Tag: music

  • Ramblings from the Valley: 2026 Edition

    We hope you all have had a wonderful Christmas and New Year here at Reyt Repair. And what better way to kick off the New Year with something different from the usual repair talk? A space for which to say what’s on our minds – or to just spout out utter nonsense!

    The idea here is to present a collection of shorter articles that cover different topics outside of the world of repairs. Today, I cover a few topics that come to my mind in recent months. So, here they are!

    Loyalty in retail…to who, exactly?

    A trend I spotted in recent years is that supermarkets and other retailers have started gating in-store offers and discounts for stuff you buy behind their loyalty programmes. Tesco has its Clubcard scheme; Sainsbury’s has the Nectar card; Morrison’s with its More card…well, these are just some examples.

    But the thing is, it didn’t seem all that long ago that these supermarkets made special offers and discounts available to all of their customers in-store. We could go into the supermarket, buy what we need, and enjoy the savings without the need for a loyalty card or app. Now it’s a case of, “Oh, you don’t have our loyalty card or app? Well, too bad; you’ll have to pay full price for your groceries!”

    Darning with faint praise

    If you’re an avid gamer, then you’ll likely encounter short ditties and sequences that play upon game overs or failing challenges in video games. There are game overs where the protagonists meet their end in various ways. You have games that mock you for failing a particular challenge, such as the 1987 single “Oh Yeah” by Yello playing when you fail a licence test while playing Gran Turismo 4.

    But then there’s games that sarcastically praise players who barely scrape through the difficult levels. For example, the 2008 video game Sonic Unleashed features two versions of the “results screen” that play when completing a level. There’s the regular version, which normally plays when you perform well enough during the level. But if you clear the level, but do it really badly (particularly on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game), you get the dreaded “E Rank” version instead! The “E Rank” version is an intentionally bad rendition of the normal results screen music, with the orchestra deliberately playing the instruments off-key. I have some examples to share of when this sound would play in response to different real world events or situations;

    • A student barely scrapes through passing exams for a course at college or university
    • Any victories in military battles/conflicts that come at such huge cost to the victor(s) that they are tantamount to defeats, hence the term “pyrrhic victory”
    • It turns out a business barely broke even (or made a loss!) on revealing its end-of-year financial results
    • You manage to bake or cook food for a party, but the food turned out to taste disgusting to the point of making people who ate it physically sick!
    • The act representing your country finishes bottom in the Eurovision Song Contest. Bonus points worth of sucking rotten eggs if said act ends up with the dreaded “nil points”! *cough*Jemini*cough*

    Metallic mayhem in the media

    I remember watching the original series of Robot Wars on the telly as a youngster. It was huge in the nineties, when millions of people tuned in to watch the show! It’s where teams of amateur and professional roboteers build and operate remote controlled combat robots in an arena. Most events involve teams destroying opposing robots with weapons mounted on their own robots, though the first two series feature events that test their driving and control skills instead.

    But there was something I thought was missing as a potential event, though; what if there was an event that features various different everyday objects that roboteers get to destroy in the arena? There could be old televisions, fax machines, toilets, grandfather clocks, and many other kinds of destructible stuff. For extra messiness, we could also add in foodstuffs such as watermelons, bananas, tinned foods and cakes. Imagine Sir Killalot spit-roasting a whole turkey over the fire pit amidst all the carnage!

    Among the inevitable merch that comes with being a notable franchise, there was an official single (complete with its own music video), which was released as “Sir Killalot vs. Robo Babe – Robot Wars (Android Love)”; it uses the music from the TV show as the base for the song. I recently saw the music video on Bilibili (a Chinese language video hosting site, similar to YouTube, Dailymotion and others). If you want to see the video yourself, I recommend watching the video here instead.

    From watching the video and finding as much info as I could about the track, the song is best as an instrumental if you can find it. I’d have to agree with the criticism about it, though; I didn’t see much Robot Wars about the song, with Sir Killalot (as in, the House Robot itself), the remote control roboteers use to pilot their robots, and a replica of the arena the female dancers perform on, the only obvious references to the show I noticed. And the song itself was pretty much a dud, as it peaked at a paltry #51 in the UK SIngles Chart – in the week “Can We Fix It?” by Bob the Builder spent its third week at the top of the charts!

    The (Many (Mis)adventures of Lofi Girl

    Speaking of YouTube, as someone who regularly follows the Lofi Girl YouTube channel after developing an interest in lofi music, I see polls where they ask the community a question, along with some canned answers. Personally, I find it much more humourous to come up with a different response, even if it’s only vaguely relevant to the question in some way. Let me show you an example;

    The first thing that comes to my mind on seeing this poll, is a picture portraying a muster of storks constantly defecating out babies from the sky, with Jade (the mascot of the Lofi Girl YouTube channel) among the adults trying to catch the babies. Ensuring that there are boys and girls for every adult in the world – fears about overpopulation be damned!

    One can really let their imagination run wild when responding to polls and other posts on the channel. Here are just a few other examples I have in mind;

    • Choosing between starting a study session at 1am or 1pm? How about starting a study session in 1 BC instead? Basically portray the study area as appropriate for the time era, with Jade in the role of the pregnant Virgin Mary.
    • The YouTube short, where a short animation of Jade visiting a cultural area of France is followed by various photos of different kinds of cheese? Imagine a cartoon, where she competes in the annual Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling and Wake events. She runs down the steep hill with fellow competitors, trips and tumbles down the hill (at one point landing arse-first on someone’s head on the way down!), and finally stops dazed and confused at the bottom of the hill!
    • If one wants to get rather edgy, how about this short where Jade accidentally pushes her cat out of her bedroom window? Surely one must admit that it could have been a lot worse: she could have pushed her cat out of the triplex penthouse window on floor 131, in Central Park Tower in New York, sending it plummeting all the way down the side the building, until it crash lands on top of a yellow taxi!
    • Asking folks what Jade would drink during her endless study sessions? Tea? Coffee? A mug of hot chocolate? Or maybe she would consume some energy drinks instead! A half-dozen of these in a short period of time, and the resultant caffeine overload would send her vigorously bouncing all over her bedroom, screaming “WhEeEeEeEeE!!!1!! bOuNcY bOuNcY bOuNcY!!!!1!!1!! wHeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeE!!!!!1!!1!1!!” No wonder she keeps failing all of her exams with all the resultant crashouts she has to endure if this is anything to go by…

    When AI makes upgrades expensive…

    I noticed lately that prices for RAM and internal storage have been going crazy; at various online retailers, RAM modules and kits are going for at least three four times what they were just a few months. Apparently, this was due to the three main manufacturers of RAM (Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix) shifting focus towards producing RAM for AI datacentres. Right now, it seems one can buy a whole laptop or a desktop PC for the cost of a single kit of RAM (depending on the amount of RAM the kit provides)!

    The knock-on effect of this is that it will make computers, mobile devices and anything else more expensive while the manufacturers prioritise producing components for the AI datacentres that are popping up all over the place. Probably a good time to hang on to to computers and phones we have in the meantime!

    The digital rivers of slop

    Speaking of AI, you probably have noticed that in recent years, there’s a lot of content on many sites that are synthetically generated using AI tools. People are using such tools to generate video clips, images and photos, stories, essays, and other material, often with synthetic voiceovers. Because such material is often poor quality and clearly artificial, many people call such content “AI slop”.

    Revenge videos are especially a common sight on YouTube (both as full videos and short-form versions); they are often created with largely similar thumbnails, story scripts, and various video footage used as backgrounds. They frequently also show words or sentences on screen as they are read out. A lot of channels that create such content post these videos multiple times a day.

    What is particularly scary about AI, is that as the hardware and LLMs evolve, the content produced using AI tools are becoming more and more convincing. Before long (if not already), we’ll reach a point where AI-generated content is so convincing, even fact-checkers and those who are particularly savvy in spotting synthetic content would struggle to tell AI-generated material with authentic ones! I can forgive those who look at producers of AI-generated content the same way they look at hippos “muck-spreading” in the wild or in captivity!

    Wrapping up

    And these are what came to my mind in recent months! I find it refreshing to experiment with different kinds of articles and try out new ideas. In fact, I’d love to share more thoughts about what I’ve seen in the world in the future! Maybe I should get Gareth to share what’s on his mind in a future article, too…

  • Let’s fix lyrical!

    Hello again fellow readers and fixers! We like to change things up every now and then, and today, we’re exploring the world of music! Over decades, many songs tend to focus on themes such as romance, growing up and friendship. Music in general can be a powerful force in many ways. It can lift people’s moods, help them come to terms with loss or breakups, or rekindle memories of past good times. They might even help people focus during study or work sessions.

    But what about songs that relate to fixing things in some way? Today, we’ve chosen a selection of songs that might not seem relevant at first, but actually make sense in the context of repairs and maintenance! Maybe we should create a local internet radio station that plays songs which relate to repairs and DIY…

    “When I’m Cleaning Windows” by George Formby

    Ah yes. Those of us who clear junk off other peoplesā€™ computers for a living (or just as a hobby) will notice parallels with this classic song. The song is about a window cleaner, who sees what various people are doing in their homes as he cleans their windows. Just like when a technician sees what people were doing on their computers as s/he cleans their (windows!) operating systems!

    In fact, one can make an analogy between public/second-hand computers and toilets – you have no idea what the previous user was doing with them before they send them in for repair, resale or recycling!

    “The Mending Song” by Bagpuss

    And now, hereā€™s a short ditty from the short-lived, yet well-loved classic British childrenā€™s TV show. One that Gareth himself fondly remembers! This song is about using glue to fix broken things and make them just like new. Of course, it helps us remember not to just throw away otherwise viable items!

    However, glue is just one way to fix broken things. We can also use nails, screws, sticky tape and other means. As long as we use the right tools and materials for the right repair job!

    “The Three R’s” by Jack Johnson

    Now hereā€™s a song that suits us to a tee! This green take on the 1989 song ā€œThe Magic Numberā€ by De La Soul is about the three Rā€™s; reduce, reuse and recycle. That means we should consume less, reuse viable everyday items, and recycle what we canā€™t use anymore.

    However, there are some other R’s we can think of – renew, remix, renovate, refurbish, rework. We can even make up some more R’s as we go along!

    “Can We Fix It?” by Bob the Builder

    Now what list of songs about fixing stuff would be complete without this chart-topping hit song from the early noughties? The theme song from childrenā€™s TV series Bob the Builder emphasises teamwork and problem solving in completing projects. The projects on the show primarily feature renovations, constructions and repairs. In the same vein, we repair, refurbish, reuse and recycle all kinds of everyday items. Making sure we keep the ratio of “Yes, we fixed it!” to “No, we ruined it!” as high as we can in the process!

    “Duct Tape Heart” by Barenaked Ladies

    We should mention that this isnā€™t people singing with nothing on here, so please get your minds out of the gutter if you think that way! Anyway, the song is about fixing the effects of a failed romantic relationship. Metaphorically speaking, using duct tape to fix a broken heart gets it working again.

    But did you know that we can fix everyday objects in a pinch with a piece of duct tape? In particular, we found out in the past that duct tape helps keep computers with battered cases going! After all, weā€™ve seen laptops with pieces of case plastics broken off over the years. And sometimes we just canā€™t find replacement case parts for them anymore. And so, duct tape is the next best thing ā€“ oh, and it gives it some waterproofing, too!

    “Metal” by Gary Numan

    As far as this song goes, computers, robots and other machines need TLC just as much as we do! The song, ā€œMetalā€, is about a machine that desires to be human, but is not quite a human. It ties in with recent advances in technology, where various kinds of implants can aid people in recovery from injuries or disease. For example, pacemakers help keep people with heart problems alive by emitting small electric shocks to maintain a regular heart beat.

    Nowadays, there are various AI tools that people can make use of for all sorts of good (or bad) purposes. We can make everyday tasks more efficient; generate text, audio, videos and pictures with just a short prompt; and imagine big companies combine AI with robotics to replace humans in the workforce. But the latter part’s for another time – if ever we get to it, of course!

    And what of other songs?

    But what about all the other songs which have nothing whatsoever to do with fixing things? Who do we see in those songs that we can make fit into the world of repairs? Well, our friends, here’s where we can get the shoehorns out and get creative!

    “Come Into My World” by Kylie Minogue

    Alright, so what does this song have to do with fixing and reusing things? Well, remember the official music video, where we see multiple Kylies come out of the dry cleaners one-by-one, and walk around a busy street in Paris? I have a possible fan-fiction theory here; the dry cleaners was actually a front operated by a group of mad techies who kidnapped and stuffed the real Kylie into a cloning machine made out of computer parts, as part of a plot to achieve world domination! Finally, a legitimate use for repurposing old computer parts(!)

    If we take the video to its logical conclusion, then we would eventually see millions of Kylies overrun towns and cities, all of them singing and dancing away non-stop. Awesome for all the Kylie fans out there in the world – not so much for everyone else who just want to go about their daily business unperturbed. “Kylie-ception”, indeed!

    “Computer Love” by Kraftwerk

    We so have to include this song, at the very least to remember how BitFIXit all started here in Sheffield! This 1981 synth-pop classic captures the feelings of a savvy computer user wishing to form a romantic relationship with a mate. We can’t really help with dating issues, but we can fix computers! That said, people do use computers and mobile devices to look for love on the internet.

    BitFIXit certainly came a long way from its humble beginnings, first in Heeley and then in Burngreave. While it’s folded into the Reyt family of services, we don’t forget how it was such an important fixture as a standalone repair cafe over the years until Reyt Repair came into being. And even to this day, we believe in the importance of keeping communities digitally connected and inclusive.

    “Viva La Radio” by Lolly

    Now what do we have here? A late-90’s pop act with a song that extolls the virtues of the radio! Nowadays, we have thousands of internet radio stations to choose from, along with the likes of Spotify, Soundcloud, YouTube and various other music streaming services. But back when this top ten hit came out in 1999, we still had FM and legacy radio, music on cassette tapes were still around, and the internet as we know it now was still in its infancy.

    In the video, Lolly plays about with her radio, which emits rather worrying amounts of electricity before it transports her to some fantasy world. That’s a huge electrical safety testing fail right there! Maybe she bought a really cheap and nasty radio you see in teardown videos on YouTube. Perhaps someone seriously botched a repair job on the radio. Either way, if we tried to use it to transport ourselves to our own little fantasy world like in the video, we’d most likely end up just like the sausages cooked in a Presto hot dogger!

    “You Can Do Magic” by Limmie & Family Cookin’ & “Abracadabra” by Lady Gaga

    Let’s mix it up with a double bill! These two songs revolve around magic in some way. “You Can Do Magic” was a 1973 UK top five hit from R&B & soul group Limmie & Family Cookin’. Its lyrics revolve around the idea that one can overcome challenges and obstacles in life and make positive things happen in love and relationships. Meanwhile, “Abracadabra” is a 2025 top five hit by Lady Gaga, where the song is about facing challenges and find the magic of it all.

    So, why feature these two songs together? Well, maybe someday we can find ways to use magic spells in real life to fix all kinds of broken stuff, no matter the problem! Imagine no longer needing to spend time using conventional tools for repair jobs, when we can just make a flick motion of a magic wand. Though we also imagine that there is a not insignificant risk that attempting to use spells to fix something end up blowing up on us instead!

    šŸŽµ “She tried to fix her bed with magic, but it just went boom, boom, boom!” šŸŽµ (from “long live the queen” (C) 2012 hanako games)

    Whew! That was quite a fair amount of songs covered here – in fact, there were so many songs to choose from that we’d be here day and night explaining them all! Anyway, do you agree with our picks here? You can drop us a message through our contact form, if you know any other songs that would fit in with the theme of fixing things, or could be turned into fixing songs!