joshwaller (baboba)

Even though all the old Rovers still haven't sold meaning you can get a bargain british built "new" car, Nanjing's MG Rover's have started rolling off the production line in China using the same equipement from Birmingham. Cars they are making are the MG7 (Rover 75) shown above, and the MG-TF sports coupe. (Nanjing bought MG Rover, but not the Rover name). Link (austin-rover), Link (bbc news), Link (autoblog with comments)

Well, I've refurbished two alloy wheels , and had the second one fitted today, so thought it would be best to get the car cleaned, so here are some photos . If you think this Dodge Ram is somewhat on the large size for British roads, then wait till you see the next picture... They're turned a GMC Topkick into a stretched limo! It's about 1.5x wider than your average UK car, has 6 wheels, and the standard engine appears to be an 8.1 litre v8!!

Team "Mr Sharkey" - we'll be taking part in the 1400 mile rally from Calais to Rome in September! Car suggestions welcome - it has to cost £100 or less - and be an M reg or older. This site: usedcarreview could be a good resource (written by the chap who invented the term " bangernomics ")

To be a human beatbox . lots of cool examples here: french micheal jackson beatbox . french beatbox . australian idol beatbox . shlomo , more shlomo , shlomo roni size duet . inspector gadget flutist beatbox , super mario bros flutist beatbox . dude beatboxing with a harmonica . some other dude . lots of people . and tez .

Auto Express (and "Pictures: Poblete") think the Rover 45 replacement from Roewe (the company that own half of Rover MG ie: the Rover 75 and 25) will look like the pictures above (pics from Auto Express 21 Feb 07 Issue) based on the Spy shots and Peter Stevens Design . It's quite a nice looking car to say the least - but I have doubts about whether the Roewe 450 will actually look that good - based on the Roewe 750 simply being a "face lifted" Rover 75, and the Roewe 250 appearing to be identical to the Rover 25 Streetwise. It will be interesting to see a re-entry of Rover (as Roewe) and MG (made by Nanjing) over the next couple of months / years to see whether they will be accepted or adopted by the UK public ( it appears as though "die-hard" Rover fans will not accept Roewe). And can they compete with the likes of Ford / VW etc? They will have to make an appealing case, especially considering how even the weaker brands in the UK offer impressiv...

We have a new contender for best spam subject line ever ... vote for your favourite in the comments. (the line is actually from a BBC News Article )

Dark City ( imdb, 7.6/10, 1998 ) - very good sci-fi film with a good amount of intrigue setup at the beginning of the film, with information fed to you bit by bit, a bit like the matrix (with some scenes shot in the same location as the matrix apparently), but with less action. Well worth watching if you liked the Matrix. Thank you for Smoking ( imdb, 7.9/10, 2005 ) - Funny film shows how there are two sides to every story and follows the job of a lobbyist for "Big Tobacco" companies. The extras on the making of the film and "living with spin" are worth watching as interesting commentaries and video clips of famous presidents lying (ie Bill Clinton "I did not...").

Argh, I'm not ready yet! I don't want to commit to the new blogger, I want to stay with old blogger, but I have no choice!! Dear invisible unresponding blogger, please don't break my blogs, I've spent a very very long time over the last 3 years customising them excessively... the old blogger account is no more? Where has it gone? Apart from the new labels it appears the same, are the labels optional? (Yes, leave them blank and they wont appear)

7 years / 100,000 mile warranty (on powertrain, 5 years / 100,000 miles on the rest of the car). WOW! Yet it's the same price / or less than a Toyota Auris (Corolla), Ford Fiesta, Honda Civic. Plus it looks better than the so called "revolutionary" Auris (The Corolla replacement that has been rated as worse than the car it replaces by What Car) It even looks fairly decent from the back (although admittedly all cars look the same these days*). I wonder whether you can happily keep the same car for 7 years, or whether boredom would set in, and you'd want to replace it with something else? Think of the cost savings compared to other cars though: "The car's broken" Kia: "No worries, we'll fix it for free!". It's been fully tested in Autocar (24, Jan, 07), and prices start at £10995 (1.4l 103bhp) with a 1.6l 121bhp version available for £11495! A 1.6l Diesel is available with 114bhp for £14245 with a low insurance group 6 rating, and a 2l...

It looks very very nice - the middle "ball" is like a trackball you get on old laptops / new trackball mice, but glows white. The design is very stylish with a black body, silver sides, and silver accents, the design appears to mimic (nee copy?) the expensive Vertu Mobile , but feels very plasticy. The camera on the back, whilst only a 1.3 megapixel (1280 x 1024) camera, appears to be very clear and have a very high depth of field (from I would guess 10 / 15cm to infinity). It featurs a very small flash and a self-portrait mirror so you can take photos for your myspace profile. The only problem I can see with the device is that it wont stand up - you can place it lying down on it's back - but in any other position it falls over - which will be a pain if you ever want to take photos using the self-timer (not that it actually features a self-timer option). The tiny flash on the back acts like a "real" flash when used with a pre-flash to attempt red-eye reduction a...

Tea Review have published their list of the best, the greatest teas of 2006, including the all time best teas . For more tea reviews and tea links have a look at the site - if you'd like to contribute please let me know!

So Christmas is once again over. I've put some photos online , and updated my myspace page . We did do stuff on new years eve, but for some reason I took precisely zero (0) photos - which is completely weird for me. One of the coolest presents (out of many very cool presents) was / is / are "Ecoballs" from nigel's eco store for £30 - these things will last 1000 washes in your washing machine, meaning you a) save heaps of money and b) are much kinder to the environment!

V for Vendetta - Interesting futuristic vision of Britain as a "Nanny State" on steriods, ie, a complete dictatorship with curfew for your own protection, ban on all "controversial" or non-christian lifestyles or religions (the Koran is banned, etc). All personal provicy has been taken away, and citizens are bugged etc. People who complain about the government or have illegal things are punished and / or killed. Highly rated on imdb (8.3/10). It's not the matrix but it's along the same lines and something dramatic needs to happen to resolve the conflict between the government and the people. I think it's a fairly entertaining film, but a depressing portrayal of a corrupt government gone wrong. I wouldn't recommend it, although I do know people who love the film, so it may be for you, but for me it gets a "meh". Green Street (aka Hooligans - 7.3/10 imdb) - Violent football hooliganism. Surprisingly moving. Great depth of character and d...

The Canon Digital IXUS i7 Zoom - Actual size* pictured above in Blue - only £166 from Amazon UK - read my First thoughts here . * Picture is actual size on my monitor.

Alien Autopsy - Funny, based on a true story, stars Ant and Dec, they're very good in it. Worth watching, despite the poor ratings from sites like imdb (3.8/10). Some background info . Lost in Translation - boredom on a stick. Painfully boring to watch, especially a second time. Date Movie (funny rating on imdb 2.7/10) - funny spoof, not to be taken too seriously, but some very funny moments. The extras are worth watching, as they cut some very funny bits out of it. Confetti - good film. Funny, slightly girly flick. Ad-libbed apparently. Some funny bits cut, so worth watching the extras. I'd say watch Alien Autopsy first if you haven't already seen it. Actually Date Movie's probably the funniest, Alien Autopsy the most interesting, and Confetti probably third in the list of films to watch.

Everytime Gallery breaks on me (which tends to be every time server changes are made by my host, or for some other random reason), I tend to use it as a good reason to do a quick upgrade to the lastest version, this time v1.55pl1. I'm not sure whether to risk going to version 2 yet... The important files and folders to backup and not to overwrite are: /albums - all photos etc are here /html_wrap - all your custom headers and footers are here. /css - annoyingly they store the default colours here, such as text and background colour - the screen css file is the main one (answered in the gallery 1 faq: why is my gallery blue . .htaccess config.php And then the quickest way to upgrade seems to be to simply replace the root of the gallery folder (and ignore / leave all the other folders on your server as they don't seem to change too much version to version, especially making sure you leave the albums folder as it is, as this is where all the photos and albums are including .use...

How can that possibly be an appealling prospect?! The retail cash price is £6650, which is around £200 cheaper than the base Toyota Aygo, however, it's around £2650 more than a 1 year old VW Lupo, a much cuter car, which is valued at £4280 (in good condition) by Parkers. Buy the VW Fox on Finance, for only £1319 more than cash price, at a total price of £7969 (9.6% apr*), and you've ended up paying £3689 more than the 1 year old Lupo! The deal is you only pay £139 a month (for 3 years) for the brand new VW Fox, and you get 3 years free servicing, saving you £150 on the usual cost of an (expensive VW) annual service. You then get to pay a final payment of £2965 so you own the car outright, yet the car is barely even worth £3000 after three years, so even if you want to sell it to someone else, you don't get the money, the finance company do, so overall you've lost around £5000. Wow, where do I sign up?! Alternatively your one year old Lupo for £4000 is now worth around ...

Skoda Octavia, VW Golf, Seat Leon, Audi A3 Apparently VW AG isn't making much money ( especially in the US ). They comprise of mainly four "brands" of car, they are: VW, Audi, Seat and Skoda. There are others but these are the mainstream brands. Toyota on the other hand appear to be making lots of profit . Here's what I think VW AG need to do to resolve their "issues". Simplify. Why spend thousands of pounds making 4 different Small Family cars - for example the Skoda Octavia, VW Golf, Seat Leon, Audi A3 (pictured above). With each car comes a seperate design team, management team, marketing team, showroom, TV commercials, safety test, factory, etc etc, if they made one of these cars, for example the VW Golf, they could spend all that money on the one car, and make it the best in the class, so that it would beat all rival companies. Keep three brands: Skoda , for budget, reliable, spacious cars that can compete on value and safety with KIA / Hyundai, etc. V...

Born yesturday at around 10pm, he entered the world weighing 7 pounds 8 ounces. More Photos: lots here , some here .

New! Douwe Egberts (Sara Lee Coffee and Tea UK Limited) " cafe-Switch " Creamy Pleasure. Indulgent and Dreamy. New Pump + Froth "Just add water". Instant "cappucino" style coffee. "Flavoured coffee drink concentrate with milk, sugar and sweetener". Only contains five E numbers, bargain! and only 2 artificial sweeteners. It tastes vaguely like coffee, although with too much sweeteners for my liking, meaning that any authentic "real" coffee taste that might be in there has vanished, to be honest, it tastes pretty crappy, and doesn't taste very milky, or creamy, instead all that seems to have turned into the top froth, leaving a dark, bad tasting coffee below. Seriously, you can't have "authentic" coffee / cappucino / latte without proper ingredients, ie: real milk, and real espesso based coffee (ie from ground beans). By the time you've wasted all your money buying these fake manufactured coffee's (6 drinks for ...