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Belated congratulations to Steve and Nóirín on their wedding, I’m not sure where in the world they are at the moment but I’m sure they’re having a ball.

I was only able to make the wedding afters but it was great to see a bunch of familiar faces (diamond, noirin, cheez, zoney, bruce, luisa, atlas, drusilla, ducky, dredg, liv, froodie, braz, artemis, rosie, tony) and some new faces (john, daniel and many others). It was my first time in the Radisson SAS St. Helen’s and it is a stunning setting for such an event.

Went home on Friday and was pleasantly surprised to find that Ciaran would be in Waterford for the weekend.

So many things happened over the weekend; I bought myself a jacket, I sat on the Plaza drinking cans and Kopparbergs for a good 3 hours while talking to Ciaran, I drank most of a bottle of Absinth, I fell asleep on my living room floor, I laughed, I got a sorely needed injection of sociability.

I also met up with bigbro and rach in DUB and chatted about political matters, plus I retrieved my PXC 250’s. Many thanks again to Gar and Rach for dropping off the headphones.

On the flight back to EIN the battery in my H320 swelled a bit and put pressure on the hard drive, forcing the head to a stand still (in to the platter I think, I’m quite sure this can’t be good for the player). Without access to MP3’s or Video  (and not wanting to just stare at a headrest for 50 mins) I did the only other thing possible, I switched on the FM receiver in my player, just to see what would happen.

I know there are funny laws about broadcasting in the electromagnetic spectrum while on a plane (for fear of interfering with cockpit instrumentation) but I suspect there is nothing saying I cant use my DAP to pick up FM signals (but I may well be wrong).

Anyway, a few things happened:

1. I could pick up several BBC channels perfectly while we were over the UK (at 14,000 ft). I assumed (incorrectly) that a plane was a Farady cage and would block external electromagnetic waves. This leads to the question “If the UK/US has nationwide WiMax (or its successor) coverage in the future will we be able to use it on planes?”.
2. Reception was pristine for extended periods (10-15mins) and would then rapidly  decline (within 2-3 seconds it would go from almost no noise to complete static).  I assume this was due to geographical features (or lack thereof) on the ground and the speed we were travelling at).
3. I found a band of complete silence from 101.5-101.7Mhz. There was a little static at 101.75Mhz (the iRiver only steps up in 0.5Mhz increments) and 101.8Mhz was back to normal static. This remained for the entire flight duration, it was coming from the plane somewhere. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to record it (swollen battery) but I suspect it was either an iTrip (which had been left on in hand baggage while the iPod had been turned off and so was transmitting nothing) or some component of the plane itself (Boeing 737-800).

That’s about it, it was a superb break and now I’m back in The Netherlands.

My stock iRiver H320 earbuds finally died last Friday as I was on the train from Roermond to Maastricht. I had a few minutes before my train to Leuven left so I popped in the Free Record Shop in Maastricht Station.

I grabbed a pair of Sennheiser MX 350’s for ~€11 and they are great (for the price). They are comfortable (I’ve worn them for about 4 hours straight with no problems), have quite good sound quality (again, for the design / price) and stay in my ears.

I still prefer my Sennheiser PXC 250’s (but I left them in Ireland ).