Month: April 2010

April 22, 2010
emaren Life

Worst Buys Greek Squid……

The word ‘geek’ used to be an insult, perhaps it is becoming so again ?

A few days ago I was asked to look at a pair of computers that belong to a’ friend. The two machines are HP’s, an elderly, but still really nicely functional laptop and a fairly new desktop.

Both machines had been used by ‘children’ and as such, they had teenagitis, multiple copies of ‘extorsionware’, out-of-date anti-virus and every ‘free game’ known to man.

In other words, they are a pair of machines that are owned by people that are less than computer savvy.

The laptop was pretty easy to deal with, booting an OEM copy of XP and using the installation codes on the label affixed to the underside had it up and running quickly, hp.com relinquished the drivers for the wi-fi and 18,197 updates later I installed Microsoft’s Security Essentials and all was good.

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April 20, 2010
emaren Driving, Life, Motorcyling

Doin’ the Hokey Kokey

This evening as I made my way home through the ‘rush hour’ traffic, an hour which i feel I need to point out lasts for ‘several hours’ and is completely impossible to rush through, I spotted an extreme Hokey Kokey motorcyclist.

As he pulled up to the (red) traffic lights in front of me he had both feet off the pegs and he sort of dragged his heels for a good twenty yards before finally wobbling almost to a halt a few yards short of the line.  He then accelerated, sort of, by slipping the clutch in what sounded like 5th or 6th gear and almost stalled the bike.

When he finally stopped, still short of the line, he wobbled a little to the left and mashed the back brake (right foot) pedal and stuck his left leg down.

Then he put his right leg down.

And lifted his left leg and mashed the gear lever up and down for a while and found neutral.

So he put his left leg down.

and his right leg up (brake)

and took his hands off the bars.

The engine died with a jolt, it seems that he had a false neutral.

Both hands on bars (both hands in ?)

Clutch and brake pulled

Right leg down

Left leg up, shake and find neutral.

Start motor – both hands in.

Left leg down

Right leg up (brake)

Both arms off (out) and he started the usual bum scratching routine.

The light changed to green.

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April 14, 2010
emaren Life, Technology ,

Do I want an iPad ?

My current laptop is a fairly old and beaten PowerBook G4 and recently it has been showing signs of age more than ever. I also have an Acer Aspire One Netbook, that runs ChromiumOS, but this is too small to use for anything beyond uber casual surfing.

Desktop computing is handled by an AMD powered, Quad core machine with lots of memory and plenty of disk space that dual boots Vista (ugh) and Linux.

Having migrated my e-mail, contacts and calender to google services I have little need for a ‘local’ e-mail, just a really good browser and access to my domain’s. Or alternatively a really good e-mail program that copes with imap or exchange services.

Chrome browser support would be great, then I get the plethora of pluggins and bookmarks sync, which is something I never knew I wanted, but now cannot imagine life without.

Battery life is not a huge thing to me, but a decent display is. My Powerbook does 1280×854, more screen real estate would be good, or a decent ‘pinch-to-zoom’ would be cool I guess.

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April 11, 2010
emaren Driving, F1, Life

F1 vs NASCAR

Or how I learned to love to watch people driving in circles.

MontoyaNASCAR was not exactly popular among my peers growing up in the UK. Apart from the odd mention on TV I had not really heard of the sport until I became a regular reader of Motoring News. Even then, the mentions were vague and related to a sport that I had no reference points for.

Let me explain.

In the UK there is a huge ‘club’ racing scene, with many formula based classes that allow anyone that is interested to race wheel-to-wheel at a price that matches their budget.

There is a simple ‘open vs closed wheel’ split, and then ‘tin tops vs open’ split too. The open-wheelers ranged from ‘Formula Ford’ up to ‘Formual One’, with a reasonably simple progression that would allow almost anyone with talent to progress through the ranks and arrive in F1 after a few years. Many famous names made the progression. I remember seeing Nigel Mansell race in the lower series at my local track for example.

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