Contact details for suzerain and friends

Does anyone have mobile numbers for the people suzerain is staying with this Whitby? coracaskia is supposed to be meeting up with them to stay with them and would like a way of staying in touch...

bah!

why does my new microphone record digitally perfect silence?

even if I hadn't plugged it in, I should still get a few bits of noise, not a WAV file consisting of a header and a big collection of zeroes.

Updated: OK, OK, I'll make this a useful entry rather than a whinge. I'm running Linux 2.2.19 with ALSA driver 0.5.11. ALSA reports the soundcard as 'C-Media PCI CM8738 (model 37) at 0x7400, irq 9'

I've tried wiggling all sorts of soft mixer settings, to no effect. I haven't tried with the microphone disconnected yet. I'm unlikely to get a chance to play with it much 'till I get back from Geneva, though.