I’ve always loved the look of the American Muscle car, in particular the Ford Mustang. I’ve never really known much about cars, I never knew much about Mustangs other than I loved the look and sound of them.
When we holidayed in California and I saw the chance of renting one, I jumped at it. (I now know that was a V6, the smaller engine of the options)
Continue reading Realising the Dream
I moved out of home and down to London to begin life on my own in June of 1996. I remember unpacking my car with the England v Germany Semi Final of the 1996 European Championships playing on my car stereo.
At that time I moved into a flat in Hurstwood Court, North Finchley, paying £230 rent a month for my double room on Woodhouse Road.
In my first 5 years in London, I had to move several times including , Holly Park, Grants Close (the one time I lived outside of Finchley, 10 months in Mill Hill), Petworth Avenue and Colman Court.
In 2001 we (Rob, Ady and Nurcan) moved in to Dukes Ave. Finally somewhere we could settle for some time. Four years we spent there until a ‘scare’ that the owners might need to move back in made us decide we should perhaps just find somewhere new. Continue reading Onto the Property Ladder
I almost surprise myself when I think for how long I went without a decent home cinema setup. A year or two back I bought a reasonably cheap surround sound system. Last month I suddenly realised my TV in the living room was only 32″. It didn’t bother me until I realised it was actually about the smallest TV I could have! This had to be changed, so off I went to the internet. I wanted full HD (1080p) and DLNA so I could stream content direct to the TV from my home network and it seemed John Lewis had an amazing deal on a Samsung 50″ Plasma, but I would have to wait as it wasn’t in stock.
Continue reading Home Cinema Experience – Full HD!
I resisted for so long… but last week I caved and order myself a Nexus One, direct from Google. I’ve been very happy with my HTC Hero for the past 7 or 8 months, but the lure of a super fast processor and a nice big AMOLED screen was too much for me. On Wednesday I place the order, I got an e-mail around 11pm saying it was being shipped, it landed around 9pm on Thursday and went to collect it from DHL Friday morning.
I’ve now had it for 6 days and I’m thoroughly loving it! There are few things missing from the Hero, I’m in the camp that SenseUI is a good thing and of course that’s not incorporated in the Nexus One. The jazzy bits and peices like rolling the numbers when selecting a date or time are not there. The contacts widget on the home screen, which I used to use quite a lot, is not there. That’s pretty much where the negatives finish though. Continue reading Nexus One
After over two years on my Honda Transalp I decided it was time for me to trade it in. A leek had once again started in the right hand radiator, just 2 months outside of warranty. This, along with a wearing clutch, rear pads and ball bearings meant I thought I should take out a Varadero for a test ride.
The Varadero’s an even bigger bike, possibly the biggest on the market at around 270 kilo’s with a full tank. This does mean it’s very comfortable for the larger gentleman such as myself. The extra power from the 1,000cc engine also felt very nice, giving it around 92 bhp compared to my Transalp’s 57.
For well over a year I’ve been toying with the idea of buying a new lens for my Canon 400D. I’d been keeping an eye on the Canon 70-300mm IS lens, the same as I’d borrowed from my dad to go to Brans Hatch last April, but they were up over £350 and didn’t seem to be coming down in any way. A couple of days ago I noticed Canon did a 55-250mm IS (Image Stabilized) lens, which I found for only £169 from a place near Bloomsbury Square, so this afternoon I headed in a bought one.
It’s about twice the size of the original lens (18-55mm) with a smooth zooming and auto focus motion. I’m not sure how often I’ll get to use it. Many places these days wont let you take a camera in if it has changable lenses. So, if I go back to Wembley to see the Saints play the Chargers for example, I wont be able to take my 400D with me.
While I was testing the lens, next doors dogs came out, so I put it to test. I was able to zoom right in on the dogs faces, and had to zoom out slightly to take the picture you see on the right.