. The first is that the site now has three colums, as opposed to two. That one’s pretty obvous though.

The next, and my favourite so far is the addition of “tags”, rather like what I use on my flickr account. I can’t really put into words why they’re good, or why I like them, but overall, it’ll make things easier when looking for individual posts, and it’s supposed to give you better integration into search engines. Allegedly. I’m not too bothered about the search engine bit, although it’s nice, I’m sure the site will continue without it.

Oh, and the banner picture will change each time you visit the page. Currently, there are only 6 in there, but this will change as soon as I can be arsed to sit down, search through my photos and crop some of them down to 509×115 in size. Tonight, however, I’m going to go through and tag as many posts as I can, before my head explodes.

EDIT: Well, I managed to get through about 12 posts. Um.

I’m aware of a couple of issues with the setup… if you view the individual pages, the archives show up twice. That’ll be a simple tweak, which I’ll attend to later

Technorati Tags: new look, Photos, tags, website

Well, everything appears to work, except for the old theme (i.e. the pretty graphics), which doesn’t seem to want to have tags inserted into it. For this reason, I’m abandoning the old look. I’ve had it for ages anyway, so, as they say, a change is as good as a rest. What you’re currently looking at is NOT the new look, it’s just one of the “boring” themes which get included with Wordpress. I’m going to keep this one up for a few days while I decide which new theme I’m going to use.

Technorati Tags: new look, tags, themes, website, wordpress

This is a bit of a computer related post. Well, I say “bit”, I mean very computer related. So, depending on whether this type of thing interests you or not, this could be a long, drawn out, boring post, or it might be a fantastic story full of whimsy and glee. Grab a chair, you may never know.

I remember it, as if it was yesterday. Mainly, that’s because it was yesterday. I was happily prattling away, on my computer, listening to some quality tunes. And when I saw quality tunes, I actually meant “Naked”, by Louise. Well, OK, not exactly a quality tune, but it’s good to listen to occasionally.

Anyway, I pressed play on Winamp. Nothing happened. It was playing, but my speakers were silent. How odd. Normally, the correct, and logical thing to do would be to see if the power light’s on. Unfortunately, the LED burned out years ago, so you can’t actually see if they’re on or off. I moved my foot, and voila! The music was back. Hurrah! Problem solved. The plug wasn’t in correctly.

Now, if I’ve took the time and effort to type the above, you’ll notice there’s nore to this story than meets the eye, or ear, in this case.

Fast forward to today, I decide that I want to listen to some tunes. Sounded like a plan. On goes Winamp, I click play, aaand… nothing. Not a peep. Oh, great. The plug’s loose again. I bend down, and find that the power cable’s detatched from the plug.

Now, this is a bit of a predicament. The plug, you see, is also the power adaptor, which is naturally a completely sealed device with absolutely no chance of repair. This means I am without music, and there’s nothing I can do about it. It was awful. Subconsciously, I kept opening winamp, then wondering why nothing was playing. It felt like I was missing a limb.

I explained the situation to Daddykins, and he, quite graciously, accepted my request of visiting PC World, for the second time in three days. And he didn’t even whinge. Whatta guy.

In the 45 minutes it took him to get ready, I suddenly spied ‘Windowcam3′, looking all folorn on the living room floor. This is the machine which required the new CPU fan in a previous post. I unscrewed the fan, in the off-chance that the local branch of PC World had a “Components” department that was actually any good.

Off we went in the car, over the Tees. You’ll be shocked, and Im sure, a little saddened to learn on this particular journey, I did NOT take the camera. This was mainly because it was absolutely pissing down. It was the worst weather we’ve had for a good few months. Anyway, the journey was totally uninteresting. Nothing to make me wish I’d taken the camera.

We arrived at PC World, approximately 27 minutes later after we left the house. I say approximately, because I don’t really have any idea how long it took. I do know, however, that Cyndi Lauper got played twice on two different radio stations. Either way, I entered “The Planet Of Personal Computers”, brandishing a warped CPU fan, and a credit card. The CPU fan didn’t really matter at this point, so I headed off to the speakers. I knew what I wanted. Moderately priced 2.1 speakers, black, nothing fancy, and a headphone socket if possible. After all, the speakers these new ones were replacing, originally cost me £9. I don’t ask for much.

THIRTY POUNDS. Minus a penny. That is the price these days of an acceptable brand of speakers. I approach the counter, clutching a box containing ludicrously expensive (but branded) speakers. On my way there, I almost demolish a cardboard display case containing memory sticks. Oops. I plonk my large box at the first till with someone sat behind. Apparently, he was only servicing the till, and couldn’t serve me. Tsk. I pick my box up and manouver it down the next till aisle. The lass behind the counter scans it, I slap my (currently overused) credit card in there, and I exit the store, clutching my newly acquired tune-blasters.

For the record, I looked at the CPU fans, with no success whatsoever. They only came with heatsinks, and the *only one heatsink* I found in the entire shop was in a similar price range to the speakers. What the fooch?

I know of a few shops back in the town who would surely be able to help with my predicament. We approach one in the area of the town which is currently getting flattened. A man is outside the store, smoking a cigarette. I enter to find a woman behind the counter… call me a male chauvinist bastard if you want, but this isn’t normally the sight you expect in a computer shop. I remove the fan from my pocket, and, before I utter the first few syllables of my request, she states that she didn’t have a clue, and isn’t employed there. Phew. I was right after all.

In steps the guy outside having a smoke, who turned out to be the owner.

“Alright mate, don’t suppose you do CPU fans on their own?” I say, hoping that they do.

He looks through some boxes on the shelves, while I frantically wave the dead CPU fan about. I must admit that, although I know a fair bit about computers, there are two things which do me over… networking and cooling. I’ve not been a fan of either. Unfortunately, they didn’t stock CPU fans, though, I’m not surprised in the least. This means I had to answer the questions I’d been dreading.

“Which processor is it for”? The guy asked.
“Only a Sempron 2800″, I reply, knowing quite rightly that the processor is actually a Sempron 2600. After all, if I oversell the CPU, the cooling will be better.
“What socket is it?” he asks. My mouth goes dry. Despite the fact I’d been looking on ebay for them since the fan’s demise, I totally forget the figure. “Socket 4-6-2″, I utter, plucking two figures out of nowhere.

A blue box is grabbed from the shelf. One final question from behind the counter… “What size?”… This had me stumped. How can one type of processor, with one socket, have more than one heatsink size? I answer indifferently, claiming that the one I was looking at was the right one. How many different sizes are they?

I think, it was at this point, I asked wther it comes with thermal paste. It’s always a good thing to check. Some have thermal paste pads, some have little sachets which is spread across the processor core.

Either way, despite my indifference in the “size” question, I paid my money (a tenner), and we headed off home, but not before stopping off to get a bottle of coke and a paper in the now half-demolished Duke Street. An Indian woman serving behind the counter clutches a young child. I can’t help but think her arm must ache after a bit.

We arrive home, and I leave the dubious task of fitting the new heatsink to Daddykins. He’s had 40 years experience, and I’ve only had 10. Either way, I didn’t explain that it possibly could be the wrong heatsink. If it went all tits up, there’d be a long “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE????” screaming session taking place.

I power up the PC for the first time to make sure the fan’s working… before I had chance to do anything, it screamed out a long series of beeping error codes… 7 or 8 short beeps. And, considering the only thing connected to the machine at the time was the power lead (no monitor, keyboard, muse, etc), I’d never, ever find out what these mean. I power off the machine again, and switch it back on. This time, a 15-second pause, and then just one beep. Phew. Everything appeared normal, then. I carried the machine upstairs, and placed it back in the original position.

It wasn’t until I powered it on again that I remembered, during the tests I did a few months ago to determine that the CPU fan was goosed, I’d also disconnected the hard drives. Maybe it was this which caused the beep code? Either way, I’ll never know. The hard drives were reconnected, and I successfully VNC’d into it for the first time in almost two months.

Something which I totally forgot about, was the fact that this machine also acts as my backup news server, should the NTL one ever die for more then 24 hours. Unfortunately, it took three hours to download the (almost) two months of news articles which had accumulated. Whoops. Most of these were purged after I found out that the database had grown to 3.7Gb in size. What a complete waste of bandwidth.

Actually, talking about space, I broke the ultimate record today. Well, at least, for me. A new chapter has been opened. Today was the day I finally broke the terabyte mark….

I’ve owned a terabyte in hard drive space for about 6 months, but this was the first opportunity I’ve had to actually show the fact. Marko from #speccy complained that a network drive shouldn’t count, but the network drive was the one in the machine I’ve just repaired, therefore the figure still stands.

OK, for some people, I’m sure the terabyte milestone went years ago, but for me, this is the first time I’ve seen total storage of over 1Tb, on any computer, ever.

Technorati Tags: computer, cpu, fan, fix, repair, storage, stuck, terabyte

They’re dropping like flies…

In his case, quite literally

Technorati Tags: colin mcrae, crash, dead, helicopter