7:00pm 31 December '99 - The working day ends, and no problems reported with NaTKiT.

Elsewhere there really doesn't seem to be much of a problem.  The UK government's web site (which seems to have closed about July '01) says everything is going swimmingly - it's all due to the National Lottery apparently.  The 'Y2K News' site is claiming that the Beeb had a studio crash this morning but aren't reporting it, although they suspect it is Y2K.  UPDATE: We've noticed that the Beeb have reserved three pages on Teletext for communicating with their staff, so they are taking Y2K seriously. 

See you about 12:30am tomorrow morning to see if the world survived.

1:50pm 31 December '99 - A  FoN currently in Oz, no not Station Tone, promised to phone NaTCH at 12:05am January 1st 2000 Australian time to let us know if Armageddon has occurred.  Well he hasn't rung and there seem to be no reports of Armageddon so either he's drunk or can't get through.  We've had no problem getting through to Oz web sites so probably the former!  Oh dear - Fosters.

The New Zealand government have an excellent emergency site and so far all they seem to have is one power station failure, probably caused by high winds.  Australian IT have a Y2K news page with nothing on it yet, though apparently so far no panic withdrawals from ATMs in Oz.

Reports of problems with ship to land radio in Italy and mobile phones in Japan?  ... and Alan Ball is an MBE!

Yes right there between Miss Gwendolyn Ethel Baker, JP and Anthony Ball, Committee Services Officer is Alan James Ball!  D'yer know there's still some element of Empire in the honours?  This year the CPM (Colonial Police and Fire Service Medal) was awarded to Joseph Louis Santos, Inspector, Royal Gibraltar Police and Donald James Watler, Chief Inspector, Royal Cayman Islands Police.

19 December '99 - A party from NaTCH saw Ian Dury in Cambridge last night - he was brilliant and got two standing ovations.  Last chance to see?  He said he'd be back.

Did you know that in an early stage of its development the Ford Mustang was called the Allegro.

09 December '99 - The Stuff section now has a Places page.

Depressing to hear that Heinz has motor neurone disease and is in a wheelchair.  The good news is that he has been annoying authority by being too loud.

26 November '99 - Sorry, but we've been messing about with the web structure again. The biggest change is that NK1, NKWin, and Prices have been merged into Products.

Ryko have released on CD Jack Kerouac reading his novel "On the Road".  Now there's one for all you beatniks out there.  (Ryko have an impressive artist roster including Taj Mahal, John Prine, Loudon Wainwright, and Frank Zappa.  But as so often their web site hasn't kept up with the catalogue.  No sign of Truco & Zaperoko or the Wendy Carlos 4 CD boxed set that includes MIDI files and a "virtual analogue synthesizer"!)

Lord NaTCH wants to wish Happy Birthday to his great aunt Ethel who was 100 on Tuesday.  She smokes 20 Sweet Afton a day, always has a sweet sherry to hand and her doctor is dead.

12 November '99 - We've often wondered what those curt to the point of rudeness ladies at Maplin look like.  Well now we know.  Can't be anything to do with Maplin's Essex location?

07 November '99 - In anticipation of a new label printer we are using up some old label stock.  (It all saves the environment - using stuff instead of throwing it  away.  God that sounded pious!  The real reason is it satisfies some parsimonious aspect of our souls.)  The last 100 or so labels are samples of a "reusable" label.  This means that in a year's time when you come to recycle the out of date issue discs the label will peel off easily.

22 August '99 - Our web site will be unavailable for some 20 minutes between 10:00am and 11:00am Wednesday 25 August.  (Our site host, Netlink, is upgrading its Uninterruptible Power Supply ... and you thought UPS was something to do with parcels.)

15 August '99 - In Red Dwarf Rimmer's CD collection consists solely of Hammond organ music.  His Lordship would agree that this is a true vision of hell but he also recently visited the Mechanical Music Museum, Blacksmith Rd, Cotton, near Stowmarket, Suffolk.  It was brilliant!  All sorts of musical oddities plus early gramophones and even a Mighty Wurlitzer that comes up through a hole in the floor.

You can change fiddly two new pence pieces for serious LARGE old pennies to play the machines.  Brilliant!

They really are worth a visit, obviously run by enthusiastic amateurs and only three quid to get in which includes a guided tour.  They are open Sundays 14:30 to 17:30 June to September inclusive.  For more info you can contact the secretary Mrs P D Keeble on 01449 613876.  (Be warned: the "howtofindus" map in their leaflet could be clearer!)

Knock knock.  Whose there?  Wurlitzer.  Wurlitzer who?  Wurlitzer one for the money, two for the show ....

22 June '99 - We've dropped the file UsrGuide.txt on the NaTKiT1 issue discs.  (It's still on the demonstration version discs.)  UsrGuide.txt is (was?) a simple ASCII version of the user guide and so has no illustrations.  As users can now download the full user guide in Word format from here we have decided to remove UsrGuide.txt from the issue disc.

09 May '99 - Turbosound took delivery of their third NaTKiT last week.  B&W have recently bought two more NaTKiT to bring their total up to 20. B&W are easily our biggest user with Goodmans coming in second with 12 NaTKiTs, but if you take the TGi group as a whole they still just out rank B&W with a total of 22.