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34246

General Discussion Area / Re: Anyone ever read a book ?

« on: 01 October 2007, 20:10:50 »

I did, several whilst on holiday, and it made an enjoyable change. Clarkson's books are good, but probably because he shares my cynical view of the world

.. But now it's back to factual stuff like how to make cars go faster and make geeky gadgets. Oh, and how to weld, which is probably a good one to figure out now I've bought a MIG.

Kevin

34247

General Discussion Area / Re: Morgan Stanley (Goldfish) are a bunch of....

« on: 01 October 2007, 19:45:48 »

So it is, its in Cumbernauld, probably wasted on drugs then  

Umm. I made a wrong turn and ended up there in the Westfield once. If iI'd had windows I would have wound them up!

Kevin

34248

General Discussion Area / Re: Morgan Stanley (Goldfish) are a bunch of....

« on: 01 October 2007, 14:45:52 »

Yes, it appears to be in Scotland.....

 

34249

General Discussion Area / Re: Morgan Stanley (Goldfish) are a bunch of....

« on: 01 October 2007, 14:04:27 »

It's always worth having a couple of credit cards if you travel. I had to bail out a boss of mine once on a business trip after the first hotel we checked into gazumped his £1000 credit limit.

I also phone mine up before every trip now just to ensure they don't shaft me as soon as they see an "unusual" transaction. It makes credit cards much more of a pain in the neck than they used to be.

Replacement cards always come well before the previous one expires though. You sure yours hasn't been intercepted in the post?

I guess all you can do is vote with your feet. If you always pay the bill at the end of the month (as do I) they probably don't make any profit out of you so they probably don't care if you do walk, sadly...

Kevin

34250

General Discussion Area / Re: Puncture :(

« on: 02 October 2007, 09:59:03 »

£12  

Surely that is extreme   a repair here is Only £5 including fitting, balancing, vat etc

I've driven on the roads over there. I would imagine they get more business  

Kevin

34251

General Discussion Area / Re: A bit of advice please

« on: 01 October 2007, 19:49:31 »

How long's the MOT on the other Omega?  [smiley=evil.gif]

Didn't you just get it done?

Oh, no. that was Bobo. Dang.

Kevin

34252

General Discussion Area / Re: How much? I Only Wanted Six!

« on: 01 October 2007, 20:06:50 »

R888's  

They'd last about a fourtnight on an Omega unfortunately but what a fourtnight that'd be  *.

Kevin

*- assuming it didn't rain.  

34253

General Discussion Area / Re: tunnies new commuter transport....

« on: 01 October 2007, 14:06:26 »

Nice  8-)

What does it rev to?  

Kevin

34254

General Discussion Area / Re: URGENT HELP for PC problem

« on: 01 October 2007, 17:05:20 »

Sounds like it wasn't coded in anticipation of a disk that large.  

Kevin

34255

General Discussion Area / Re: URGENT HELP for PC problem

« on: 01 October 2007, 12:08:30 »

If the drive can physically be "read from" the best approach to recovering it is to take an image of what's currently on it, put the drive back on the shelf and use tools to recover data from the image. This will not put the failing drive under any more stress than necessary and it avoids the risk of writing to it and doing more damage. I would not run tools, especially unknown programs downloaded from the internet, on your only copy of the data.

The above approach will need some specialist tools and will take a little time, but if you've got valuable data on the drive it's worth doing this than to risk doing more damage, IMHO. I could talk you through the above on a Linux box but am not familiar with the tools to do it under Windows  :-/

I used a data recovery guy local to me to get out of a sticky situation about a year ago and yes, it was expensive, but in this case the data he recovered was worth it. It's worth having a chat with someone even if you don't go the whole hog as they will be able to make some useful suggestions. This was a complex job involving a failed RAID 5 array. He came and collected the drives and 36 hours later delivered a USB hard drive containing all of the recovered files. He appologised that it took so long but said the main issue was the time it took him to image all the drives before starting the recovery.

Have a look at http://www.contentengineer.com. Give them a call and speak to Rob. He was very helpful although you might be better off using a guy local to you.

I hope you get it sorted.

Kevin

34256

General Discussion Area / Re: Hand held GPS for sale??

« on: 01 October 2007, 22:26:24 »

I've got a bluetooth one that came with CoPilot software for the PocketPC. It's a decent GPS receiver IMHO. (don't ask me about CoPilot). You might be able to pick one up on its' own on ebay perhaps?

Kevin

34257

General Discussion Area / Re: Anyone with a hand held GPS for sale??

« on: 01 October 2007, 16:15:23 »

I must admit I got quite interested in that too. Haven't got off my @rse and looked for any yet though!

I've got a Garmin Etrex Vista, which is quite nice. It has a barometric altimeter and a magnetic compass built in so you can use it both to find out where you are and to figure out bearings against local landmarks, etc.

You can download maps to it to overlay roads, etc. although, while this looks impressive, it's by no means essential if you're just navigating to a waypoint, and it's no use if you're off the beaten track, of course.

The software that comes with it is pretty rubbish, TBH, and this is a common theme with Garmin. They are very good at building the hand held devices and not too good at the supporting applications IMHO. Having said that, once you've downloaded the maps you want, it's pretty much stand-alone.

The hardware is also a little flaky in that sometimes the display packs up and you have to twist the case a little to get it back.

However, if you can do without the moving map and compass, I'd say go for a Garmin GPS12XL from Ebay. Totally bomb proof and reliable, if a little heavy on batteries. Failing that one of the other ETrex models although they don't look as robust.

If you have a PocketPC with GPS you might want to consider MemoryMap. That allows you to overlay proper ordnance survey maps.

Cheers,

Kevin

34258

General Discussion Area / Re: Petrol Going Up Another 2p

« on: 01 October 2007, 22:20:45 »

Where would an LPG party be held?

Your house

Well volunteered, and with expert advice on tap, too

 

Kevin

34259

General Discussion Area / Re: Petrol Going Up Another 2p

« on: 01 October 2007, 19:41:12 »

Just read somewhere that Gordon, bless his heart, promised not to put up LPG WRT Petrol for 3 years from the last budget. So there we are.  

Given that my car boot is empty 99% of the time, I'll keep the car until it falls apart, and I'm due a bonus shortly it's actually getting tempting. It's just the 1% of the time that I need all the space that's a pain :-/

Can you get a decent amount of mileage from a doughnut tank in an Omega?
Can they be fitted upright?
OK. Access to the rear light cluster for bulb changing then becomes an issue but what about replacing them with LED replacements that fit where bulbs once were? Resistors required to fool the MID, no doubt, but assuming they last practically for ever it might be worth considering :-/

LPG party sounds good.

On a serious note, on other forums I belong to we have exercised buying power for common upgrades and got them with a considerable discount for collecting a number of orders together.

Something to consider.

Kevin

34260

General Discussion Area / Re: Petrol Going Up Another 2p

« on: 01 October 2007, 13:11:00 »

I wonder if any of the suppliers would be interested in a bulk buy?

Kevin