Speaking too soon, and fun with hardware.

We have crane, right next to the bridge, right next to the skate-park site. Could it be? Could they be lifting into place the pre-fab blocks, or is something to do with the bridge repair? No I'll be optimistic and say it's the skate-park.

Got stuck getting to the bridge, so when I finally got it in sight I roughly timed the lights. Stopped me at 13:59, sporadic traffic headed towards me, let us through at 14:02. I got through and we were all stopped at the pedestrian crossing that had just changed, as a result I still had the other lights in view. I got to the top of Bridge Street and glanced back, the town-side lights had switched to green; the time? 14:02.


Here's a story from Jim (Hi Jim) which I'll whittle down to the essentials. Jim had a nice new car, which came with a nice new CD-player. The nice CD-player was MP3 compatible. So seeing as you can fit more tracks onto one CD in that format, and to save the hassle of switching CDs around in the car, tracks were ripped and tracks were burnt. The disc played on the home stereo, the disc played on the DVD-player, but it would not play in the car. So Jim called the garage who told him it might the speed he's burning them at, Jim checked with me and I told him that was bollocks.

Brain-racking time. Jim had copied the files over as data (correct) using some software that came with his computer. Digging up the manual it turns out that you if you go to the audio options you can burn an "MP3 CD" this adds an .m3u file (a playlist). Maybe the car-player demanded this playlist file? Maybe when they talked about speed they were on about sample rate? Other then a faulty player these were the only two viables I could think of.

Nope. The car goes back to the showroom, the CD is put into the car and fails to work. The CD is put into another car's player and is just fine. "Ah you'll have to check at the service centre" One drive later and this simple test is repeated with the same results with an added twist. Another CD burned by the service centre, one that works in another car, also fails to play. Hey faulty player.

Okay the car manufacturer want the serial number of the player, yeah that's right nobody records it when it goes in and guess what... it's not visible from the exterior. It's a box, the whole thing has to be pulled out the player the air-con controls everything just to get at the player, slap it on a photocopier and take the number. At which point the whole lot has to be all put back together again.

Now call me naive, but when you're added electronic packages to, well anything, that come from different manufacturer wouldn't it be an idea to record the details about them before you plug them all in?

Also makes me wonder about their test procedures.