Anything that I feel like saying.
I’m off to Carlisle Racecourse tomorrow to go to Roadsafe 2007. This is a road safety event run by Cumbria police – I just go to look at the police motorcycles and cars. Thankfully there are live bands and other things to keep the rest of the family amused.
The weather was excellent last year, but there is lots of rain about at the moment so I’m hoping it will be ok.
I get annoyed when my PC takes longer to boot up, as it has been recently. I wondered if it was to do with the new 2Gb of RAM, perhaps it takes longer to check? I traced the problem though. I’d been lazy and left my MP3 player plugged in to the USB port. Being a small MP3 player, it runs as one of those USB mass storage devices. The delay was part of the new fangled USB boot that these PCs have, it was trying to boot from the MP3 player.
And in the pursuit of DSL happyness I’ve used all sorts of MTU, RWIN and other tweaks to get the best out of my connection. Most recent change involved pulling wires out of the wall, which would normally be a disasterous move for me. Having consulted the diagrams at DSL Zone, I pulled out a couple of wires. This appears to have improved the noise margin on my ADSL statistics, and given me over half a meg of extra download speed. Result!
I’ve been using Tomtom Navigator 6 on my Orange SPV M600 with a cheap bluetooth gps receiver I bought on ebay, and it has been quite impressive in what it can do. Only hassle I’ve had has been with the audio on my cheap holder for the car.
I was quite interested to see an article on the BBC about how they check the data for the maps behind the likes of tomtom, which involved a couple in a big orange van with cameras.
It’s quite interesting to see how surveying works in the modern age.
The Scottish Motorcycle Show falls within the week of our Wedding Anniversary each year, so I usually work to combine both by going to the show during the day then going out for a family meal in the evening.
Being as it is our tenth this year, I booked a few days away for myself and Mrs AlistairL. Believe it or not we honeymooned all those years ago in Glasgow, so we returned again, albeit to a different hotel. I booked up a Junior Suite at a hotel about 50 yards from Sauchiehall Street and had a great few days. We popped out to see Ghost Rider at the cinema across the road on Wednesday night, using the 2 for 1 Orange Wednesday promotion. That was a cool film.
Thursday was out on the Underground and up to Byres Road, the Botanic Gardens and headed down to have a nice lunch at the Kelvingrove Cafe. The KG Cafe is an interesting blend of restaurant and cafe, and comes recommended from me. Afterwards I popped upstairs and checked to see where my name was on the donor wall – you can see my name up there with the rest of the restoration donors! I even persuaded Mrs AlistairL to let me look around the transport museum and look at the old bikes. It is just across the road from Kelvingrove, and was on the way back to the Underground station. We headed back and went to see Epic Movie, which was rubbish – I reckon I’m too old for that stuff.
Friday was a good wander down Buchanan Street, popping in to Borders, Frasers and a wee look up and down Argyll Street. We had a show booked up for the evening at the Royal Concert Hall. Two folks called Jacqui Dankworth and Todd Gordon were doing a wee tour featuring Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra songs. At pains to point out it wasn’t a tribute show, they just sang and they had a three piece band with them and some good jazz was played. This time I felt a bit young, looking around at the mean age of the audience. It was good to dress up, and I switched from black jeans, T-shirt, and North Face Jacket to… Black suit, Black Tie, Black 3/4 length coat. I lightened up during the interval for the show and removed my tie. The show has been touring on and off for a while, was at the Edinburgh festival, and round a few smaller venues in Scotland.
We headed back home to check that the kids and the cat were still alive, and they were! And there was even some pizza still left. We all went out for an Italian meal at our traditional venue, chilled out, and enjoyed our company.
Sunday was off to the bike show at Ingliston again, which is still much the same as it has been since MCN took over many years ago. I was a bit disappointed that Honda wasn’t present, and the big manufacturer stands were a bit tame compared to yesteryear. As befits a current BMW owner, I poured over the BMW stand and there was a really nice R1200S in black. As I’ve mentioned in previous years, the format of the show is beginning to go stale for me and I could spend the ticket and food money on a nicer day out, or add a few quid more and do a run with my local rospa diploma advanced riding trainer. That would be a better spend. I even noticed that Joe from LMTS had passed up having a stand this year, though I spotted him at the show. I popped over to take a look at the IAM stand, but didn’t know anyone there.
I used a couple of sites a few months ago to tune my connection, and it helped the download/upload performance of my adsl connection in the house.
The overall picture is described on the max dsl diagnostics page. On there I use DSLzoneuk to monitor performance from a uk based site, but I use dslreports in the US to check tweak settings.
Usual caveats apply – not my fault if you break something by changing it as a result of this posting..
Apart from a whole pile of books, I have purchased:
And all of them, apart from the headphones, are bike related!
According to two of the Doctors at our local surgery, “There is a lot of it about”. Ok, I may have paraphrased it a little, but you get the gist of the effect.
I’m just back to work after three weeks of a virus that got me, and ended up with Bronchitis in the bargain. Endless coughing, associated pain and feeling ill – yeuch.
I got a bit of a fright after the Doctor examined me, “It’s not pneumonia, thankfully”, and I’d only got as far as Bronchitis (if that is a bonus) and got a course of antibiotics to fight it away.
From talking to others since, and one with a relative in Hospital with pneumonia, it just escalates from a cold like virus to various degrees of chest infection.
So I’m back, absolutely exhausted, and roll on the weekend to work on the recovery.
I didn’t know there were different styles, but knowing which can help with sorting out the situation (as well as losing weight which is a contributory factor).
Try the three wee exercises suggested by the british snoring website, and then figure out what will help if you happen to snore.
I’m signed up for a spannering course for motorbikes, having monitored Learn Direct Scotland for the last year, and narrowly missing one course which was cancelled due to lack of interest.
I start the “Know Your Motorcycle” course at Borders College in, wait for it, Galashiels, on Monday. It runs for 10 weeks and the finish will coincide quite nicely with the advanced riding lessons coming in again. It is a bit far away, but is the typically excellent price provided by such establishments.
I’ve also made enquiries about first aid courses, and the local St Andrews Ambulance seem to do quite a few in the local area. I think I’ll wait on that though, want to keep time for MCP exams.
Ok Kev, I now respond:
Alistair Laing 