DamnSaxon

Shetlinkers awake! Scotland v. Australia in the World Cup, today (Mar 14), 1 p.m. onwards on R4 LW or R5 Live Sports Extra. Dunno why cricket's not more popular north of England, but this Saxon will be rootin' for Scotland - a six off every ball received, guys, and a wicket with every ball bowled! Won't be easy, though, agin' the best in the world. Good Luck!

A nice operating system joke: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/09/friendly_fire_virtual_pc/

It tells you something about that field though ... check this: http://www.weeklyworldinquisitor.com/aliens/index.php?PHPSESSID=5d9c3ac0f9b3243475669130d257f2d4

"It's better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick" (Anon, to me anyway) "This is like deja vu all over again" (Yogi Berra) "Say to them: “Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant to know how to realize his wishes. Now that he can realize them, he must either change them or perish." (William Carlos Williams) And to lighten the tone after that one, Groucho again: "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. ... Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

"You haven't introduced me to your daughter" "She's my sister"

Quick check of the module: 1. Hook a speaker to the speaker connections, 2. Shouldn't matter which way round you connect the mains (as long as you don't connect the earth connection (and the metalwork) to the live side) - if it has a switch on it the wire that goes to that should be the live. You should be able to see which of the mains input connections goes where. 3. Apply power (keeping hand nesr switch) 4. If you get a thump and a bit of background noise, it's probably working ... 5 If you get an increasing hum when you move a finger near the input pins (don't touch!) it is working. 6. Turn off. If you have a test meter, one of the input pins is probably connected to earth/the metalwork - check which for later connections. (If you have a meter, you can be sure of not making the metalwork live too!) These days nobody can guarantee perfect soldering 'cos this new "lead free" solder is rubbish, but if you know what you're doing you should be okay. With apologies to the EC and the environment, if you've got good old fashioned lead-containing solder it'll work for a lot longer if you use that.

That unit looks very tasty, spokeshave - if you're going to be playing with that at home I'm glad I'm not next door to it! Preamps don't really put out much power ... they're usually rated at about a volt or half a volt output, all the oomph will be coming from the power amp. Yes, you could almost certainly take the preamp output from the practise amp to be going on with, if you want to talk details PM me for more info. I've been mucking about with electronics for years & have built a few amps for people. Peeriebryan's probably right about smaller speakers having more "attack", but on the other hand the big 'uns are your man for sheer gut-punching power. The Jamaican community round here generate phenomenal quantites of bass with their home-made cabs, mostly multiple 18" units. Stacked. On both sides of the stage. If you can pick up (or have) some drive units, the main thing is to be sure that they can handle the power your module puts out, otherwise you'll just launch the cones out the front of the box. If you're lucky (?) you'll just get filthy cracking sounds as the poor old cone tries to go beyond its limits. Also, your woodwork will have to be pretty solid, bass guitars will find every rattle mercilessly, promise. If you're going to be soldering the various bits together, make darn sure you can guarantee good joints ... if the wrong wire falls off you might find you're listening to a couple of hundred watts of pure mains hum, NOT a recommended experience - and you have to go right up to it to turn it off. If you can't guarantee good soldering - practice (!) or find somebody who's better at it. Another thought - that amp module does work? - If not it'd be an awful waste of time. But yes, it's all quite doable, and no reason for it to cost much more than the price of whatever bits you need to buy. Been there, worn out the teeshirt. It'll be fun.

Meanwhile Scotty 'n' me'll be down at Trent Bridge ... I'll be wearing me best chainmail frock!

And - Comin' frae th' wrang side ay th' border as Ah dae, Ah fin' thes quite useful. http://www.whoohoo.co.uk/main.asp it woods be braw tae hae a body which coods translate back again, thocht!

Wind up your friends with this one: http://www.spammimic.com/ - copy'n'paste this into its decoder to prove it - Dear Friend ; We know you are interested in receiving cutting-edge news ! If you no longer wish to receive our publications simply reply with a Subject: of "REMOVE" and you will immediately be removed from our mailing list ! This mail is being sent in compliance with Senate bill 1620 ; Title 6 ; Section 309 . This is NOT unsolicited bulk mail . Why work for somebody else when you can become rich inside 61 DAYS ! Have you ever noticed nearly every commercial on television has a .com on in it and people love convenience . Well, now is your chance to capitalize on this . We will help you increase customer response by 120% and process your orders within seconds ! You can begin at absolutely no cost to you ! But don't believe us . Mr Ames who resides in South Dakota tried us and says "Now I'm rich, Rich, RICH" ! We are licensed to operate in all states ! If not for you then for your loved ones - act now ! Sign up a friend and you get half off . Thank-you for your serious consideration of our offer ! Dear Professional , Especially for you - this cutting-edge intelligence ! If you are not interested in our publications and wish to be removed from our lists, simply do NOT respond and ignore this mail . This mail is being sent in compliance with Senate bill 1623 ; Title 2 , Section 302 . This is NOT unsolicited bulk mail ! Why work for somebody else when you can become rich as few as 78 months . Have you ever noticed most everyone has a cellphone plus people are much more likely to BUY with a credit card than cash . Well, now is your chance to capitalize on this ! We will help you turn your business into an E-BUSINESS plus use credit cards on your website ! You are guaranteed to succeed because we take all the risk . But don't believe us . Mr Jones of Georgia tried us and says "Now I'm rich many more things are possible" ! This offer is 100% legal ! So make yourself rich now by ordering immediately ! Sign up a friend and you'll get a discount of 60% . Best regards !

What ads would those be, then?

As a mere Englishman, with our legendary "inability" to speak anything but standard English, I envy you just having the older language to consider reviving. If nothing else, in any English speaking context, it gives you a "private" language - consider how we British used Welsh speakers in WWII, or the Americans used Navajo Indians, to confound the enemy (who almost certainly won't have any Welsh / Navajo / Norn speakers to interpret for them). The problem, of course, is that if a language is that close to dying out, it lacks words for a lot of modern things, so you end up having to invent a lot of words up front (particularly if you're going to enthuse the next generation) - and then, are you really speaking the same language, or just a sort of modern parody? Look at the vast enthusiasm for Latin shown by Father Reginald Foster, the Vatican's Latin translator - he went so far as to make words and ohrases for modern things (e.g. "occlusorum fulminem" - "lightning closer" - for "zip fastener") but - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/28/wlatin28.xml Sadly I think the "modern world" will prevail and we'll all end up speaking American. But it's a damn shame that whole cultures die out with their languages ... we all end up the poorer as a result.

It is. Mind you, you get the occasional twinge of guilt when some site you like says "send us some money and you can get rid of the ads"! Another satisfied user.

If you have a few old leads that fit the tape or the pc but not both, wirecutters help And if your tapes sound a bit dull, Audacity is a nice free program for tweaking your old favourites before mp3ing them, burning a CD or whatever. What shall we do with all those £100's we've saved?

Well, I voted for the Bentley, then ... Did you say "given appropriate funds"? ... Oh, well, I'll have one of each and make my mind up at leisure, please

Nothing to do with that unfortunate greyhound, but a definite oops ... funny, it took a month to trip over this ... http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/16453936.htm Kind of puts your problems in perspective.

Very well said, Trout. If you've done nothing wrong, the state should get out of your face and off your back. Our turn for the "need to know" argument.

Is this one of your chimp tricks?? Anyway, that's not suposed to be a tail, it's supposed to be a sword.

I like bananas just the way they are. I don't want to have to evolve into something else to continue enjoying ... whatever they might evolve into.

Yes, and it's under quite enough threat without adding any more.

Yes, but mostly (until the UK started throwing its weight around) much simpler and non-biometric. E.g. a friend who recently lived in the Netherlands had one, it had his photo and "an address where he could be reached" - none of this every-last-detail stuff Blair wants. I wondered whether you'd move it - I thought it was a bit large to put in just as a post & wanted it to act informationally. Anyway, you now know (if you could be bothered to wade through it) that TB doesn't give a fig what anyone thinks, he's darn well going to give us a police state anyway. And as people knock down his reasons one by one, others will pop up like weeds. I never thought I'd say it, but it's almost enough to make me vote Tory - at least they say they're against the "database state".

I was one of those who got a copy of Blair's email. Here it is in full: This government makes my flesh crawl.

Yeah, Roachmill, unfortunately you're right - there are an awful lot of bits of software out there for windows, and some of the freeware is amazingly good. On the other hand, there are some quite nice things I've heard of for Linux, which of course I can't use unless (a) some kind soul who speaks programming cares to port it to Windows, or ( I take a few years off to become expert enough to do it myself. There shouldn't be an issue here. As you say the important thing is making the darn box do whatever it is you want it to (mine is the best "tape recorder" I ever owned, and a pretty neat shortwave radio when I want it to be). But it is very annoying to have to mess about with learning different OS's if you want to use this program rather than that, and downright confusing when you then end up with two machines which look pretty similar but work just that irritating bit differently.

- Presumably 'cos you made them so. That nice Mr. Gates didn't give us the option. No, please, I really do appreciate the choice aspect of Linux. The point I was trying to make is that that freedom of choice is only really available if you have learned all the vagaries of the system, and how to set up that tempting bit of software just so from the command line. On the other hand, just about every bit of software for the unfree installs almost as nicely as Ubuntu, runs fairly sensibly first time, and gives you some sort of GUI-based setup screen for tweaking it. Yes, I agree Linux is already there for the seriously computer-literate. But if it's ever to see off the commercial opposition, it needs to make everything as straightforward for the virtually illiterate as an Ubuntu install. I think Trout's example above is still too common for the would-be casual Linux user. (Another edit to tidy up the quote)

You're lucky - us poor W*nd*ws users boot straight into the GUI ... but probably that is more like what Joe Public wants. Those of us who can use a command line can (we hope) have more control over the system, but Joe P is more at home just clicking on a button. (Incidentally, my first proper computer was about 5 dozen TTL chips on a big board, I do know roughly what goes on down there!) As for all those programmers producing open source working "together", I'd say no. As per much of this thread, there isn't one simple, straightforward system for Joe P to use, except this commercial, non-free, non-open thing. If the Linux community all got together & concentrated on producing ONE system, for my money (£0!) it would beat W*nd*ws out of the market. As it is, even drag-and-drop can't be universally relied on (in my relatively limited experience).