Basil Brown Smarter than The Internet. Shock Probe.

Should you wish to test your mettle against the combined weight of human experience, as represented by a clever meta-search of popular search engines, try this site. Here's the transcript of how your own correspondent fared...


The internet says:
Hi. I'm smarter than you and I can prove it.

Puny human says:
What with?

The internet says:
Well, I'm tired of this domain name and I don't like the site all that much so I'm off.

Puny human says:
You're supposed to be omniscient! Huh!

The internet says:
I know he is supposed to be omniscient as well so he must have.

Puny human says:
Talk sense, laddie!

The internet says:
The end of that day brought the Reverend Lazarus Barden to the McElwaine place yet again to talk sense into the one sane member of the clan, Sister Tabitha.

Puny human says:
Ohhh. riiight, you just make sentences out of keywords.

The internet says:
cunt randomNum = Math.

Puny human says:
arse parse

The internet says:
I will try with nanoxml tomorrow, which does not use the XMLPull API, which might be easier .

Puny human says:
I'll take that as your statement of defeat. Farewell and Webspeed to you and your kin.

The internet says:
Click on a checkbox above to open one.

Interesting to see that the internet had to resort to bad language in order to score a cheap point. I would never sanction gratuitous use of the cunt word. Yet another reason to scorn the mighty giant and entrust your queries to me and my sponsors.

Clean and Restore Vinyl Records; LP's, 12" and 7" Singles

Drewbie said...

Do you know how to clean vinyl records? I got some out the other night that I hadn't played in a while and they all had awful surface noise which I'm sure wasn't there before. When I looked at the playing surfaces, I saw they were looking quite dirty, with marks on them, but there don't seem to be any bad scratches.

I've heard you can pay to have them professionally cleaned. Do you how much this costs and how effective these services are?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Basil Brown said...

Why yes! But I will say that this is one I reckon I should be charging for... it's taken much experimentation and several damaged LP's to master the technique. Still, you could always pay an extended visit to my sponsors...

The spotting will probably be caused by damp; this also causes the grooves to clag up and chronic surface noise is the result. It won't come off with a dry wipe and if you've ever tried washing a record with tap water, you won't do it again. The water leaves behind unmoveable [presumably mineral] deposits and a record that's seen tap water becomes irretrievably damaged.

And don't use alchohol, spirits, petrol, meths, turps etc. Irretrievable damage will follow.

Warning! The following method is not suitable for use with fancy moving-coil and/or any other unduly expensive cartridges, as the final stage of cleaning is achieved by playing the record in a damp state. That said, I do use an m/c cartridge, an Ortofon MC15, but this is a comparitively rugged thing [and I'm v. careful]. I'm assuming a reasonable level of dexterity, mechanical sympathy, electrical awareness and common-sense. I take no responsibility for any loss/damage to equipment, property, record collection or to the wellbeing of your own mortal-coil should things go bad. Nothing written here constitutes advice, it is merely a sharing of techniques that have worked for me.

Caveats away. What you need to clean vinyl LP's and singles is....

.... fanfare ....

1/ De-ionised Water, as sold for batteries and steam irons.

2/ Fairy Liquid [or equivalent]

3/ Small receptacle in which to mix solution.

4/ Tesco Value bog-roll [Or equivalent. Don't use coloured tissue. A lint-free cloth would probably be a better option, but I use aforementioned bog-roll without problems]

5/ A shiny new pin.

6/ Record-cleaning brush.

7/ Stylus-cleaning brush.

The method:

a/ Clean receptacle thoroughly, using only de-ionised water.

b/ Pour a tablespoon of de-ionised water into receptacle and add a TINY amount of Fairy Liquid. A blobette on the end of a pin kinda tiny. Stir well. If there's foam or significant bubbling, you've got too much detergent.

c/ Place record on turntable and rotate at 33RPM. Pour mixture onto the playing surface, taking care not to spill any on the label. Centrifugal force will make the fluid run towards the edge, so with [clean and dry] finger, guide the liquid suspension until the entire playing surface is wet. If your fluid has the correct concentration, it will just about cling to the surface as one big wet mass. Too weak and it will settle as individual blobs; too detergent-rich and you'll see foaming.

d/ Stop the turntable and with your clean finger, feel around the record's playing-surface for moveable clags. Don't take so long over this that the surface dries out.

e/ Prepare a cleaning pad from several sheets of bog-roll or whatever. Rotate record at 33 RPM. Gently press the pad against the record, so that it absorbs the fluid.

f/ There should now be no visible wetness on the playing surface. With a record-cleaning brush, carefully wipe the surface so that all loose matter is picked up.

g/ Play the record. If all has gone well, you should now hear clear black silence after the needle hits the lead-in groove. After playing about half the side, some noise may return, both as the record dries out and as the needle picks up grooveclag. Clean stylus and repeat until entire side plays clean and clear.

Important Notes:

Be very, very careful not to spill cleaning fluid. In a turntable, there's often only the motor to really worry about, but be sure you know what's under the platter and where. If in any doubt at all, improvise a method whereby the wet stage is carried out by hand on a stationary record well away from anything wired.

Don't start with your best LP. It will take trial and error to achieve perfection, so practise on something insipid and replaceable, like Bon Jovi.

If all the above seems too much like hard work, there's always help available from the growing number of people who've bought record-cleaning machines on e-bay. A proper specialist may charge a few quid more, but if you have something at all precious then it's worthwhile.


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You may also want to repair a scratched CD.

A Scent of Spring

Do you know the way to San Jose? Need directions? Ask Basil is the place for interactive fun with an increasingly irascible Basil and the place for answers to those questions too random for Wikipedia and just too trivial to bother a proper pro-blogger who doesn't have to frickin' beg for clicks on his Ad-links with.

Ask a question here, or from any comments link. The best Q&A's will be published as seperate pages whenever I feel the backroom in the store of human knowledge could do with it's cobwebs illuminated by everybody's [except the FBI's perhaps] favourite searchbot.

End the preamble etc. etc.
Until I find a catchier catchprase, just Ask Baz is all I can say.

How to Defy Ageing

Snitterbitch said...

Baz,

I can hardly believe it's happened but I've just hit 40 and now I can't think about anything else other than my decaying beauty. My ex sez I still look good, but that's only because he wants to get me into bed and anyway he's no oil painting himself. Can you recommend any skincare products or an anti-ageing cream?

Thanks!


Basil Brown said...

In response to your question about my recommending an anti-ageing cream:

Exercise and moisturize! Oil of Oleh-Oleh works as well as any anti-ageing cream in this respect; any improvement you perceive from using an expensive anti-ageing oil is likely to be pure psychologica. Sorry, but there it is. Don't let me put you off though, it's only my 'umble opinion and I'm sure you won't have to look all that hard to find someone with a speculatively-priced anti-ageing cream to sell.

The expensive anti-ageing creams will make extravagant claims for themselves and will always be marketed as containing some quasi-scientific sounding "miracle" ingredient like Pro-Revitalift V7 or Aloe VXD. Our elders had a term for this sorta thing, and that term was Snake Oil.

Anyways; the companies selling expensive anti-ageing products are trading on faith, fear and envy. They'd have you believe us chaps are only interested in youthful perfection, Perfect 10 and all that nonsense when, in fact, our sexuality tends to be... [sniff] a little more complex. [Even tho' it may not always appear so to be.]

My guess is that if your ex still wants to boff you after whatever ageing process you've undoubtedly put him through, then you're probably doing okay.