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

Well I first heard the show when I lived in Australia, and it was looked forward to there just as keenly

"Well I first heard the show when I lived in Australia" Now that truly is amzaing! I had no idea. But how could that work? Wouldn't the radio signals be all upside down or something by the time they reached Australia? They must have some sort of special signal inverters or something of the sort down there. Or is it we up here who have those? All this technology is amazing. Regardless, I'm glad to know that "GK," as he's fondly known here, is getting around a bit.

Happy birthday for t'other day FM
The Bug radios are good. We recently upgraded the firmware in our original bug to the version 2 stuff so effectively have a bug too now.

I was trying to think of what it reminded me of, and I've suddenly remembered. The 1950's version of War of the Worlds with Gene Barry: the Bug looks like a Martian flying machine. I'm expecting to be vaporised any morning now.

You hadn't even been born when that movie came out, FM, but I saw it when it was first released. Left quite an impression on a young lad, I can tell you that. Haven't trusted Martians to this day.

Another film that left a strong impression was The Day the Earth Stood Still. I was about nine years old when it was released in 1951. Gort, klaatu barrada nikto! This is a phrase every young lad who saw the film back in those days has memorized to save the earth from virtually certain destruction at the hands of ticked off robots. After seeing that film, I've not been especially keen on trusting humans much, either.

A very good film that. Intelligent sci-fi was thin on the ground. It was all 'let's give those alien squiggly-squirmies some hot leaden death!'

I bought a 1Gb SDCard for the beastie: it only cost £13. This now allows me to record SIXTEEN HOURS of programs! I always miss the classic serial on Radio 4 but now I can just preprogram the Bug in advance and record the lot. Mega.

Are we talking about a bug or an IT bug (sorry for interrupting) ?

No, we're talking about one of these:

http://www.thebug.com/

Belated Happies!

I might just have to get myself one of those for my 43rd birthday in a month's time!

Got a small TV with Freeview built in, but the radio stations are quite limited.

JT

A Bug is to a radio lover like a pair of Carl Zeiss's to a twicher. You really can't appreciate what the medium has to offer otherwise. Well, you can, actually, but being able to record stuff you'd miss, and pause real-time radio when some eejit trying to sell stuff kncs at the door, is a godsend.

Did you make that website? Who did the cartoons, was it you?

Naah.

Twitching madcapbug blues would be even better

Does it have a coaxial aerial input (like a TV)?

I've had my house rigged with such sockets and so would like to use them.

JT

It has a sort of coaxial socket on the back, but it just needs a short little aerial as the actual frequency is almost in the UHF.

Thanks FM

(Strange we should be discussing DAB on FM's thread)

JT

I recorded Tony Robinson's Friendly Guide to Classical Music on Classic FM on Sunday. This channel doesn't see the need to update its Electronic Program Guide so I had to sit next to the thing and start recording manually instead of leaving it to come on automatically.

If I have a criticism of the Bug it's that it's so feature rich it can be difficult to find out how to get it to do what you want it to do. Funnily enough, I don't actually miss the FM...

You can do a timed programme (you know a bit like programming the video before all those easy to use codes came out ) even if you're not using the epg. It works quite well and we normally record stuff that way.
It records in MP2 format as is broadcast which needs a little work before being able to be used with a mp3 player if you ever need to use it like that.