To see them requires either a motorised/adjustable dish, or a second dish with a world of LNBs attached to it. I’ve already got a dish for Sky, and didn’t fancy replacing it or fiddling with it much. Also, I intend moving fairly soon, so didn’t fancy changing dishes and running loads of cables.

I’d got myself a satellite TV card for my PC, as there’s more I can do with it. It’s a Hauppauge HD-capable card, plus it sits alongside my DVB-T card quite nicely.

However, the issue still remained that I needed a satellite signal for it. I’d previously seen some small portable kits in Lidl which included a dish, LNB, and some free-standing brackets. That was a while ago, but I knew they were available elsewhere. I had a dig around on eBay and found one for £40. It’s a ‘Konig’ branded dish, with a small single-output LNB, a foot stand, a sucker-cup to stick it to a table top (which doesn’t actually work) and a wall mounting bracket.

I tried it indoors behind glass but there was just no signal at all. Apparently around 2005 glass manufacturers started using various new coatings to reflect sunlight – said coatings also reflect satellite signals. Our windows were replaced in 2008, so I really was heading down a dead-end road.

I tried the dish out in the garden, and it had a perfectly useable signal on Hotbird and Astra 19.2E. Even with the mile of cable I used it was working fine. It seemed my only real solution was to hang the dish out the window. I’ve got a good line of sight to a fair bit of the Southern horizon, so it’s a perfect position. I needed to somehow hang the dish out of the window, but in a way that was adjustable. I needed to be able to adjust the angle on the dish to catch different satellites.

After a bit of pondering, this was the result:

It’s a pretty simple right angle, strengthened to stop it wobbling. Inside it’s fitted to a double-height section, which just hangs against the window frame. The dish isn’t heavy, so it shouldn’t be a big issue. The cable itself acts as a useful safety in case the whole thing decides to launch itself to the ground!

At the moment, it’s picking up Astra 19.2E very happily. There’s a couple of things I want to address. Firstly I need to pick up a longer bolt, so I can use washers on both sides. I might try and strengthen the top arm somehow as I can see the hole around the bolt being a weak spot. Also… I can’t close the window!

But hey, I’m not complaining!

This is why you should ALWAYS wear the wrist strap when using your Wiimote.

If the Wii came out about10 years ago, when most people had CRTs still, they’d probably just bounce off, no harm done, but LCD and Plasma screens are made of very thin, fragile sheets of glass and plastic. Doesn’t take much to bust one.

Honestly, I can’t say I’m overly surprised. I always expected something like this to happen eventually. I could analyse the hell out of this, or go all Chris Crocker over it, but I’m not going to be doing that in a rush.

Instead, I’d like to say I think it marks a new beginning. The band’s sound has always been a mish-mash of all the band-members’ own musical likes and dislikes, and that produced the unique sound they had. It meant they often drifted around between genres, and that made it great.

Steve reckoned he had a more folky background, so I’ll be intrigued to see what sort of direction they take in future. I’d noticed Kevin Hearn moving more to the front with songs, and Jim was submitting more which made for some great songs. Plus all the guys can sing, so they’ll definitely cope on that front. Be intrigueing to hear how (or even if) they handle ‘Steve’ songs.

As for Steve, he reckons he has a load of new projects up and coming. The Art & Time Ensemble work he did a while ago was pretty good, and I imagine a studio recording of something similar would be absolutely wonderful. The Vanity Project looks likely (to me) to turn into a ‘real’ band, and Steve says he has a second album on the way, so I look forward to that – the eponymous debut was a great album.

So it all looks promising to me. To quote a Kevin Hearn song – This is a beginning, not the end!

Last night was no exception. He had two support acts – one a local guy, and other an up and coming act by the name of Dan Michaelson and the Coastguards. They weren’t too bad, and passed the time whilst we waited. After they’d finished, we waited for what seemed like an eternity. One of the roadies appeared with setlists, then about 15 minutes later picked them all up and replaced them with others, so I can’t help but feel the delay was possibly due to some last-minute changes.

After much staring at the stage doors, the Duke suddenly emerged from the wings onto the stage, much to everybody’s surprise. The whole place fell silent whilst he began to play. The Temperance Society’s Chip Bailey appeared after a couple of songs and joined in on drums and percussion. The banter with the crowd was good. Some songs employ records being played as intros to the songs (well, I think some come from recordings off the mixing desk, but I digress), but it seemed the record the Duke wanted wasn’t where he thought, so a singalong ending to one song was drawn out longer whilst he ran around trying to find the record he wanted. It gave a few laughs anyway!

Chip appeared to have added some more percussion instruments to his already odd arsenal of Stumpf Fiddle and cheese grater and whisk. The new additions were attached to a large stand, and included a broken cymbal with bolts through it, a saucepan, and some small sheets of metal on a hook, among other things.

Mid-show, the Duke mentioned that at the previous gig they had done in Portsmouth, he’d been able to wheel his piano out into the middle of the crowd, and play some songs acoustically. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible due to there not being an easy way to get the piano down. He actually seemed genuinely dismayed that this was the case, but apologised and carried on anyway. The show came to an end, and a final encore took place. He said a few thankyous, then announced that it was the end of the show, but they’d managed to set up another piano downstairs. Everybody was welcome to come downstairs and enjoy the little ‘after show’. He then said himself and Chip would crowdsurf to the back. Everybody laughed good naturedly.

He meant it.

So one short crowd surf to the back (very rock and roll!), Chip hanging onto his Stumpf Fiddle whilst doing so, everybody piled downstairs. The Academy staff were running around trying to open up doors and get people down safely. My hat off to them, as I think it really was an off-the-cuff thing, and pretty much everybody transferred downstairs.

The downstairs room is much bigger, but obviously hadn’t been opened up for use, as the only lights on were the main lights. Sitting in the middle was a piano, and everybody just crowded around. The Duke was still running around (I think he was actually looking for his pint), and eventually joined everybody. Chip was busily entertaining everybody by playing his Stumpf Fiddle some more. The Duke started up playing some songs – a weird mish-mash of his own songs, some modern songs, and some old drinking songs (The Old Bull and Bush being one).

The whole thing was played out by candle light as somebody lit the little candles on his piano, and the main lights were turned off. It turned into just a fun sing-song. OK, he did forget the words to some of the songs – including his own – but nobody cared. It was great fun. The show-stealer being a little boy who managed to stand down next to the piano and held up the words during one song, then sang a few parts with the Duke, then alone. Naturally, he got massive cheers for singing along (he wasn’t bad either).

Eventually the show ended properly, and we all filed out. It was gone 11:30 at this point, so we’d probably gotten another 45 minutes out of that extra bit of show!

I can’t help but feel that with Duke Special, he’s a musician’s musician. He really does LOVE music. He loves to play it, and play it for and with other people. If he can get the audience involved, he will. Suddenly, as an audience, you don’t feel that you’re being played to, but that you’re somehow involved. I’ve seen other bands who barely acknowledge the audience (Editors did that), or they have a laugh, but more with each other on stage, so you feel that you’re watching somebody else having fun. Duke is more about involving the audience. Chip Bailey is a great accompaniment to that, as he does the same thing.

It’s just damn good fun. Exactly what a live gig should be.

Cobblers.

With analogue connections (i.e. SCART), the signal made its way through as a set of subtle waves. The subtlety of those waves could be destroyed if the cable was of a poor quality. It could lead to flat colours, a ‘halo’ effect around people, or shadows in the picture. People would pay ridiculous amounts of cables which did make a difference, albeit subtle. To most folk, it was so subtle that it really didn’t matter. The hard-core home-cinema type would tell you until they were blue in the face that it made a difference, but it mattered not one jot to everyone else. There was such thing as ‘cheap’ or ‘bad’ cables. I’ve had a few, and they were poorly made, and poorly shielded, so they did produce a pretty dire picture.

Along comes HDMI, and it uses a digital connection. It’s all pulses. On-off-on-off-on-off. The digital simplicity of ones and zeros. With HDMI, if the signal gets through, it gets through. It either does, or it doesn’t. What that means, is that the cable either works, or it doesn’t. If the cable is ‘bad’ you’ll know it – big blocks on the screen, or odd sparkly colours, because chunks of the picture information is missing. It’s very similar to how Freeview breaks up when a lorry rumbles past your house.

Basically, you need a ‘decent’ cable. One that makes a good connection at both ends, won’t slip out or wobble, and shields itself from any interference from other cables, like power leads or speaker wires. These stupidly expensive cables are just that – stupidly expensive. I found the cable pictured at the right for £14.99 in Wilkinsons. It’s 1.5 metres, and has gold-plated ends (so they won’t tarnish). I’ve got three of them now, and they work like a charm!

Since buying an HD-ready TV about two years ago, I’ve slowly been replacing bits of my TV/Audio kit, as we gadgety-geeky types are often wont to do. In doing so, I’ve upgraded to Sky+ HD, and have upscaling DVD players and other fun things. As a consequence, all my kit is now connected via the HDMI. I used to have a spaghetti of SCART leads packed down the back of the TV. They were thick and bulky, and always drifting lose (a major issue with SCART).

Using HDMI cables has been good. I’ve actually got more HDMI devices than inputs on my TV, plus I need to send the signal in two directions to the TV and projector, so there’s a switch box in the mix too. All told, there’s about six HDMI leads in there now, including these Wilko cables. I’ve been using them quite happily for some time, and they give me perfectly good picture quality. The Sky+ HD box comes with an HDMI lead which is, to be honest, a bit cheap and nasty when you look at it, but even that works perfectly fine. As I say, a lead either works, or it doesn’t. My ‘best’ cable, is a Belkin lead I bought some time ago which was probably nearer £30, and that is no different to these newer, cheaper leads. Wilko actually sell cheaper leads still, and I think even they would work fine.

The Monster leads Comet and Currys push onto you are sold simply for the profit margins. The wholesale costs on them is closer to £10, but they sell them for about £50. They use it to recoup any losses they might have made price matching, and giving you a better deal.

That’s how they getcha!

For most of what it does, it uses ‘Activities’. Basically, these are a set of macros to start certain things, say for example the Watch TV activity starts your TV, digital set top box, and changes channels around to where you want them to be. It’s nicer than having to switch the remote modes between TV and Digibox, to do things. Switching between activities will also switch off things. So if I go from Watch TV to Watch DVD, the Sky box goes off, and the DVD player comes on, but the TV stays on and just switches channel.

Programming the remote is all done from the PC using the software. Setting up the activities is very, VERY long-winded, though. Apparently, Logitech thinks wizards are the best way to do everything. Not true guys! Something simple, like ‘Watch TV’, is quite easy to do; I press the button, my TV comes on, the Sky box comes on, and the HDMI switch changes to the correct input. That’s a ‘pre-made’ action, so you just basically confirm what you want it to do.

Once you’ve set up the action, it’s a case of plugging in the USB cable, and pressing the buttons to update the remote. It’ll ask you to try it, and then take you through troubleshooting if it doesn’t work, which solves most problems.

If you want to do something more advanced however, it gets trickier. I found the need to turn my DVD player on after a certain delay, and despite fiddling around endlessly, couldn’t convince the remote to do anything but turn on all the devices in the action at the same time, which didn’t work for me – I needed my DVD player to come on a few seconds after the TV. Similarly, I couldn’t create an action to use my Media Center – I had to create a custom action for that, so yet more wizards and clicking ‘next’!

What I’d like to see is a simple script editor, so I can just drop commands in, with all the delays and key presses I need. To be fair though, the software is actually quite comprehensive, and you can tweak a lot of things, but they’re – yet again – hidden deep down in the wizards in obscure places.

Once I’d finished fighting with the software though, I now have a remote which actually works very well. It’s quite responsive, and it’s quite amazing to press one button and have a few devices all spring to life, AND set themselves up. Previously, I’d be juggling remotes to do the same thing. Now it’s one press of a button!

The remote features a help button, which will re-send commands if they fail or mess up for some reason. At one point, my TV was already on, and I pressed ‘Watch TV’. The remote thought the TV was off, so sent a power command, thus the TV went off. The help button steps through all the actions and can reset things to get you into the right place. It can also help out if something in the action config is subtly wrong, and in concert with the software (and ANOTHER wizard) reconfigure things so that it always works.

There’s some niceties in the software though. Because it’s all so wizard-based, it’s fairly easy to get the main things going, like the Watch TV or Watch DVD actions. It’s also clever enough to allow you to have two output devices (I have a TV and projector), so you can select which to use. I added a second ‘Watch TV’ action, which turned on the projector, Sky box, and my Amp for audio, as well as setting all the right input and outputs. Plus, the configuration is flexible enough to allow the remote to be set up with the buttons bound to various random things. All buttons are independent, so the audio controls control the amp, whilst the channel buttons control the Sky box.

The little LCD screen is quite useful too, and can have those odd special keys set up that are unique to the device. Other universal remotes don’t have the capacity to take those keys, so you end up with strange things like the Sky button being bound to the Teletext key, or something equally confusing. I can actually create a button on the LCD screen which says ‘Sky’, and make it press that button. And also only make it show when I’m actually controlling that device as part of my action. The custom keys can also accommodate favourite channels, complete with a channel logo. Digiguide has a handy directory full of little channel icons, so I picked those up and loaded them in.

Actions can be overridden and you can go into device mode, and control devices directly. My TV has a tendency to ignore the DVD player sometimes, so I have to flip channels to re-gain a picture.

With some fiddling (OK, a LOT of fiddling), I think I’ve actually got something very workable. I’ve only gone to another remote once now (my DVD remote) and that was because I needed to do something in the menus as I was upgrading the firmware, and wanted to use the ‘real’ remote, just to be sure I was doing the right thing.

Despite the really oddball software and all its wizards, the Logitech Harmony 785 is a great remote. Due to the screen, and the software, it’s far more flexible than most other universal remotes on the market. It’s just a shame the software is so annoyingly long-winded to configure.