Muddy

Went for a quick ride yesterday. M took K's bike (brave) and didn't crash once despite the brakes giving up half way round. To say it was a little muddy would be an understatement! We had to hose ourselves along with the bikes when we got home.

Birthday Weekend

What a weekend! M&C flew from Sweden on Thu night, we ate in the Tilbury. Fri morning was a trip to Bath, we ate in One Fish Two Fish. Thu morning we went to Padstow to see Grandma, we ate in Number 6 and then Sun morning we headed home, we ate a shoulder of lamb on the BBQ. A lot of travel and great fun. Incidentally, if anyone knows WHY the streets of bath were raised please leave a comment...

Too cold for bikes (and shorts)

Found a new route last night but boy was it cold! Too cold for shorts that's for sure! This new route is around 10 miles with a mix of ups, downs, mud and forest - perfect really! Well, it would have been - I got two punctures, ran out of batteries, fell off and rode through dog poo... hmmm.... all fun though hey!

Computer for Grandma

I got Grandma's wifi broadband working last night and she was somewhat impressed with what the Internet had to offer. The family has been talking of getting her a computer for ages so I took the initiative and bought an Acer Aspire One for her today - just setting it up now. It runs a lite linux (fedora core) OS which means no viruses and difficult to destroy accidentally. The desktop has icons for Internet, email and chat. It has a webcam, mic and speakers built in and room for memory cards and USB devices. I just hope the 9" screen is big enough for her...

I'm in Plymouth

Am in Plymouth for work - went out tonight around the harbour area. Had a fantastic meal at an Italian restaurant that did the perfect medium-rare steak :)

Si and Ellie's Wedding

So, this weekend gone I gained a Step-sister-in-law as Si and Ellie tied the knot. It was a brilliant day with sunshine and warmth! Nice for Summer to finally arrive in mid-October :) Photos are uploading as we speak but you can see what's there at: Flickr Wedding Set

Suunto Core Returned

Suunto delivered my Core back to me today after 2 weeks away. They haven't actually fixed the problem... much better... they sent a whole brand new one. This is good for 3 main reasons other than the button now works. Firstly the old one had a scratch on the screen that I did whilst biking, secondly the strap was badly marked (again my fault) and lastly the rotating bezel was never quite right - this new one's is. So, overall I am pretty happy!

New Route

Only managed to get out on my bike once this week due to work and other commitments. J and I headed on a new route and only got lost twice. Highlights include my headtorch running out of batteries and me packing only the wrong size spares.

Apple TV 2.2 Update

We got Apple's 2.2 Update for the ATV. One of the new improvements is a standby option (at last). With the ATV in standby I am wondering if I'll need to turn the central heating up to compensate for the lack of heat it usually irradiates :)

UPDATE: actually, even when on standby mode it still acts as a small space-heater. The thing is incredible - how it does not spontaneously combust I do not know!

Quick ride.... new gloves....

I've been working this weekend but found an hour to get away from my office and do some exercise. Took the bike out for an hour (to test the new Specialized Deflect Gloves I bought) in the wind and rain that we are currently enjoying. The new gloves are wind/water proof and my hands were noticeably more comfortable. I did a now familiar run but in reverse (clockwise). It still took about an hour but was much more interesting (maybe I am just bored of going the same way each time). The new SatMap did a very good job of tracking me and also showed a climb of nearly 230 feet in the middle of the run! Back to work now - I have a few more hours of system integration work to complete...

Night in Bristol

I found myself in Bristol last night - last minute work thing. After work I managed to catch up with C from Unisys and SB from Uni. C is still running his own marketing business and SB has a new flat near a "massage" parlour!!!!

Good fun catching up with people you have not seen for years - will have to come and visit more often! Oh, also ate a Buffalo burger - interesting.... tastes like beef to be honest :)

iPod Nano / iPhone 3G - not charging

New car - new ipod - dealer interface - what could go wrong? Well, it turns out that Apple have changed their hardware interface on new models. This means that although my devices play music through the car's stero they will not chrage whilst they are plugged in. Bummer! Some digging around provided the answer...

Apple are phasing out FireWire charging. Older units could take this 12V supply and charge from it - very useful for car manufacturers. Now Apple are only using the lower voltage (5V) USB supply. So, your device works but you get a message saying it will not charge.

The solution seems simple - create an in-line plug that hijacks the 12V line, through a resistor drops it to 5V and supplies it to the USB pins. Problem is - where to find one!

Well, a bit of searching took me to RIDAX who provide the only one I can find. It is expensive (about £30 inc shipping) but looks high quality and even allows you to plug an external 5V input should you need it - giving charge capability to those devices that never had it. All other pins simply pass-through so everythign else should be unaffected.

Let's hope it works - it arrives in a week or so...

UPDATE: works great - added benefit is that you can attach a normal mini-usb cable to it and it will charge and sync from the PC - one less cable to carry around now as I can leave the apple cable at home.

Suunto Core - broken!

My Suunto Core (orange/black) watch broke! The top right button stopped working. I contacted the shop who advised it best to use Suunto's on-line support. Well, they were right. After filling in one on-line form I was given a PDF with all the return docs and a number to call for DHL. DHL are coming to pick it up this morning - all for free including packaging. Not bad at all - and they think they'll get it back to me in about a week.

iPod Nano

My new iPod turned up today - a black 16GB 4th Gen Nano. It is lovely and curvy and for once I can get my whole music collection on - for now. It also allows me to play movies/shows on it - although the screen is small it is usable.

SatMap Active 10 Arrives...

I think you know what happens next - yep, I bought one. Got the base unit, the hi-power battery pack, the bike-mount and a 1:25,000 map of Hertfordshire. Am now off to make sure it is running the latest firmware and see if it is hackable :) Awesome!

SatMap Active 10

Am getting more and more into this mountain biking thing and as a result I am starting to venture further and further - usually in the dark and rain. In these circumstances a folded paper map is sometimes not always as good as you'd wish. Enter the realm of the portable GPS device. These come in many flavours but this one - the SatMap Active 10 - is the only one that gives you a *real* OS map and a large screen. I think I have spotted my next toy :)

Nurburgring

Whilst navigating my way around the 'ring' I put my sat-tracker on. As you can see from the pics below I did a pretty cautious lap of this famous circuit :) My time was around 14:30. However, let's put this in context - a new car, new tyres and brakes and no wish to prematurely shorten its life. Add that to the insane closing speeds between me (the slowest thing on track) and the likes of a GT3RS doing 100mph more and you can see that I spent most of my time looking behind me! Good fun though and nice to say I've done it.

Mercedes Collection - UK Reg

The final chapter was this morning (Monday). I took the new car to Mercedes in Stevenage and handed it over for pre-delivery checks and to get my UK registration. It took forever but after a couple of hours I was handed the keys to my new car - fully road legal.

The entire collection process had been flawless. Mercedes UK/Germany pulled off seamless handovers form flights to taxis to hotels to the ferry - everything EVERYTHING was perfect. J and I had an awesome time driving through Europe and by the I got home I was fully acclimatised to my new steed. If anyone ever gets the chance to do this - JUMP AT IT. It will give you an adventure to remember!

Mercedes Collection - Day 3

We woke up and to our surprise found a huge breakfast awaiting us. Fuelled up, we headed to the Nurburgring F1 circuit to see the SF qualifying. We didn't expect to see much but ended up seeing all sorts. In between practice and qualifying was a stunt bike team doing mad stuff (see pics linked in title). We left around 10:30 and headed for Calais.

There were two ways to Calais, the fast way or through the Black Forest - we chose the latter. Once through the forests we realised that we were a mere 30KM from the border of Luxembourg - and cheap fuel. So, we headed to a town on the border to fill up. When we arrived we kept going - until we were in Luxembourg city - we stopped for lunch. Our lunch never came - after 45 mins of waiting in a cafe we gave up and headed off. We stopped in a service station before crossing back to Belguim, filled up with fuel and bought snacks.

Belguim was boring - we got stuck in traffic and there was little to look at. Brussels - which we ringed - was busy. After many MANY hours we crossed to France. At this point we had missed our 15:50 ferry - it was 20:00. We raced to the port and managed to get a place on the 20:45. Apparenlty so had most of the rest of the world - the ferries were super busy due to the ongoing problems with the tunnel. Still, we had club lounge passes which saved the day - with Force 6 earlier the entire downstairs in the ferry stank of puke :( After a glass of champagne and 90 mins to relax we landed on UK soil. Customs (amazingly) let our temp-plate A-Class roll right through and by midnight we were home - exhausted.

Mercedes Collection - Day 2

I woke up early - and excited. Breakfast was downed promptly and we took a quick walk around the town before heading back to meet our Taxi. By 10:00 we were in the collection centre - they seemed surprised/pleased to have an Englishman present. Turns out they serve 250 collections a day here and it is most unusual for there to be anyone other than elderly Germans. I filled in the insurance forms and was thanked for being so young! We then had a factory tour - where J and I got lost. Finally we saw my car in the delivery hall. It was there for 5 mins with two people pointing and phoning before it was driven away again! 15 mins later it returned sporting the headlight deflectors allowing me to drive in Germany at night.

We had a charming lady hand the car over - she was nervous of speaking English but mostly of having to drive a car with the wheel on the wrong side :) Luckily she successfully managed even the auto-parking demo. We set off for Hockenheim - our first stop. En-route we hit autobahns - and 112mph (NICE!).

There was nothing happening at Hockenheim so we set off to our next stop - the Nurburgring. Here we put in a tourist-lap and got the sticker to prove it. It would appear that all the Porches in the world were visiting. We then hung out by the track watching before heading to our hotel for the night.

The hotel is famous - you can see it in all the console games - and it was deserted when we turned up. Finally we found someone to let us in and settled into our room. For dinner we found an Italian restaurant just down the road - who only took cash. Whilst there we were sat next to an elderly chap - who pointed and shouted "Tommy. you Tommy yes!". When we politely pretended to not understand he gesticulated at himself shouting "Hitler, military, Tommy - yes!". We agreed and tried to get on with our beer - someone should have told *him* to mot mention the war - I had all sorts of Fawlty Towers jokes running around my head :) We got back to the hotel (still dead), drank our emergency beers (stashed from the lounge in T5) and watched Star Wars - on telly - in German...

Mercedes Collection - Day 1

After dropping the MINI off J and I made our way to LHR's T5. Here we checked into the BA lounge and started on a few drinks and snacks. T5 is huge with plenty of shops - before we knew it the plane was ready for us. The flight was good - we had champagne. In Stuttgart we were met by the taxi that drove us an hour to Rastatt. We checked into the hotel and grabbed some dinner - steak for me :) After that we went for a walk, found a bar and then ended up in the only place open after 23:00 - an Irish Pub!!! We drank Guinness and Kilkenny.

Mercedes Collected

Just a quick post to let you all know that J and I made it from Germany back to the UK (via Belgium, France and Luxembourg) in one piece. The new car didn't miss a beat and is great to drive. more pics and stories to follow as and when I get time...

MINI gone...

With just under 64,000 miles, 0 miles of fuel left in the tank (well, actually 0 turned up as I left Knebworth so it is more like -3 miles) and 3 years and 9 days old I handed the MINI over this morning. I am very sad to see it go - it has been such a fun car to drive. I'll miss its crazy under steer, ability to carry speed through roundabouts and the hugging you got from the sports seats. I'll also miss its retro looks and sculpted interior. One thing I won't miss is the lack of space for my right leg on motorways - about the only thing I can say I did not like about the car.

This afternoon I fly to Stuttgart and then on Friday I pick up the A-Class straight from the factory. Home again on Sat. One chapter begins as the other closes...

Murder Mystery at A's

We went to A's for a Murder Mystery dinner party on Sat night. The scene was a local Australian TV mogul had been murdered at his party. We all had a motive but who was the killer!!!! I was Bruce Didgeridoo (musician/songwriter) and K was Alice Springs (beauty queen and 3rd in Miss Australia). M also turned up and was Di Agnosis (flying doctor). L was Dame Edna Average (opera singer). A was Stavros Kebab (TV celebrity chef and our host) and the other A was Mad Max Melbourne (a famous cricketer) and R was Miles Behind (an athlete). We started with a pork terrine, then had duck for main course and a proper toffee pudding for desert. Excellent fun - I ate far too much! More pics liked in title.

Diamond Extended Battery

The extended battery for my Diamond came today (3 days earlier than the Europe release date??!). The battery is bigger and comes with a new back for the phone. This is about 3mm deeper than the standard one so the phone looks a bit more chunky. It boosts the battery from 930mAh to 1340mAh - about 40% more. This should allow me to run my sat-nav tracking software for much longer bike rides :)