joshwaller (baboba)

Engine / Performance: Performance isn't the right word for this car, however, the engine does have a gruff growley sound when pushed, it's just a shame the car doesn't accellerate in the same way as it sounds. When idle the engine has a wobbley character about it that wobbles the car, this is especially noticable when stopped at traffic lights (most likely due to the 3 cylinder engine). The engine is adequate to set off from lights in a nippy enough way, and keeps up with traffic. Handling and Driving: The biggest problem I found when driving this car was the general feeling that I was driving a van - the car seems to tower over similar class cars, and you can't see the front of the car. There seemed to be little feedback from the steering or wheels. The car has a light steering and a light clutch so is easy to drive. Interior and space: Suprisingly spacious - seemed more spacious inside than the MK1 Octavia - makes me wonder why cars are different sizes when the ins...

The Intenso 8GB USB Pen Drive has annoying packaging - you need scissors to open it. Nice green colour though. No wrist strap / neck strap / keyring loop is provided with the pen drive. There is a (plastic) loop on the pen drive so you can attach your own strap if you have one, but personally I think this should come with the pen drive, and I suspect this will be too small for a keyring loop, and will probably break if attched to a keyring. The bright red light is ALWAYS on when it's plugged in - and it only switches off when it's flashing when you're reading / writing to the pen drive. However, it does seem quite quick - copying 1gb on to it took about 35 seconds and copying 1gb from it took around 35 seconds. As is the norm with hard drives, pen drives, SD cards etc, you get slightly less space available in Windows - with 7.51gb total space available, and the drive comes pre-formatted as FAT32. However, I'm not sure why you'd buy one of these pen drives when you ...

So I'm very very slowly bringing the Mini back to it's former glory. So far I've beefed up the sound system with a subwoofer, and front speakers, although I do need to mount these all properly, so this is just at the testing stage at the moment. The head unit is very nice though - a Sony GT420U - with USB and AUX in it supports pen drives, and USB hard drives! I've also been looking at the front of the Mini as there's a lot of surface rust under the bubbling paint. Very little of it has gone through so with some elbow grease and some sanding it should smooth out okay, ready for a respray. I've also decided to respray the rocker cover, as that was suffering from some rust. Here's the before and after shots of the rocker cover, now that it's been painted red. I've sanded the rusty bits with a B+Q Mouse Sander, and covered the rusty bits with Hammerite Kurust from Halfords. Next I should be able to fill any dents, and smooth ready for the primer. M...

Potentially good day road trip? from Britains Best Drives - 1 North Yorkshire Moors BBC TV (iplayer, available till 2nd April 09) Starting at Scarborough - up to Scalby - through the Yorkshire moors - via Dalby Forest (£7 toll road), to the A169 to Hole of Horcum, Goathland, Grosmont - to Whitby Westerdale - Google maps says it may take around 1 and a half hours - so that would give you plenty of time to get to the start and plenty of time to get home afterwards with the majority of the driving being done during the middle of the day when light is likely to be at it's best. Sights to be seen: Scarborough: 1950s cafe/ Harbour ice cream bar. Dalby Forest. Hole of Horcum. Place where Heartbeat is filmed (Goathland). Whitby Abbey. Hopefully I've been able to recreate the route in google maps, as shown below: View Larger Map Next episode is in North Wales: BBC iPlayer , Google Maps Route (roughly), Screen grab from the show . Seeing: Caernarfon Castle, Dinorwic slate quarry, the L...

Wow, my last pair of shoes from Clarks, lasted nearly 3 years ! They were £60. Since then this range of shoes seem to have gone up in price as they're now £60 - £75 (or slightly less when you factor in the 15% VAT we're paying - ie they're still priced up at £75 in the store, but are £73 when you come to buy them.) Here's hoping these new "Clarks Rustle GTX" black leather, goretex, active air, "extreme comform technology" shoes last as long as the last pair! With the last pair it was the sole that wore out the quickest, which meant they were no longer waterproof. The new ones are very snug - they grip your feet even on the heel - and the inner is quite fuzzy meaning your feet shouldn't slip when in them. They also seemed to be the most comfortable out of the range with the most bounce. Here's the old ones with the worn through soles. And while we're on the subject of shoes, I may as well mention some Sketchers trainers (pictured below) I ...

BitDefender Internet Security 2009 (£25 from Amazon UK) goes a little bit further than most anti-virus software, however it also adds parental control so that you can make sure your children aren't visiting dodgy websites. When installing it notified me that a newer version was available and asked me if I wanted to download it - this extends the install time - however you may as well have the latest version if you're in no rush. Once downloaded, the install took roughly 4 minutes (excluding download time) and required a restart after installing. I installed it on a Vista SP1 laptop. Once installed the program takes over the built in Windows Firewall and Windows Defender - the main features are anti virus, anti spyware, anti phishing (works with Firefox as well), IM encryption, Family network protection, Gamer mode, Laptop mode, antispam, firewall, parental control, and file vault. Total Security 2009 adds Tune-up and Backup. (If you want backup as standard then I'd recomme...

£31 from Amazon UK - this provides Nero 9 + Nero BackItUp 4 plus a trial of Nero Home 4. It comes in a big box containing the usual size DVD case - so isn't especially environmentally friendly when it comes to the packaging. Installation attempt 1 failed at 2% with Nero installer crashing, and a reboot was required. (Although it did manage to install a Lightscribe control panel that now lives in the taskbar). Installation attempt 2 was successful using the typical installation settings (although it appears you need to perform a custom install to get all the Movie templates - which are useful if you use Nero Vision). This seemed a little slow - taking around 20 minutes on my PC which has 2 500GB hard drives, a Quad Core processor, and 4GB of ram, so I dread to think how slow it would be on older machines! Installation did not require a restart of the PC at the end of installation, which was an unexpected bonus. The installation put two icons on the desktop - one of them a Lightscri...

Old cars are now rediculously cheap, years ago (1996 / 1997 to be more specific) I remember seeing the new Ford Ka, and thinking, one day I want to own one of them, and now they're £500 in autotrader. Same goes for the Ford Focus, years ago I remember saying, "When the Ford Focus only costs £1k then you just buy one of them every year, what more could you need from a car?", and now they're around £1k (the Zetec engine always had a nice growl, and the seats were comfortable enough for sleep). In a few years the new (BMW) MINI will be a similar price (you can get them for less than £4k now). It makes me think, why not just buy a different car every six months to experience driving these once great cars... here are some I'd like to drive: Rover 75 - £1k will now buy you one of these spacious, comfortable, retro / stylish looking cars. V6? V8? MG ZT-T? (although admittedly these cost more) Rover SD1 - available as a V8 but getting rare now so good SD1s will cost sign...

It's not often you get the live out computuer games in real life, but this weekend, the computer game became real as I was able to drive the Mazda Demio from Gran Turismo on the Playsation in real life! It's surprisingly similar to the computer game - it has four wheels, an engine, and moves like other cars, except, just like the computer game, it doesn't want to go there quickly, nor does it want to go round corners at any speed. The Demio features some things in abundance, namely reliability, space, and practicality.

This I guess would almost be considered a fully featured "64bit"* game for the Atari Jaguar - using 3D objects - some with texture mapping and a 3 dimensional environment. The game has three modes - an original Missile Command - with changeable background (choose from a default wallpaper, atari lynx, arcade, or tv set), a 3D Missile command - an updated version of the original but in 3D, and then a "Virtual" Missile Command - which is set under water and is first person - you can fire from one of the cannon towers (at a time), and must protect the houses, other towers and yourself. The game has some horribly irritating background menu music. I prefer the original version of this - seems the quickest - most fun and most playable. * The games on the Atari Jaguar seem to be very similar to 16bit games of the time (like the MegaDrive and SNES), except with the addition of 3D abilities for some of the games (much like Sega 32X, and the SNES Starfox game).

Important questions that I haven't seen answered anywhere else: Stereo speakers built in - No. Video recording - 320x240 MP4, 30fps, 2 channels, 32khz. WOW - are Sony oblivious to the fact that every other phone and digital camera now offers at least VGA video recording, while the better ones offer HD video recording? And surely stereo speakers built into the phone should be standard practise? Using the Sony C905 as a digital camera: So what about photo quality? the biggest appeal of this camera has to be the built in 8 megapixel Sony "Cybershot" camera with "Xenon" flash. Well, the flash definitely helps with photos of people. But one area where camera phones have always been behind in image quality is noise - the basic facts are that the more pixels you cram into a small image sensor, the more noise you're going to get, and mobile phone cameras have the smallest sensors you can get. Have a look at this picture (click above to embiggen) taken without flas...

Long story short - Easyjet flights back to Gatwick cancelled - no alternative other than driving to Calais (via Belgium) to get a ferry back. Then hire a car to get back to Gatwick (although a train would have been possible). From this I have deduced the following about these new cars: Vauxhall Vectra - despite it's "family car" size, there is not really comfortable space to carry 3 people in the back. Long journeys (2 hours +) are uncomfortable, and rear headroom is poor on the hatcback. The head rests are uncomfortable and in the wrong place for attempted sleep, and the window ledges are too high so that you can't rest your arms on them. Ford Focus (08 model) - space in the back is plentiful for 2 people. Seats are comfortable enough for sleep on the motorway. However interior feels very cheap, poor quality plastics, manual winding windows even on Zetec model. Noise in the back in excessively loud on motorways. * Mini pictured above is the Mini I've recently b...

It's full title, according to Amazon, is "Philips Bangkok GC7220 Steam Generator with SteamGlide Soleplate - 3.5 bars Steam Pressure", however I prefer the shorter name of Philips GX7220. It costs £75 , or £95 at Tesco. Apparently this is good value for a pressurised steam iron (others are in the region of £150!), it's not much more than other premium brand philips irons . Normally I'm happy buying the nicest looking £15 iron from Argos. This things big. You fill the bottom half (the stand) with water - switch it on - wait about 2 minutes - then start ironing with the top half. The steam is delivered to the iron through the large flex cord. The ironing - it's fast, damn fast. Wet too, and ironing on a solid surface will leave the surface (and the underside of the clothing) slightly damp, so it's recommended you use an ironing board with a mesh design that will allow the steam to escape. Setting it up and using it is fairly straight forward, as long as you...

The album grows on you, with tracks 2 and 3 standing out as the highlights for me. Track 1 gives a poor introduction, and track 10 leaves you disappointed. When the track works, the powerful voice, meaningful lyrics, and almost perfect music come together to form an impressive, (sometimes) moving and enjoyable experience. It's important to give this album the attention is deserves - listen to this album with the correct setup and the powerful bass lines and melodic tunes impress. However it can also serve as pleasing background music for dinner parties. Skip tracks 1 and 10 and you have a great (if slightly short) album. As a guide she often sounds like Annie Lennox, and occassionaly Lisa Stansfield over the top of a jazzy soulful sound. it's available from Amazon

The Vostro 1510 from Dell.com/uk - £316 including VAT and Postage (with £50 off, plus a further 10% off). It's very dark in colour, and not very shiney from this angle. After the faulty advent I think I've finally got a bargain of a laptop to replace the Inspiron 1300 . The laptop scores well in Vista, although is let down slightly by the graphics, and 3D graphics scores. Aero is supported, but scores would be higher if a dedicated graphics card was chosen. The Vista experience scores are: CPU: 4.8, RAM: 4.8, GFX: 3.5, 3D GFX: 3.5, HD: 5.1 - giving an overall score of 3.5. The Dell Vostro 1510 features a 1.8ghz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 250GB HD (WD), Vista Home Premium, DVDRW (slot loading TEAC), 15.4" widescreen, SD/MMC/MS/Pro memory card reader, 4 USB ports, WIFI (plus physical on/off switch), Firewire, a shiney sparkly black lid, a catchless closing mechanism (magnets? weighted shut?), a nice blue circuit board with easy access to the CPU and memory. Some pros and cons, s...

Upgraded the gallery again - this time to v1.5.8, and also updated php to the latest version. Only problem is this time I didn't follow my own advice and make a backup first! Luckily I've got a daily backup, so I should just be able to copy the important files back like html_wrap, and the css files. Hoorah it worked*. * apart from breaking the "latest comments" button, and the random front page image. doh!

- Highlight the address bar before the page has finished loading and the right click / copy option is greyed out. Reselect the address bar (url) and copy is enabled. - Click photos on Facebook too quickly and the album goes back to photo 1. - text is displayed in white and fonts become corrupted. details and screenshot here . (This all happens in Opera 9.50, and 9.52)

Strange, bleak, dark and slightly unsettling. Haunting vocals as per usual, but none of the commercial friendly drum and bass beats of the earlier Dummy album. More noise - it made me question whether my stereo was faulty. The last couple of tracks turning to rock. Some folk rock sounding stuff, with others (Machine Gun) sounding like it's come straight from one of the early Terminator films.

This video (on iplayer - will expire) explains men's unexplainable moodyness.

Thanks to CHDK (Canon Hacked Firmware), a Canon Powershot SX100 IS , and this guide on how to make HDR images in Adobe Photoshop CS2+ I was able to turn this original image... ...into this image (by taking around 16 shots at different exposures, using the auto exposure bracketing feature of CHDK)... Click images to embiggen. This would have probably worked better if there was less movement in the picture. However it's impressive how much detail is lost in the original image on the wall and sky, where everything is overexposed and colour is dull and lifeless.