A big gig with a gigabyte . . .
QUESTION What became of Ray Pilgrim, the ‘anonymous’ singer of the Carry On Screaming theme song?
Ray’s answer was simple: ‘I got a better job.’
When he left school, he joined a bank and, at weekends, sang in a band called The Earthquakers. They won the Elvis Presley Jailhouse Rock Trophy and were declared all Britain Rock ’n’ Roll Champions 1958.
Job offers swiftly followed. Ray joined the Oscar Rabin Orchestra and started a weekly BBC radio series. He wrote and recorded original songs, but specialised in covering current hits.
In his relatively short singing career, he performed 800 gigs with the orchestra, made more than 200 BBC broadcasts and recorded 150 songs released on 55 labels across 25 countries, amounting to several million sales.
at the same time, he was a student at the London school of Economics, studying by day, singing by night and squeezing broadcasts and recordings in between.
summer 1962 was decision time. Ray got his degree and was offered a job by what was then the biggest computer company in the world. He had to choose between music and computers.
Ray made a clean break from the orchestra and broadcasting, but was able to fit in recording sessions for another three years.
The Carry On screaming theme song came out of the blue. He agreed to do it, provided it was credited as ‘anon’. It was to be his last professional singing job.
In the early years of his new career, Ray specialised in banking automation. He worked on the first network-based computer system in British banking and helped plan computer networking needs of the future.
He’s used email and has had a screen on his desk since the seventies.
In the Eighties he was in senior management with responsibility for a large group developing network software and running widespread international network services.
In 1990, Ray started his own company in software development and consultancy. He gave seminars, chaired international network conferences and won first prize in a national Economy in Government competition.
aged 83, Ray is in no doubt he made the right decision to quit singing.
Name and address supplied.
QUESTION Why does my upto-date computer take three times longer to boot up from restart than from power on?
FROm the earliest days of computing, the elapsed time taken to boot a system has been an issue, and designers have developed shortcuts to speed it up.
a cold start requires the operating system, such as Windows, to be loaded from scratch, the attached devices to be identified, drivers loaded and the system to be prepared for users to log on.
If fast start-up is enabled in Windows 10, which is the default, then when it next shuts down it saves much of the information it acquired during the last cold boot to a file on disk.
The next time it is booted, it uses the saved information to do a warm start so it is ready to be used much sooner.
sometimes, such as when fixes are being installed, a fast start is not appropriate because the old programs, not the updated ones, will continue to be used, so it is necessary to perform a cold start. Windows restart closes the system down without saving information to disk, so the next boot will be a cold start.
many other devices, such as mobile phones and iPads, default to a warm start when turned on.
special key combinations or a hidden reset button may have to be used to force a cold start, which is sometimes necessary to resolve problems.
George Knight, Welwyn Garden City, Herts.
QUESTION What did Nostradamus have to say about 2020?
NOsTRadamus is the 16th century apothecary and writer, famous for his 1555 book Centuries, a collection of 1,000 quatrains (four-line rhyming verses) said to foretell the future.
supposed predictions attributed to Nostradamus are rolled out whenever there is a catastrophe.
There has been an internet meme doing the rounds that states: ‘There will be a twin year (2020) from which will arise a queen (corona) who will come from the east (China) and who will spread a plague (virus) in the darkness of night, on a country with seven hills (Italy) and will transform the twilight of men into dust (death), to destroy and ruin the world. It will be the end of the world economy as you know it.’
However, this is fake news — this prediction does not appear anywhere in the writings of Nostradamus.
some have latched on to a genuine prediction, Century 2:53. ‘The great plague of the maritime city. Will not cease until there be avenged the death. Of the just blood, condemned for a price without crime.’
Hubei province is a landlocked part of eastern China, so Wuhan can hardly be described as a maritime city. However, the disease was traced to a seafood market, which could be a loose link to the quatrain.
Nostradamus’s predictions usually require a great deal of hindsight to be linked to current events.
Rachel Wilson, Bath, Somerset.
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