Vodafone are now offering a service to subscribers called "My Contacts". Using SyncML, a web-based sync protocol available on many mobile phones, you can sync your contacts, events and notes to the vodafone server so that should your mobile be stolen/lost the information is easily accessible online. Alternatively, next time you upgrade your mobile, you'll be able to recover all these items over the air from outside the shop :)

Only slight negative was having to sync 162 contacts (over 200 "numbers") on the first connection (especially with poor reception), but I got there in the end.

Commercial spaceflight could be less than half a decade away.

Amazon boss shows off spacecraft

I've been painting my new car. I think it looks quite good:




Ok I admit it it's 1/24th scale ;)

Went to see the new Bond last night. It's a good film, the pace is just right and the plot has some nice twists, even if some are a little obvious from the outset.

Interesting that they have chosen not to publicise the new theme, or maybe not given that it isn't anything special. I did, however, enjoy the parkour scene and the chases. Although I'm not entirely convinced by the behaviour of the Aston during an "elk" test.

Well worth a watch, but you probably already knew that ;)

My new Scirocco arrived this morning :)

I was intending to paint the slightly rusty bits on the underside, but there have been thundery showers all day, so I limited my activities to removing the rear beam and was amazed not to find any rust between the mounts and floor.

Hopefully next week I'll be able to paint it.

I stumbled upon a nearly perfect Mk1 Scirocco Gli the other day while browsing some classifieds. The car has done 39,000 miles from new and was claimed to be rust free (yeah right, I believe that when I see it!). Seeing as it was offered for not a great deal of money, well less than the cost of the welding on my car at least, I went to see it; with Rajan in tow for moral support and a more level headed opinion.

The car had been vandalised, all the glass and lights were broken and the mirrors ripped off, but the current owner has replaced all these items and the only scars that remain are some dents in the doors. Rajan and I had a good hunt around, testing the sills with a magnet (all solid and original), the arches (solid and original) - in fact everything was present and correct (including some parts I was aware existed but have never seen before!). There are a couple of items that need addressing, the corner of the windscreen frame has rusted but a replacement piece cut from a scrap car is included and a plate will need to be welded into the raintray where there is a hole.

I phoned a friendly bodyshop yesterday to get a rough idea of the cost of the work needed, and was pleasantly surprised. So I've taken the plunge and she is now mine :)

( Pictures Behind Cut )

Jenny and I flew back from Prague on Sunday, which was probably the least enjoyable bit of the holiday as we were held in a holding pattern over Heathrow and the plane was buffeted around a fair bit. Also for no apparent reason having checked in 2.5 hours before the flight, we ended up with rubbish seats in row 25 (or 26).

The rest of the holiday was great. Prague is very pretty and I must have walked down every little street in the New and Old Towns, just enjoying the views. We went to a couple museums, there are literally hundreds of museums throughout the city displaying everything from fleas with horseshoes to medieval torture equipment, most notable the National Technical Museum on Letna Plane (which appears to be next door to the Agriculture Museum), which has a sizeable collection of motor vehicles (planes, cars, trains and bikes), a smaller collection of clocks and an enormous collection of cameras. It was a very interesting place and doesn't seem to be very popular with the tourists, so I would recommend it to anyone unfortunately as of next week it'll be closed until 2008 for renovation.

Despite being on the plane we completely forgot to go look at the 75' functional metronome that now stands on the plinth that supported Stalin's statue. Although we did go and see the TV tower which is decorated with climbing babies (another tourist free zone).

Obviously we also went to see the more famous landmarks, such as Wenceslas Square (actually a boulevard), Charles Bridge and the Astronomical Clock in Old Town Square, which apparently performs a little play on the hour behind the two blue doors at the top, but I could only see that they had opened and not what was inside from where I was standing.

I took lots of photos, so will try and post some later on.

Wish I had more lego.

Lego Pinball

Went to see the new Pirates of the Carribean last night. It was very funny, just like the first one. Although I did feel the start dragged on a little, and this resulted in a film over 2 hours long. Add to that the lack of an ending - I'm not sure any loose ends were actually tied off; so you'll be left waiting for a third film - and you may be a little dissappointed with the film as a whole. Don't let that put you off, it's still fun to watch.

My laptop has developed a very irritating fault. It appears that one of the RAM slots has a loose connection to the motherboard, resulting in an intermittent memory fault that either stops the laptop from booting, or causes it to BSOD (something I'd never seen on XP!).

It appears to work fine if I remove the offending memory, but then my laptop really can't cope with XP as it only has 128MB. So looks like I need a bigger SO-DIMM to get it working again, or maybe I should buy a new laptop.

Spotted this in Metro this morning, looks quite amusing.

http://www.eepybird.com/dcm1.html

I spent this afternoon painting my engine block. I have decided to paint it gold, as I wanted to match it to something inside the car and with most of the interior being black (which is the factory colour for the engine), I chose to match the dash insert (a champagne gold).

Paint is a lot golder than I expected and should look good when fitted. Unfortunately it went on a bit thick so I have quite a few runs, but nothing a bit of sanding won't sort.

My neighbour has also suggested that his brother might be able to teach me to weld :)

Quite an enjoyable action film. Plot is obviously manufactured to get the desired stunts, but that doesn't stop it being good fun to watch.

Dispite my best efforts we actually managed to win this match 5:3. My first game was a rather crumby 104(160), followed by a reasonable 143(199) and concluded with a even worse 100(156). I didn't manage a single strike all evening.

And I can't, and it's not like i could even get it back on the road this year; unless I win the lottery (odds 0:1 as I don't play) or I am actually a welding master and haven't discovered it yet (but as I can't afford a welder let alone wire and gas that doesn't help).

The sun is out and I want to drive somewhere, anywhere, I want to get away from it all. Me and my car (sic!) alone on the open road. I haven't taken a day of holiday yet this year and a bit of me just wants to book it all in one go. Set off in one direction (I'm thinking South East) and see how far I can get before I having to turn around and come home (I shan't let the Channel stand in my way).

I looked into hiring a Ferrari to cheer myself up, but they want silly money.

And the most irritating/depressing thing....

.... the car is worth more to me as a smoldering wreck :(

If I didn't value my driving license quite so much (seeing as it 100% necessary for me to go to work = pay my mortgage = keep a roof over my head). I'm more than a little tempted to finish rebuilding the engine, drop it in, and take the car for a spin, without wings, without MOT, without Tax and most importantly without a large amount of metalwork underneath.

Two excellent games, 164(218) & 150(204), followed by one that wasn't quite so great 98(152).

0:7

It rained on Saturday, so I went home to see my Mum for her birthday. We went out for dinner and I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

I came home after breakfast on Sunday so I could do some shopping. Then when I got back from Tescos, the sun came out. So I started reassembling my bottom end. First off I degreased it, and came to the conclusion that the old paint doesn't need stripping. So I fitted the crank (with fresh bearing shells) and the block end plates. And loosely fitted the sump. Now it's ready for paint.

I might have got a bit further but the it was my neighbour's birthday and he invited me over for a BBQ.

I played two matches tonight, to catch up on one postponed from when I was in Edinburgh.

First off was a doubles match vs Girls on Top:

After a very poor start, 95(150), I got into the swing of things and came back with a 153(208). Third game was a little below par, 120(175), but all in all not too terrible. We won the middle game and overall so a final score of 4:4.

Following on was our postponed trios match vs Tridents:

Being well warmed up I bowled quite well. First game wasn't amazing, 114(168), but my second and third were fairly impressive, 127(181) and 145(199). We took the first and second games and the match overall, a final score of 5:2.

The last week has been a bit of a mission, more for Rajan than me as it's his car and he's done most of the hard work, but we've both been working it on most nights this week. We took the roll cage out last weekend, put the vinyl on the tailgate on Tuesday, before fitting the rear screen at midnight. Wednesday night we put the tailgate on. Thursday I forget, Friday afternoon we did the bonnet and lots of niggly bits I think, it's all blurred into one. I think I've got an average of 5 hours sleep each night, but I was getting into work for 9am.

On Saturday Rajan said he hadn't eaten since Thursday dinner or something (so I knocked us both up a quick curry, he was most impressed).

Sunday morning was the culmination of the weeks work, a 6am start to get the car on the trailer (well a 5am start for him as he had lots of little things to do). Except it refused to start, having flattened three batteries, we finally resorted to using my Escort as a source of power and even with it running it still took a good few cranks to get it started!

We got to the show a little later than planned, and the battery on the Golf was flat again, meaning we had to push the car off the trailer. The rain cleared up just after we got there, and the Golf had pride of place on the 30 years of the GTI stand (well it is probably the oldest in existence!).

Spent the day wandering around the show, saw quite a few very rare cars (Audi 100 Coupe S, lots of Porsche 914s, Kubelwagens). We decided to leave at 5pm (when VW UK came to collect their cars) and guess what the battery was flat again. Rather ironically the person that offered us a jump start also had a flat battery, but there was no shortage of batteries ;)

I should get on and start restoring mine, I really need to rebuild my engine before it starts to corrode.

We got home about 8pm and I had my first go at towing a trailer, the Signum makes an awesome tow car, bucket loads of torque mean you hardly notice the bit of bent metal dragging along behind, the drive home was a fair bit quicker though!

Went out to pub and then clubbing in the evening, and didn't make it to bed until 3am, that'd be a 21 hour day then; no wonder I've only just got up!

Today I need to get a new light for bathroom, I sold my dark oak furniture on Saturday, so went to IKEA to get a new bedside table. While I was knocking the dowels in upstairs the the globe of my bathroom light fell away, hit the sink and exploded.