well Manchester Confidential are organizing some tours of Underground Manchester over the coming weeks see here

an FLR-9 high frequency signals interception antenna array which, at the height of the Cold War, was used to intercept Soviet and Warsaw Pact communications as well as non-US Diplomatic messages at Chicksands – dismantled in 96.

St Margaret's Bodelwyddan AKA The Marble Church, Built out of lime stone, still looks as clean as the day it was built, just hasn't weathered.

Pink Floyd – Run Like Hell, Echoes, Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Rick Wakeman – Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Motorhead – Aces of Spades, Overkill
Saxon – 747 (Strangers in the night), Wheels of Steel,
Slade – Cum on feel the noize
Pearl Jam – Alive
TYR – Regin Smiður clicky
Yes – Starship Troopers
Arthur Brown – God of Hell Fire
Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath, Paranoid,
Eagles – Journey of the sorcerer
Jeff Wayne – Eve of the War
Jethro Tull – Aqualung, Thick as a Brick
Judas Priest – Hellion/Electric Eye

Steve Harris

aye, set the Sky+ too, i seem to remember prog rock britannia being on sometime last year, and it was a good prog.

We were doing ok – not great, ok up to Christmas (architecture – churches and historic buildings mostly) but since then we had 3 large projects stall, as a result 3 out of 6 got made redundant last week (I was one of those made redundant). the forecast for those remaining isnt good – as one section which was mainly funded through Grants is coming to the end of its funding cycle so thats going to be a big chunk that will be ending in a few months.

personally i would like to see the engine regs change to allow a bit more freedom, ie – a 2.4litre limit but relaxing the 'it must be a v8 with 2 valves per cyclinder' freeing the teams to decide which engine type suits them.

to a limited extent i would like to see some ground effects allowed – something along the same lines as the GP2 regs.

increase the size of the front tyre back to last years regs.

this is a lovely relaxed place to stay: http://www.frenchblat.com/
we stayed a couple of years ago. absolutely lovely.

http://www.englishcut.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/6

former Savile Row chap who moved up to the lakes for a quieter life.

Bruce has said the same thing for years – he went to see maiden, and he thought he wanted to be the front man – hence why he went on to join Samson to get him out there.

Plus some of paul's performances could be a little hit n miss, so it could well have been Bruce saw em on a bad night for Paul

nope.

well. you could probably save all the icons from 2008, and reassign all the icons in 2009

think they're actually planning on binning FM at some point ( 2015? ), though it would free up very little bandwidth.

the plan set in the Digital Britain paper was to move all the stations presently on FM, to DAB. then sell new FM licences to new local stations, which currently boardcast on MW.

OfCom have stated a year or 2 ago that the DB time line of a 2015 switch over wasnt commercially viable, nor could they force the move as is happening in TV, since there is something like 15million analogue radios being used, and less than 2 million DAB recievers sold.
They feel if FM stations where pushed onto DAB before there is a larger take up of DAB, then people would just stop listening – especially since there arent many in car options, and new cars dont come with DAB either. the goverment is looking at making it mandatory for them to install a DAB radio in new cars.

When you look at the DAB only stations, they just arent surviving – GMG has shut or merged many of its DAB stations with other stations. IE Rock Radio, was DAB only in the North East, it was merged with the Manchester station, which broadcasts on FM.

GCap sold off Planet Rock and the Jazz station they had…

i thought Campos had been saved in a buyout headed up by Lord Lucan? 😉

Also with the testing, have Mclaren and a couple of other teams saying they'll be fitting a new aero package at Barhain (rather than this test as they aint ready yet)
Which is strange as during a race if the part is designed and signed off by Friday, they can have it on the car by race day any where in the world (according to Brawn)

this here describes a nice walking tour of the less well known/less touristy places of amsterdam.

other places to visit is the diamond cutting facility Gassan

Diamonds, which does a little small tour or how diamonds are cut and shaped.

Personally i wouldnt bother driving, as it is such a pain. and public transport is excellent.
a good tourbook is the 'get lost' guide

i'd agree with ya – i was more talking about Dave's look from the beginning.

wouldn't call Tarja goth….

come on, you should all be happy. the Teeside has been shut down in a carbon trading transaction.

Racheal Green:
2002 CHAMPION – 1st female champ in Caterham Motorsport history
2002 Lord Wakefield Trophy – outstanding achievement worldwide
2007 Lord Wakefield Trophy
2008 BWRDC Gold Star
First female to claim a race win at every Caterham championship level contested

Susie Stoddart
current racing in the DTM (German Touring Cars)

Former Champcar racer, now in DTM.

oh and just for reference on battery life, on the standard battery, i had tom tom running for 2hrs while navigating through manchester, started off with 70% battery and was down to 10% when i switched it off when i hit the motorway and knew where i was. that also included making a couple of 5min calls to let the missus know i was going to be late home, while stopped at a supermarket for a loo break – didnt switch the sat nav off during the stops

I've got to put in a word for the HTC HD2, I've had windows Mobile phones for years and years, but this is absolutely amazing!

As with all WM is uses active sync to quickly sync your contacts with outlook. MS Office is included – so theres easy editing of office files word, excel and powerpoint. as is Adobe PDF viewer.

the HTC Sense user interface is brilliant to use – and the 4.3" screen is gorgeous! HTC have done a brilliant job with the sense interface – yes the WinMob OS is in the background, but you bearly see it.

I travel a lot for work, so had been looking at netbooks etc, but then I'm carting around a phone, MP3, and a computer. If I got one, how good would it be for: phoning;

contacts synced with your outlook contacts list – and dead easy to find the contact to call – a 9 grid 'favorites' list or type the persons name or start of number and the phone shows up possible suggestions, voice dialing can be installed as a 3rd party app. Also active sync will allow you to sync between at least 2 computers.

The other thing is, when you plug it in, it will ask you what type of connection you would like – active sync, disk drive (ie it will display the SD card as a removeable disc drive, for faster transfer, or to use the phone as a modem for internet connection sharing. If you dont select an option within a few secs (5-10secs) then it will default to your last selection)

listening to music;

phone comes with a microSD slot, and usually includes a 2Gb card – the phone will read at least the current 32Gb microSD cards, the Music tab organizes music by album, artist, genre, song, playlist etc. turn the phone on it's side and you can flick through the albums and skip to a song via the track listing.

I use windows media to transfer music to the phone, but i believe there are other progs can sync music with the phone.

checking e-mail;

If your work has a Exchange server or similar, then you can put the settings in for push email (as in when emails are received by the server they are 'pushed' to your phone) otherwise you can set up the phone to check the sever in a set period to get your emails (from 1 min intervals to once every day)

browsing t'internet;

the built in Opera Mobile has been designed specifically for HTC, and features multi touch, as well as single touch (double tap the screen to zoom in) Very quick at loading pages, Internet explorer is also included, but is slower and doesnt feature multi touch (tho a double tap on the screen zooms in, which i find easier as that can be done with one hand, rather than needing one hand to hold the phone the other to 'multi touch' to zoom in)

if it is important, then the browswers support Flash and you can load the normal facebook page, rather than needing a seperate Facebook app (tho a seperate FB app is included too if you need it).

Opera will store passwords if you wish to save you logging in.

Oh and another thing, you can link your contacts with your facebook friends – which will put their profile pic as their contact image, a built in twitter app is included too, which can automatically receive the latests tweets.

if your intested in the stock market – theres a tab which will sync with the latest stock market update.

If you click a link for a YouTube vid, then the YT app will open to view the video, otherwise Vimeo and others will load in the browser.

maybe a bit of reading of work reports or taking basic notes.

while the disadvantage over older resistive touch screen of old WinMob phones means you no longer have a stylus to write notes i have been able to use my finger to act as a 'pen' there is a link from the phone screen to a notebook, so you can write notes while on a call, or you can use the Office OneNote app, there is also a voice recorder for dictation. as i said there is MS word, Excel and Powerpoint.

Also, how good are they as a gps for biking etc – I noticed that there is now an 'app' for memory map – how well does this work?

dunno about MM but i have got Tom Tom installed which works great, theres also Google maps included as standard (as is a trial verion of CoPilot, another sat nav prog, but i prefer Tom Tom) I've used the phone for Geocaching, and the 'BasicGPS' prog i have used shows the GPS is very accurate, i have had a reading within 0.5yrd of the location of the Geocache!

you can also 'geotag' your photos via the HTC footprints – that is tag your photographs with the co-ordinates of the location you took the picture.
the install of googlemaps now has the use of a compass so is show the direction your heading on the map – the compass is also a seperate accessable app if your orienteering, and can link to googlemaps to give you a bearing to your destination.

In the Windows Market Place (think the App Store) there is a GPS tracker app which can store your movements for downloading and logging – so you can see the route you took, and how far you went/have been.

there is also an app included as standard where you take a photo of a business card, and it will automatically convert the card info to your contacts list.

FM radio – plug any headphones with a 3.5mm jack in and you can listen to FM station radios

5M pixcel camera:

and video quality can be seen here:
here (unfortunatly the noise of the deltic did overpower the mic a wee bit… but then they are rather noisy things!)

in terms of battery life – i think judging by mates Iphone the battery life is similar, but i have the advantage in that i can swap batteries if i run out and cant get to a plug (there is also a large capacity battery available for HTC which doubles the battery life, and the thickness of the battery, if your a very heavy user) there are also cradles available for the HD2 which can charge the phone, and also a slot behind for a second battery to be fitted and charged at the same time.

Of course Bluetooth can be used to partner a headset, and send files between other bluetooth devices. and also the wifi connectivity – you can also use the phone as a wifi router.

Also, it will display the weather for your current location, which is also linked to your calender – so will display a 5 day forcast in the calender app underneath your appointments, there is also a separate weather tab, which can display the weather in any number of locations you set.

there is a fairly good review of the phone here

I love it, as i said, ive had Win Mob phones for years, but this one has blown me away!

I found it disgusting and tipped it down the sink.

good god man, you could have at least offered it to those of us with taste buds!

hmm, might even be worth using up my one trip a year to tesco to get some at that price (tho i wonder if Asda are price matching?)

I hope you took the short trip from Horwich to Manc Airport to take a trip through tunnels under the runway at some point in the 4 days.

or maybe a blat up the A682 to Settle (you dont have to drive fast to enjoy that road, i took an elise hire car i had last Feb up that and was stuck behind a line of traffic bumbling along at 40ish, but still was enjoyable with the roof down in the countryside listening to the engine on a sunny day)

blimey, some people can tell what someone did for 4 days with a car, from a 30sec clip!

my missus took one for a test drive 4 year – that was fatal – she's been after one ever since.

3rded for Marios

oh and dont forget – if you can get the bikes on the boot lid – only travel as far as a tank of fuel can get you – since the filler cap is inside the boot.

TVR chims are can be had for as little as £6000 these days – not expensive cars really, its the running of them that is the biggest pain.

wouldnt have through you could fit a boot mounted rack as the fibre glass wouldnt take the strain on the clip points.

if one will go in the boot, i think theres enough space behind the seats to get another bike in there. You would have to drop the roof first to get it in and out.

apparently there are some folk who have fitted a luggage rack to the boot lid of an Elise which can take a bike.

A tow bar isnt an option, the chassis finishes about the back edge of the rear wheel – the boot and fuel tank hang off the back of the chassis.

I'll be happy at the British GP, i'll be the right side of the catch fencing with my flags, just waiting to find out where i'm posted

The Southern Yeti: If it's made it here, why has it only made itself known to dumb hick yanks?

cos they are teasers.

teasers fly around the galaxy looking for planets that havent made intersteller contact yet, and find someone that no one will believe and strut up and down in front of them making 'beep beep' noises.

rather childish really.
🙂

Fortunateson09 – i had to ask on Pistonheads where the washer bottle was on a Elise 111s when i had a hire one for a couple of weeks. 😳

rather than go through your insurance and have the hassle of having to pay out your insurance give some one like http://www.europaconsultants.co.uk/

i used them when a van ran into the back of my MX5.

hit the nail on the head there Glenp – the teams are working to such a narrow set of rules, that there isnt really that much difference.

gone are the days when a team could experiment with tyre sizes, different compounds, 4 or 6 wheel (double front ala Tyrrell or double rear ala March (never raced))

another +1 for the HTC HD2, got mine yesterday. nice step forward from my old Touch Diamond.

tho if you dont want something as big as the HD2, then the Touch2 is a nice compact size like the Touch Diamond. (only thing the Touch2 seems to be missing, is the gsensor so it doesnt rotate pictures when you turn the phone on its side.)

Now the best driver f all time is back,

Jim Clark is back from the grave? 😯

HH – just emailed a PDF of the chapter in the Metric Handbook, tho from what you say it might not be quite what your after.

But it does give 5th 50th and 95th percentiles for men and women in a table next to each other

If it would help, i have my 'metric handbook' at work, i could scan in the couple of tables for women and men on the various proportions and email them over

Mann et al 2008 used gridded MXD data attributed to Rutherford Mann et al (J Clim 2005). Rutherford et al had stated that the gridded MXD was online at Rutherford’s website, but this was untrue.

In Sep 2008, Steve McIntyre sent an FOI request (his third such request to CRU), asking for the gridded MXD data as sent to Mann and associates. I did not ask them for anything new or anything that had not already been sent to others. Had Rutherford et al lived up to their representations to Journal of Climate, the request would not have been necessary.

Whereas previous attempts to obtain this data directly or through the journal (edited by Andrew Weaver) had been unsuccessful, this request through FOI was resolved promptly and expeditiously by CRU placing the requested information on a webpage.

well its not exactly 'peer reviewed' is it.

not that using usually stops the IPCC using the information.
such as anecdotes in a climbing magazine, or a students dissatation

It was weighted and they didn't release all info when buried under a deluge of FOI requests from people bent on distorting their data.

😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆

keep perpetuating the myths TJ.

would you mind providing a list of the FOI requests, and from whom. Since you make the claim, i'm sure you can back it up – having read it in an editorial of New Scientist or Nature doesnt count.

i'm not directly, but i have worked closly with Brian Gavin for a number of years
his website is: http://www.briangavindiamonds.com/%5B/url%5D

i booked a test drive of a caterham at a local dealer, was told to wait for their 'test drive guy' to get back before i could go out.

he couldnt fit in the car with the roof on (was raining, hard) so i was able to still have the drive on my own. and told since there was only a gallon or so in the tank if i refueled to put some in, and bring them the receipt.

but if its a second hand car – i would just be looking to see if the car stops straight, that on a straight road it drives straight without pulling to oneside (tho allowing for the camber of the road on that one)
that it turns on hard lock at low speed without any grinding noise (ie the CV joint is ok)
theres no wobbles either at 20/30mph or at higher speed (60+)
that the clutch bites ok – not too high or too much free play on the pedal.