Before I Die #1
Drive the Col de Turini in a 60’s Mini Cooper S
I love driving (reasonably) fast on twisty turny roads and I love mini’s. So nothing could be better than driving the Cold de Turini in an original Mini Cooper S.
Col de Turini is a mountain pass situated in south of France in the Alps and is more than 1 mile above sea level. It’s about 20 miles long and has over 34 challenging hairpin bends. Acclaimed as one of the most exciting drives on this planet, it also forms part of the WRC Monte Carlo Rally.
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The Col de Turini was partly responsible for the Mini’s rise to fame as it was the epic Monte Carlo Rally win from racing legend Paddy Hopkirk on this very road that made the Mini not only a rally legend but a cult motoring icon.
The Col de Turini pass was also featured in the first episode of Top Gear series 10, when Hammond, May and that other nob went in search of the best driving road in the world.
I must do this before I die, and hopefully not die doing it 
Insane #1
iJackAsses
I have an iPhone and I do have a soft touch for most things Mac. But when I browse through the App Store and stumble upon various apps that just use technology for technology’s sake, I do wonder what the world is coming to sometimes.
This cartoon says it all for me…
Click To Enlarge
Love it! 
BTW, the carton isn’t mine, I found it on the intaweb.
Thank You #1
Clip Cable Tidy
Every so often you see an idea and think “Duh – why didn’t I think of that?” Well this is one of those. If I had a dollar for every time I lost a cable over the side of my desk I’d have about a hundred and forty two bucks.
So whoever ‘invented’ this idea – Thank You!
Colnago Super Project
I’ve been wanting to do a classic restoration project for a while and get into the fixie thing. So, a few months ago I bought an old Colnago Super on TradeMe with the aim of getting it stripped right down and do the whole nine yards including re-chroming of forks and polishing all the bits. Anyway, after a few months of being flat out at work and the old Colnago gathering dust by the day, I came to the sad conclusion that it just ain’t gonna happen.
So I flicked the old Colnago off on TradeMe, at a rather big loss, and then soon after found that Colnago have released a 2010 Super retro fixie – bloody awesome. So, as I speak, I have one sitting with my name on it in Scotty Browns – deposit paid – and selling shit like crazy on TradeMe to get the thing.
While the new 2010 Super is a bloody awesome bike, it’s still needs that bit extra. My plan is to use the bike as a base that I can ride straight away and over time by some old NOS Campagnolo parts to turn it into something REALLY special.
So here’s my plan…
How sweet will this be? It’s gonna take a while to get the bits together, some are quite rare and hard to come by, especially the Sheriff Stars. But it’s going to be nice to see it evolve but have an awesome bike to ride to and from work every day.
Back Now
Blimey, over 7 months since my last post!
I’ve had a rather long absence from blog writing mainly because it’s been a bit of nightmare time and have been dead busy with work stuff.
Have had tons of stuff I was itching to get down on this virtual paper but other things just always got priority.
Anyway, back now. Watch this space.
OMG – Have I Fallen For A Microsoft Product?
Microsoft Courier Looks Gorgeous!
I can’t quite believe that I’d ever say this, but the Courier seems to be (nearly) everything i’d want in a tablet PC. Is it possible that Microsoft has finally managed to trump Apple?
Just take a look at this. This is just soooo beautiful. The world has been holding its breath for the new Apple tablet, but I think ‘the world’ may have been dreaming the wrong dream.
Unlike the predicted Apple tablet, the Courier just seems so much more practical, durable and usable. The form-factor, the interface, the aesthetic, it just ‘does it’ for me.
Take the time to watch the following video. The user-experience shown here seems to be absolutely amazing and sooo natural. This can’t be Microsoft – they just don’t do stuff like this?
The only thing I’d wish for is digital ink, but the technology doesn’t exist yet to support the colour and responsiveness that would be needed here. I’d also ‘beg’ Microsoft to keep-it-simple and not start feature cramming. It’s the (apparent) simplicity of this device that makes it work.
If the Gizmodo story is true, it would appear that the Courier is a real thing and not too far away.
How can I pre order one now? I want one so badly.
Tsunami hits close to home
Devastating Samoa Tsunami Kills 110
The realities of the vulnerability of the region that we live in has just struck quite close to home when a massive undersea earthquake triggered a tsunami that has devastated Samoa and Tonga and taken may lives with it.
At the time of writing this article, some 110 people have died and many more injured. Watching the footage on the news tonight has really struck me with how close to home this all is, in more ways than one. The remnants of the Tsunami tidal wave did hit NZ without any damage, but there’s many Samoan and Tongan families who live here in NZ and lost loved ones.
The pictures of the once beautiful Island are devastating. Whole villages wiped out. Peoples homes and possessions taken a lifetime to build, all gone. When you look the photo below, it’s quite clear that this wasn’t that far from home.
For the first time that I can recall in the 10 years that I’ve lived in here, the magnitude 8.0 quake resulted in a ‘National Warning Tsunami Threat to NZ’. A bit scary.
My heart goes out to all those in the region who have lost loved ones and are now picking up the pieces and trying to rebuild their lives.
What’s it bloody like?
Here I was, like, going out for some lunch, like, and was, like, walking behind these twenty somethings, like, and, like, couldn’t help getting kinda irritated, like, at the banter going to-and-fro between them, like. Almost every bloody other word, like, was ‘like’.
It’s almost *like* the younger generation are completely incapable of, like, ………..pauses. I think most of the Gen Y’s do it, but for some it’s like a fricken habit on steroids.
If I ever start, like, doing this can someone please hit me around the face with a large fish – PLEASE!
Apple does make me wonder sometimes…
This was unexpected, the new fifth generation iPod Nano doesn’t take still photo’s and the camera is in the most awkward position that you can imagine.
My daughter has just turned 8 and she’s a very lucky girl to get a spanking new iPod Nano in blue, no other colour would do, it had to be blue – like mother like daughter. Emelia is over the moon with her new toy but I spent a good while trying to work out how to take photo’s and have now discovered it can’t.
Being fair, Apple doesn’t say that it *does* take stills but it seems so *obvious* that it would. After all it has a *camera* and a *photo library* – duh? Given that the Nano’s have such a small amount of memory, much of which would be taken up by songs, I would have thought that taking photo’s would be more common than memory hugging videos.
I’m hoping that this can easily be fixed in software and will make it into a software update – please Apple!
What’s with the cork?
Have I become I wine heathen?
Here I am, taken my time to choose a bottle of wine to go with my regular Friday night pizza, finally settling on a bottle of Pinot that looks half decent for my budget. I then find myself putting the bottle back because it (wait for it) has a cork!
At the time I thought nothing of it, but now it’s had time to simmer, I now wonder what the heck has happened to me. I’m a man of simple tastes and I relish the ‘experience’ of things. For example a short black is far more satisfying when you’ve ground the beans, filled the portafilter and seen it through to the final brew.
I used to have a similar experience with pulling a cork, and even enjoyed using the more complex method of using a proper Pulltaps corkscrew that posh waiters use. For me it was all part of the experience.
So have I become a wine heathen? Well, after a bit of Googling, the story that I’m gonna stick to from here on is that screw caps have a near zero chance of the wine being corked and are more environmentally pc. I’m sure that’s what I was thinking at the time