A long, long time ago, in a far away galaxy, I wrote that I had suddenly discovered by reading my domain stats that people actually read my website. Quite a shocker at the time. I was even more shocked later that day to discover that the mighty comic genuis and Ubuntu hacker that is Jeff Waugh had linked to my blog regarding my then vapourware (en_gb sp.) Ubuntu Jingle, inspired by the LUG Radio joke about the Um Bongo advert. Jeff, being syndicated through Planet Gnome, Planet Debian and Planet Ubuntu caused a pleasant flurry of hits over the following weeks that meant I had to produce the jingle.

So then I checked my stats a few weeks ago to find the domain stats control panel for http://www.umbongo.com in my referrers list. Hilarious. So now I’m watching them watching me watching them. Thankfully they don’t seem to be upset by the jingle, well I haven’t heard from them anyway. I don’t know, maybe it’s free advertising or something. Relieved.

The jingle itself was included in LUG Radio episode 25, with Aq doing the words over the top.

Forward to today. I check my domain stats again, I like to know whats going on, it’s good to see where you hits come from, check for 404 errors, see what google search terms point at me etc.

I see a referral from ubuntuforums and investigate. Maybe someone checked out my blog after reading a post on there or something. Nope, it’s a LUG Radio listener called Saik0 (sadly I can’t find a web address, so no link) pointing out my jingle and doing some good LUG Radio advocacy at the same time.

And check this: he made it his Ubuntu login sound. Thats gonna crack him up after a while, but wow. I feel all important. I just wish I had been able to do a better version. By the time I did it, I’d had so many hassles I just wanted to get it out of the door. It sounds muffly to my ears. Maybe I’ll do a better one soon.

But for the uninitiated, here’s my original (~3MB uncompressed .wav).

You can download LUG Radio episode 25 from here (aka Season 2 Episode 13). The jingle appears at just after 57 minutes, but you should just listen to the whole show anyway 😉

Or just get the snippet of the LUG Radio version of the jingle from here (104KB .ogg in .tar.bz2).

So, thanks Saik0 😀

Oh, incidentally, if you want some other Um Bongo goodies, like a Windows screensaver, the Um Bongo theme tune, mobile phone ringtones and wallpapers, have a look at the Um Bongo downloads and the Um Bongo mobile phone downloads. There, that should keep the lawyers happy.

And drink it in the Congo 😀