It has taken about seven years to get here, but our new community radio station NE1fm finally launched on Friday 8th June 2007 broadcasting on 102.5 FM.

The whole story about how we got here is long and complicated so I will save you from that story for now.

On day two and three we broadcast live from the Newcastle Green Festival bringing live music and the capturing the whole atmosphere.

Currently we are broadcasting live on week nights between 7 and 11, and will be expanding the schedule over the next six weeks. Why not tune in now and then and you might find something you like.

…has passed it’s MOT.

I have a lovely little car (stop laughing). It may not be the newest, fastest or most fashionable in the world, but it keeps on going and is fuel efficient. Normally I ignore the “Where do you wind it up?” and “Is it waterproof?” gags because it gets me to where I need to go.

Anyway, it was in for it’s MOT, and unlike last year I thought it might need some significant work doing on the exhaust to pass. Well it did, and considering the car is only worth £250 (stop laughing again) it was touch and go if it would be worth while.

The good news is that it has now passed the MOT for under £200, this including two new tyres that were only just legal, the MOT cost and labour. Thanks to ERB Services for the good work, and thanks Kev for recommending them.

Google have introduced the Web History service so if you are logged in to your Google account you can see what you searched for on Google. You can also see what sites you have visited if you have the Google Toolbar installed and enabled, but I do not use this feature for privacy reasons, although if the data was regulated under UK legislation and could be removed by request I probably would.

The result were quite interesting. Apparently I have made 9,283 Google searches since November 5th 2005 and the top ten are…

1. cacher of the month
2. high orbit podcast
3. Alistair MacDonald
4. ne1fm
5. alistair macdonald
6. dabbar
7. catcher of the month
8. digifusion
9. cranky geeks
10. NE1 2SW

I can split these searches down in to three categories. First things like “cacher of the month” and “high orbit podcast” are sites that I use semiregularly and can not remember the web site URL. I search things like dabbar, ne1fm and my name to keep track of what others are saying about them (and me). The third category is just things that I have needed to find and only “digifusion” appears in the top 10, but considering the ad hoc nature of searching the only surprising thing about this is that anything for this category appears in the top ten list.

For reference “NE1 2SW” is the postcode for my office that I often use as a starting point on Google maps, so I guess those queries are logged as well.

On Friday Gillian and I broke up.

I am obviously upset by this and and taking a little time out as a result, so please expect things to be a little more behind schedule than normal.

It is our hope to retain our friendship that we had for a long time before getting romantically involved.

I have just finished dong a few updates to me web site. I have done a few things including a link to my latest Flickr images and a tumblelog powered by Tubler that I am still to finish.

I am quite excited by the tumblelog despite being rather ambivalent about it at first. Now when I come across something interesting (web page, blog entry, image) that is worth noting but I don’t have time to blog, I just click one button and it is listed.

I will also be moving more of my personal rubbish from my main blog to my Vox blog. Tech stuff, rants, fun stuff and news will remain here. Pictures of parties and office plants will be on Vox.

Sorry if the site went a little weird as I was uploading it. It will go weird again soon when I finish it off.

Finally I am trying to get in to Twitter. I am still rather concerned about putting information out so publicly, but I will be using it to say when I have blogged, updates the web site and things like that in the near future as an experiment.

Okay, the unicycle. Some people were a little confused as to why my brother bought me one for Christmas. Granted it is not the most normal of presents, but it is not a daft as you may think.

Many a year ago I tried to ride a unicycle at a party and after a while managed to go a reasonable distance. We borrowed the unicycle for a week and after a few bruises, a new window in the garage door (it was only small) and a lot of getting up I because quite good at going in a straight line.

My brother obviously remembered this, and decided that perhaps I needed more practic so I can go round corners, so that is why he gave the a unicycle for Christmas. Personally I think it was a great present and next year you are all getting unicycles from me :-).

I have enabled anonymous comments on my blog so you will no longer need to register with Blogger to make a point. Although I did consider moving away from Blogger to enable more customization it is doing what I need it to do, and doing it well, so I will stick with it for now.

If you are trying to contact me in a hurry you may have a few problems. My mobile is working but the voice mail is playing up a little as I am not always notified I have one waiting.

Sadly I am also not on email most of the time as the free Wifi we were expecting from British Telecom as part of BarCampLondon2 appears to be a 24 hours pass that will leave me off-line unless I pay. As you have probably guessed I am a little peeved about that.

Sorry about that, but if it is urgent the best send me a text so I can get back to you.

Despite music licensing issues there are many many Internet radio station available to listed to and I am rarely left with noting to listen to.

Despite this is was intrigued by postings on Media UK and comments on Tech Talk Radio podcast so I decided to check this site out.

It is the result of the Music Genome Project, a project that categorises attributes of music. All you do is select a artist or track you like and the site will go off selecting music that shares similar attributes. You can select the music you like and don’t as it goes to help in the selection. what you end up with is a tremendously well tailored service for what you want to listen to.

So if you like music, no matter what type, then have a look (and listen) to pandora.com.

Last year I was sent this screen scraper for the RAC, probably to persuade me to renew my membership. I blogged about this in December.

To my knowledge you can not buy these, but I would recommend it if you could. It fits nicely in the door’s pocket and because it is more flexible than your traditional scraper it cleans the windows of ice and show fare more effectively.