I crafted a “wire antenna” outside my house and have been enjoying a plethora of new stations to listen to. To my surprise, my shortwave also picks up the CB bands. I’ve been enjoying channel 6 which is essentially 4chan for truckers. These are the equivalent frequencies in MHz.

Channel Frequency Channel Frequency
1 26.965 21 27.215
2 26.975 22 27.225
3 26.985 23 27.255
4 27.005 24 27.235
5 27.015 25 27.245
6 27.025 26 27.265
7 27.035 27 27.275
8 27.055 28 27.285
9* 27.065 29 27.295
10 27.075 30 27.305
11 27.085 31 27.315
12 27.105 32 27.325
13 27.115 33 27.335
14 27.125 34 27.345
15 27.135 35 27.355
16 27.155 36 27.365
17 27.165 37 27.375
18 27.175 38 27.385
19 27.185 39 27.395
20 27.205 40 27.405

*emergency only.

Lingo guide.

One of my hobbies is to listen to shortwave broadcasts from other countries. It all began when i was studying antenna theory as part of an RFID certification. Long story short: I never took the test and bought a bunch of radio equipment instead.

I’ve started to record my findings on YouTube. 

The Issue:

Images displayed in web-pages are corrupt or garbled. This issue spans across any web browser. Image heavy websites suffer the most. Example:

Behavior:
This issue only affects images in web pages and is seemingly random. If the image is saved locally, the corruption remains on the image. Not all JPG’s are affected, and the issue is more frequent in Google Chrome than IE 9.

What I Found:
Surprisingly, most threads regarding this issue go unanswered on Google or Microsoft support boards. The others are full of useless misinformation touted by a bunch of jackasses.

The root cause is currently unknown but has something to do with the index.dat database file that web browsers use. This cache was designed to improve performance, and is always locked while a user is logged on. If this file is corrupt, shit goes crazy.

I used CCLEANER to delete the existing index.dat files and the symptoms have gone away. The file could have been deleted manually if I had logged on as a different user, but I didn’t want to stop my MP3 from playing.

Root Cause?:
So what the fuck started this? Few hypothesis:

1. Recent power outage may have corrupted the file. I should probably run the System File Checker (sfc /scannow). Simplest, most obvious answer.
2. Hard Disk Failure – On occasion, my PC does freeze while playing games, no BSOD or errors logged. This is always a pain, but I think it’s mainly video card related. Would have to experience other issues to really pin point. A probable answer.
3. NIC Failure – Is the download of the file failing before completion? Rather odd that it only affects JPG’s, so not likely.