@tomharris @fireh9lly i heard about the boxing day tsunami on ceefax, which really undermines the emotional impact of such a story

@envgen @tomharris @fireh9lly same wtf

@jk @tomharris @fireh9lly were there tvs back then that played the radio accompanied by ceefax pages? and maybe we had carols on the radio via the tv which was also displaying ceefax? i cant think of any other reason why TWO unrelated children would be reading ceefax news headlines on boxing day morning. like, maybe one child in the entire country, and only by accident, but TWO?

@envgen @tomharris @fireh9lly they definitely had a extremely early-morning TV show called Pages From Ceefax which replaced the test card slot. usually they had like, muzak, or sometimes something good like mark shreeve production music or somethin??? maybe carols at xmas

@jk @envgen @tomharris @fireh9lly most of the time pages from ceefax had a horrible sine wave or noise or something?? occaisonally it had elevator music though

@kit @jk @envgen @tomharris @fireh9lly

it was very common from 1998 for the BBC to transmit Ceefax pages (normally with music) as an alternative to the Test Card F (later J), which was only transmitted during engineering work.

its possible also 1KHz GLITS tone (Graham's line up interval tone signal) was transmitted around the time NICAM stereo was introduced (this has gaps to identify left and right channels to show that stereo is working)

@vfrmedia @jk @envgen @tomharris @fireh9lly maybe i always caught that GLITS tone ^^ it always made it very unpleasant for me to use, as a babby i didn't think about muting or w/e

@kit @jk @envgen @tomharris @fireh9lly

a lot of kids of my generation (1970s), found test tones, colour bars, test cards both "scary" but also strangely attractive (perhaps thats why I ended up working as a broadcast engineer for a few years 😆 )

BTW this is the Graham who invented the GLITS tone

https://ips.org.uk/?post_type=fellow&p=5887

@kit @jk @envgen @tomharris @fireh9lly oh yeah, they used to do the "just show pages from teletext" thing on public access tv here in holland too up until like, the mid-'00s
usually accompanied by one of the (at the time 5) public radio channels here or just straight up silence

@Thaminga @jk @envgen @tomharris @fireh9lly america totally missed out on the wonders of teletext

@Thaminga @jk @envgen @tomharris @fireh9lly i was really happy when the look around you dvds had fake "pages from ceefax" in the extras

@jk @envgen @tomharris this is the answer to the mystery. you were both up at Real Xmas Morning Hours!

@KitRedgrave @fireh9lly Chicken + orange = OK
Chicken + rice = OK
Chicken + avocado = OK
Chicken + mayo = OK
Rice + mayo = not good
Avocado + mayo = not good
Orange + mayo = not good

The mayo is the real problem - needs a lighter dressing.

@ghost_bird @fireh9lly yeah my thought was "the avocado needs to be the centerpiece of this" and avocado and mayo is not good

@KitRedgrave @fireh9lly Maybe if the avocado was underripe it would be... not better, exactly, but less obviously wrong?

@ghost_bird @fireh9lly they just did not know how to handle avocado in 1979 huh

@KitRedgrave @fireh9lly In the U.K. in 1979? Definitely not. It was a bad time for produce generally - golden-delicious apples and rock-hard tomatoes.

@ghost_bird
@KitRedgrave
The same preserved Teletext has a bunch of info about what fruit and vegetables are good to eat at the time, I'll get them for you later

@ghost_bird @KitRedgrave they're very glitchy due to the preservation method used, but yeah