Testing windows live writer

So this is just a test.  I want to see if it works :)

Edit: I decided to download ' Windows Live Writer' after reading about it on Lifehacker.   I thought I'd want a decent little app that I could run in the background so I could add posts to the blog without having to navigate (and forget!) my Blogger password.

Anyway, I finally downloaded it today, and installed it, and my first impressions are quite good! 

Installation & running for the first time

After I had finally found where to download ' Windows Live Writer' (WLW), the installation was pretty painless.   

Running WLW for the first time, it asks you for some details about your blog.  As I'm a "blogger beta", I didn't opt for the 'Spaces' sign up (this is for those who don't have a blog, but want one on Windows Live Spaces).  After entering my details (wrongly), i finally got into WLW and was confronted by a blue-ish word-like application. 

Interface

To be quite honest, i hate the blue appearance of WLW, and would really like to de-clutter the interface.  You have the normal "File | Edit..." menu which you get on most apps. 

Below that, you have the WLW menu.  Create a new post, edit a post, save drafts etc.  You also have  a "layout button.  This is cool, purely because the main editing window reflects what your blog looks like, with all the same styles, fonts & layout! You can change this, just incase you don't like it!

You also get the standard formatting tool bar (bold, italics  etc).  And then, cluttering up the right hand part of the app, you get 2 boxes. One allows you to open or create posts (identical to the top tool-bar), and the 2nd box allows you to insert links, pictures, tags or maps.  But these are pretty much covered in the formatting toolbar, so it duplicates itself.  D' oh!

Usage

Using WLW is very easy.  Once you've set up your blogs, it's a case of creating a new post.  Spell-checking (how handy), and then clicking 'publish'.  It really is as simple as that.  Obviously, it can get more technical depending on your blog!

Conclusion

Well I've used WLW for about half hour, had a quick flick through the menu's and options, and it does seem like a very handy tool!  Especially for setting our your layouts.  I really like the way it let's you see how your post will look like as it uses the same styles as your blog.

This is just my first impressions.  Ill post a more in-depth look at a later date.

 

EDIT: I've just realised that WLW doesn't allow for 'Blogger Beta' Labels, so for the time being, i'll stick with the browser based posting.  Meh!

Tesco Value ear phones! Cheap-tastic or Cheap-plastic?

For months now, I've been after a proper set of earphones for my Creative Zen. I've never been a fan of headphones, the ones with the plastic strap over the head, and the painful bits of plastic on the ears. I much prefer the buds that go IN your ears.

The best pair i ever had were the ones that came with my Mp3 player, but they died a death about 6 months ago. I guess I never treated them properly. I only used them whilst i was at work, and even then, it was just one ear bud, so i had half an idea on what was going on around me.


Anyway, slowly, one deteriorated, and then 3 weeks later, the other bud died. Since then, I've tried several pairs. The best ones i tried were Panasonic, but the cable was only about 12 inches long, which is noooo good.

At the moment, I'm using a Skype ear bud (and microphone) which I was given free at a London train station 9 months ago.

Anywho, I digress, I've been on the market for a good pair of headphones. a month ago now, I was walking around Tesco's with my girlfriend, when I spotted the Tesco Value headphones for 97p! How much?!

So I bought them! I figured that i cant really go wrong for 97p!

Packaging

Well, for 97p, your not going to get much for your money are you!? the packaging was your standard plastic wrapped around a bit of card which housed the headphones.

Feel

Well the ear buds actually feel quite comfortable in my ears. There's no fabric covering to give grip, but they don't really feel loose so it's not needed in my opinion. The cord feels rather cheap, and quite flimsy. So much so that if it got bent or twisted too much, it could easily break the internals.

The Actual bud's look cheap. They're black, with silver touches. I guess this is to boost the look of them, make them look a bit special! Doesn't work really. Oh, and they are branded "Technika" I assume this is a Tesco's brand.

Sound

Well, this is the most important part, and to be honest, they do sound rubbish. The actual sound quality is low, and listening to music with them does sound like your listening to music under-water.

The sound is rather flat & sounds empty. Bass is non-existent, although you do get a few low notes, it's nothing substantial. Treble is existent, but the mid-range is really what let's the sound down.

Conclusion

In all honesty, i was hoping to find a good bargain. Earphones at 97p which had good sound quality. In actual-fact though, the headphones are of poor quality. They look cheap, and feel it too. The sound isn't good at all, and since i bought them, I've used them twice. Once to see what the sound was like, and secondly, to write this review.

These might be good if they are for some younger kids, who are more interested in hearing anything that listening to music. But if your after some good quality sound, then these aren't for you!

Clicky web-stats. Perfect!

As I've posted before, I've been getting back into web-development recently, working on my new skills in CSS & (x)html mark-up. One of the things i used to enjoy looking at when I developed websites years ago was the web-stats, hits, stuff like that.

In my recent development however, I've not been able to find a good free web-stat service. Somewhere i can log onto and view the hits, the search terms, the referrers for my sites.

That was until this week when i happened across 'Clicky', the perfect solution.

I Found 'Clicky' to be a decent web-stat app. It shows me what i want to know in a clear & precise way.

Setting up was easy as pie. You register on the website, and it then asks you to set up your website. You enter the URL, and then any other re-directs you have going, other URL's and such forth. Once you've entered this data, and submitted it to Clicky, it gives you the script that you must enter on your website. And it's not much of a script either. It's only 2 lines of javascript, and seems to work a whole host of magic!

I've got Clicky measuring stats for 2 of my websites at the moment, and it's giving me an average hit count (based over a the previous few days), current unique hits for the day, and it also gives you the amount of click's each user has done!

It goes into further detail too! It'll even tell you what browser the user is using, and the operating system they are running. For example, for ClubTrinity.co.uk, the last 20 people to visit were running Windows, 18 of which were running Internet Explorer, and 2 (only 2?!) were running Firefox.

This can be pretty handy when producing websites, but that's another story!

'Clicky' will also tell you what pages have been visited and by whom. Every user has their IP address, and this is how Clicky can tell which pages have been visited by which user. This enables you to see what users are looking for, and obviously allows you to tailor your site to suit. It even tells you how long each user was on the website for!

On the flip side though, as much as i like 'Clicky' (and I've only been using it 3 days), it is missing a couple of features which I'd like to see, screen resolution for example! I'd like to see how many users are running at 800x600 compared to how many are running 1600x1200.

The other problem I found (and i have spoken to the guy's at Clicky about it) is the fact that when you have multiple sites in the Clicky database, it strips all sub-directories from the name.

Now the 2 websites i have on their currently are hosted on the same server, but under different sub directories. So now when i log-in and use the drop down box to choose which site I'd like to see stats for, all i see is the domain name. I'd like to be able to specify and call each site by a certain name. But I've been assured that they are working on this, so it's all good!

I'd definitely recommend Clicky for an on-line, quick & easy web statistics tool. It's helped me out massively, and it will help me tweak my sites further for the better! If you run a website, and your looking for a stat tool, i think this is the one!

Check it out, 'Clicky'

making the switch

Well, in a previous post, i mentioned that i had come back to Blogspot, and redesigned the blog, only to realise that it wouldn't work with 'Blogger Beta'... But now i've done it!

That's right, i've fully switched over to 'blogger beta' now, so i can take full advantage of the new features, which include some nifty little hacks and some good layout options!

It also includes for the use of Widgets, which is always handy!

Anywho, there's some good bits to the new blogger, like labels & catagories which i like, and also the widgets down the side of the page is always handy. There's loads of stuff there that can be played with (read: hacked) and i've got a couple of ideas up my sleeve!

Only problem with the new blogger is the actual templates themselves. It's REALLY hard to see what's going on as google have added tons of new custom tag's to the mix and it's really confusing. But saying that, i managed to get the site looking almost identical to it's previous counter-part. The only difference being the date, which is now above the title, rather than below! Gawd know's how you change it! (If you do know, please post a comment!)

Right, Back to the drawing board!

24ways is back! Hoorah!

24 Ways is back for another year (or 24 days!) of nifty little web-design tricks to impress! Check it out!

Xmas already?

Is it Christmas already? Has the whole annual Xmas holiday been moved and I've missed the breaking news headlines? As far as I'm aware, it's still 25th December..

So why have i been listening to Christmas songs on the radio at work all day for the last week or so?

Is it me, or does it seem like every single year that goes by, people put up their decorations earlier, or shops start selling decorations earlier, or radio / tv stations start playing Christmas songs / adverts earlier?

"... but come-on, it's not even December yet!"

Problem with starting the celebrations early, that by Christmas day, everyone's sick of it! Now I'm no Scrooge, i love Christmas (especially egg-nog latte's from Starbucks!) but come-on, it's not even December yet!

That said, seeing as everyone's already in the mood for Xmas, I'm starting to look forward to it too! See the lights up in my local town (have been up for 2 weeks already!!!), the ad's on the TV, and 'Gears of war' in the local shops, i cant wait for Xmas now!

Convert video for the 360 (Part 2)

Sooo.. a couple of weeks ago, i made a post about how to quickly convert video for the 360. Tonight, i decided to try it out.

getting started...

So i downloaded the VLC software & the batch file to help with the encoding. This was pretty easy for me, and should be quite easy for most people. I proceeded onto the next step of the instructions, which told me to drag my selected video file onto the batch file, and then watch it encode.

Right.

So i selected an episode of Top Gear. One of my favourite programs, and will quite happily pay my TV license for it! Each episode of Top Gear is an hour long, so i thought "It shouldn't take too long".

problems...

I Dragged my .avi file over onto the batch file and watched as a command window flashed before my eyes. Surely it couldn't be done? It's not so quick, that it's almost instant, is it? So i spent 5 or so minutes looking for the outputted file. I couldn't find it, so i opened up the .bat batch file in Notepad++ to see what it was actually doing.

It turns out that the file path to the VLC player was wrong. Humm. Maybe i didn't follow the instructions.. Ho hum.

I set the File path and tried again. No luck. Double checked the settings, all fine. So what was the problem? I looked into the .bat file using Notepad++ (excellent tool btw!), and noticed that although the bat file was referring to a folder, it wasn't mentioning a specific program, so after altering the path, i tried it again, and success, it worked! I dragged the avi onto the bat file and then the dos cmd prompt appeared, and a few seconds later, the VLC Player appeared, and it started converting the video!

converted...

Half hour later, it finally finished (30 mins to convert an hour program? Not bad!). So now i had my original file (.avi) and my new 360 file (.wmv) Woot!

The only problem i could see was size. The avi was 350mb(ish) in size. The .wmv file was 1.6GB! WOW! Something should be done about that!

So next up was to play it on the 360, and surprisingly, it worked straight away and it played perfectly. No distortion, so sound problems, just an hours worth of solid entertainment! The only problem with it was that i had dragged it onto the 4:3 bat file, but the avi source was actually 16:9, so the perspective was wrong.

Never mind, i doubt i'd keep the new wmv because of the size. It's just a case of finding your 'sweet spot' between file & size and quality i guess.

Conclusion...

However, first impressions on the guide to converting video for your 360 is spot on, after a few teething problems, it worked fine, and it's bloody easy!

Oh, and if i find a decent quality setting with a decent file size, i'll post it!

edit: After playing with the bat file & reading up on the Happybeggar forums, there seems to be a few tricks to try, in order to get the optimum quality vs size. In my original article, i mentioned that a 350mb file was converted to 1.6gb. I tried the same file with different quality settings, and got it down to 700mb. Still twice the size of the original, but not half as bad! And the quality wasn't bad either. Definitely watch-able!

ClubTrinity.co.uk

clubtrinity_preview Hosted on Zooomr

I first designed the ClubTrinity website over 4 years ago, so last summer, i thought it was high time it got a bit of a re-design!

I started, concocted, re-invented, scribbled, and played with various different designs until i came up with something i was happy with. After a few more weeks of playing, coding, testing etc, I finally got into XHTML & CSS. So i re-built the new design using my new skills and now it's a hell of a lot cleaner (code-wise). I also had fun using syndication with the forums & galleries at ClubTrinity.

I also managed to get an RSS feed working for it (wooo! - That'll come in handy!)

Anywho, click on over to ClubTrinity.co.uk and let us know your thoughts :)

Quickly convert video for the 360

I spotted this link somewhere (i forget where) yesterday, which gives you a quick run-down on how to convert video's to WMV (windows media video) format to play it on your 360.

I've yet to try it, but by looking at the details, it seems pretty good. I spent a good 6 or so hours converting a bunch of home movies to test them out on the 360 using a program called WinAVI. That was slow. If this is as quick as it suggests, then im laughing!

Check it out here

Quick note

Just a quick post to say that i'm still messing with the design of the blog. Things wont be staying the same. If you visit one day and it's looking a little broken, dont worry, it's just me playing :)

the 360 is slowly taking over my lounge

Just over a week ago, Microsoft announced the 'fall update' to their xbox 36o dashboard. This brought over 70 new features to the dashboard. One of them being the ability to stream & play WMV video from a networked PC to your 360! This opens up a whole world of possibilties!

On top of that, Microsoft recently announced that they will be launching a marketplace for TV & Films. This suggests that you can download movies & TV episodes to your HDD, and then watch them when you want!

This is a great idea (imo), however, this creates a bit of a problem. All those people who have got 360's & the 20gb hdd will need to buy a new hard drive if they want to download more than a couple of films!

And then what happens when your hard drive fills up with movie content that you want to keep? Surely Microsoft wont allow you to transfer films from your 360 to your PC, because that would just be offering pirates a way to share films!

So what will happen? You pay £8 for a film, it takes up 2gb (HD films will likely take up ALOT more space)?. You can fit 6(ish) on a 20gb hard drive. So what happens when you want to download more than 6? I wouldn't want to delete films after i've payed for them!

So, the obvious answer would be get a bigger hdd, which Microsoft haven't announced, but there are plenty of rumours regarding 100gb drives. What happens when that fills up though? Where will it end?

To me, the perfect answer would be to download files via your PC and save them on your computer. And then either stream them over your network to your 360, OR burn them to disc, and put the disc in the 360. This will allow you to create a catalogue without using hard drive space.

However, Microsoft have only just announced the Video Marketplace, and as far as im concerned, there aren't many details about just yet! Let's see how it pans out!

Ain't it always the way...

Sooo, as mentioned earlier, i spent a fair bit of time today "updating" the look of this blog, as
well as testing my new-found css skills.  True, most of the work was already there, but i've
built on that with what i know.  I wanted to re-design the site with my knowledge, what i've
learnt so far, and no searching for help on google.  I was happy with what i had created.

I then realised that Blogspot had a "blogger beta".   Not one to miss the boat or anything, i immediatly looked into it.  And there are a few features that would come in handy, HOWEVER, in order to take advantage of the new layout features, i'd need to rebuild the site as there's no way to import the current design.   So i may be working on that over the next few weeks.

I Must admit, i am really enjoying web design at the moment.  I first got into it 8 or 9 years ago.  I was a big fan of UK Garage music, but had trouble finding any decent websites purely because they didn't exist.  So, whilst browsing through the magazines at a local news-agent, i found a magazine with an article called "build your first website".   Armed with some demo software (Claris home page to be exact), and the magazine feature, i got started.

At this point in time, it was the summer break between terms at college, i was having great fun designing, and was learning & redesigning my website on a weekly basis.  Finally it got to a stage that i was happy with and it started gaining hits.  

About a year (and several redesigns) later, my UK Garage website was quite popular.  I was getting a couple of thousand hits a month and i was happy with how things were going.  On top of that, i had formed a partnership with a friend of mine to run an artist promotion agency.

With this, i also started receiving requests to redesign other peoples websites.  It seemed as if i was always behind my computer tapping away at the keyboard in Dreamweaver, knocking out graphics in Fireworks, or perousing the web for inspiration!  And i loved it!

Anyway, after a couple of years (2002), i met my wonderful girlfriend and my time spent on websites dwindled.  At around the same time, the use of CSS & XHTML started to become popular.  More & more websites were popping up with accessability in mind, proper functionality.  All of a sudden, webdesign was more than some hefty table layouts & some round corners.  As i mentioned though, it was at this time that i stopped designing.

Over the past 2 months (ever since reading an article on devlounge.net, i've become hooked on webdesign again.  I've lost count of the amount of hours that i've spent tapping away on this keyboard recently working on table-less layouts, closing tags (grrr) and scouring the web for tutorials. 

And the one tool that's REALLY helped me do this is my Kingston U3 Datatraveller pendrive.  Due to it's U3 capability, i can carry around my notepad application (EditPad Lite) & my FTP program (FileZilla) wherever i go, and i can design from any internet-enabled PC with a USB drive!  I couldn't recommend these things enough!

So, after spending 2 months working on CSS & XHTML, learning, and reading, and reading some more, i can definatly say i am REALLY enjoying myself.  So much so, im already working on 2 other websites.  I've completly removed all tables, and im excited about launching them!  I guess i better get back to it!  Wooo!

Check my new threads!

Well i'm back! Do i really know what's going on here? Let me explain. Almost 2 years ago now (im sure!), i started this blog. A Simple blog to simply note down details about my car. The problems it had, the cost it incurred, and the progess.

Anywho, i got annoyed with Blogspot's designs, so moved briefly to a friends server. That promptly went down. So i came back to Blogspot for a month or so before shifting the blog over to blogsome.com. Even though it was using Wordpress (i like wordpress), it appeared to be very slow. Too slow for me (im impatient!). So i came back to blogspot for another short stint before dissapearing again to Wordpress.com (so i could use wordpress). However, they have strict design constraints. In order for me to change design elements, i had to pay. That's a no no for me.

Anyway, over the last 2 months or so, ive been learning CSS & XHTML. 2 Languages i've wanted to learn for years. And today, i thought i'd test myself. Here's the new design for my blogspot account, and to be honest, i REALLY like it! Coupled with blogspot's ease of use, i think i'll be staying here for a while! :)

On top of that, whilst over at Wordpress.com, i re-arranged the blog. It's no longer based on just my Pug. It covers a few of my interests. Yes, my 106 is in there. On top of that, i'll be including some articles on gadgets, tech items, games for the 360 (and the up-coming 'console wars'). Music will also feature amongst other tid-bits like reviews, and finally web-design bits.

In the meantime, i must get back to work. I will merge all my posts back here at some point soon!

Enjoy :)

Oh what i'd do for a pair of these

I Popped round a friend’s house last night. She’s a DJ. (Visit her site). I went round to help her out with her website. And in her office, i noticed she had a set of Pioneer CDJ-1000 units sitting next to her Technics. Now i used to be a DJ (you can see me in action here), i’ve still got a set of slick Technic’s 1200’s (the silver ones baby!) and i’ve always been a lover of vinyl, you just can’t beat the big 12″ discs!

Anywho, Emma showed me how these decks work, and i soooo want a pair now! I thought they may be cheap (lol!!!), so i popped on to ebay, cheapest is £710 EACH, that’s not a typo, and that’s not including delivery!… Wowoweewah! that’s a lot of money for some cd players lol!… I only had a quick 5 min demonstration, but they seemed very very powerful, full of features, and i loved the fact that it had an SD card on the front for those “so hot off the press tunes, they’re not even on CD yet!”.. but £1500 for a pair is a bit steep! I had trouble paying £600 for my 1200’s, and even then, they were second hand!

They would certainly do for me to replace my old Gemini CD deck which is, to be quite honest, poor! I wish i had some!

Renault goes hi-tech

Just spotted this prototype of the new Renault Twingo ‘concept’. Now i think it looks very very nice, similar to a C2 (which im not such a fan of!), and it looks very high tech! Im still wondering why you’d need (and whether it’s legal) to have a 15″ monitor mounted on your dash! On top of that, according to ‘Motor Authority’, it has a turbo charged 1.2 engine!.. wooo! Click here to read the info and have a gander at some high-res pics! [Motor Authority via Engadget] 

Need For Speed: Most wanted (360)

What a damn good game this was! Man oh man!This was one of the only games i was really excited about when i got my 360, and i have been playing it for the last 6 weeks! I’ve slowly been working my way up the blacklist, and finally, last night, i managed to beat ‘Razor’, the big man!

The story goes like this. You roll into Rockport. There’s a blacklist of 15 Racers. You want to be number one. Sounds easy enough, except, some punk called Razor fiddles with your motor, and you lose it in a race at the beginning. So you then have to buy a car, and improve on it to win races whilst evading police.

It’s the evading of the police chases though that is most fun for me. Point to point race’s are cool, circuits are ok, but trying to evade the cop’s whilst skimming corners, ducking down alley-way’s, and boosting down the freeway’s is where most of the fun for me comes from!

The graphics are very very good on this game, you can see reflections off car’s, you can see sparks up against walls, theres no slowdown and the cut-scenes whilst doing jumps etc are very very nice!

I will write a proper review another time, but my rating for this is: 4/5

Audio via the 360 Controllers

I noticed at the weekend that the 360 controllers for the xbox have a little plug underneath which is used for plugging in the headset for use with XBL (Xbox Live). Now, this little plug has a headphone socket in the middle. Surely i’d be able to plug headphones in and play games without any disruption to others? I THINK that would be a good idea?.. but apparantly not so. The socket is just for communication! Right then!.

Still, it’s a shame. I’d love to be able to plug my headphones into my controller and play my 360 with out disturbing anyone else in the room!

HI-Def comes to the 360

360hd Hosted on Zooomr

To be honest, i’ve not been that bothered when it comes to the HD-DVD add-on for the 360. Yes, hi-def does look incredible, and yes, i will purchase myself a HD-Ready TV in time, but at the moment, im happy with my 24″ Mitsubishi Box. Now i could be miles off the mark here, but i’ve been told that standard TV looks awful on HD tv’s, and i wouldn’t be surprised. And seeing as in the UK, there isn’t a great deal of HD shows broadcast, i see it as a waste of money.

Give it a year or so, when i’m in my own place with my girlie, and the price of HD Ready flat screen’s drop to a reasonable level, and the amount of HD programs broadcast over the UK airwaves & cable goes up, then i will move into the HD era.. But until then, it’s a no-no.

But it’s still good to know that, when i do get that TV, HD movies wont be far away because the hd-dvd add-on to the 360 has finally had it’s prices announced. Unfortunatly, only to the japanese market, but the UK prices will be coming with-in a few weeks “apparantly”. Anywho, according to T3, and a little dollar to sterling calculation, the HD addon for the 360 should retail around £90. That’s a bargain if ever i saw one!

Now, of course, im assuming that HD-DVD win’s the current format war between HD-DVD & Blu Ray. A lot of people said that Blu-ray would win because of it’s increased capacity over HD-DVD (50gb over 30gb), however, HD-DVD has been first to the market with their media & players. In Addition, Microsoft have had a good year+ headstart over the PS3, and if it means that 360 owners only have to shell out £90 for the HD-DVD addon in comparison to the £400 player, then that’s going to be a boost for HD-DVD straight off.

Now originaly, i thought, that because blu-ray had the extra space on the disk, and the PS3 come bundled with a blu-ray drive, that it would win over hd-dvd, however, it seems to be changing. Obviously, the big US film studio’s have some sway in the final winner. Most are supporting both formats, however Universal announced today that they will not support blu-ray. Coupled with the high price of the PS3, and the delay in getting blu-ray (and the PS3) onto the market, these could lead to hd-dvd winning the format wars. This would be a serious kick in the teeth for Sony & their PS3, but let’s save that story for another day!

Get Well Soon Hampster

As most people would of heard by now, Top Gear’s presenter, Richard Hammond was involved in a high speed accident whilst filming a segment for the show. More details can be found here. Hopefully, Richard will make a speedy recovery! Get well soon Hammond! 

Kingston U3 Data Traveller (1GB) - (Review)

I’ve always thought pen drive’s were quite expensive. I Remember i bought one about 2 years ago. Admittedly, it was a rubbish one, and it was bought so i can transfer saves between my PS2 & PC. It was a ‘Max Drive‘ usb pen stick, and it held a whopping 16mb! WOW! Now, i paid £20 for this, and that price is exactly why i thought pen drives were expensive!

Last year, i noticed my boss had one sitting on his desk, which he hadn’t used in a long time, so i nabbed it off him. It was a marked improvement over my 16mb unit as it held a blistering 64mb! However, it took it back off me 2 months ago.

Now at work, i’ve got a few gig’s worth of files that i have accumulated over the years, which i want to ferry back to my home PC. Rather than burn CD’s everyday, i thought i’d look at Pen Drives again to see if the price had dropped!.. I was shocked to say the least.

eBuyer was offering a Kingston U3 Datatraveller 1GB for £13 ish! 1GB for £13 was fantastic. Add on delivery & VAT, and it came to arond £18! I was amazed to say the least! So i quickly ordered one, and 4 day’s later, i had my gig pen drive in my hand, and my, oh my, it’s a dinky little thing.

There’s not much you can really say about pen drives. They plug into the USB socket, and they carry data. Mine has not had any problem’s what-so-ever. It hold’s the data, it does exactly what i wanted it to do!

The real bonus though, was the U3 compatability. Now i’ve never heard of this until i read up on it. Basically, it’s a technology which allows you to run programs from your USB pen drive. Fantastic. The Datatraveller comes bundled with 3 trial programs, but visiting u3.com allows you to download more free & trial programs aswell as buying them!

So far, my U3 is running Foxit (PDF Reader), EssentialPIM (tasks, contacts, calender etc.), Editpad Lite (notepad type program) And filezilla (an FTP Client). Now these are really handy if i need to run a program from someone else’s computer. There’s loads of other programs that you can buy, however, i like free stuff, so im not really interested!!!

My only gripe with it is that transfer is quite slow, which is a shame, but i usually tend to start teh transfer between pendrive & PC (or vice versa) and then walk away so speed doesn’t really bother me!

So yeah, that’s my U3 datatraveller, I would certainly recommend one, and for £20, you cant really go wrong can you?

New Earphones

Im after a new pair of earphones for my Creative Zen. It Shouldn’t be a hard task should it? Apparantly so. I want a decent pair of earbud headphones which sound good, punchy, clear and can go quite loud when needed! The bud’s that came with my Zen were very good. In fact, they’re probably the best I’ve ever owned. However, after a year of abuse, being pulled out of my bag on a daily basis, in a tangled mass, something was bound to go wrong. Unfortunatly, it did. One bud stopped working. 3 weeks later, the other bud stopped working too. I thought i could fix it with a bit of sellotape, but that failed miserably.

Fast forward a week or so, and whilst in the office, i found a pair of headphones on the window-sill! I found out who they belonged to, and was told that they were spare, and were only cheap ones. No matter i thought, earphones are earphones. As long as i can hear the music, they’re cool.

How wrong was I? These no-branded, 99p earphones were terrible. Really quiet, really cheap feel to them. Sound quality was just wrong. It sounded like i was listenin to music underwater.

At this point, i was getting desperate, and was missing listening to my latest downloads at work! So routing around at home, i found a small silver pouch which i had picked up at a london station many moons ago. Inside the pouch was an Skype branded earbud & microphone, obviously intended for Skype use, however, they’re perfect for me at work. I cant sit at work with earbuds in both ears, so i only use the one!

BUT, these skype bud’s are only intended for voice and what not over the internet, so they’re not that good, but they’re better than the 99p jobbies i found! So i’ve been using this skype bud for about 2 months now. They REALLY lack bass, but other than they’re ok!

Ok, so i’ve digressed, the whole point of this post was about a review I read over at T3. It’s about a set of Creative Zen Aurvana earphones. The review was positive, and the tag-line was “Noise-blocking buds that don’t cost the Earth”. ‘They sound good’ i thought. Some decent phones for a decent price. So i went on a price hunt as T3 didn’t offer one.

Creative.com are selling them for £89.99. Wtf?!.. “..buds that don’t cost the Earth”. True, you can’t buy the earthy for £90 (maybe a small bit though), but £90 is alot of money for some ear-phones!!.. £90 is aLOT of money for a set of headphones (you can buy a car for cheaper!). So that’s the end of that idea.

Onwards with my search for some decent bud’s… any recommendations?

THIS is how you do it!

Just spotted this [via Digg]. THIS is how you do it!.. Electric motoring has always been a bit… well, bland! The Toyota Prius, has probably been one of the most successful electric car’s and even that has a petrol engine!. The Hybrid connection. One of the main problems for electric car’s though is the fact that they’re not very fast, and most dont seem to have much range on them

However, a britiish engineering firm (PML Flightlink) has gone and stuck 4 (FOUR!) electric motor’s capable of 160hp each, and stuck them in a Mini. So This mini is now able to push 640hp (ish) and top out at 150mph with a 0-60 of 4.5 seconds! Now that is pretty impressive for an electric car (in my eyes anywho). They’ve managed this by putting one engine in each wheel, and this is what PML specialise in!.. I think they’ve done a damn good job!

Brakes are done!

Well i got the brakes done! Which is good. At least i know i can trust them now!

Oh well.. That's nearly £300 quid gone over the last 2 weeks on the car :( !

Meh!

Been 6 weeks since the last post. Exhaust started blowing & catching on speed bumps..

Then it fell off on saturday. Got it patched up with a new bracket. It failed again on tuesday. Took it to another garage yesterday. The pipe on the end of the cat has rusted away and any clamps going on there are just not working. £200 for a new catalytic converter.

Was also told that the brake pads are quite low on the front. Will get them done at the weekend.

Also have a dodgy O/S/R ? wheel bearing. Surely that should be O/S/F.

All-in-all.. not f'in happy!

On a lighter note, i got an xbox360 for my birthday! That will allow me to take my anger out on something :)

Broken screens suck!

My Girlie has an iRiver HP120 20gb MP3 player, and she loves it loads.. Even as far as to say “it’s the best gift she’s ever received”… However, a month or so ago, she showed it to me, and there’s a huge crack across the screen where it looks as if someone’s trodden on the player :(.. That’s no good at all! So i’ve been checking eBay for a replacement player. Either cheap, or broken just so i can whip out the screen and replace it on my girlies machine, however, that’s harder than it sounds!

So, we’re talking about getting her a new 20gb player for her birthday… Any suggestions?

 

CEX.. Heaven or Hell?

Cex (Computer exchange) is a cool shop. It sells used games, DVD’s, consoles, phones etc.. All things gadget-like. It’s nice as it’s generally quite cheap. Games from a couple of quid, same for DVD’s. Many a weekend i’ve walked out the store with 4/5 DVD / Games in my bag after shelling out a poultry £25!.. It’s generally a bargain shop and i like it.. for that.

Now, in my last post, i mentioned that it was my birthday, and i received a 360 premium console of my mum, dad, brother & sister!.. My Girlfriend also purchased me a 360 Hard drive & game unaware that a hard drive would be included in the premium console (as she thought i was getting the core package).

So i was now left with 2 Hard drives. One of which i had no use for. My girlfriend had picked the Hard drive up from CeX for £55 (OUCH!) which is a lot cheaper than new (£70+). Anywho, last night, i went to return the hard drive, which i hadn’t removed from the box. As far as i was concerned, i had had it for a week (hidden) and then when i was given it, i had no reason to use it, so it was in an identical condition as to when she bought it. It’s not difficult to understand!

However, Mr CeX had implemented some stupid company policy saying that if you want to return something for refund, you can only do it within 48 hours of purchasing it (?)! 48hrs is a bit rubbish. Especially as this Hard drive was over a week old now.

So i went in there last night asking for a refund for the hard drive (and obviously, got stung by the above 48hr rule!).. After standing around for 10 minutes waiting for my refund, the clerk came back to me and told me about their 48hr policy, and all i could do was sell the Hard drive back to CeX for a much lower price! If i wanted cash, i could have £30. Or i could take £40 in vouchers… What the fuck is that all about?

My girlfriend bought me a hard drive for £55. I hadn’t even touched it, removed it from it’s box, or used it, yet because of some stupid rule, i am now down £15, and they’ve now been given a hard drive & £15 for being thick!…

No wonder CeX is the biggest used game retailer in the UK if it can pull off tricks like that! Im certainly not happy, but i will be complaining so we shall see what happens there! 

mmm... next gen!

It was my birthday on Saturday, and having received a huge box from my family, i was quite intrigued as to what was in it. Come saturday morning, i woke up, made some breaky & had a cup o’ tea, then ripped the wrapping off to find a box full of crumpled newspaper. Hmmm..

Inside the box, covered in crumpled up newspapers stood a white & green box with the words ‘xbox360′ written on the side!

After picking my jaw up from the ground, i realised it was actually a 360 premium, with the Hard Drive, wireless controller etc already inside the box (Bonus!). Also inside the box was about 10 or so games that my brother (who also has a 360) had piled in there from his collection to keep me going till i get some of my own games!

Man im loving this next-gen business!!!.. So i shall be back in a couple of days with a proper review of the box & some of the games!

Creative... Innovating or Immitating?

I’ve just caught sight of the new Creative Zen V Plus over at Creative.com. It’s another MP3 player, and a good looking one at that. Although it has a small storage capacity (1, 2 or 4gb), it does comes in various different flavours (5 trim colours according to creative.com). It also includes a ‘line-in’ recording socket which is useful. It allows you to encode mp3’s from various sources without the need of a PC. Hoorah! It also includes extra features like a calender, clock & task list. These additions, however, are a bit too extra for me. It’s an MP3 player, it play’s MP3s! (more on this later).

However, this is not my point. The Creative Zen V Plus looks a lot like Microsoft’s new offering, the Zune. I Mean, they’re both MP3 Players. They both have colour screens (most do these days) however, it’s the design similiarities that gets me. Both are set out the same way. Screen at the top (like most), but a circular button at the bottom which controls most of the tools, with seperate Play buttons.

Is the circular button too much like the ‘pods though? When i see an MP3 player with a big circle at the bottom, i immediatly think of an iPod. It’s all about branding & being unique. If your product looks similar to other products out there, it wont stick in people’s minds, they’ll say “oh, there’s that player that looks like a Zune”..

When it came to me getting an MP3 player. I could of gone for the iPod, but i didn’t want to follow the trend. For me, an iPod was more of a status symbol than an MP3 player. So i went for a Creative Zen Touch player. A 20gb model from Creative which does it’s job well. It plays MP3’s. It has a black & white screen. It works. This is what im talking about! When i look for something, i want something that is dedicated to what i want it to do! If your going to buy an Mp3 player, do you want it to have a calender on it? Do you want it to have a task manager on it? No, of course not. Your buying it to listen to music, not to see if you need to buy milk when you next go to Tesco’s.

That said, i think technology these day’s is loosing it’s mark. Too many features are trying to be bundled in with too many gadgets. I can see in 5 years time, there will be mobile phones with 10gb flash drives installed. You could sit on the bus and watch the latest episode of eastenders before it’s broadcast over digital tv because iTunes on your mobile has synced with the BBC via the buses wireless hotspot technology. Phones will no longer be phones, MP3 players will no longer be MP3 players…

However, i digress. I’ve covered many gripes (branding / uselessness / copycat / eastenders). In summary, i think the new V plus looks like a Zune (or vice-versa). Both look very similar to an iPod because both companies (Creative & Microsoft) want a slice of Apple’s pie, and in doing so, have turned themselves into sheep. Getting to the top of the pile isn’t about stealing your competitor’s customers, it’s about innovating your products & enticiing your customers. Give them a reason to buy your products. 

GTA: Lego City

I know this is probably old, but i’ve just seen the GTA: Lego City trailer on YouTube. It’s a parody of the GTA: Vice City video game trailer, but made from lego, and i’ve got to say, it’s rather impressive on some sort of scale! A lot of time & patience must of gone into it, and i do like the end article. I found the link on Digg, but pop on over to YouTube to view it, OR www.brickflick.com (the producers) to download the movie! 

Forza Motorsport 2... mmmmm (360)

I’ve just been reading my RSS feeds, and came across a rather tasty looking vid of Forza Motorsport 2 over at XBox360 Fanboy… Now i own & play Forza on the original xbox, and it looks & drives really well, but Forza 2 is lookin mighty fine!

I know the video doesn’t show any in-game footage, but the motor’s look shiny, plus, i do really like the 350z’s :).. Here’s a link to the post over at Xbox360 Fanboy!

 

Burnout Revenge (Xbox)

I’ve always been a fan of the Burnout series of games. Ever since seeing pictures of the original Burnout way-back on the playstation2 in 2001, i’ve been hooked on the thought of wrecking car’s for fun! And every single burnout game i’ve owned has been a joy to play!

Now, over the past couple of years, i’ve kinda lost contact with console gaming, and the release of Burnout: Revenge (the 4th game) slipped beneath my radar. It was only when i saw it in my local gamestation for cheap, that i decided to pick it up. The only problem was that the game was on the XBox, and all my previous copies have been for the PS2. Would it be a better gaming experience or worse? I wasn’t holding out much hope to be honest, as i’ve always preferred the PS2 over the XBox, and i only really picked up my XBox for Forza Motorsport, and maybe Halo?

Anyway, i digress, after getting home, and having a blast, the old features that made me fall in love with the burnout series was there, the crashes, the smashes, and the incredible sense of speed you get as you blast down the wrong side of motorways, through alley-ways and down normal streets, scooting between coaches, big rigs & vans before coming across a junction and being that split-second too slow as you soon realise it’s too late to break and you cringe as the fantastic replay show’s your shiny sports car bumping off car and into a lamppost scattering pieces of car all over the road!

The game also brings back the immense fun of Crash Junctions as well as some new play-features which all add to the game-play!

Now after playing the game for a week or so, i soon got bored of it, which always bugged me as i loved all the previous games, and couldn’t put them down for weeks on end. So what was different about this? To be honest, i couldn’t put my finger on it, but for the last week, myself & my girlfriend’s brother have been playing multiplayer on Burnout: Revenge, and loved every single second of it! The multiplayer “Road Rage” game is such immense fun and we’ve had many a laugh & joke about winning (but mostly losing)! The only problem with this appears to be the lack of settings. The ‘Road Rage’ game only allows 10 takedown’s before finishing. I WANT to be able to change that!. I want to play for as many or as little takedowns as possible.. Surely a ‘golden takedown’ game would be fun? The first to take someone down maybe? Why wasn’t this feature included?

Never-the-less, the last week or so of pure Burnout has been immense fun, and im soo glad i had the chance to play multiplayer and have such a great laugh with such a great game! After getting bored (was I insane?) for a while with this game, im not right back into it, and love that thrill of speed & destruction. True, it can be very irritating at times when you come across a level that you can’t get past, but surely that’s the whole point of it? How much fun would a game be if you could complete it in an hour?

Overall XBox score… 8/10

Overall PS2 score… 6/10

Edit:

Well, i’ve not played the game in a while, ever since i got my 360, as this is still not backward compatible with the 360 . Regardless of this though, i had the chance to play burnout Revenge on the Playstation. You’d think they would be more or less identical. To be honest, the playstation one really is inferior compared to the xbox version. The sound does not come anywhere NEAR the quality on the xbox, with missing samples, delayed effects etc. Loading times are horrific, and the gameplay doesn’t feel right. Tis a shame as all the previous burnout games ive’ owned have been on the playstation! Makes me wonder what i’ve been missing!. I’ve lost all faith in Sony! 

Gone wireless...

wooo!… for the past few months, i’ve been hunting for a wireless router for home. I finally narrowed it down to a netgear item, and it looked nice.. But im on a budget, which was set to £40. I Eventually found somewhere selling the netgear router, new, for £39.99 with free delivery!!! That was eBuyer, and it was out of stock.

I waited a month or so, and they were still out of stock. However, saturday night, i checked, and yes, they had 1 (ONE!) in stock… ordered it as soon as i saw it! Woo, i got my router, and on budget.

Next morning, i check my email, and yes, there was one from eBuyer. “Sorry, your item xxx is out of stock” AARRGHHH!!!! So i cancelled the order and visited eBay. So i found one for £25 + £10 postage. So i got my new router, less than budget and it turned up yesterday!

It was rather easy to set-up and after a bit of hair-pulling on my part (turned on WEP, but ignored it on the laptop), i finally got the internet on the laptop, so i can now browse the t’interweb on the sofa, rather than huddled up in the corner!

Plus it looks good!… haa! 

what the...?

These turned up in my inbox this morning from one of my work-mates who used to live in South Africa.. These are SA Police hummer's that have been spotted on the road!



Beep Beep!

Oh fudge...

Just had a call from the local garage. My car has failed it's MOT. It failed on 2 minor problems and another problem which i was unaware of.

1) Door Mirror Glass - This is slightly cracked (still). Didn't think it'd fail on this.
2) Passanger side window washer - Again, didn't think it'd fail on this!
3) Rear brakes are below the limit - Never even knew about this problem. Brakes are fine!!!

Sooo, they are looking into the brakes and will let us know how much it's gonna cost to fix!!!

:(

volkswagon bora's

Recently, i've been noticing a few VW Bora's on the roads. Now i know these have been around for ages, but in my eyes, they look rather nice. And after a few hours on various VW forums & websites, i've found some very nice looking Bora's.

Check these badboys out!







Certainly something worth thinking about in the future :)

Surprise Surprise!

Well, yet again, the car has a problem!

I posted last week to say that the car had been into the garage to get the hose fixed and all that!... Well that's all done. Last Friday, we decided to go to Suffolk to see "H"'s parents. I thought it'd be a good test for the car, to see how it goes now after the work. Anyway, it got there & back in one peice which was good :)

But Tuesday morning, i got in the car, started her up, put it in reverse and looked out the back window to find a load of blue(ish) smoke coming from the exhaust. Jumped out to have a look, but the smoke had dissapeared, and nothing was coming from the exhaust so thought nothing of it.

Got to work & posted what i saw on the PGAC, to which the ever-helpful members told me it's probably due to worn valve stem seals which *should* ideally be re-placed when doing the head gasket. But obviously it hasn't been done.

So now, basically, when the engine is off, a small amount of oil seaps into the cyclinder. Upon starting the car, this oil get's burnt off, hence the blue smoke. It shouldn't create too much hassle if it get's left, which it probably will do... Well for a few weeks or so until i can get enough money together to get it done again. You see, when the valve seals go, you need to take off the head to replace them. Doing this, might damage the head gasket and depending on how you take the head off, it may need skimming again too!... So in theory, i'd need to get the head gasket done AGAIN in order to do the stem seals. What a bitch!

Soo, "H" & i have been talking recently about really saving. We're gonna look into getting a mortgage & get our own place together... But obviously we need a car too, so we're gonna try and save a bit of cash for a new motor!

Will this ever end?

FOR SALE: 2 x Technics 1210's

I have, for sale, a set of Technics 1210 turntables in very good condition.

These were purchased 3 years ago brand new, and have rarely been used over the last 2 years. They come complete with lid's & ortofon cartridges as shown in the pictures below.




[more pictures here]

Looking for £450 ovno for these.

Based in Croydon, Surrey. e-mail me if your interested!

It goes from bad to worse!

Sooo, on friday, i picked the car up. Seemed ok!.. Saturday, we helped my girlies dad move from Croydon to Eastbourne. Car behaved well,although i wasn't racing it or anything. I did notice however, that when i pulled away, sometimes the clutch would judder. But i thought nothing more of it, and didn't want to scare the passangers into thinking that there was a problem.

Forgot about it on Sunday, but the problem kinda re-appeared on Monday. So monday night, i got home from work and decided to inspect the driveshaft gaiter which the mechanic had done. Looked fine to me. So stood up, locked the car and walked away. A quick glance back to the car to make sure the indicators had gone off, and i realised a big puddle under the car, and it was getting bigger by the second!... Doh!

Went back and opened the bonnet to be met with a radiator pipe with a huge spray of water coming from it!... Nice! Now if you have read my blog, you should know that i had a similar problem almost a year ago now with a different pipe!

Never-the-less, the pipe needed replacing. Now seeing as the mechanic had done a decent job on the head gasket, i gave him a call. Bearing in mind it was at 6pm on monday, and the car was booked in on Tuesday morning at 9! Not bad i thought.

So Tuesday comes, i drop the keys off, and head towards the train station (again). At 11am, i phoned the mechanic to find out what the progress is. he said he couldn't find a problem!.. So i told him where it was coming from and to go have another look.

I Phoned him up at 2 to find out what was happening with the car. He said he had fuond the leak, and ordered the new part. He'd be picking it up at 4, and then i could have the car at 6! I was told to phone back around half 4, 5pm to find out how much it'd cost!

So 4.30 comes, i was about to leave to get the train and thought i'd better make sure it was done. Phoned hte mechanic, and he told me he didn't have a chance to pick up the part, and the car wouldn't be ready until today!... AARGHH!

So in the last 2 weeks(ish), i've had the car 3 days... That aint good at all!

Oh, and the other problem. Saturday night, "H" went out to meet some old school friends. 1am, she phoned up to be picked up. I got halfway to the club when i got a flat tyre.. So had to lock the car (and leave it at the side of the road) and walk to where she was as i didn't want her standing around alone waiting for me.

The car's gone from bad to worse. Im hoping this is the last of the problems, but i've got half an idea that it wont be! im mean't to be going to suffolk this weekend. I hope the car behaves itself!

I've got the car back!..Wooo

Well, as my last post mentioned, with a bit of luck, i'd be picking up the car on Friday, and indeed i did! Damn it feels good to be driving again! And since friday, i've done around 150miles which has been quite fun!.. But still had a few problems though!

Saturday, my girlie & i helped her dad move to Eastbourne, which is around 50 miles from where we live. So we loaded up the van and drove down there. i followed behind the van and drove sensibly so as to run the engine in so i dont wreck it with the new bits on it. Had no trouble getting down there, but i was always looking under the car for leaks. I must of been imagining it (or unlucky) but whereever i parked, there always seemed to be a few drops under the car until i got home from Eastbourne. I will have a proper look at the engine today though!

Also, Saturday night, "H" went out with her old school pals. She phoned me at 1am asking to be picked up, so i jumped in the car, and drove into town to pick her up. It's about 5 mins away, if that. Anyway, got halfway there, and i could feel the car pulling to the right. Now it had not done this earlier whilst driving to eastbourne, so it meant only one thing, a flat tyre! D'oh!. Being 1am, and not an entirely safe neighbour hood, i thought i'd drive to the club, pick "H" up, and drive back, and then change the tyre in the morning as it didn't 'feel' that flat. But after turning a corner, i realised the tyre was completly flat, DAMN!

So pulled over to the side of the road, and called "H" telling her that i had a flat tyre. Now i wasn't going to leave her waiting, or standing alone for too long in town, so i locked the car, and ran down to where she was. We walked back to the car so i could change the tyre.

It's all done now (obviously), but this is the 3rd flat tyre i've had in as many weeks, and it always seems to be the same corner of the car that's going down, however, it's not the same tyre. My first thought was that someone was sabotaging(sp?) the car. But thinking about it, my first flat was in Suffolk, the second one was driving home on the A12, and the last one was at Home. So it's not that. I doubt anything is catching inside the wheel to flatten it, but i'll definatly have a look later on when i get the flat tyre replaced!...

Since ive got the car back though, i've realised i do love the car, i love the way it drives, the way it handles, and the way it feels on the roads, and it'd certainly be a shame to get rid of the car. It's a difficult decision, but maybe one that will have to be made sooner or later :(

Nearly done...

Well i have constantly been on the phone to the mechanic, and if all goes to plan, im picking up the car tonight!!!..

The Mechanic first off, set about looking into a water leak i never knew i had. This turned out to be coming from the inlet manifold and he sorted that out. he said he looked into this as it could be causing the head gasket problems, but once it was done, the problems were still there. So they set about changing the head gasket. Upon removal of the head, they noticed that the gasket was indeed knackered, and had a breach between the water ways & the cylinder. Not good! So the gasket was replaced and the head was sent off to be skimmed.

When i phoned them yesterday afternoon (hoping the car would be ready), he said the head was back and all was well. But the car wouldn't be ready until friday morning (today), because obviously, it all needs to be put back together, and then driven round the houses to sort it all out!!!..

So i shall be leaving work early and head back into Croydon to get the car.. Wooo.. I cant wait!

I've also got the guy to fix my leaking CV gaiter, so in theory, the car should be pretty much sorted now!.. I told him i had the MOT coming up and was there any problem's he's spotted that i should be aware of, and he said no, the car looked pretty good now that the work has been done!

I Cant wait!!!

The Car's gone...

... to the garage this morning! Hopefully it'll be ready soon! I phoned up a load of places last week to see if there was a garage close by to where i live which could do the head gasket as soon as possible, and this garage said they could take it in today and hopefully be ready by thursday morning!.. Fingers crossed! Let's hope it's not too expensive!

I know it may sound stupid, but im missing the car already, and REALLY cant wait to get it back! Getting the train to work this morning was a nightmare, and took me well over an hour! Had to go from East Croydon Station upto London bridge, and then back out to where i work! Was hassle considering i can do the drive in 20 mins on a good day!

Roll on thursday!... Oh, and the mechanic will also look at my leaking CV Joint!

Will post more news when i get it!

Oooh, it's mucky!

Last night, i went round to my dad's again to try and flush the water system, to try and pre-long the engine till next tuesday when the head gasket get's fixed.

I took some pictures of the gunk coming outta the engine.. it doesn't look nice! Here's the pictures


The water filler cap.


The crap coming outta the radiator.


The basin under the car full of the sludge!

Hopefully the engine will hold out till tuesday!.. Finger's crossed!

Double whammy!

I Took the car into the garage today to get some welding done which has been pending for over 6 months! an hour or so after taking it in, the mechanic phoned up and told me he had done the welding and also fixed my exhaust as it was blowing loudly and annoying him!.. Wooo... So for £40, i got 2 problems fixed! Back of the net!

I did have some quotes from various garages about the exhaust. They told me that the catalytic converter was worn and needed replacing... one garage wanted over £300 for it. Turn's out it was just a loose connection, and needed to be tightened up!

Also, i've booked my car in to a local garage to get the head gasket done. It's going in next tuesday so fingers crossed, it shouldn't take too long and once it's out, most of the bad problem's would have been rectified, and it'll only be smaller problems which will need attention!

Shall post back with any new news!

And... to top it off...

Just got my tyre, and whilst there, i asked the fella why there would be oil/grease around the inside of the rim. He had a look and told me that the driver's side CV joint has worn, and is leaking grease!

F'in fantastic! :(

Woah, it's been a long time!

Yup, its been a very long time since i last posted here, but to tell you the truth, there's not much going on!

I've still got the 106, it's still got problems. Here's the story from the last 5 day's...

THURSDAY
I notice i've run out of ciggarettes, so i decide to drive down to the local shop and get some. we were in suffolk at the time, and the local shop was a mile away. So i drove down there, got my ciggies, and drove back. Whilst driving back, i notice that the car's pulling to the right. Thought this was slightly strange, so when i got home, i checked the tyres, and sure enough, one was flat! D'oh!

Oh, and i also noticed that my right hand indicator isn't working!!!

FRIDAY
Friday morning consisted of me changing the flat tyre for the spare. The spare appeared to be mildly flat too! Damnit! So i pumped it up and drove down to the local "Rapid-fit" garage to get it replaced. 3 Hours later (3 damn hours!!!) they had managed to fix the flat tyre, put a brand new tyre on the passanger side, and ignore the mildly flat drivers side tyre! After a brief conversation with the bloke, he went off, and checked the drivers side tyre before telling me it was fine and it had no holes or leaks!... Fair enough, so i drove away £40 lighter.

SATURDAY
We were going to drive back to London today, so i decided to do the usual checks. Looked at the tyres, the looked fine. Checked the engine, it was ok. Oil was a little low, but it was alright. Brake fluid was fine. Last check was the water. Now you may recall i had trouble with the radiator a few months back! The water level on saturday was fine, but it had a brown oily water substance congealed around the cap!. Nice. This would indicate a head gasket on it's way out! Cost to fix would be around £400! OUCH!

So anyway, decided to drive home. It was me, my girlie, and her sister in the car. Driving down the motorway, i was in the fast lane overtaking a car when i felt the steering wheel start juddering. I thought "this aint right", and sure enough, 30 seconds later, my front drivers side tyre (AGAIN!!!) was flat, and i was still doing 70mph down the fast lane.. So after battling to get onto the hard shoulder, i had to change the tyre which isn't much fun when there are huge trucks racing by my ear at 70!!

SUNDAY
Decided to leave the car today! too much trouble!

MONDAY
Driving home from work, i pull into my driveway to hear a funny whirring noise coming from the engine. After closer inspection, it turns out my alternator could be knackered!... Not MORE problems!

So, to sum it all up, the past 5 days have produced:

1) flat tyre
2) Indicator
3) Worn Head Gasket
4) ANOTHER flat tyre
5) Dodgy alternator

Oh the fun of running a Peugeot!!! So now, im off to get another tyre for the car. Tomorrow, the car's booked in to a local garage to get the hand brake pivot welded. They will also inspect the passanger side front suspension as it's creaking like a be-atch!...

Oh, and i know where the exhaust is blowing from now :D!

Onwards, and downwards?!

News?!

Well to be honest, nowt's been going on! The car's been fine, with just the niggly problem of the small peice of welding which needs doing to the handbrake pivot (really should get that done) and the blowing exhaust which also needs looking at.

I've been thinking about the sounds in my car, and im half tempted to upgrade the rear speakers to a set of 6x9's which would of course, require a stronger rear shelf. The only reason i want to replace the rear speakers is whilst sat in traffic last week, i decided to play with the settings on my stereo. I adjusted the sound to the rear of the car, and to be honest, it sounded awful. This (i think) is because the speakers are too deep, and are not moving correctly.

Also, whilst on the note of ICE, i've been hunting for a pioneer CD-RB20. I spotted one on ebay on saturday, which i started bidding on, but got outbid with 5 seconds to go. Done another search which produced a second one which ended sunday morning. I placed my max bid, and went out. When i got home, i checked it only to find i had been outbid again!... arrgh!.. So, the search continues. I actually spotted one on eBay this morning with a "Buy It Now" price of £10. Sooold!.. Bought it straight-away. So hopefully it will turn up soon and it'll work fine! Although im a bit dubious because of the price. Oh well. We shall see!

Lastly, with some kind help from 'Longun', a mate of mine from the PGAC, he has leant me some server space. ONce it's all up & running, i shall be moving my blog over to that space which will allow me more creative freedom with the site, which is nice! And i promise i'll set up a new domain name so that the website is memorable.

Ho hum, back to work i guess!

Happy new year!

Happy new year to all!... Hope you all had a good'un, and played safe over the holidays!!