Get a Nokia e71. Secondhand or NOS, should be cheap. Don’t confuse the Nokia e-series with the rest of the crap Nokia (can) turn out. The e-series really are good. It looks like a Blackberry, but it works. And 4 days on a single charge too.

Has other bells / whistles too, but is a good phone and is good for emails.

That Sea Vixen is proper awesome.

Yeah, I’d have just burnt the dope as well, in a “series of small fires”.

Marmoset – Member

Last night was worth it alone to see an F40 and 959 together – it felt like I was 12 years old again!

To me the 959 looked really dated. The F40 certainly looked old, but in a good way.

Mighty Bucc.

Best job I ever had.

Why do you need to commute each week?

Because I like sex with the missus?

save the cash, and have sex with someone else’s missus

You’ll need a fairly sturdy one to put a Mini on. Try Thule – they look good.

IIRC, the rule of thumb is the distance from you to the screen should be approx. the screen size (diagonal) x4 or 5.

Above 42″, plasma still has the edge

Do your research wisely if buying LCD. Find out what type of panel they are made using, and avoid the TN (cheap) panels. IPS is where you want to be.

Also identify the difference between LED backlit, and LED side-lit screens.

Surprisingly, if he’d done that ‘race’ right, from Corrachadh Mòr to Lowestoft Ness it would be 554 miles – less than 100 miles more than the route he took. He’d have had to average over 72mph though…..

Bits of him are quite far West too.

Did he mention Britain?

Yes, he did.

CFH – Well, he DID leave from England’s most Westerly point, but as he did it he claimed it was Britain’s most Westerly point.

Fair enough, by around 30 metres. Ardnamurchan Point is generally recognised as the most Westerly point on the GB mainland though, albeit inaccurately by that short distance.

A good 22 miles West of Land’s End

You are right. That’s why I said it up there ^

Geography lesson for Clarkson.

Britian’s most westerly point is Ardnamurchan point, not Land’s End

You had my hopes up there, I mis-read that title as “Limmy Dead”. Oh if only…

My lad did something similar to this. He managed to modify the year on his licence to 90 instead of the real 91. Local bouncer looked at the licence and compared the year to the bit in the driver number which also has the year of birth, and of course they didn’t match. My son’s obviously a good forger and a fool at the same time.

First I knew of it was a copper at the door handing me his licence back. Bouncer had handed it in after the shift.

They left it to me to, ahem, “return his licence to him”.

He won’t do that again.

Good point. Getting insurance with an IN10 on your licence makes life quite tricky. Possibly more tricky than the basic 6-month ban itself….

A thing that will be missing from your wallet soon = A Licence.

Driving without insurance, first offence, 6 to 8 points. (only 6 if FPN)
Use of hand–held mobile phone whilst in charge of a vehicle, 3 points

Plus your existing 3 points.
12 – 14 points in total.

So, you are looking at a 6-month ban under the totting-up rules.

Might be worth reading this.

Weigh it in for scrap. Don’t forget to fill the tyres, fuel tank, screen wash, engine block etc with water first though!

I drove from Scotland to the French/Italian border without being asked to show my passport, and I suspect that was just ‘cos the Italian border bloke was a bit bored (top of the Alps). Wasn’t asked for it again all the way round Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Holland, Belgium and France. So, technically, yes you can travel UK-France with no passport. However at airports a passport is the de-facto method of identification (even when getting on UK domestic flights, for example) I’d be very surprised if you manage this OK. I did once fly from the UK to Eire without one though….

MOT’d car is uninsured by default,

Defo a myth. I was stopped for driving with front fogs on, when there was no fog. 1/4 mile away from the foggy bit. B’ stards. Anyhoo, I’d managed to forget the MoT renewal date, and I just got a HO/RT1. Got it MoTd the next day, took it all in to the local cop shop – all OK and no mention of insurance being invalidated.

sounds like the tick of death to me.

I have recovered drives from this state using spinrite, but only so I can back them up. If you already have a backup, then you now also have a paperweight.

face like a bucket of fire damaged lego

craigxxl – Member

My mother thought we’d split and didn’t give it a second thought. I still bump into her every now and again, normally she crosses the road to avoid me though.

Your mother crosses the road? Wow

I’m driving my first ever auto these days (Bongo), and have been very surprised about how much I like it. Does take a bit of getting used to though.

I would go back to a manual if the right car happened to be a manual, but my previous thoughts about them being crap have been banished for good.

Also surprisingly effective in the snow, where I thought an auto would be useless. Smooth gear changes and the ability to feed in the power very gently have made driving in snow/ice a very rewarding experience

Zedsdead – Member

BP are an American company.

Eh, no, they are not. As someone who works for BP, I can assure you that they are a British company. Why do you think the US are so pissed off with BP over the GOM spill? They were not pissed off with Occidental over the Piper Alpha, or with Exxon over the Valdiz, or with Union Carbide over Bohpal.

That would depend if it inherited the horn really – if it did it would be a Unicorn. If not it would be, well, a horse.

I’ve had some right royal accidents with mine.

A raptor 50 and a flight box do not mix well when one is trying to land, and the other is trying to be an “immovable object”.

Lots of schrapnel and LOL-ing later, and I have a – ahem – “custom profiled” flight box.

Flat receiver battery resulted in a £800 raptor hanging in a disheveled manner in an industrial fence.

I was winning the “stack it in” league amongst my RC heli pals for a while, before I learned how to fly the damn things.

Scary beasts eh?

and then the weather, which these days comes exclusively from someone pregnant.

I was wondering about that the other day. WTF?

Let’s face it, anything Vectra based isn’t going to be too impressive in the handling department, is it?

Sounds to me like you have found a few snowboarders who happen to also own mountain bikes.

vlingo – really good voice recognition / reading out SMS & mail
GTunes – Music player, with free streaming and download.
Lookout – Anti Virus, Phone Locater, Security, etc
Juice Defender – Looks after usage to help battery life.
Pure Grid – Really decent Calendar app
Battery Left – how long in hours, or %, or v, etc, etc

I had some skirting fitted by a joiner last month, and he did the internal joint that way.

Butt the first piece right into the corner.

Cut the next piece to fit the next run plus the thickness of the previous board.

Cut off the bottom (straight) piece of the end of the second run, leaving the moulding part intact.

Cut through the moulding part at 45° – to give a matching edge.

Cut away the bit left with a fret saw – not so old fashioned it seems!

There have been some interesting test reports about these aftermarket increased capacity batteries for the desire – although they have a higher capacity on paper, they have a much lower capacity under test than the standard HTC ones. I think the issue is more that the HTC ones are very good than these ones are crap.

Smartphone + 2 (or more) days battery, email, internet etc – My last phone was a Nokia e71. Easily lasted 2 days, and had all the smartphone functionality you caould ever want – WiFi, GPS, bluetooth, mapping, interweb, emails, etc, etc.

Screen is a bit small, but hey ho, it’s always going to be a trade off with battery life. The e72 which replaced it is AFAIK equally good, with some slick revisions.

Blackberry’s IMO are pretty unreliable in comparison (sweeping generalisation – no idea which models are good/bad/ugly). Many friends who have them have done nothing but moan about them. My old e71 was sold on to a mate of mine, and he’s still impressed with it a year on.

No reason why you couldn’t with a real one if they were set up to do so – it’s just not a particularly useful thing to do, so they don’t. Not exactly rocket science – you just reverse the pitch on the blades.

Once you have a heli set up to fly inverted (as much negative pitch as positive), then it can do all this:

Can you imagine being in that? Which is pretty much why real ones aren’t set up to fly inverted.

This is as close as a real helicopter gets to the “3D” antics:

Best thing to do with a Beetle.

New Stig hunches over VERY like Tiff……..