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Philip Bragg

@synx508

Technology person, vintage synth and electronic test equipment enthusiast & restorer.

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Latest posts by Philip Bragg @synx508

Just for one day.

11.03.2026 10:49 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

I don't think they've had any weather of that sort recently. A lot of these community stations are running processing, RDS, stereo in their studios and sending MPX to the transmitter over RF or IP, so it's probably that connection that has failed. They're still streaming automated programmes.

11.03.2026 10:48 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
RF carrier on 103.599MHz

RF carrier on 103.599MHz

And the carrier is a shocking 1kHz low.

11.03.2026 09:37 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Still off air.

11.03.2026 08:57 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
A tabby and white cat lying on a Hewlett Packard 5335A universal counter

A tabby and white cat lying on a Hewlett Packard 5335A universal counter

It’s cat time again.

10.03.2026 22:07 πŸ‘ 18 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

Their internet stream is still working but their socials haven't been updated for months, suggesting that all is not well.

10.03.2026 21:58 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Looks as if The Beat 103.6 is broadcasting silence, not even a stereo pilot, just an unmodulated carrier (too weak to see RDS here but I don't think it has it currently).

10.03.2026 21:57 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Good choice though!

10.03.2026 09:17 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

I think they stopped doing it due to the gradual loss of the generation of people who could happily and voluntarily staff the shop, talk to people, do a bit of tutoring and make refreshments.

09.03.2026 18:27 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

I used to be a cleaner at a church that run brass rubbings on Saturdays, all the brasses were fibreglass so it seemed really strange to me that people would be interested in doing it but the results looked nice and made people happy and perhaps that mattered more.

09.03.2026 18:24 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

I don't want to worry anyone but there's post on reddit titled "What did London look like when you were born, I’ll go first (2008)"

09.03.2026 16:15 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

This is a salient point. The service continues through these difficult times.

09.03.2026 09:54 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

For a while, a person was redistributing owl beek changes using Twitter. I've a feeling it was also on various other networks, too. I have no idea who was running the bot that posted to Twitter, which is kind of lovely.

08.03.2026 21:32 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
My owl beek has ...

I've just been reminded that I run the internet's sole remaining owl beek resource, if you discount xkcd's static version that always tells you that the owl beek has green. Should it continue? It has been running for a few decades and all things must pass.
Here's info web.archive.org/web/20070701...

08.03.2026 21:30 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 0
My owl beek has ...

I have just noticed that it was actually Beekenham, which, as the sole remaining source of owl beek updates, I have to pay my respects to. Here is more than you need to know about owl beek. web.archive.org/web/20070701...

08.03.2026 21:26 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
A late 60s pocket radio called Internet Satellite.

A late 60s pocket radio called Internet Satellite.

So several years before the term Internet was coined for a network of interconnected computer networks in the mid 70s. Several years earlier a small company in Beckenham Kent sold cheapo Hong Kong made pocket radios.
They called themselves Internet.
Here is one I bought today with box.

08.03.2026 19:24 πŸ‘ 227 πŸ” 34 πŸ’¬ 12 πŸ“Œ 1

Perfect for a cat that doesn't mind being Handeled.

08.03.2026 09:37 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Today's cat name: Zadok the Purriest

08.03.2026 09:16 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Aah, well, that's funny, being in my mid-fifties and very familiar with this, I sheepishly Googled the lyrics to discover what a Morry Thou was and it's so obvious and perhaps too obvious and I was overthinking that it was some sort of artist's name.

07.03.2026 19:49 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Here's my strategy. Add "because I don't want to take it home" to all prices. Start every price 25% higher than you intend to sell for, make sure everyone knows you're open to offers. And the best tip, have a prominent item you have no intention of selling to draw people in. No, not that.

07.03.2026 10:23 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Maybe the tiny circular hole beside the viewfinder lens is metering

06.03.2026 22:50 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

I think the upper smaller window is optical viewfinder but might also be metering.

06.03.2026 22:49 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

The lens cover is closed in the lower picture, to add to the confusion

06.03.2026 22:25 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Stopping people from thinking is an awfully effective measure against thought crime and the revolution it might foment.

And yet we’re happy to manufacture our own suppression based on the magical thinking that 10x the output will somehow 10x the return.

04.03.2026 18:36 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

For them it's very appealing, the improved link between search queries and results that's the inevitable fruit of throwing lots of compute at the world's largest and hottest corpus is also perfect for steering people towards helplessness and inhibiting their autonomy.

04.03.2026 18:20 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

The better brain is stolen goods. Why are we legitimising stolen property? Why are we letting the stolen goods machine steal more, quicker? Why are we building data centres to facilitate more of this sort of thing? It's too late to put this thing back in the lab but it's not too late to constrain it

04.03.2026 17:54 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

I've a growing fatigue of intelligent people defending LLMs on the basis that they nearly do good stuff in specific areas sometimes. This is a technical wonder, brought about by nothing more than scaling a toy chatbot from the 1990s up and giving it a better brain, it's "cool" but it's not thinking.

04.03.2026 17:51 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

Not completely.

04.03.2026 15:18 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Temporary Closure
Little Point
Sudden Nausea

04.03.2026 14:00 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

That's named similarly to a village near the Belgian town of Dessicant.

04.03.2026 13:55 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0