February 29th, 2008 by RocketMBA
Tomorrow is the 1st of March, and what better way to ring in the first month of Spring than by buying a Christmas tree? Yes, Ideal World will be running their annual Christmas tree sale tomorrow, starting at 12 noon. Impress your friends and neighbours by being ready for Christmas 9 months early!
Ideal World can be found at channel 21 on Freeview and at channel 634 on Sky, in case you had somehow forgotten.
February 27th, 2008 by RocketMBA
BBC One aired an 8 hour marathon of live Six Nations rugby last Saturday, and all they got in return was 124 complaints from miserly old gits who don’t like rugby.
For any of the 124 fossils out there who happened to file a complaint:
WHY DON’T YOU TRY ONE OF THE OTHER 400 CHANNELS, GRANDPA?
February 25th, 2008 by RocketMBA
Don’t you just know what it’s like to have a load of old crisp packets lying around the house? I know I do, so I decided to make use of them the only way I know how: irresponsibly.
The goal of this experiment was to answer the question “Does a crisp packet increase satellite dish gain?”.
The tools I used were a computer fitted with a SkyStar 2 card, an 80cm satellite dish with a cheap Korean LNB on the end, and an old crisp packet.
The crisp packet (ASDA Smartprice, Ready Salted) was placed over the whole of the LNB face and most of the LNB body.
Now for the readings. The dish was aligned to 1w, and tuned to transponder 11325 H 24500.
Before crisp packet:
After crisp packet:
As you can see, placing the crisp packet over the LNB has no effect upon the signal strength recieved. As such, the crisp packet cannot be recommended as an item to increase satellite dish gain, but it does look quite snazzy and may make a short-term alternative to LNB joint sealant.
Further things to try: different flavour crisps, foil-lined crisp packet, using tape to hold the crisp packet in place.
February 14th, 2008 by RocketMBA
The US military are planning to shoot down the wayward spy satellite that’s on course to smash down to earth next month. Unfortunately, they’ll probably end up shooting one of our satellites instead.
Either way, their plan involves blowing it up before it gets back into the atmosphere, because it’s got a load of fancy technology on that they’d like to keep secret.
The secrecy surrounding the satellite is likely related to the President’s astounding capability to confuse everybody in the room whenever he makes a speech.
February 5th, 2008 by RocketMBA
Don’t forget that England Under-21s are playing tonight, live on Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports HD1 at 7:45pm. It’ll be nice to watch an England team win for a change.
To pad out this post, here’s a haiku about Theo Walcott:
“Theo Walcott went,
To the World Cup in Deutschland,
Stupid bloody Sven.”
February 4th, 2008 by RocketMBA
The nation collectively fell asleep tonight as the BBC showed the 42nd Super Bowl, the first time the Super Bowl shown on the BBC.
BBC Two carried the transmission complete with original American commentary that confused people with speak of the 2nd & 10 for the 10 yard four sack rule.
I, with the support of a friend, managed to watch the entire game without dropping dead of boredom. It was so boring, however, that we actually enjoyed Tom Petty at the half time interval.
