So to re-cable my (OEM) Rega RB300 tonearm, I have have to use feeder wire, in my case, a high E string from my electric guitar. (As the folk in the guide on Vinyl Engine did). It has to be straight to go through two narrow holes. 

At this point it enters the main arm body, but it needs to then go forward, but of course, it doesn't want to. 

The Vinyl Engine guide recommends kinking the wire, but I couldn't get a kinked wire to exit the lower part. 

Anyone got any advice?

Update 25th July2014: I'm going to send it back to Audio Note for repair. It's far too hard and I broke the earth wire.

It's Alive

Oh yeah, baby! I'm bringing the blog back. Blog 2.0. Whatever. More uninformed content will follow. Soon.

Closedown

I think it's pretty obvious that I am now an ex-blogger.

I am just noise in the signal-to-noise of the internet.

You can keep up with what I'm doing on twitter and Google+, links are on http://worldofnic.org.

Ooh. Android.

So it appears I can blog from my phone. I'm not entirely sure I'd want to, but if push came to shove, I could.

Happy X10 Mini owner.

Android FTW!

Oracle vs Google. .NET and Mono

Miguel de Icaza (Mr. Mono) has written an excellent piece on ORCL suing GOOG over Android/Dalvik.

Oracle, as Sun, extracted $1.6bn from MSFT, and $900m of this was for patents. So we can safely assume that  Microsoft's .NET implementation is covered by this deal.

Now Miguel and  Mono folk will be crowing about how wonderful the Microsoft Patent Licence Grant is (and it is a generous gift). However, one small point: Mono is also likely to be in breach of Oracle's patents, but Microsoft do not have the rights to confer these rights to Mono.

So Mono folks - you're just as likely to get a visit from Oracle as Google, or at least you would be, if NOVL had a Market Cap 50-100 times the size of it's current woeful state.

Book Review: Bernard Sumner: Confusion - Joy Division, Electronic and New Order Versus the World

Confusion - David Nolan's book on Bernard Sumner tells us more about the man than we knew before, including his real name.

Yes, we have to put up with reading about Ian Curtis' untimely demise and that nightclub somewhere up north again, but the necessary duplication is kept to a minimum.

It's not an official biography, but Bernard interjects corrections occasionally. At the end, we do know more about him, but still not much. He's a private person, who doesn't want fame and doesn't even want to clarify people's misconceptions! Frustrating and confusing.

Luckily, Nolan writes well (if with the occasional amount of repetition) and has interviewed many, many people from Bernard's past and it's this combination of research and good writing that keeps you going through the mystery of Bernard's life.

8/10 - well worth reading.

How a die-hard UNIX head switched to Windows

If you know me, you'll have heard me lavish praise on UNIX and Linux and deride Microsoft for nearly everything. But as Keynes said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

Here are some facts/opinions/hunches

Windows 7

• Windows 7 is fast enough. It's a lot faster than Vista -and boots in a similar time to Ubuntu
• Windows 7 has a usable, attractive, well-thought out UI.
• Windows 7's power options and Switch-User work. Consistently.
• Office 2007 still beats OpenOffice 3.x and is only £50 for 3 licences (assuming you have a kid).
• Most stable version of Windows on the desktop yet.
  

Development

• Visual Studio 2008 is better than Eclipse, Netbeans, JDeveloper, etc.
• The CLR is more efficient than the JVM in terms of RAM and speed.
• C# is better than Java. (Being, fundamentally, a re-engineered, re-thought out version of Java with more features).
• LINQ to * (very clever).
• Silverlight 3 beats Flash and Java applets hands down in resource usage.
  

Servers

• Windows still may not have UNIX-levels of stability, but 2008 does appear to actually be stable. At last. (I don't have enough data to judge this).
  
• Active Directory is the de facto SSO/Directory mechanism for many enterprises. It works.

The Linux desktop

• I don't like KDE - it's brilliant "under the hood" but isn't usable.
• GNOME is usable, simple and attractive. It would like to be written in C# and run on the Mono CLR, but there's no way a bunch of Free Software advocates are going to do that. Expect a fork and both versions to die slowly. KDE wins (and usability suffers).

Other comments

• It's just a shame that Outlook and Exchange suck so much. ;-)
  
• I have no experience with SQL Server 2008 but I hear good things
• Is IIS 7.x stable?
• Expression Blend is pretty cool
• I wish I had multiple desktops.