joshwaller.co.uk

I've been to Koln Cologne / Dusseldorf Germany thanks to Easyjet. It was okay. The unwritten rules of travelling: 1 - if backpacking, make sure your stuff is blatantly on your bed otherwise someone else will claim your bed and then have a go at you for sleeping in their bed! 2 - when driving along a single track road, and meeting another car, the car that has the least distance to reverse, should reverse, however, normally the most arrogant person will force the other person to reverse, which is nice. Needless to say I've had enough travelling for now, and seriously can't be bothered unless absolutely neccessary or if the roads are free of other traffic!

We went to Alton Towers yesturday, unfortunately, Heather had the car so I wasn't able to drive down in it. I went with Tony, in his car. He wasn't so keen on the second ride we went on: Rita Queen of Speed, as you can probably tell from the picture! It is VERY fast, and very scary. Later I went on Nemesis and it felt quite tame in comparison. For some reason it didn't take a photo of me! Hex was good but confusing, definitely worth going on, but I felt it could have been better. The Haunted House was a good adaption of the usual haunted house with guns, but nothing spectacular. Tony's favourite ride was the rapids, even if it did involve getting wet. I like it a lot too, the big rotating platform used to board is very cool. They had a new ride called Peugeot Driving School - unfortunately it was for kids! We wondered whether it was sponsored by Peugeot, I thought it might be, however it might just be a really weird coincidence, what with all the Peugeot 207's dotte...

We have our new car ! Hooray! The journey took a bit longer than expected due to a crash on the motorway, and roadworks on the only other road. The car drives well, the brakes work well and the heating and air conditioning work very well. The car shares a lot of components with the Skoda Fabia but the cars little extras, and big extras, make the car noticably better. The little extras worth mentioning: the stereo volume increasing when the engine noise increases, the small lights above the vanity mirrors, lights in the back for passengers, the emergency triangle in the boot, purple and red dials etc. The big extras worth mentioning: the much better 1.9 TDI engine in the VW Passat, a very nice improvement compared to the 68bhp 1.4 in the Fabia, the bigger, better seats, the increased space inside. There are some downsides, it seems to roll a bit more than the Fabia, maybe it could do with it's suspension stiffening? Plus parking will be much more difficult as it wont be possible to...

Small box, containing an even smaller box. Steve Jobs loves Pirates of the Carribean 2, but he doesn't like it when you steal music. The simple but ESSENTIAL instructions: To switch on, press center button. To switch off hold PLAY/PAUSE. To reset hold Center and Menu. If you don't get to grips with switching on / off using this method then you're buggered and you're best off without an ipod - why they couldn't just use an on / off button, I'll never know, perhaps it's un-cool. (Remember Apple prioritises cool, over easy to use). The stuff you get with it: Dock adapter, earphones, packet of instructions (no CD, no manual), some white apple stickers for the teenage audience, USB cable, frabric case (hoorah!) The switch on experience: Choose your language. Use the menus... Look for the new games, only to find, you have to buy the new games for $5 each. New quick-scroll feature lets you go to the first letter of the Artist. Neat. New feature: Search f...

I'm really looking forward to this - ever since test driving a Skoda Fabia VRS - I've wanted a (VW/Audi/Skoda/Seat) Diesel TDI car. We spent a good few weeks looking for a cheap Skoda Octavia TDI, but all of the cheap ones ( Mitchell Group (highly recommended!) which was very helpful as we knew what to expect when driving other TDIs. We figured that we'd have to spend more money than we had hoped to get a low mileage car, but unfortunately the 02 Octavia was outside our budget so we tried a number of other cars from AutoTrader, and spent most of this weekend looking at: a VW Bora TDI that didn't feel like it had a turbo, a high mileage Seat Leon that had some kind of over-revving problem (and a high mileage), and finally a low-mileage VW Passat 1.9 TDI S 100bhp (pictured). It's bigger than we were intending (and heavier), but has plenty of space, and the only main drawback is the saloon style boot - we'd have preferred a hatchback so you can fit a dishwasher sh...

We went to Brittany, France this week via Ryanair, the East Midland's Airport, and Dinard airport. We ate lots of crepes, swam in the sea and in a pool, and watched lots of TV that was dubbed over in French. TV highlights were: T.J. Hooker, a cop show featuring William Shatner. German show ( Alarm für Cobra 11 ) featuring Autobahn Police where every 5 minutes there was some form of police chase involving a vehicle of some kind (such as a Hover craft, Bulldozer, Range Rover, VW Golf, Fiat Panda, BMW 5 Series, Large Trucks) most shows would feature several large explosions - it was EXCELLENT and should definitely be on UK TV. Malcolm in the Middle was also very funny in French. Photos now in the gallery . East Midland's Airport claim have won an award as the "Best airport in the UK" - I personally find this claim award highly questionable for the following reasons: 1 - The layout of the airport is extremely poor meaning that queues (in check-in) end up blocking ALL w...