Friday, 1 December 2006

Alfie Noakes <...> said:

Not sure yet, what other benefits IE 7 may have .. anyone on here used
it much yet and if so, any comments?

Alf.

Hi Alf

You make a good point .... Dunno !!! (Why not "Google" IE.7 and see what they claim ... then decide whether you agree!!!)

Graham

Quoting a previous Les Wires contribution:-

It doesn't pull in the
listeners but I would guess thats down to the platform and poor quality
AM signal rather than content.

But if the content is so 'bad' on the other stations that RAJAR shows figures for and they are the stations with what you consider to be less acceptable content, surely that proves that Big L's format is a wrong-un. People obviously much prefer the content of the other stations.

How about
a station playing 'popular' music without the competitions, traffic,
trivia....particularly the trivia.

And without a skip or fast forward facility how's it going to compete with my iPod? What's the point of somebody many miles away streaming music at me when I can do it myself and have much better control over it than listening to somebody else's stream?

—
* Christopher England just said that *

Quoting a previous Graham Jones contribution:-

MORE IMPORTANTLY you have upset Chris I think … you failed to delete the
unnecessary stuff before posting your contribution (like wot I did)....
woe betide you pal.

Actually, it upsets far more than me.
—
* Christopher England just said that *

Quoting a previous Alfie Noakes contribution:-

Not sure yet, what other benefits IE 7 may have .. anyone on here used
it much yet and if so, any comments?

Tabs. Once you understand how to use tabs properly it's so much nicer than the old concept of browsing.

Also IE7, after an initial hiccup or two now long dealt with by upgrades, is pretty hot when it comes to pop-up blocking, phishing detection and dealing with most other ills. I find it a lot faster and less prone to 'misrepresenting' website content than Firefox. Previously I was a Firefox anorak.
—
* Christopher England just said that *

Radio Jackie is the last truly independent local radio station. It's based in Tolworth and broadcasting to "South-West London and North Surrey". 'Independent' means it's not been assimilated into the typical 'Borg' (talk to a Startrek enthusiast for an explanation) groups that almost every other 'local' radio station has.

It manages to retain its independence because of its pirate heritage. Despite never really experimenting with ground breaking formats but sounding identical to any and all "ILR" stations (as the commercial sector was known) when it was a pirate in the late 70s / early 80s, it somehow became a respected standard for the first generation of land-based pirate radio enthusiasts, so exuded a magnetic charm and appeal that was only detectable by the radio anorak. This anorak pheromone still works today to attract a collection of goodwill and people happy to work for nearly nothing or actually nothing. That keeps the real costs down. Not that that's a bad thing. This is probably exactly how real community radio should work.

Disappointingly, the output of the now legal Jackie all these decades later still has nothing exciting to offer, but maybe 'bland' is what true local radio actual has to be.

A 24 hour news team manage to pump out an hourly bulletin of news nicely oriented to the local area, but it's all pretty standard reporting and based on an old BBC local radio style from a few decades ago. It has an honesty and a safe believability to it, without sensationalism or attempts at radical presentation with silly music playing in the background or daft echoes on the voice. It's nice. It's trustworthy.

Inbetween the news bulletins are the programmes. These consist of a presenter allowed to speak every 10 minutes or so. Most times songs are played in twos, joined together by a female voice saying something with the word Jackie in it. As is usual these days, she sounds as if she recorded her messages whilst straining with constipation on the toilet. When will voice artists stop sounding like this? But, why is she there saying what the presenter could open his/her microphone and say? At least if it was the presenter uttering the liner and nothing more than just the liner between the songs, people would feel he cared and hadn't popped off to make a coffee. It's not as if he has anything else to do, like researching the content of his links or something difficult like that.

When it does come to the presenter's link, yes he has a number of fixed things he has to read each hour, but generally whatever he puts in as an ad lib is tame and gentle and oriented around dedications and saying hi to people who are going to be sent car stickers. It's important to mention local areas or places or pubs or shops in these links. Then, immediately after this bland link, that's when the commercials are played. Again, this is a habit I've never understood.

I mean, if a person is listening for the wonderful songs that are being played, then they want to hear the songs as near to each other as possible, right? Why would they want to hear great big long gaps, full of bla-di-bla before a song is played? Surely it would make more sense to not run the commercials after a period of presenter woffle? But no, the music enthusiast has to wait.

The same applies to the speech enthusiast. When songs are played one after the other in a block, why is he being kept waiting to hear the talkie bits? This way of treating people seems guaranteed to upset the speech enthusiast and the music enthusiast.

And just what type of music enthusiast is attracted to Radio Jackie? Well, the playlist is heavy with very inoffensive old songs from a variety of different genres, although most were previously released as singles and charted. It's big though, a bit like the London Eye taking quite a long while to gently rotate round back to the start. Maybe that's a good thing compared to other stations which seem to have just forty songs going round faster than a 78.

In these days of people tending to have grown up with a particular genre it's difficult to see who this wide range of styles of mainly oldies music interrupted with inoffensive chatter actually appeals to. Possibly to people who just don't care passionately about their musical tastes any more. Possibly to people who just want some bit of beige coloured wallpaper they can leave up in the background. Possibly to people who want to drift in and every now and again hear mention of a place they don't live too far from. Possibly to people who remember the imaginary good old days of wires strung in fields, metal boxes with glowing valves and a cassette machine pumping 'shows' into the ether.

Are there really enough of any of these people listening to keep stations like Radio Jackie going? In my heart I hope so, but I feel uneasy because I don't quite know why I hope so. Is it the anorak pheromones?
—
* Christopher England just said that *

CE wrote (very heavily snipped),

Radio Jackie is the last truly independent local radio station.

How about Club Asia? (London) I quite like it even if I can't understand a word of what they play. They got a good plug in the Telegraph a few days ago.

Apparently run by 2 young ladies. Seemingly strong emphasis on being British and, very friendly/local feel to it.

Best

Ian Bull

Christopher England <...> said:

Quoting a previous Alfie Noakes contribution:-

Not sure yet, what other benefits IE 7 may have .. anyone on here used
it much yet and if so, any comments?

Tabs. Once you understand how to use tabs properly it's so much nicer
than the old concept of browsing.

Also IE7, after an initial hiccup or two now long dealt with by
upgrades, is pretty hot when it comes to pop-up blocking, phishing
detection and dealing with most other ills. I find it a lot faster and
less prone to 'misrepresenting' website content than Firefox.
Previously I was a Firefox anorak.
—
* Christopher England just said that *

I agree :-)

Christopher England <...> said:

Tabs. Once you understand how to use tabs properly it's so much nicer
than the old concept of browsing.

—
* Christopher England just said that *

Couldn't resist the previous reply .. how childish :-)

Back to business .. The tabs concept is very good and one of those things you wonder how you ever managed without it previously. Also, seems very stable and able to cope better with faulty scripts and other such glitches as found on various web-sites. (I suspect that may have been the issue with AN). There is definately more control over pop-ups and nice to see the warnings that are displayed regarding add-ons and feeds. Early days, as I said before, but very impressed so far.

One for you to consider, Richard ??

Alf

I'm not sure that I'm very good at genres nowadays.

I am pretty sure that I would'nt know "garage" or "house" if I heard it.

I presume that "electronica" is like Focus.

"Dance" must be 1930s music of the type played on Radio Normandy.

"Bluegrass" eludes me completely.

Now how about, "do wop". Presumable that's music which sings "do" or "wop" like "do wop showaddy waddy" or "do wop a lou you're my baby". So songs that sing "vo de do" must fall into the "vo de do" genre.

Of course, I know punk, that's like "nellie the elephant" sung very quickly.  

From: "Geoff" <...>

Christopher England <...> said:

And without a skip or fast forward facility how's it going to compete
with my iPod? What's the point of somebody many miles away streaming
music at me when I can do it myself and have much better control over it
than listening to somebody else's stream?

—
I think you make a good point Christopher. Following on from our previous posts I think any station will have a lot of trouble persuading you to unplug yourself from your iPod. The same would probably apply to me, BUT, I say probably, because I live in hope that one day something will arrive on the air and demote the MP3 palyer, or whatever it may be by then, to the back of the drawer.

If that happens, at least I may then hear something different/new, whereas if I'm still listening to my player, there's a fair chance that I will have heard what ever it's playing before.

Regards - Tim

Christopher England <...> said:

Disappointingly, the output of the now legal Jackie all these decades
later still has nothing exciting to offer, but maybe 'bland' is what
true local radio actual has to be.

In my opinion I think you have described the Radio Jackie situation very well, Christopher.

You describe the output as 'bland' and I think you may be right, but having known a few of the Jackie guys in the past, I think they are 'playing it safe'. It took them such a long time to get where they are now, and with the history of the previous disaster of a station (financially, at least) lurking in the back of their minds, I think this may have influenced them into taking the what might be called the 'middle ground' or what I might describe as 'for G***'s sake don't play anything that might make a listener touch the dial'!

Perhaps over time they may find an occasion to be be a little more adventurous.

Regards - Tim

Alfie Noakes <...> said:

One for you to consider, Richard ??

Yes indeed thanks for that, I will try and give it a go soon.

Richard

Sterling Times <2@slewis.biz> said:

I'm not sure that I'm very good at genres nowadays.

I am pretty sure that I would'nt know "garage" or "house" if I heard it.
I presume that "electronica" is like Focus.
"Dance" must be 1930s music of the type played on Radio Normandy.
"Bluegrass" eludes me completely.

Of course, I know punk, that's like "nellie the elephant" sung very
quickly.

Classical, is of course – anything that Christopher England has heard "at least once" on the radio.

Regards,
—
Charlie

Charlie Davy <...> said:
Sterling Times <2@slewis.biz> said:

I'm not sure that I'm very good at genres nowadays.

I am pretty sure that I would'nt know "garage" or "house" if I heard it.
I presume that "electronica" is like Focus.
"Dance" must be 1930s music of the type played on Radio Normandy.
"Bluegrass" eludes me completely.

Of course, I know punk, that's like "nellie the elephant" sung very
quickly.

Classical, is of course – anything that Christopher England has heard
"at least once" on the radio.

Regards,

--

Charlie

Now now!!

Christopher England <...> said:
Quoting a previous Les Wires contribution:-

It doesn't pull in the
listeners but I would guess thats down to the platform and poor quality
AM signal rather than content.

But if the content is so 'bad' on the other stations that RAJAR shows
figures for and they are the stations with what you consider to be less
acceptable content, surely that proves that Big L's format is a
wrong-un. People obviously much prefer the content of the other
stations.

How about
a station playing 'popular' music without the competitions, traffic,
trivia....particularly the trivia.

And without a skip or fast forward facility how's it going to compete
with my iPod? What's the point of somebody many miles away streaming
music at me when I can do it myself and have much better control over it

than listening to somebody else's stream?

--
* Christopher England just said that *

Not sure your meaning about bigL, but if it was on a more popular platform I think it would be much more successful, probably me so please let me know your thoughts.

As for ipods, fine if you want to re-listen to tracks you've heard many times before, only radio (and concerts) will introduce you to new music. If chosen carefully radio is probably the most essential part of your music collection

Ok, some gooder-news, innit.

The Mailspaces people have just done some big huge mega-update to the system to deal with a number of problems.

One of the results of this is the fact that everybody by default is now using 'plain text'. You can change this in your personal preferences back to enhanced, html, etc.

However, for those using odd systems for their email rather than the more conventional Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc., it is probably best to leave things as they are in default.

Secondly, the problem that some were having trying to view Anorak Nation in IE6 is most likely because they have a nasty Toolbar or two infesting their browser, which itself causes interference to a lot of websites.

Might I suggest removing all but a Google Toolbar if you are forced to use IE6 rather than IE7. I think even the Yahoo Toolbar is subject to incompatibilities.

However, the exciting new Anorak Nation software should now be dealing with those nasty Toolbars and working round the interference they give, should you not wish to free yourself from rogue Toolbars!

There are some other minor changes that you will notice if you fiddle around, but that's really all the major stuff. Done, I might add, by listening to your complaints. (You wouldn't get that type of response at Yahoogroups!)

Anybody any other gripes, just bring 'em on so's the Mailspaces hackers can sort it even further. And thanks for the previous gripes.

—
* Christopher England just said that *

Richard Sharpe <...> said:
Alfie Noakes <...> said:

One for you to consider, Richard ??

Yes indeed thanks for that, I will try and give it a go soon.

Richard

dont forget to install Windows Defender
as that will stop unwanted software install on your PC.

also see if your pc is ready for the new windows coming out in Jan 07.

www.microsoft.com/uk

Incorrect. Here in Cambridgeshire we have access to
something called "internet" to introduce us to new
music.