chrisp65

cd checked over on a long car journey today and one rogue track had popped up twice - always good to check

revised cd in post tomorrow (thus saving me the cost of both a cd and postage)

Can I just point out that I won at Suzuka on F1 2009 on the wii - and I was driving a Force India and I'd had a few bacardi and cokes.

I used the little steering wheel and I had all the variables on their toughest settings.

I've written to Mercedes and Ferrari and not heard a thing. Ah well, their loss.

Look at my photograph in the rogues thread.

aye you and me both, victimised for being baldies.

# 47 ignore any health issues until patently too late to do anything about it

# 48 always go one mile further than last time the petrol tank said empty

First some context:

I'm a nice guy. I rarely drink. I have no points on my license. For my job I have some crb checks and security checks on my side. I look utterly normal. I rarely have attitude.

My limited experience over 47 years is wholly bad.

As a kid in my first few cars I would be routinely stopped and treated to shitty attitude by fucktards with time on their hands that couldn't find anything wrong with the car or me.

As a proud new house owner I phoned the police to report the off license across the road was currrently being raided with people running around filling boxes. An hour later they called me back and said they now had a spare car if they were still in there. I kid you not, they called back and asked if it was still being robbed an hour later.

In my late 20's at a footy game a swansea fucktard in police uniform pushed me from behind with no warning and tried to provoke me into a fight. Luckily I'm soft and wouldn't rise to it.

A few years ago I stopped alongside a police car and told the two occupants some drunks were vandalising cars a couple of blocks away. They asked if it was my car. I said no. The response was 'there you go then'.

I do know that in the grand scheme of things they are necessary and do greatly contribute to keeping the beasts at bay. I would not advocate changing the system greatly. I guess I just had a bad run of luck in my once every 10 years contact with them.

I think the biggest problem with Macron is that it sounds too much like Mackerel

... Nike sounds like Pike....

Adibass?

puma tuna

Hhmmm, you may wish to consider why your house has a cavity.

In the majority of cases filling the cavity works just dandy. In some cases, for various reasons, bridging the cavity causes rainwater to get into the inner leaf of wall and cause damp. It's worth asking if the installer / adviser will guarantee that your house is suitable.

It's a risk, but then you never know if you don't try. If I hadn't tried dogging I would never have got those night vision goggles on the cheap.

I'll give somebody a funtastic 76 minutes.

By strange coincidence, radio 4 tonight had a short article about the 'fact' that Steve Jobs told Neil Young he listened to his fave music on vinyl as the compression of an mp3 spoiled some music.

They than played two twiddly bits of Neil Young and asked a wheeled in expert to spot the difference - which he failed to do. I got it right, but then it was a fifty fifty test of limited scientific credibility. Being neil Young, both version sounded equally boring.

'kin 'ell Bicks, I was worried i didn't know what brickwalling was, now I've got to deal with 'kin tweetdeckafobia

I can't remember off the top of my head (and I'm not going to bother googling it), but the old ska bands from the 60's used to have enough money for a single take (hence the raw appeal of that genre!). Anyway, whoever it was that recorded Skinhead Moonstomp clearly cocks up the lyric, using the word foor not feet - but then corrects himself. Makes me chuckle everytime. I have diverted well off topic.

Skinhead Girl by Symarip

absolutely fantastic sex for the ears

Well, I may be "talking shite", but I still don't hear any of these differences. I'm not saying I can't hear them, but I don't. Subtle difference.

Can I ask, and it's not a leading question, but do you ever listen to music for the simple pleasure of it, rather than as an accompanyment to somehting else, like doing dishes, reading a book or having a bath. Have you in the last few years, picked up an album you like/love, and pressed play on what ever kit you posess, and then just sat back and "listened".

Secondly, what's the best kit you ever heard that album on? In broad terms of value, or just by brand/naim? (Did anyone see what I did there?).

Because, its often that people who profess to have "cloth ears", often never actually sat back and relaxed, and listened to their music in a way that isn't "distracted", nor have they had the benefits of really good hi-fi demonstrated to them.

I think my hi-fi is pretty poor, I know what it "could" sound like, (its an LP12, IttokII and Linn k9, with Audiolab8000a and Castle Durhams, (all about 20 years old) but I reckon even Mike would be convinced if he came round mine for a coffee - Even my Dad, who would be of the same view as Mike, conceeded that my turntable just sounded more "natural" - the sound stage was far clearer, better defined, deeper, and somehow more "rythmical", even listening to the fairly poor "Stone Roses" album on LP and CD back to back.

Hi fi is a bit like fine wine. A glass of wine might be good, a good glass even better. But when you had one glass, thought it was good, and THEN opened the next one, and really could compare the 2, then thats when it hits you.

ahh beat me to it, but my analogy was beans.

Sometimes you get home, you've got stuff to do, so you chuck some Morrisons beans in a medium white sliced sandwich and scoff it watching Flog It. Lovely. Spot on.

Sometimes, you need to make sure it's Branstons beans, the bread must be hand cut and toasted, the toast has to be cooled so the butter doesn't completely melt, and you eat it slowly, listening to Radio 4.

Surely you get excited when a Small Faces track you've already got on 8 cd's pops up on another cd .... but with some previously unheard little sound in there?

Surely you've gone over and over the Beatles roof top stuff listening for police knocking the door?

For what it's worth, I've had a new digital radio for Christmas. Radio 6 is simply transformed compared with the previous laptop experience. God bless decent kit, people who care and late stuff from the Small Faces.

For contractors to make money at present they have to 'sweat' their assets to use a trendy current term.

That is, previously they would have had a number of staff on tap to allow a rolling programme of work. A couple of guys setting up a site and starting the basics, whilst the majority worked on the current main scheme, whilst a couple mopped up the snags on the last job.

Now, there isn't the profit for the luxury of 'spare' staff. This means unemployment for many, and running around like overworked idiots for those retained or working through agencies etc.. It also means that 'snaggging' is now a struggle. Nobody wants to pay a day rate to a subby or an agency to sort out a couple of minor faults. A £500 day rate to fix those annoying last odds and ends isn't going to get shelled out by the contractor, it eats profit. Similalry, the agency or subby isn't going to do an hour and a half for you, when he can get £500 a day elswhere.

I think this brickwalling thing is more of an issue with classical music, which tends to have a stupidly wide dynamic range. Classical buffs are always going on about how it annoys them when the mastering narrows it down. Me, I like it. I mostly listen to classical in the car, so quiet passages tend to get lost in the engine noise. So I turn the volume up. Then when a loud passage comes in, it's WAY too loud and splits my eardrums. I like to be able to set the volume at a given level and leave it alone - and still be able to hear all the music. Brickwall away, fellers.

You shouldn't waste your time with all this classical music nonsense anyway. Look, the world population is approximately 30 times what it was in Beethoven's day. Therefore, statistically, the Chemical Brothers are 30 times as good as Beethoven.

Anyway, nine times out of ten, re-mastering is nothing more than a marketing ploy. They don't need to do it well. (Sings in Morrissey voice:)"At the record company meeting...."

I've never understood why the likes of Beethoven didn't experiment and collaborate more. If he had teamed up with Kraftwerk or some other Krautrock the synergy would have been obvious and the cross over would have introduced him to a wider audience. Mozart tried it a bit, but other than one hit with 'Amadeus Amadeus' he didn't do that much.

They say that the first industries to be hit are the retail sector and the building sector.

We have needed some work done on our house and every BUILDER who has given us a quote has said they have stack of work on...!

Surely this is a good thing and sign.

Does anyone here work in the building trade whats there opinions...?

It's dead.

But a very complex dead.

There is very little going on, and what is hapening is skewing the industry. With very little work many people have elected to leave or been forced out of the industry. this means the pool of talent has contracted to reflect the lack of money making opportunities.

This is then made more complicated by the occassional 'big job' such as an Olympics contract, where, the few people in any one specialism that are still in circulation all get sucked into one big job.

We are in a situation at present where all the big construction firms have laid off their own labour and workforce and now rely on subbies and agencies for everything. Problem with that, is that when a big contract comes along, they just don't honestly have the resource they claim to have access to. I've seen a number of instances lately where national contractors have won multi million pound jobs and then cannot perform or deliver on time. They've made a promise reliant on subbies, those remaining subbies, all shafted by the big boys for the last 4 years now just work for the highest bidder on any given day.

This is particularly clear in government contracts. They won't deal with smaller firms, they demand the lowest price will win regardless of people knowing it can't be delivered at some of the stupid prices offered. Then, big surprise, the winner can't deliver on time. Solution? Well we can go legal, or throw more money at it and pay more than the other tenderers originally wanted. Result? Every contract costs more than forecast. Every project over runs. Every bricky, plasterer and sparky knows that if he's still in the game at the end of this year, he should be making a good living.

spot on

I first noticed this a good few years ago when some Who album was released that was trumpeted as a 'digitally remastered' set of hits and 'best of' stuff.

It's as if the guys doing the remastering just didn't understand the immediacy of the original. Rather than just taking out a few hisses and crackles and imperfections, they thought turning every dial up and softening the contrast showed how good modern mixing could be. They were proving they could twiddle nobs and change music, rather than bringing purity to scratchy originals.

Thanks all the same, but I tend to avoid anything labelled as remastered these days.

Give me the original, give me a remix by a trendy name. But don't bother with a re master.

Princess Camela

Who?

no no, not that Princess Camela.

I suspect that one is hiding a little surprise for some young lad off his face on fizzy lager and thinking he's about to get the full tour of Phucket.

Princess Camela has suggested that school kids submit suggestions for a menu choice for her maj as celebration of the Diamond Jubilee.

Menu should be typically British, relatively simple and suitable or relevant for an oldie. My nippers are currently trying to think of their menu choices.

I've got a few ideas, currently I'l leaning towards:

starter: dairy lea cheese squares on crackers

main course: pizza

dessert: wagon wheel

I don't think it's an Irish thing, I think it's an Audi thing.

I've also noticed they can't travel in the first two lanes of the motorway.

It's a worry because this is clearly a problem spreading through German cars having started in BMW's.

When my nipper was still a baby and couldn't actually talk I took her for a vaccination jab.

Nurse stuck the needle in and she gave us both an incredible mouthful. No crying or screaming, Lord knows what she said, it was all baby gibeerish, but we both knew we'd had a proper bollocking and weren't to do it again.

The more i see the following happen, the more i think it should be in the "things that QUITE RIGHTLY piss you off" thread, if one existed....

At my gym/health club there is an indoor pool, very nice it is too. Also there is a steam room and a sauna roon in the same arena. As I am plodding up n down doing my best, I often see blokes come straight out of the said steam/sauna rooms & go straight in to the pool without using the separate shower cubicle to rinse off all their greasy sweat. Does my fckin head in !! I even told the surly lifeguard yoofs this & they shrug and continue to look disinterested. Must be a job criteria to look so, unless a fit bird in a bikini wiggles in.

I am at the point of the next fcker to do this I'm gonna square up to em & tell em in plain, loud words how trampish they are. Knowing my luck, they're probably bodybuilder types & a ruck would soon break out with me coming off worst i guess.

But come on, for fcks sake....I know there's chlorine in the pool but jeez !! And dont get me started on those who dont wash their hands after a slash/number 2..... total and utter pikeys !!!

As a kid it was a revelation to me whilst in Germany that people would have a shower before getting in a swimming pool! I was soon educated in the ways of hygene and the fact that we Brits turned out, on the whole, to be the stinky feckers of europe that need to crank up the chlorine because we treat swimming pools as....public baths.

I recently realised that tyres are cheaper in the Mercedes main dealer than in Kwik Fit.

Shop around.

Crack or chip in a windscreen depends on size and location. If you go on some windscreen company website they will have an easy guide. Autoglass maybe?