jinnantonnixx

Quite. Lots of people work over Christmas. These are largely unobserved and unnoticed, but they keep the country running. Electricity, gas and water workers, emergency services, pub workers, taxi drivers, telecoms workers, security services, and of course the entertainment industry. These are just the ones I can think of in a moment. We, who are on holiday, enjoy and rely on the services that these people provide. They would certainly be missed if they all took two weeks off.

^^^ This. Definitely. USB memory devices should be for convenient transfer of copies of data. Not for storage. And certainly not for sole copies of data.

Well, it wasn't quite up to my usual incandescently good standards. I felt that I was shoehorning it into the context. For the record, I was commenting on the food post, and said that Christmas should be all about the baby cheeses.

I see. That could happen if Strata Solar Company decide to install a black hole. Unlikely to happen.

Let's examine that argument: "they 'suck up all the energy from the sun'". Is that another way of saying "they cast a shadow"? Or am I missing some subtle point?

Your spelling mistake makes the subject rather unsavoury.

Do you have any hearing loops (Telecoils) switched on?

Worse than Hitler. Just kidding. Infrequently vile.

You can get amps to drive several pairs of speakers, but this is specialist and you'll need to drill and lay cables. I wouldn't really go wireless speakers as any encoding/decoding will reduce the quality. So practically, you will need an amp and speaker combo for every CCAudio. For less critical listening environments (e.g. kitchen, workshop), a simple pair of powered speakers might be OK. But you'll be glad you shelled out for a nice amp and speaker set for your main listening room. You could keep an eye out for some second-hand kit. Hifi owners tend to look after their kit, and you can get some bargains. You can always upgrade bits as you go.

Absolutely. Just get some coat-hangers. Do Coat Hangers Sound As Good Monster Cables? – Consumerist But seriously, just get some reasonable speaker cable. There's a lot of voodoo nonsense with HiFi, so don't pay more than a few quid for any cable.

I'm still using my old student hi-fi I bought back in about 1990. It's a Rotel RA920 amp and mission 760i speakers. It's still good! I would certainly go for a separate, dedicated amp instead of an integrated unit. Something like a Cambridge Topaz and any Mission bookshelf speakers would be a good starting point.

Exactly my thoughts. My old Rotel amp and Mission speakers still work as good as new. Now they're a full cloud audio system.

Don't forget to go into the Chromecast device menu and switch on 'Full Dynamic Range' if you want to get the most out of the music. It's off by default. https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6290498?hl=en-GB

The Chromecast Audio is going to be one of those 'disruptive' products. I was toying with the idea of buying into a Sonos system, or similar, but lamented that my old hi-fi was still good. Along comes the CCAudio, which is a great and very cheap way of turning an old (but good) hi-fi into an up-to-date system. My favourite music is uploaded to Google Music. When I want to hear new stuff, my favourite free apps without ads (compatible with Chromecast Audio) are 8tracks <<< **This is a seriously brilliant music app ** and Soundcloud Here's a mix I made on 8tracks. I must have been feeling morose! http://8tracks.com/anon-665053243/indie-mix-1

We must not be cowed or bullied by your demands. Anyone working with farm animals is OK with me. Most are outstanding in their field.

Ah, that's news to me. A pity.

JoliOS is good. I've use this a while back for an old netbook. https://www.jolicloud.com/our-story

That's right out of the arc. Though I must admit, it struck a chord if you approach it from a different angle.

I was worried that the hyperbole/hyperbolic pun might get lost on the tangent you mentioned. It's a bit deritivative*, but there you go. *yet another maths joke!!! I'm on fire!

That's pure hyperbolic.

You might want to try these settings in the squid.conf. negative_ttl 1 minute positive_dns_ttl 1 hour negative_dns_ttl 1 minute These set negative hits to have a short life time, so that if something is wrong with your DNS, and a negative hit is encountered (by error), then the negative hit isn't remembered for long. squid : negative_dns_ttl configuration directive

I haven't worked with Squid for a while, so I'm pretty rusty. Is there a reason why you're using Kerberos and NTLM? Kerberos is by far the preferred protocol. Even though your config offers Kerberos before NTML, it is the client browser that decides on the protocol that it ultimately uses. Squid exceptions are logged in the file 'cache.log'. This command will list the last events logged by squid. The -f option keeps on polling the file, showing you a live view until you press Ctrl-C to escape. tail -f /var/log/squid/cache.log Have you configured the squid stats tool? This is a CGI script which should be installed by default, but not necessarily configured. First find the file locate cachemgr.cgi Copy the file to this location: /var/www/cgi-bin/cachemgr.cgi Start a browser and connect to http://your_squid_server/cgi-bin/cachemgr.cgi There's a whole heap of useful goodies in here. The following is a paste from my notes - it must have seemed important to me at the time. How's your DNS server - is it stressed out? If you can, you might want to try using Google's public DNS servers just to see if this has any effect. You'll need to restart the Squid service, so do this out-of-hours. In the squid.conf, add dns_nameserver 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4

No trip to the attic to get Christmas decorations is complete without a rummage.... Yesterday, I found some old prints I made when I used to do my own printing using old fashioned film, enlargers and papers. These aren't digital, these are scans of prints I made. The negatives are colour, but my printing equipment was black and white. B+W papers aren't sensitive to red lights, so the resulting prints are a bit unpredictable. These are pictures I took of blues legend John Mayall. Here's a contact sheet I made of the negatives Obligatory 'funny how this happened' story about how I took these.... I was in Dublin in 1995, as it happens I was in the Guinness visitor centre just moseying around. I'd heard whispers that John Mayall was in the building having some kind of press conference. So I asked a member of staff, who immediately shook my hand, said I was a bit late but took me up to the exhibition rooms. Clearly, she mistook me for press. Perhaps having some nice Canon gear and a scruffy photo bag gave this impression. However, I felt that to come clean would certainly embarrass her in front of others in the room, and I am far too gallant to do this. So I gritted my teeth and attended the press-conference and forced myself to take some photos of John Mayall and his band. The sacrifices we have to make, sometimes.

Not really. I pay £27.50 a month. It's an odd amount, but it's less than the standard BB only. I don't know why. I might look into getting the price down. Although there's a BT fibre cab in the street, I don't want to use rickety BT phone technology. Once you have cable, there's no going back.

Yes, no problem. Welcome to the wonderful world of bicycle tyre sizes. The 700c is the outer diameter of the tyre. The smaller number (37, 38) is the width in mm. Most road bikes are 700c. 29 inch-wheeled mountain bikes use exactly the same rim size as 700c, but are wider. So they're called 29 inch. However, 29 inch and 28 inch are the same. :confused2: Tyre Sizes - Schwalbe Professional Bike Tires By the way, there's only one tyre you need to get if you want to avoid punctures - Schwalbe Marathon. I've been using Schwalbes for years and for keeping punctures at bay they're unrivalled.