h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*hugs*, KB. No harm in forgetting every now and then…

Lusus, same here. The tactics for pushing shows [or anything] can get fairly harsh and in your face,

PH: wrapping Christmas presents. I am covered in Sellotape and frustration, goddamn. Whoever is on Today FM, they are too perky for twenty past eight on a Monday night. Having to craft characters. Why haven’t I this done?

Maybe a bit late by now but...
. A cheap, mid sized, middling firm, artist's paintbrush
. A small bottle of isopropyl alcohol (not for your consumption).
. Perhaps (probably) a small wire brush (they often come in threes, about 1 1/2" long & say 3/8" wide). You want the Brass wire & perhaps the nylon bristle (Not the steel if you can help it.

- With care, scrub all the circuitry with artist's brush & alcohol. Allow to dry.
- Go all over the solder side of the circuit boards with the brass wire brush - carefully, gently or it'll look like a hedgehog far too quickly.
- Repeat with the artist's brush & acohol.
- Brass brush then alcohol again, if it seems appropriate.

At this stage, you may have noticed one or more soldered joints that are dull rather than bright solder, they may be 'dry' joints so remake them.

Frequently, the valve sockets are weak points & they can be v awkward to put right. Gently scraping the valve pins with a knife edge often does the job - scrape not cut (with the pins towards you and the (sharp) knife edge away from you, gently draw the knife over a pin, towards you. Rotate & repeat, 6 or 8 times on each pin that looks as if it might be corroded.
It is not entirely unknown for a ninjuneer to solder valve pins directly but...

A note on soldering irons: one with a small tip (a 'soldering pencil'), temperature controlled if possible. A wet sponge or similar and frequent wipes on it to clean the tip. Be extra careful if you don't have a small iron - avoid bridging two joints.
If you feel the need to remake many joints, see if you can borrow a solder sucker to clean up each joint before adding more solder. Avoid keeping joints hot for very long - 2 or 3 short, spaced-out applications is better.


Good luck

! That was for Mr D @12118 previous page.

Good - I was worried about Anna soldering her presents together...

... o__O That would've worked better, I think!

PH: there's allegations out against a certain singer. The public do not know if they are true yet; he's up in court. People are jumping to conclusions. What if the guy was framed or something? There's a thing called benefit of the doubt...

I suspect that you are referring to the Cardiff case Anna.

Police are able to retrieve an awful lot of forensic data from a hard disc. For instance dates of usage, passwords used, time of downloads, times e-mails were sent or opened, in short, plenty of stuff that will fix a specific user to a specific computer at a specific time.

I see lots of these types of charges where there are often masses - thousands of pretty vile images of children and animals, which is what is alleged in this case.

Police are pretty careful with these cases. I would expect, if the normal pattern is followed, to see denial in the face of a mountain of evidence followed by conviction.

The conspiracy part is more difficult unless there are messages and e-mails as part of the evidence.

Yes, inocent until proven guilty indeed, but framed? Why? Too hard, easier to make an allegation of historic rape or a sexual assault by touching.

PP

The Department of Motor Vehicles: "We're sorry, but the SR-22 insurance form that you sent us two months ago (when we asked for it) is more than thirty days old and therefore cannot be processed. The fact that you came to our office in person to address the issue when it first arose has evidently been forgotten. The numerous phone calls you made two weeks ago and the assurances we gave at that time that the matter had been resolved also apparently never happened. Although this situation is entirely our fault, we must ask that you send us a new SR-22 form by tomorrow or your driving priviliges will be revoked. (Again.) We'd like to apologize for our bumbling incompetence but in order to do that we'll need you to fill out six different forms and have them signed and notarized in triplicate so that we can forget to file them. Have an agonizing day."

Sounds as though somebody needs a slap Mr X.

It rarely produces results, but just think how nice it would feel.

PP.

PP, yeah I think that’s the one. Thing is, they released HIS name. Why not the other two? It’s not looking good, let’s be honest. I don’t like the guy anyway but the way people believe he committed these crimes… I believe this is it for his job if this is true. His mother’s put up her house for surety. Can’t get over that!

Not sure how he could be framed but that was my first thought; “let’s take down someone famous” or something.

If they’ve taken computers, I doubt they wouldn’t find anything however small. They take that stuff for a reason. I shudder to think what they would turn up on me, not that I've been doing anything illegal.

Merry Christmas, every one, but a PH: Christmas carols. Jesus.

My PH is Christmas *hymns*, things like Oh, come, all ye faithful. Why do they all sound like dirges? This is supposed to be a time of rejoicing, not mourning.

You're lucky you don't live in Germany. Their hymns are reeaally funereal. When we sing "The First Noel" or "O little town of Bethlehem" or "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" (which are little known in Germany, and we only sing them very very occasionally) everyone cheers up.

There is one German one which everyone always wants to hear, about being happy and joyful, but it is the most miserable tune you could imagine.

Generally, tunes from the 15th century do sound rather sombre to our ears. The joy, presumably, comes from the words. As for the tunes, they just didn't know any better in those days.

At work we had a web radio station running over the past few days with just Christmas music (Britney Spears, Michael Buble, Melanie Thornton - all the usual stuff) . After a while, all the tunes began to sound the same. So, basically, although these songs only run for a small part of the year, whether in shopping malls, or the hymns in church, perhaps it's better in the end, because they do rather pall after a while.

Not normally a fan of German hymns but Stille Nacht is much better than silent night

Maybe, but it's still a dirge.

Dirges are sombre and full of lament.

Anyway, my Petty Hate of the Day is people who use their "addictions" to oxygen and water as examples of why addiction is not a bad thing. Yes, this actually happens.

Scuse me while I go and find Bethlehem Down...

Another Petty Hate: Kobo eReaders.

We got one for MiL because you can't get eLibrary books on Kindle due to some probably entirely spurious licencing issue. Anyway. I am so far finding the thing clunky, awkward and unintuitive... and I'm good with computers. I don't know how we're going to get MiL going on this damn thing.

oooh, need to hear it in real life!

PH: hundreds of channels and nothing on.

Ah that's a common 21st century malaise I find - the illusion of choice. There's all those channels, so there's bound to be something good on. Or in the supermarket - miles of aisles of products, so they must have the thing you're after (rice noodles, preserved lemons, and plain peanuts have all failed this assumption in the past year....)

Bruce sang it: 57 Channels and Nothing On