But those elements do enable you to drive faster* on a road.

Yes, sorry, absolutely. What I was trying to say is that the proper view of ‘making progress’ is about driving confidently and – much more importantly – safely to the road conditions and other drivers to get from A to B in the shortest, but legal and safest time – if that makes sense. So it’s not necessarily about driving fast and there may well be times and situations where ‘making progress’ actually means driving a fair amount below the speed limit for the road as it is the only safe way to proceed.

Someone mentioned above about ‘collecting’ cars behind you if there is a potentially dangerous section of road ahead – this would be an example where actually slowing down a bit (not brake testing the cars behind mind and not slowing too much to annoy them) will actually mean you can progress more smoothly through the proceeding section of road.

As driving (very expensive) prototype vehicles is part of my job, we have to have a driver assessment/coaching every 2 years and it really is brilliant. It’s just enough to knock off the bad habits everyone picks up and give you a good chance to re-assess your own driving. We use this lot:

CAT Driver Training[/url]

Highly reccomend them. The instructors will pick you up on bad habits but not to the point of nitpicking – If it’s an unsafe habit you’ll get the ‘correct’ way hammered home, but if it is just a difference to what they do (e.g. the indiciator thing above) then as long as you are shown to be safe whilst doing it then all is good.

The additional roadcraft they teach does have an element of ‘making progress’ but only to the point of getting you to be able to drive safely and legally without having to drive 10mph below the limit. All of the ‘making progress’ stuff is actually more about observation, road positioning, and escape routes than it is about driving fast.

I’d definitely reccomend a refresher/advanced course of some sort as you really can see where you’ve picked up bad habits and hopefully get rid of them. I’m certainly not claiming to be a driving god after having done their courses, but I do find myself driving ‘better’ on the roads (which I appreciate is massively subjective).

Ice hotel in Kiruna is definitely worth a visit – although Kiruna itself is nothing exciting.

I’ve only ever been on work trips so can’t really comment on pleasure activities up there, but it is beautiful in winter. Very easy to get out to the middle of nowhere in utter pitch black and get the best chance of seeing the Northern Lights – I’ve seen them twice and they were utterly incredible. Still images just don’t do it justice.

I’ve always fancied going back as more of a holiday so if you find anything good then please post back on here!

Superglue

Definitely not superglue unless you want a severely weakend windscreen,

As others have said, get a proper windscreen adhesive – just not worth the risk by bodging it with anything you have lying around.

I’ve got a pair of these:

Low Nabucco GTX

And they are brilliant – use them for apres ski, but they were bought for cold testing (down to -30 or even lower) and with a good pair of socks they keep your feet proper toasty. Great grip on snow/ice as well.

Before the other week, the last cars I had changed headlight bulbs on were a Vauxhall vectra where the entire headlight unit had to come out, and a Renault Clio where the same was needed but that needed the wheel arch liner out as well.

Saw that a bulb had gone in my car a few weeks ago (Citroen DS3) and was dreading the time and faff it was going to take. Opened the bonnet, rubber cap off the back, old bulb out, new bulb in, rubber cap on, bonnet shut. About 1min30 in total I reckon. And this from Citroen as well – I was amazed to say the least!

I’ve just recently bought a Marmot Nabu jacket which is Neoshell and it is ace. It is very very breathable and easily better than the Gore Pro Shell jacket it’s replacing and better than a lightweight Rab eVent jacket I have also.

The Rab ones I think fall in to either the very lightweight category, or the ‘proper’ mountain jacket category. The uber lightweight ones will still be reasonably tough and certainly not less than a similar Gore (Activeshell) or light eVent jacket. The bigger ones will be tough as nails but then the weight penalty is there.

Where I think it really comes in to it’s own is the jackets made using the softshell version of NeoShell. It’s as waterproof as the hardshell version but softer (….). I bought the Nabu as when I go out Winter/early spring/late autumn on the hills I can now take 1 jacket rather than the breathable but not waterproof softsheel and the waterproof but not massively breathable hardshell I used to take. Neo is breathable enough to wear all the time, comfortable like a softshell and waterproof like a hardshell.

The Nexus is a fairly standard mountain jacket weight – 600g is not really that heavy when you are actually wearing it, it’s more about fit than weight unless you are doing 2 weeks with a 25litre bag up a cliff….

Nils Frahm and Agnes Obel are my current favourites – just beautiful piano music (and a bit of vocals)

I think the idea is good but the lumie is terrible, not rempotely straightforward to use and keeps you awake with a bright blue light if you haven’t set the alarm. Not tried any others but I was thining of just getting a timer light switch instead.

I know I’ve already mentioned it above, but for anyone disappointed by the quality of the Lumie but still likes the effect then definitely have a look at the Philips ones. They look better, they are built very well, the display dims with the ambient light level (and vice versa) and is a nice orange rather than bright blue and it works great. The colour changing one is especially good.

I use a Phillips one and think it’s great. Waking up to a light room, even if you know outside is dark, is much more conducive to actually getting out of bed. The Phillips one I have also changes the colour temperature as the brightness increases to simulate a sunrise (dark red to a yellow-white depending on how bright you set it).

What I actually find best is the reverse and using it as a diffused bedside lamp for reading before nodding off. You can set it to slowly dim the light (and again, colour temperature) over 5-30minutes and it really does help rather than just going from bright to dark instantly.

Really impressed. They just need to make one with a DAB tuner in it now.

Bill’s just off Cornmarket is good – their duck pie is amazing.

Edit: is that yours?

I wish!

(And yes, as my username suggests, I should really put a word in for one of these as well :)

Particularly like the Evo review of it – good score considering they rate out of 5 stars…

TVR Speed 12 EVO Review

Can’t believe no-one has said an XJ220 yet!

OK it wasn’t quite all it could have been, but that is definitely what a supercar should look like.

Still staggeringly quick as well

Visually it doesn’t appear to be mate no, there’s certainly nothing coming out the back even when booted.

As someone else mentioned above – the unfortunate downside of a DPF is that because it filters the soot out, if your engine is producing more smoke than normal it doesn’t get past the DPF and so the driver never actually ‘sees’ increased smoke.

Main culprit for increased smoke is the EGR valve stuck open – soot will then go up a lot. Does the car feel sluggish on pullaways or when driving at high load? usually a sign of an EGR issue.

Tour Of Britain – Ditchling Beacon

Shoreham Beach Long Exposure

The Gates of Newhaven Port

Langoustine

Fenêtre

Having seen the price on the apple store for the 6 plus did I miss something? I thought I heard 499 USD, which has translated in to 789 GBP for the 128GB, 699 GBP for the 64GB and 619 for the 16GB.

US prices were with a 2 year contract – UK are SIM free

Having seen the price on the apple store for the 6 plus did I miss something? I thought I heard 499 USD, which has translated in to 789 GBP for the 128GB, 699 GBP for the 64GB and 619 for the 16GB.

US

5 green chillis and 3.5 tbsp of black pepper????

Yeah, still chilli in it, but the heat comes from the pepper – difficult to describe but properly nice.

Takes about a week to grind that much pepper for it…

Hmm….that didn’t work did it….the URL is still there to extract…

For something a little different…

Kurumulakittu Varattiya Nadan Kozhi[/url]

Totally unpronounceable but ruddy amazing – the heat is black pepper based rather than chilli and so it is much more of a warm, aromatic heat than a sharp spice. Properly properly good.

I once saw an Evoque with an “urban camo” paint job.

Depending on where you saw it, it was quite possibly a development/prototype car as they use an ‘urban’ camp for them. Or it was just someone with no taste.

Having had the pain/privilege of working with JLR the last couple of years, these things are annoyingly good. Don’t like the styling, and the space is comically bad, but they are really very good to drive. Nothing massively exciting, but just solidly good. Same with the big ones – a Range Rover is phenomenally good taken as a big luxury car.

Still wouldn’t buy one myself mind.

(Yeah missed the bit where Pook mentioned it was diesel he filled up with………)

Haha, not yet at least….

Oh, and to add – all that was for petrol engines. The Diesel ‘super’ fuels pretty much just have different additives, although will usually have a higher Cetane number as well – essentially the same as the RON, but you are a LOT less susceptible to auto-ignition issues in a diesels the thing basically runs on auto-ignition! (Although it is possible and pretty bad when it happens)

Depends on the engine. The main feature of these fuels is that they have a higher RON (98 or 99 typically). What this means is that the fuel is less prone to uncontrolled combustion (knock) which is very bad for the engine. Modern engines will have a way to retard the ignition if it detects knock – this then pulls the spark away from the most efficient angle and so the combustion isn’t as efficient, but is stable. With higher RON fuel, the engine can run the spark angle nearer to the optimum angle and so combustion is more efficient.

In ‘normal’ cars this isn’t going to make a massive amount if difference as they won’t be particularly prone to knocking anyway (although as engines get smaller and turbocharged the possibility of knock increases). If you have a reasonably old car, then it will make zero difference as it might not even have knock control. However a ‘performance’ engine could notice quite big gains, and indeed might HAVE to run on higher RON fuel in order to operate safely, especially when driven at high load.

The other benefit of these fuels is that they have other additives which are good at cleaning out high pressure fuel lines and injectors – these are present in standard fuel but are sometimes a bit better in the higher RON fuel.

So yes it does make a difference. Is it noticeable? Probably not massively for your family hatchback. Certainly is for your weekend Ferrari…

I had it about 10 or 12 years ago – just felt absolutely drained for a week or so. The blisters weren’t really painful, just not very pleasant.

I’d sack in the ride for this week – just recover and do it when you’re better which will hopefully be soon.

F12 looks fantastic.

Agreed – the thing has HUGE road presence (literally and metaphorically).

California – not too outrageous but it’s not meant to be; still a great looking sports car
458 – looks stunning
FF – not the prettiest car in the world but still has Ferrari ‘presence’
F12 – Stunning. Just stunning.
LaFerrari – if you say this thing isn’t Ferrari-like then I think we might be looking at difference cars

And ALL of them sound incredible.

Done.

As others have said – choose the camera based on the lens, not the other way around. For photos for a letting agents, the final images are going to be fairly small and either printed on a sheet of A4, or displayed on the web so there isn’t much point splashing out for any fancy camera body. Bencoopers suggestion of just getting the Sigma 10-20 for your current A300 sounds best. Spend any remaining budget on a decent, solid, tripod, and possibly a flash and you will have pictures just as good for what you need than spending more on a body. Houses don’t move so use a tripod for every shot you can and you won’t have to worry about having a fast lens or a body with good high ISO performance.

Make sure you read up on taking ‘real estate’ photos – as others have said, it isn’t just a case of putting the lens as wide as possible and pressing the shutter. I’m looking at buying a house at the moment and some photos are absolutely terrible – if the photos are bad I am much much less interested in the house; a potential foolish approach, but the quality of the images (as in composition not image quality) will make as much of the sale as the description.

Good tutorial here:

Digital Photography School – Real Estate Tutorial[/url]

So OTR price…no paying for extra metallic paint etc etc

No.

Unless it’s not included and you’d like it. An OTR price will be for a particular spec – if you are happy with the spec you pay your money and get your car. If you want a different spec then you pay as per the option price list.

Definitely do it and definitely do the ‘extreme’ version – it’s not actually that extreme, but is miles better than the non-extreme one. Brilliant fun and a morning/afternoon well spent :)

I think Sony do some pretty good ones.

A couple of quick ‘setup’ tips we are taught at work:

– set the chair forwards/backwards so that full clutch, brake and accelerator depression are achieved with a still slightly bent knee
– (not technically the chair, but it’s for the next bit…) adjust the wheel rake so that your elbows are slightly bent at the 10 and 2 positions
– adjust the seat back so that if you rest your wrists on the top of the wheel you don’t have to lean forward. Your shoulder blades should be resting firmly on the cushion
– adjust the seat bolster angle (if possible) so your thighs are supported as much as possible. The adjustable seat lip will allow you to support more of your thigh
– adjust lumbar support until it feels comfy
– make sure you can reach the main controls without stretching
– make ure you can see the main controls and out of the windscreen and sidew windows

It’s going to be a bit of a compromise of those, but hopefully that is a good start.

A few drops of vanilla essence in the mix before cooking – lightens the whole thing and adds enough flavour/sweetness that you don’t need loads of sugar….not that that should stop you of course :) A good one for out-of-winter porridge.

For depths of the darkest months – dried dates and a wee bit of very dark chocolate. Mmmm. A very good way to start a dreary winter day.

Pretty impressed by this as well:

http://gizmodo.com/tesla-might-just-open-up-its-electric-car-patents-1587851265

Ok, it will give them more competition from the ‘big boys’, but if this was taken up then the infrastructure would improve massively and overall benefit Tesla who would have quite a lead. Great call by them I say.

Moneywiz – has iOS and Mac apps (if you have a Mac); simple but powerful, sorted.

Usually not a huge Bose fan, but the place I’m staying at the moment has one and it is very very impressive for the size. As above, the B&W A5 still beats it, but the Bose is a bit cheaper I think and would certainly do the job very well.

That’s the other advantage of the MeCo stuff – it is much easier to care for than pure Merino as you can just stuff it in with the rest of your cycling kit or normal clothes and wash as normal.

The Cocona bit is great for stopping pongs as well. I went trekking in South America for 2 weeks and basically just used 2 MeCo tops and at the end of the two weeks they didn’t smell much less fresh than they did when I started.

(I don’t work for Rab or anything, just generally really impressed with MeCo – one of the only technical fabrics I have found that works exactly as it is advertised to)

Rab MeCo.

Blend of Merino and Cocona (or thirtysevenfive as it is now called…) – absolutely ruddy brilliant; much better than just pure merino IMO. And generally cheaper too. Just as comfortable, warm, haul sweat off you, very fast drying.

Rab MeCo

Jawbones (or whatever they are called these days – Racing Jackets?) would get my vote. They still have a huge field of view even with the frame beneath – although probably not quite as big as the Radars – and have the advantage that the thicker frame acts as a good light block around the sides. I use them riding, running, and any other sport and they don’t move an inch. Weight nothing as well.