Be Excellent To Each Other

Yeah deffo - go in there and shit on your boss' desk just to see how far you can go.

Or bring him an apple and be subservient to The Man all your life.

I may have been drinking.

Radio 1 was once taken off the air by a fire alarm that had been set off by a toaster.

Simon Mayo was on-air and as per emergency procedure he inserted the emergency music DAT tape and legged it.

Trouble was some pillock had taped over the emergency tape with "The best of Nicky Campbell". Probably Campbell himself come to think of it.

DAT?

Good luck Pundy

I'm a bit burnt.

I use Google Earth with road-overlay personally. That way I get the streets but can also look for handy landmarks.

This does result in me spending half an hour more than I intended to surveying the world, though. Hmm, maybe we should have a Google Earth thread?

Hey, I hope it goes well too. I'm a Civil Servant now!*

Should be okay though. Only problem is, I can't sleep through a combination of messed up sleeping patterns, (being a doley scum does that to you) heat and nerves, and have to be up at 7 tomorrow. (Yes, I know its silly to get nerves once you've got the job, but I used to get nervous before the start of a season at Towers, despite working with people I knew for years)...







*They're employing me to kick the shit out of benefit cheats**
**not really... at least I hope not.

Just as well for me, as one of my pet rats chewed through the phone extension cable which connects my Sky box with the phone socket downstairs. Since this cable passes through the wall and runs down the outside of the house, it might be a bit tricky to replace if they ever do decide to kick up a fuss about it.

No, I think It was a Hawk, but cannot confirm.

Went to Ben and Jerry's Sundae yesterday and sat in the sun watching/listening to bands and eating free ice cream and drinking cans of lager at 3 quid a pop (I had 2). It was most excellent. Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly were good, Lemonheads were OK and Ash looked like they were playing a 7 year old's birthday party. Top stuff all around though.

And, on entering Clapham Common tube station, MRSA started getting a shift on, so I ran down the steps and triumphantly jumped on the train stopped there, before she could. As the doors closed and it banged into motion, I realised I was going south, when I should have been going north. It was like the end of Titantic, but on a tube train.

That's a nice little lappy. What are the specs and price? My parents are after a cheapo laptop and I doubt I can convince them to get a mac.

Bollocks, just been into the garage to give the bike a quick drink of oil before I head to Oxford to hand my 'holiday form' into the DSS.

Shiny new rear tyre has a screw deeply embedded in the middle of it. Pressure is holding though and it is a long way in so god knows how long it has been there.

I'll be on the bus, then.

PC World are (I think) doing a very serviceable siemens things for £300. And there's always a decent £400 HP or Compaq about with a little more power.

The Eurofighter is fucking awesome. It is an astonishing thing to watch in action, it flies like a rally car drives on gravel, sliding and cutting through the air rather than swooping and arcing through the sky.

The Yanks don't like it because it absolutely rips the piss out of anything they have.

It is apparently a good aircraft, but all those high-alpha aerobatics are purely to impress airshow crowds and despotic would-be customers.

And for out-maneuvering guided missiles, they said.
I'm not normally impressed by that sort of thing, but I must admit I was a bit

Digital Audio Tape.

I went to the British Motor Show on Saturday, where I made a point of getting in and out of a Lotus Elise and Europa (so I could see what an Elise would be like with the roof on) as many times as I could without looking too weird. My love affair with that car is now sealed, and I still haven't actually driven one yet. I'm sure someone on here mentioned before that they use an Elise as an everyday car, which is exactly what I'll be doing, hopefully by May next year if I can work out the financial side of it well enough. So if the person that said that could please stand up, I may have to ask you many annoying questions over the next 10 months...

As others have said, the phone line is there for two reasons. One, it dials out in the middle of the night and uploads your viewing habits. For this, Sky TV receive a few quid from some subsidiary firm that sells marketing info. If you break this bit of your contract, Sky can fine you a one-off £25 fee. It's in the small print.

Second, it's how the pay-per-view Box Office, Interactive, and sports events work.

Having a phone line there is a condition of installation, as you say. If you are saying you got away with it I'm surprised. The usual trick, and what I did, is to have a temporary phone extension bought from the poundshop stretched across the living room floor. The installer asks for your phone line, and you wink and say "here it is", and he plugs it in, and then you immediately unplug it and put the extension away. A few months later Sky send you a letter and you pay £25 and all is well.

Except! They don't sent the letters any more, my Sky HD box has been off the phone line since I had it (Feb I think) without complaint from them. My installer said they don't chase these things any more. So you should be OK.

The only exception to all of this is Multiroom, where they give you a second box and card that gets all the same channels as your main box for £10 a month. They'd have massive fraud problem on their hands here -- say, I take the full £45 a month package and a multiroom on top, then rent you my second card for £20 a month cash. We both get all the channels, bingo bango. Hence Sky absolutely require all Multiroom boxes to be on the phone line and dialling up to their servers a few times a week.

Aside, they use the caller line ID to confirm the location of the box; I've pondered what would happen if I sold you my Multiroom card, then we connected your boxes's modem to a PC which ran an IP based tunnel to another PC at my house and then dialled out from my end, spoofing the caller ID. I think that would work.

Let's try it, send me your card and Sky HD box dude.

My phone number is automatically withheld. Could that be a factor?

As you say though, apart from the installation I've never had it plugged in and never been served notice. Certainly if Sky start trying to lamp fines on me for not letting them earn money off my viewing habits, I'll just threaten to cancel my contract and see how strict they really want to be.

Google Streetview or whatever it's called is being filmed for the UK, yes. Smile, you're on t'internet.

Sure, what's your addre--- hey, wait a minute!

Yes, it would stop it working. You're supposed to configure (or it may come already configured) the special prefix in the Sky box that overrides the withhold, but as I've said, they don't enforce this any more.

Incidentally, your old Sky box will still pick up a bunch of channels, and a bunch more if you buy a £20 card. Useful if you want a TV in the bedroom or something. Did the Sky guy change the LNB when he was doing the Sky+ install?

OK; fraud is too strong; let's compromise on "blatant breach of the Sky contract you signed". If you don't like it, you don't buy it in the first place. There's no getting away from the fact that Sky give you no wriggle room on this.

Mind you, subverting it over the modem-over-VOIP tunnel I described has an appealing Heath Robinson angle to it.

This is true, actually. Good point. However if you phoned up and haggled something out of them, such as Mr Gnomes free new Sky+ box, you'd end up starting a new 12 month contract and the phone line clause would kick back in then.

That depends, what's an LNB?

Actually I'm furious at the fucker this morning, as I left the house to find his rubbish in my garden. The feckless shit unpacked the equipment he needed and just threw the boxes in my garden. I'll be getting on the phone to Sky shortly to complain.

He did, however, change the *thing* that the satellite reflects the signal in to, and curiously drilled a hole in the wall and installed a second wire from the dish.

Also, Mr Gaywood, I made sure double sure on the phone that getting the Sky+ box did NOT tie me in to a minimum contract with Sky. The guy on the phone said I could cancel at any time and within the first 12 months all they'd do is come and take the box back.

That *thing* would be the LNB, and you need two feeds from the dish so you can watch/record 2 channels at the same time.

The LNB is indeed this thing. You need two wires because the Sky+ box can record one channel whilst watching another, or record two at once. Two signals == two wires.

In all likelihood he fitted a quad LNB, meaning there are still two outputs on the thing not currently connected. If you want to you could use one of those connections for your old Sky box and a £20 card to get a decent channel selection on a second TV somewhere in the house. Cost you a few bob in wire if you can do the job youself.

The installers are always franchised people, essentially self-employed, and it always pays to be nice to them. E.g. putting a second cable lay in costs £60 or something offically from Sky, but you can bribe the installer with some nice biccies and £30 cash and he'll do it -- and do a nicer, neater job of it too. I had a good natter to my installer, who was a really nice guy, actually.

This does mean you can get a variable quality of service from them though.

Good good. How are you finding Sky+ anyway? Is this your first experience of a PVR?

Hah, I like that idea.
Could do it with sound cards and a few bits and bobs I think - my PC would open the connection when it senses the modem going off hook, and your end would need to work a relay to pick up the real phone line - then the dialtone would be heard at my end and it'd all work as normal..

You can probably buy stuff off the shelf to do that but hacking it with a couple of 9v batteries and a resistor or two has a certain appeal as well.

Want to try it?

That's the LNB alright. The second cable is there because the Sky+ box has two receivers, so that you can watch one channel and record another simultaneously.

I pinched my brother's Sky HD box when he moved out and put it in place of my bog standard Sky digibox, so I've only got one cable going into it. Means I can't record one channel and watch another, but it works okay - except for some mornings when you switch it on and for some reason it stubbornly insists on using the receiver that isn't hooked up rather than the one that is, so you get a nice 'No sattelite signal is being received' message. Fortunately this doesn't happen that often.

I'll be phoning Sky to do a 'Comical' when I start my Paternity leave. Did you have an *ahem* big package including Sports and/or movies to begin with CG or just a basic (£20ish) Sky sub?

Doh!

I think I had the basic mix channels and then the discovery channels on top. I think it's everything apart from movies, sports, and the crapload of shit music channels. £18/month.



It is indeed. Sky+ works fine, I've done a couple of test recordings and it works like I'd expect, very good. It does however seem to have one critical flaw. Where has autoview gone? I liked nothing better than stacking up an evenings viewing on autoview before going and watching it all in bed, but now I can't do that. It doesn't help me that instead of autoview I can auto-record because I don't want it recorded and it won't change the active viewing channel. What a load of arse!

Just got off the phone to Sky. I rang the central customer services number and was transferred no fewer than 3 times and had to explain my complaint 4 seperate times, eventually ending up with the right person who sounded utterly indifferent and laconic, who assured me they take it very seriously and will raise it with the 'manager' of the installation guy, however I won't receive any outcome from their 'investigation'. I made the guy agree to send me confirmation of my complaint in writing, but frankly I don't expect it to turn up.

Nothing fucks me off more than trademen leaving their shit in my garden. It happened when I had my bathroom tiled, the fucking bastards left two bags of tile offcuts and rubbish in my garden, around the side where I didn't immediately see it when I thanked them for doing the job. Obviously when I discovered them the next day I was intent on murder. It's a basic part of the fucking job to tidy up after yourself, you cuntbags. Murder, death, kill, etc.

I do have a tv upstairs, and I'm capable enough to crimp my own cables, but I don't feel too compelled to hook up a second box just for me, not when I can apparently get £30 or so for it on eBay, at least.

Ta Comical, same as me then.

There's no autoview, because autoview was originally intended to be used when recording something on Sky with a VCR. You don't need a VCR any more.
You could always get the thing that lets you control your box from another room.

Hmm, I looged into my account at TradeDoubler today (as I try to make a small amount of commision on my DVD site) to find the entire account missing. It seems they have just deleted my account without telling me.

I have sent an e-mail to their support department, but I don't hold out much hope of a reply. Looks like they want shot of me.

Ew

Haha. Turns out it's not as bad as people make out. Plus everything is back up and running again, so I guess it was just a glitch.

Lo Russ, I've a mate (well... I say mate... we need a 'wanker' dimlie) who works for them doing something. If you trust me (fair enough if not), drop me some kind of ID for yr account, privately, and I'll ask him if there's anything he can do.

I have just bought my Boys a new cage. They now live in a huge 3 storey palace of hanging stuff and fun. They don't like it, however

I'm sure Pundy and Dave will settle in eventually.

Pics.

E Am. They're cowering in the corner by their litter tray. I hope they'll get used to it as their old cage shattered a bit while I was cleaning them out at the weekend.

An 80's advert for Diet Coke, the Commodore 64:

Wow - that's Super Cage! My two would be jealous, so I better not let them see the photo.

In further rat news, Noodle (my white rat) seems to have an eye-infection, but since I'm already having expensive dental work this week, I don't have the time or money to take her to the vet. I just hope it clears up by itself. I guess if she's still like it by the end of the week, I'll have to take her whatever.