A tale of the ..... eventually explained.
I was working around the house one day, and had the music going from my PC in the office blasting around the house, when suddenly it stopped.

"Righto" I think "Must've dropped the connection to the internet radio station"

So I walk back into the office to have a look - as soon as I walk in, the music starts again.

"Oh good, it's reconnected" I think, and walk out again.

Music stops.

I walk back in.

Music starts.

Eventually I discover that the music starts and stops just as I'm walking in front of the PC.

Naturally I check for loose connections, shake things about, move them around, but the bare facts are that the music plays consistently when I'm literally just standing in front of the PC, and stops when I move off that centre position.

What the fuck?

To those who aren't that interested in the technical side of the solution: It had a rational explanation and I fixed it.

For those who are...

My PC is connected to my hifi via an external digital-to-analogue converter, which has both electrical and optical inputs, and the PC is connected via the electrical connection.

Now, it was a bright sunny day and I had the curtains open. When the music first stopped, the angle and strength of the sun had been such that it reflected strongly off the back wall and into the optical connection of the DAC enough to confuse into thinking it had two conflicting inputs and shut off. Every time I walked in front of it, my shadow blocked the light, and it was happy again. I found a blanking plate for the optical input and that stopped the nonsense.
It took a little while before I twigged though!

Length? 655nm +/- 30 nm.
(JohabMorelli is spenging merrily away, Thu 10 Jul 2008, 13:41, Reply)