Tom Bennett

My parents have just come back from the States, complete with a story about one of their friends almost marrying an englishman with the surname Chicken. Needless to say, it became the subject of much hilarity. Incredulity shortly followed and they, along with the rest of their group, started to proclaim that that surname couldn’t possibly exist.

A quick search of ancestry.co.uk has settled the argument.

Who are your chicken ancestors?

We’ve found chicken in the following databases:

• 2515 matches in UK Census Records
• 3937 matches in UK Birth, Marriage and Death Records

Needless to say, my rather schoolboy sense of humour led me to search for other strange and unwanted surnames. Did you know that there are 158 Bum’s, 103 Tit’s, 71 Bollock’s, 4 Arse’s, and no less than 1608 Poo’s recorded on the UK Birth, Marriage and Death records? Poor sods (yeah, there are 21 of those too).

Yep it’s free and available from my-xda.com. Follow this link to get it!

I’ve been umming and ahhing for nigh on a year about whether to buy a Squeezebox, all because of the price tag. £190 is a hefty sum to shell out for something that does almost exactly what my laptop already does well.

Two days ago I caved in, and ordered it online. It arrived yesterday, and was up and running within 15 minutes of getting home (actually that’s not strictly true - it was more like 45 minutes, but that was entirely down to me being a muppet with my wireless key). Actually, on that note, it’s worth pointing out that the Squeezebox supports both WEP and WPA, but if you do use WEP (which you shouldn’t be) then it will only recognise hex keys, and not ascii ones.

With little more than a few hours worth of use, I think I confidently say that it’s one of the best / coolest / amazing items that I’ve bought. It’s slick, easy to use, and best of all, it’s really quick. Your entire music library is available to you quickly, and the audio quality it great.

Best of all - you can download a plugin for Slim Server called Alien BBC which allows you to listen to all of the BBC’s streams, including podcasts and their ‘listen again’ library. It’s so slick, I love it.

5 stars. Buy one - you won’t regret it!