Snow joke

We've all had a bit of snow and it was perhaps a chance for the Astra SR to redeem itself, so far it's not impressing me and although it's fast the ride is firm, noise levels terrible and all in all not selling itself to me.

I've been surprised with the grip from the Astra in the wet, perhaps it's only positive quality so far - most Diesels skip around in the wet like a stone on an ice covered pond, the Astra (to be fair) gives good grip with hardly any loss of power.

However ... along came the snow, now I've had some pretty shitty cars for the snow, the Avensis was probably best categorized as "shit" when driving in snow but the Astra actually managed to perform worse.

I couldn't get out our car park at all at work, the traction control can't be turned off so it instantly cuts engine power when the wheels have no grip, a lot of digging later and several people pushing I got out the car park.

One thing I noticed a few days earlier was the Astra does not like a bit of ice, anything resembling ice causes it to skid in that "I'm sure I have ABS but nothing seems to be happening" sort of way, today I found either the snappy clutch causing me to spin the wheels at the slightest throttle pressure, the engine stalling if I tried to pull off in 2nd gear (come on Vauxhall, I could pull away in 3rd gear in most diesels I've had) and then the slightet dab on the vicious brake pedal caused yet another skid so I had to use nothing more than throttle and gears to stop - what a crock of shit.

There's no doubt the Astra is quick, there are many cars that will leave it behind but it's a nippy blighter and even more loony with the sports button on but I've had enough of it, for day to day driving it's noisy, unrefined and I think terrible value for money.

Weather permitting the Astra goes back tomorrow, I'm swapping into a 1.9tdi Passat so it will be interesting to see the difference, I did notice one button in the Passat that immediately got my vote "ESP OFF" - that's what you need when the white stuff comes and despite the dire equipment level in the Astra I almost find it offensive that Vauxhall seem to know better than you but omitting one from their car, in fact i've had one in just about every diesel I've driven due to the torque they generate so in slippy or snowy conditions it's common sense to be able to turn it off.

I've come to the conclusion that any car without a engine temperature gauge is the work of the devil and should not be trusted, it should therefore be burnt at the stake at a cost of 37.2 mpg.

Perhaps when I get in the Passat I will get my hearing back and some comfort, apparently the 1.9 tdi is surprisingly powerful despite a low horsepower so this may be an interesting comparison.

Black Ops

Hoorah it came early ...

A perfect end to a shitty day, had a filling at dentist then got home to find Black ops arrived a day early .

So far it's WOW !!!!!


Mental graphics, insane level of bullets and crap flying towards you, but here we go again for another COD classic.

SOLID COPY !

End of an era

It's been a while since I wrote anything, since the last post I've ripped out and completely re-decorated the bedroom making sure the Xbox and 37" TV have prime place so everything's gone fine there.

Holiday was back at Bigbury on Sea, drove down in pouring rain, arrived in blazing sunshine - fried some local sausages (from the Saint Annes Chapel shop - awsome shop by the way) and local bacon on the beach which started the week as it meant to go on.

My Avensis finally reached the end of it's company lease so was returned with only 87900 miles on the clock, I had just got the diesel nice and loose and there it was being returned.
Unfortunately the previous owner had managed to dent and scrape every body panel on it so it wasn't worth me buying it otherwise I would have considered keeping it.

I'm now in a hire car for a while, a brand new Astra Sri (1.9td 150psi).

Comparing the two cars it's surprising what you miss, no cruise control in the Astra, no rain sensitive wipers, no electro chromic rear view mirror, no sat nav built in, no leather seats, no electric seats, only front electric windows, no folding door mirrors, no under floor storage, no pop out cup holders, no rear arm rests or cup holders, no rear 12v accessory point, no climate control.

In fact I think the list goes on and on, the Astra (considering it's a high spec model i.e SR) is as sparsely equipped as the older Club or similar models I used to drive in the past.

The dashboard only has a radio (with MP3 input) a basic computer and that's your lot.

Add into this mix the Vauxhall Trick wipers and your in for some fun, I had these on my Vectra, press the indicator and you get three flashes, press it harder and it stays on. If you need to cancel it then you have to press the SAME direction, if you press the opposite then that one comes on.
It's common to see Vauxhall drivers going along with one indicator going then the other and so on until either they give up or the system self cancels.

Now I can live with these to a degree, the other problem is the driving position, the seats are like solid wooden boards, very little comfort and quite deep seat bases so you find yourself hitting the steering wheel getting in and out and I'm not a tall chap.
Getting yourself into a reasonable driving position you then find other problems, the indicator lights on the dashboard are exactly in the position the steering wheel rim is, you cannot see if you have your indicators on other than listening for the faint tick sound emitted by the unit, you have to duck your head down below the steering wheel to see if they are on - come on Vauxhall have you actually tested this car with real people in it ?

Toyota put the indicator and headlight icons together in good view, your headlight icons are fine why not do similar and put the indicator icons on either side then it's sorted - not a hard one to solve for Christ sake.

Even more fun though are the air vents, the side ones by the window need the vertical fins turning all the way up to close it, this means you can't set a position and leave it, if you do then you always get air out, if you close it you have to set the position up all over again - for fuck sake Vauxhall, we can send probes to Pluto, why can't you leave the air vent where you like it and just close off the air flow ?

The central vents are effectively null and void, in most cars they are high up on the dashboard and you can direct a cool breeze to your face in the summer etc.
On this car someone with very limited intelligence put them half way down the dashboard, if your like most people you have comfort positions on the steering wheel to place your hands at 10 O'Clock and 2 O'Clock positions, they are the recommended positions and lots of people hold their steering wheel this way.

If you do on the Astra the central air vents will blow cool air onto your left arm, nothing at all will find it's way to your face unless you change your grip on the wheel, for many people it's natural to hold it the same way as they have done for the last 30 years so i'm sorry Vauxhall but your wrong, the vents are shit and your Astra design sucks big time.

Interior is drab, sparse and looks little better than a Corsa, for £21k I would expect a damn site more from my car and this is not cutting the mustard, imagine going into a lap dance bar, paying a premium price and finding a drab, dull tired looking woman in front of you who does nothing to inspire your senses or provide any kind of eye candy.
Similar to a lap dancing club your compelled not to touch anything in the Astra in case it breaks or you feel tainted by the experience, in fact there are so few options or features inside you won't press more than one or two buttons anyway.

The seats slide back and forth with 1960's styling, bringing a few moments of fond memory's, your first driving lesson in a Fiat 127 when you had manual seat adjustments because it was cutting edge technology 30 years ago.
Now it's there because Vauxhall cannot compete with other manufacturers so turns out cheap looking and poorly dressed lap dancers in a world of style and entertainment.

As far as the engine goes, I used to think the Avensis was a noisy engine, most diesels are particularly at tick over, the Astra does not let you down here, lots of vibration and noise at tick over, it's certainly no better than the Avensis.
Power ... well the Avensis was 125hp, this is 150 and has 6 speed box, you find yourself a gear higher than you would be in a 5 speed box so you feel your changing a lot more at lower speeds, its common to be in 3rd when you would have been in 2nd and so on.
The Astra has one and only one redeeming quality about it, the engine has plenty of oomph, 0-60 is gone in a flash, 1st gear is like many diesels, a quick struggle to light up the turbo and your in 2nd gear 2 microseconds after pulling off, in the Astra though 2nd gear propels you forwards similar to the Enterprise engaging Warp drive, there is a yelp of power and your now in another county, keep the power on and go to 3rd, 4th and 5th and your well above motorway speeds before you know it, engage 6th and your still pulling strongly.

Average fuel consumption at the moment is 39.8mpg, not impressive, on the Motorways over a 300 mile run I could not break 39.9 mpg on country or urban runs it gives 36.8. The Avensis would give 36.9 without fail on country runs and was very easy to get this up to 45 by keeping a higher gear or cutting the speed down a little (5mph), on motorways the Avensis would be in the high 40's or 50mpg, in fact at 70mph you would often see 52mpg with a full or empty car.

On the dashboard of the Astra is probably the one and only button that would interest most of you, the Sport button, hold your throttle steady and press it, the car immediately responds with considerable increase in throttle and power, holding it at 60mph I engaged and the car (without touching the throttle) went above 80 and was still going when I disengaged.

Traction control seems about the same as the Avensis, it's a far cry from the old traction where they simply killed your engine rev's, the current ones control your traction with elegant precision and you hardly know they are there, perhaps a little squeak from your wheels every now and then is all you ever get.
The Avensis was almost impossible to wheel spin, this seems no different.

Unfortunately no button to turn traction off though - on the Avensis I had control manually if needed.

The ride itself is OK, the suspension is firm but comfortable, firmer than the Avensis but you feel more pot holes and bumps, I've also found it has a tendency to be twitchy on the road, often moving to the left or right through no action of yours but most likely due to a small defect in the road etc, the Avensis on the same roads would not wander as much, you would sense the road change but the car would carry on regardless.
I've also seen a bit of under steer, give it some rev's and take bends a bit closer to the car's envelope and on perfectly dry roads it can twitch out and under steer leaving you a little wide, I think this is perhaps the fact there's a stonking heavy diesel engine under the bonnet and the laws of physics apply.
The Avensis didn't suffer too much from that, I think the wheel track was wider and it always seemed to go where I pointed it with very few issues considering it was a much much heavier car.

Boot space is OK, it's an estate but no more space than the Avensis hatch, the problem with estates is the immense drumming and booming from the rear when your driving, the road noise is amplified and makes using the radio pointless, in fact for most of our motorway journey we turned the radio off as we couldn't hear it. On the Avensis the road noise was much less and the sound system infinitely better. On the subject of noise the Avensis had no perceptible wind noise, you often had to open the window to hear if it was stormy or feel any cross winds, the Astra whistle like the old models, get to motorway speeds and your accompanied on your journey by natures rendition of Roger Whittakers "Streets of London", another reason to turn the tinny and cheap radio off.

We tried adjusting the bass, treble etc but these seemed to engage other settings such as Shit, really shit, bass only shit, can't hear a fucking word shit, was that the news ? shit and so on - I think all I ever did on the Avensis was put the treble up 2 notches and left it like that for several years.

All in all, apart from the fact it's quick (but easily beaten by other cars such as Golf GTI etc) the car leaves me dry, it's nice looking on the outside but that's like your lap dancer looking nice and being an axe murderer on the inside, you get inside the Astra and feel cheated, I've had a Skoda with more buttons and gadgets and many many cars that offer more than this, the SRi badge should stand for Shitting Robbed Innit, they have robbed all the gadgets and features you would expect for one thing and one thing only, a bit of speed, on the urban roads it's a sprinter, sprinting from junction to junction leaving boy racers in their Corsa and Saxo's far far behind, press the Sports button if they appear in your rear mirror and see them vanish.
Take it on the motorway and you need ear plugs, and you need a big wallet as cruising economy is not impressive, the body rumbles and roars with every bump and mile, touch the throttle and there's more noise but it's all wasted due to the general road noise and the song that should be "lots of power and torque" sounds like its playing along with "music to murder your loved one's by Vol3." your getting a mixed track, one that encourages to say "Fuck this, I'll drive slower because I'll get my hearing back", at this speed the road noise is much better but the engines effectively turned off so the music's not playing.

At 50mph it's like Radio 4, a sombre tune with little to entertain you.

Would I buy one, Yes but only if Vauxhall had a shotgun at my testicles, in reality NO, not a chance, not ever, not even if I was given a large discount (which I can get from my company) - it's just a 100m sprint racer and although it appeals to the child inside you and inspires lots of giggles when letting the horses out to play it's the subject of dark nightmares and bitter dreams when you let it above 50mph.

Hopefully I'll get a new company car and we'll see what that's like, odd's are it will be far slower but with fuel prices it's perhaps time I took my right foot off a bit and also saved a few points on my licence.

Final words, a tip to Vauxhall, when your designing a car, try asking real people what they want and go from there, horizontal arm rests in the door might look good on Gok but in the car it looks like someone's put 0.1 seconds of thought into it, the wing mirror controls are almost on the bonnet of the car, the Japanese ? they put them within easy and obvious reach. As far as my lap dancer goes, I feel a bit let down and violated, I wanted a pretty and sexy dancer with some class and breeding, this one looks the part outside but her dances only inspire for a moment then are lost on the dull soundtrack and club atmosphere, you feel when she speaks it's with the mouth of a whore but not words to make you feel sexy, warm and tingly, instead you feel the need to get your coat and look elsewhere, you surely shouldn't be paying premium prices for such offensive behaviour.

It just had to be

After a busy day taking old wardrobes down and  building a fitted one ready for some sliding doors tomorrow I remembered I had some crusty bread in and theres only one thing for it when you want a snack ....

Beans on toast.

The main problem is the vast combinations that you can do with this simple dish, I'm sure Stephen Hawkins would discover black holes quicker if he could brush his maths up on this.

For example, the choice of beans, do you have plain and simple "value" beans, Cross & Blackwell or Heinz (if your nice and rich) or do you have BBQ beans ?

The choice of toast is just as important, I like a 1/2 inch thick (or more) slice of fresh crusty bloomer or tin, buttered whilst still hot (no margarine thank you) and then on with the beans.

Some prefer sliced bread, thin, medium or thick, then there's toaster sliced bread (quite a bit thicker) and super thick.

If that's not enough to confuse you then you've still got the choice of wholemeal, wholegrain, granary or custom breads like sunflower or poppy.

After a few hours making your choice then the other question is do you put cheese on it ? If so, do you put the cheese on the toast first then the beans or the beans then the cheese? These things are important and anyone reading this and thinking otherwise could get themselves in a sticky situation if this is discussed without having a trusted and valued opinion.

If you put the cheese on the top, do you grill it to get it bubbling or let it melt ?

Speaking of bubbling, there are devotees to the pan and others to the microwave, do you heat your beans in a saucepan or the microwave ?
Some refuse to discuss and will only use the saucepan, I've known someone who always uses the same oven ring, sets it to "just the right" heat and by the time his toast is cooked his beans are just right, not too hot to mush up and not burnt.

Another favorite is an egg on the beans, again your choice is not simply an egg but do you want a fried egg, poached or even scrambled ?

I've not known anyone have an egg AND cheese, it seems to be one or the other so again the permutations come alive and yield numerous outcomes of choices, Cheddar, Edam, Leicester, Derby or something exotic ? Harlech (with horseradish) or blue cheese?

Even then when it's all on the table ready to be eaten, do you put salt on it, white or black pepper ?


I've tried many combinations and it has to be white pepper with a touch of salt, crusty white or granary bread (a nice granary batch is perfect, crispy on the outside but soft inside), good salted butter and ironically the choice of beans doesn't seem to matter to me that much, I've tried them all and it's either Heinz or if I want a bit more sauce then I go for my value beans so my toast is slopping in plenty of sauce.

Next time your peckish and fancy some, don't just get the tin and slop it on some sliced bread, give beans on toast the time and energy it deserves, try it on ciabatta, multi seeded or a nice touch is Morrisons Onion loaf (99p last time I got one).

I'm sure that given the vast permuations and combinations that this should be a 2012 Olympic sport - I've seen people poach eggs with military precision when making beans on toast so nothing is over cooked - dedication above and beyond.

I got to say, mine were champion, tomorrow the sliding doors go on and who knows I might celebrate with an elaborate egg on my beans !

Start the day right

I would have included an image but I ate it !

Anyway - quite often you get a hankering for some good old crispy bacon on Sunday morning, we quite like to vary this by having bacon and egg fried rice.

All you need is some COLD left over rice - we cooked ours the day before and left it in the fridge over night - you need about a bowl of rice per person so it's easy to measure out when it's already cooked and cold.

We also used 8 rashers of smoked bacon and 4 eggs today - this was more than enough for 3 people.

Slice the bacon into strips or pieces to your liking I make mine about 1cm square, fry it up until it's how you want it, we like ours really crispy.

I don't use any oil to fry the bacon but let the bacon fat itself do that.

Once it's cooked, put the bacon to one side and let it drain until you need it.

Put the bacon pan back on the heat (without the bacon in it), and pour in your eggs (which you have whisked first).
Again I don't need any oil as there is normally enough bacon fat left in the pan to cook the eggs.

You need your egg to cook like an omelette i.e you want the egg to cook in one large round chunk rather than scrambled.
I let it cook most of the way though then cut into 3 or 4 sections and flip the egg over in the pan to quickly cook the other side.
once the egg is just done then transfer it to a warm plate and get the pan back on a good heat to do the rice.

I add a few spoons of olive oil or whatever oil you prefer, get the rice in once its hot and stir the rice to get it nicely fried and heated through (about 3-5 mins).

Slice the egg into strips then fairly large pieces, and once the rice is almost ready then add a few spoons of soy sauce (I used 1/2 dark and 1/2 light soy as it can have a strong salty taste and the bacon already has enough salt) - don't add too much soy sauce, it's a lot easier to add some yourself whilst eating than take it away whilst cooking.

For 3 people you find about 3 tablespoons of sauce is more than enough, stir that in the rice to colour it and give it a little flavor, add the bacon and stir up for a minute to warm through then add the egg.

Give it a good stir up to warm the egg and serve it up.

You can add peas etc to this but I'm the only one who likes peas in our house so they get left out !

I don't put any salt in as this would over power the dish, you normally find the bacon has a sharp salty taste anyway particularly if cooked in it's own fat.

Takes 10 minutes to make and in our house about 3 to eat, we find it fills us up nicely often not needing anything else to eat well into the day so good if your having an active day.

More shite

Sometimes when the weathers shitty and your having a dull day you get something that brightens the cockles of your heart.

Pulling up at some lights I noticed a car pop next to me, young lad slumped low in the seat (steering wheel higher than his head !) one hand resting on the wheel in the casual style they try to adopt.

I noticed his blacked out windows, large wing on the rear, obviously custom body kit and alloys worth a considerable amount more than his car and you could hear the exhaust popping away like popcorn in a robots belly.

The amusing bit to the situation was that I then noticed a "GT" badge stuck on the boot and actually managed a little chuckle to myself as I noticed the next two words, the first one was "Toyota" - now bear in mind I drive a Toyota, it's OK and does the job but that wasn't the real reason I laughed.

The next word was "Starlet" and before the one person who sometimes reads these rambling words actually writes back and says "Toyota made a GT Starlet" - yes I know they did, that wasn't actually what made me chuckle.

You see I know Toyota made a GT Starlet, if memory serves it was a 1.4l engine with a twin mode turbo so you could be in low mode for some shopping and popping around town then press the button and go into high mode.

In fact I quite fancy one on my Avensis so even that wasn't why I chuckled - so what was it ?

The young lad had obviously gone to a lot of trouble and expense on his N registration Starlet putting a custom body kit on etc, the bit that made me chuckle was ..... he left the 1.2 sign on (and stuck the GT letters on wonky - not to mention they were in a different font and character size to the "Starlet" letters).

So this poor young lad had spent his life savings on a car worth probably £250, put alloys on worth more than his kidneys and lots of other bits, not to mention the bonnet with large air scoop.

The final nail in the coffin was when the traffic lights changed to green, with a Roar like a thousand angry bees his exhaust fired into life, I think we was probably at 10  or 12 mph when I leisurely pulled past him then as I heard him go up into third gear to try and coax some life out of it I allowed my bumbling 2.0 Diesel to leave him so far behind his tax will run out before he catches me up again.

God bless the tinkers, had it been a true Starlet GT I think the shoe would have been on the other foot, by the time my 2.0D had got to 4000 revs I think he would have been gone. In reality although he looked the part (did I mention his suspension lowered to the lowest point possible?) it was like owning a fighter plane but finding instead of a jet engine someone has swapped it for a propeller.

The update after this though, he was in fact faster than a Kia I came across a few minutes later, bear in mind he was on a dual carriageway so had the national speed limit I clocked him at 17mph for a while and he eventually went up to 25mph before he turned off at a set of traffic lights, almost hit a car, then stopped totally trying to work out how to get over a level crossing, tried to turn into a good yard which had a large gate closed over it then I followed him past a speed sign that showed his speed as ... 19mph  !!!!!

Stardate .. May 30th, Location ... Earth

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As anniversaries/Birthdays go it started as it meant to go on.

A gentle wake up from Charlie the www.cats.org.uk at 5:45 am  as he smashed his way out the kitchen again and proceeded to run over the top of us whilst screaming "For God's sake someone feed me, do you not see I'm starving ...." in cat speak and pointing at his www.asda.co.uk food. 

Beth unwrapped @6:00am and was slightly disappointed that only half of her presents were Chococat (http://www.sanrio.com/characters/) or Chococat related although enjoyed all the www.moonpig.com and all the www.moneysupermarket.com .

A sumptuous breakfast of scrambled eggs (for Beth) and Cheerios for me (must remember to write to  www.nestle.com , I had them and didn't feel any fricking Cheerier).

Off to http://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk for a day of pampering and other high jinks.....

Park up at  http://www.victoriacentre.uk.com after carefully selecting the exact space I wanted (N31) from a mere 6,500 available - made a note that this was a new record for myself having done it in only 43 minutes this time.

Time to Spoil everyone so its time for finest beef with free range eggs, freshly baked bagels and freshly ground coffee, yup it's time to go to http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk where you to can have a freshly cooked http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/food/breakfast/sausage-egg-and-cheese-bagel.mcdj?dnPos=-1495

Clothes were the order of the day so for the best in quality and value it's off to www.primark.co.uk where amazingly it was the busiest shop in http://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk by far, a massive handful of summer outfits and stuff for a mere £28 and we're off on more travels.

Beth actually spends more money than seconds in http://www.buildabear.co.uk/ , she was in there for 32 seconds and spent £40.

Off to (www.bigwok.co.uk)  or not ... Beth decides she's not feeling too www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk so it's off back home for a snack, Barbara had her http://www.gourmet-food.com/gourmet-cheese/harlech-cheese-102832.aspx from http://www.trentham.co.uk/shopvillage.html with a glass or two of Cava from www.morrisons.com - where I had just taste tested the new cook sauce from http://www.pataks.co.uk/news/ - Authentic curry made easy, but I decided to have http://www.redskysnacks.co.uk/#/products/sea_salt as Harlech cheese taste too much like poisoned snot to me and topped it off with some http://www.westons-cider.co.uk/Shop/Organic-Ciders/Premium-Organic-Cider~~12x500ml/.

Thanks everyone for the cards etc - we're planning on having a Chinese for tea tonight, I think his name is Wan Lee.

Hairy Spuds ? No ... Crispy Spuds ....

Nothing makes Sunday dinner go down worse than crappy spuds so as yet another batch of megga spuds came out and I had a camera handy here's a sad but awsome pic of this Sundays spuds.

I nabbed the one far right and a couple of hidden ones that  were even more crispy than the ones on the top.


All I do ... use whatever spuds you fancy, I think these where marfona but use King Edwards or Wilja, Red Rooster or anything you like.

First ... Peel your spuds and get them in some water ready but not on the heat yet ... Wait for it Soldier ......

Pop your oil into a good roasting pan, I use sunflower and a good pan with plenty of room.

Get the oven on - ours is fan assisted so 200 degrees or 220 if your on gas.
While the roasting pan is getting hot turn the spuds on and bring to the boil.

Once boiling time 5 mins and simmer the spuds (your oil should be getting nice and hot)

meanwhile .... prepare the secret ingredient...

For 4 people I use 4-5 heaped tablespoons of plain flour, 1 tea spoon of cornflour and 1 teaspoon of baking powder.

Mix well then grind a good measure of black pepper and some salt, stir again so it's all well mixed.

As soon as your 5 minutes are up, take the pan of spuds and drain quickly, you don't need to worry if the spuds are still wet, in fact it helps the next step so to drain mine quick I dump the pan into a bit colander then put the spuds straight back into the saucepan.

Put the lid on the pan and shake back and forth once or twice, you should notice when you take the lid off the spuds have fluffed up.
Now sprinkle most of the flour mixture over the spuds, put the lid on and shake to coat the spuds, if you need more flour then put some more in.

Take the roasting pan out with the (hot) oil and I lift the spuds out the saucepan they were boiled in into the roasting pan, that way you leave any excess flour behind etc. The spuds should sizzle as you put them in, a good sign your pan is hot enough.

All I do is put the spuds into the oil, don't worry that the top of the potatoes stays "dry", that will help if you leave it like that so one trick is not to have too much oil in your roasting pan. Just put them in the roasting pan but don't turn them over yet and don't be tempted to splash the oil over them to "get them started" you find using a little less oil and not turning them in the oil they turn out better !

Pop back in the oven, in 15 minutes check them and I normally turn them over at this time (gently please ... they will already be crisp on one side but will be slightly soggy on the other).

Back in the oven for 15 more minutes and check again (I turn them one last time here and you should have signs of some perfect spuds coming soon).

Another 15 minutes and they should be done, if you like them really dark and crispy (which we often do), turn the oven up to 220 for electric or 230-240 for gas when you first start and/or adjust cooking time if you find them cooking too quick.

When your done I lift them out the oil as much as possible rather than simply pour them out as if you coat them all in oil just before serving they can be a little oily but this is true of anything you serve like this.

So ... lift them out (I put them in a colander) and let them drain for a few moments before slapping peoples hands as they try and grab them ... Get OFF !!

I find keeping a large metal ladle in the hot fat essential for keeping grasping hands off, the combination of a physical smack with searing hot oil normally deters the casual spud pincher until next week.
Don't forget to check each spud as it comes out so you can carefully serve out the potatoes while keeping the choicest ones for yourself - something that's difficult with these spuds as they all come out great but others will argue comparing each spud with their own preference for crispness or colour against the select few you keep back for yourself.

You should end up with a spud that you can break windows with on the outside, crispy and firm that even stays crispy with some gravy on it ...... nice and crunchy with the salt and pepper giving it a little seasoning and taste, inside they are steaming, fluffy and soft.

The great thing about cooking them this way is if anyone you know is on a diet then you can eat them all yourself.

P.S they even keep well if you let them cool, we often make more than we can eat and our daughter has the left overs for tea which is not fair in my book !

Come out Marshall

After much waiting, Red Dead Redemption was released and delivered.

Had a few hours on it and it looks like Rockstar are onto yet another winner.

People ride or wander past, often with a "hello" or "Good morning", wagon trains drive by and I've even witnessed one character ride past, stop then stand by a rock taking a piss.

Whats also interesting is that I played for about 90 minutes then accidentally loaded a saved game taking me back almost to the beginning, I retraced my steps and the mission I had just done changed into a completely different one !

Multiplayer is also great fun, people running everywhere firing antique weapons, no large magazine clips here, just good old fashioned "get up close" guns.
Horses are animated amazingly and the atmosphere is staggering.

At one point I rode up to a ridge and thought "ah this is the edge of the map", many games hide the boundaries with wide valleys and far off scenery, looking at my map I realized I was no where near the edge of the map and I will end up going across this enormous canyon.

How Rockstar have fitted such massive scenery maps into the game is beyond me, it looks like the game will have tons of missions and time needed, I suspect like GTA and Fallout 3 I'll be coming back time and time again to find new things to do.

One tip though .... don't try to shoot a hangmans rope when your wielding the knife, the person dies !

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Although I've been running Ubuntu 10.04 beta since it went live I have put the 10.04LTS release on.

My preferred method is to download the Alternate install CD, this allows you to mount it either with a loop command (so you mount the ISO as a virtual CD) or simply burn a CD and open that.

Either way you get the option to run the updater and if you select "no" to the option to download update files from the internet you can migrate quite quickly whilst the 10 million or so other users are putting some strain on the servers.

The only program that didn't seem to work in the Beta version was the automatic wallpaper changer that my and my daughter use.

This appears to have been put into the current repository though as this works perfect in the final release.

Everything else works exactly as I would expect it to, the only difference you notice is the new button layout (although mine stayed the same as I was using Emerald as my screen decorator and not the default decorator.

Anyway, if your buttons are on the left and you don't like them just install MWBUTTONS, it's a simple script that lets you move them around and do all sorts of clever stuff with them.

Ubuntu is going from strength to strength and although I hated Vista with a vengance of a thousand cursed souls I feel the future will narrow down to Windows 7 and Ubuntu for the average user.

I have no gripes against Windows 7, just that I can do everything I need to do in Ubuntu, in fact I was so used to it simply working I forgot how much it was protecting me until I went to an innocent looking web site (looking for a birthday present for my daughter) and Firefox warned me the site was attempting to install files onto my PC.

The good news was 1) It simply couldn't as I wasn't running windows, 2) Even if the files had somehow got onto my PC they would have been useless and 3) I spent a while annoying the site by just clicking "no" to the warning and refreshing the page.

At one point just to really annoy it I opened multiple firefox sessions to the page getting something like 14 warning screens up - and still the PC ignores them and carries on regardless.

New in Ubuntu 10.04

• VERY fast boot up and shut down, I have one machine (P4 1.8ghz) timed at 7 seconds to boot up and 3 to shut down !
• EXT 4 file system as standard on new install
• Grub 2 loader on new installs
• New user interface - nice dark looking but I still prefer my "glass" effect windows
• Empathy is the supported messenger client in 10.04 - I was getting some strange issues with Pidgin which was a shame but Empathy works very well.
• Support for status (on line, busy etc) right next to the log off area for single function control.
• Gwibber - status alerts to all your social networking clients in one application
• Firefox 3.6 

Lots and lots of other tweaks but none that should be an issue.

A very worthy successor to 9.10 and a painless transition from 9.10 to 10.04 with no issues at all.

Spam spam spam spam spam spam spam

As well as being an amazing Monty Python song there's a bit more info on these people pretending to be Microsoft.
The company may also be using names Comantra or Supportonclick or Logmein123.

This YouTube video helps a lot, major respect for the chap here for leading them on and playing dumb.
Some people even report leaving them on hold for long periods while they go and do some washing up or laundry.
Another excellent tip is to put them on hold then have a friend take the phone call and pretend to be the local police, the scammers normally claim you called them !

If you listen to that Youtube audio very carefully you will realize that they don't know anything about your computer, they are asking for all the details and they are simply asking you to show event viewer messages.

Event viewer will have notifications and warnings, that's it's purpose - don't forget you can export the current view then clear all your logs, come back a few weeks later and see what's going on.
In normal use you will get messages in there, that's it's purpose and the scammers are simply playing on your fears and attempting to get money from you.

Another youtube link that has lots of "supportonclick" scam recordings is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6-IzN46-L0&feature=related

I have added Youtube videos on the right hand navigation bar so you can view the most useful ones anyway.
If you can't see the video list then you might need to check browser settings.
(Ubuntu users may need to check plugins - I have "mozplugger" and "mozilla-plugin-vlc" installed so the videos appear fine on my system).

As long as you remember not to install any software , let them link up or give them any personal details then have fun annoying them and wasting their time.

Don't forget, when your finished with them, tell them to fuck off !

Click for a fix ? I don't think so matey

Looks like the imposters and scammers pretending to be Microsoft are still at it.
They rang one of my team this Thursday, to keep him anonymous lets call him "Dave"...

Anyway they went through their usual story that they were calling on behalf of Microsoft and that he had lots of PC errors and they would fix them.
Dave led them on a bit and asked them who they were - they then told him they were a company called "clickandfix" - now then, before anyone starts emailing this company and given them a piece of their mind I need to point out this company has posted a message on their home page advising that people are posing as them in and attempt to extort money from you.

The bottom line is it's not that company at fault, someone has pulled their name from the internet and is using it illegally to attempt to rob you of your money.

So they were giving Dave all the jargon and asking him to look at all the errors he had and telling him they could fix it. He then told them he knew it was a scam and they were trying to rob people of their money, they carried on talking so he then told them he was a Microsoft certified professional so he knew they were talking bollocks.

Eventually they put the phone down and left him in peace.
A short while later the little fuckers rang him back, a new person said "Oh so your the person who thinks he's a Microsoft expert are you ?"

The cheeky fuckers had the nerve to ring him back and have an argument with him !

He ran through some of the things I put earlier in my blog...

How have they tied your IP address to your phone number and details ?
Who gave them your information (they said Microsoft - this is a lie as it is in contravention to data protection act and lots of other laws) ?
How have they been gathering data about your computers errors without your permission ?
Why have they called your phone in contravention to the TPS ruling ?
Why are they idiots ?

Actually I made the last one up.

Ask yourself though, if someone called you up and pretended to be your bank and asked you for your credit card details would you give them ?
If someone calls up and pretends to be Microsoft or anyone else why would you give your details then ?

The best advice is to tell them they are a bunch of fuckers because you run Linux so they are thieving twats, tell them to fuck off and put the phone down.

I think it fair to say we're trying to track them in more detail so we can shop them to Microsoft - I'm sure their lawyers will be more than happy to have a chat with them ?

One .... well twice then

I use Ubuntu One for sending files up and down over multiple PC's and to share with other people any large files that would be difficult to email or send by the notoriously slow MSN link.

One works great from my server and always has done, with my notebook I noticed it was a little hit and miss but never gave it much thought to fix it.

Anyway, I had a rough idea what to do but as with all these things your always mindful in case you mess something up. Ubuntu one is installed with Ubuntu 9.10 as standard so the package on the One website is not for 9.10.

I removed it using apt-get package manager but couldn't re-install as it said I had broken package dependencies, obviously I hadn't removed it all - one reason I wanted to remove it was that I originally installed it when I had 9.04 and it might be when I upgraded to 9.10 something didn't quite update or similar.

This website helped - http://www.ion-box.org/wiki/index.php/Reconfigure_or_Reinstall_ubuntu_one

I opened a terminal and pasted the following in...

pkill ubuntuone
sudo rm -rf ~/.share/local/ubuntuone rm -rf ~/.cache/ubuntuone rm -rf ~/.config/ubuntuone mv ~/Ubuntu\ One/ ~/Ubuntu\ One_old

Opened the gnome keyring (Applications/accessories/passwords and encryption keys), locate the entry for Ubuntuone token and delete that.

Then back in the terminal I pasted the last few commands.
sudo apt-get purge ubuntuone*
sudo apt-get install ubuntuone*

It was just a case then of launching the Ubuntu one client , authorizing the notebook to access the Ubuntu one area and it's sorted.
Files synched up straight away so all in all about a 3 minute fix, I can now send and synch up to 2gb of files over multiple PC's from anywhere in the world, it even synchronizes your evolution email contacts.

Clear skies

Still no go in the UK for flights and much of Europe.
The ash cloud as seen on http://www.radarvirtuel.com (Virtual air traffic radar) is still over much of the continent and if the last eruption is anything to go by this could last years.

One good thing though, at least the BA strikers won't need to hold any more strikes over the next day or so.

Anyone wanting live web cam images of the volcano can go to http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-valahnjuk/
There are three camera links on the left hand side - Close up, mid range and Distant.

Going nowhere ...

Here's the real time flight information for UK and Europe 9:30 am on April 16th.
Whilst on my way to work I was hit by a frozen Pizza, 4 lasagne meals and a tub of ice cream - I found out it was fall out from Iceland.

It's very strange to look up and see no vapour trails at all or any sign of planes apart from military essentials or one person power gliding.

Obviously the point of canceling the flights is to prevent the odd plane plummeting 25,000 feet with an engine full of hardened glass so it's not a bad decision.

Speaking of going nowhere I was amused this week with some horrendous vehicles on the road, one chappie had a nice K registration Nova, kitted out in alloy wheels, blacked out side and rear windows (but with a give away non tinted front windscreen , tut tut) and an exhaust big enough to hide a bear in.

The racket from his exhaust was immense as he tried to impress the odd passer by with his handy foot work on the pedals, I probably upset him in my crappy 2 litre diesel when I hammered past and left him about 1/2 a mile behind in a mere couple of seconds.

He finally caught up at the next set of traffic lights and sat beside me revving his engine, exhaust burbling until they finally changed to green and gave the signal to GO GO GO.

My trusty (or is it Rusty) Avensis left him standing and he was overtaken by myself, at least 2 other cars behind me and an age old Land Rover that had seen more action than Tom Cruises bed sheets.
It was obviously well worth spending all that money on a car worth probably £250 on the open market.

On the way home tonight I saw the one thing that I absolutely totally hate, drivers who constantly turn to their passengers as they talk as if they need to face them or they won't hear them in a sealed car.
I've seen this many times and know how this leads to getting nowhere, once when I was in Leicester on a road called Melton Road I had some idiot behind me doing the same, constantly turning his head to one side to talk to his passenger, obviously he didn't see me put my brakes on at the red light and thumped into the rear of my car.

Had several close misses several other times so know it's stupid thing to do, in fact earlier this week someone in front of me was doing it big time and approaching a roundabout was too busy talking to his passenger (in the back so had his head turned right around to his rear) to see the large lorry that had just pulled out in front of him.

The words "emergency stop" came to mind but he was a little upset at the trucker giving him the dead eye for being an idiot and me laughing at him for being an idiot.

Anyway, the UK is going nowhere - nothing new there then...

The Scammers are out

Quite a few people at work (and my family) have had unsolicited calls from people saying they are Microsoft and they are calling to let them know they have detected a problem with their computer and will fix it (and extend their warranty) for £55.

The interesting thing is they then talk you through typing some commands which bring up event viewer and then they play on your fears by saying "look at all the errors, we can fix those now and your computer will run much better".

They then go to considerable lengths to ask for credit card details or bank details even asking for someone else in the house to give them if you say you don't have bank details.

It's quite clear these people are either not based in the UK or are simply fucking morons, one colleague led them on a bit but then told them he was a police officer with the anti fraud unit, they simply carried on talking and explained how they were Microsoft and they will fix all his problems.

If you ask them for a phone number you will most likely get a number in a hosting centre that leases lines out so you won't strike any success with that.

A few tips...

Ask for their FULL name and their business address (to confirm they are Microsoft).
Ask them for the Microsoft switchboard number
Ask them for their Employee number
Ask them how they can collect information on you of a personal nature without your permission in breach of European law
Ask them how they married your PC information to your phone number
Ask them what information they are gathering

If your still pissed off then simply tell them you DO NOT USE WINDOWS - tell them you USE LINUX.

Personally I would tell them to FUCK OFF

P.S I wouldn't tell Microsoft to Eff off, just the scammers so make sure it is them before you commit an offence under the wireless and telegraphy act (1949).

The time is right

I just did a couple of timings on Ubuntu 10.04 beta.
Installed on a 1.6ghz celeron with 512mb of ram.....

From BIOS passing control to the boot loader (grub)
On mains power - time to login prompt = 6 seconds, time to desktop = another 6 seconds.
On battery power - time to login prompt = 7 seconds, time to desktop = another 8 seconds.

Shutdown - 3 seconds !

Once you have typed your password at the login prompt you barely see the screen change, your then straight onto the desktop and off it all goes, quite staggering for speed.

Firefox 3.6 does not hang about either, it's more than a match for many a browser, pages flashing in front of your eyes - due to collaboration from Yahoo and Canonical the search page now defaults to Yahoo but that's easily sorted if you want google or something else.

I upgraded one machine from 9.10 to 10.04 and on another installed 10.04 from CD.

This looks like the definitive release for speed and features.

Nice touches:
Dell broadcom drivers, work easily (select restricted drivers and activate)
Disk utility checks your drive for any issues, allows simple formatting of volumes, integrity tests, performance monitoring etc.
Gwibber - allows you to update multiple social networking sites at the same time.
If you don't like the windows buttons being on the left "mac" style look for mwbuttons, this script can change them to any orientation you like.

I made a quick launch script in the applications menu (just paste the absolute path to mwbuttons i.e /home/kevin/mwbuttons and give the launcher a name).

Time to play a bit more on it.

Ready 2 Go ?

I've been using these new "Ready 2 Go" batteries for some time now, in my opinion this is the future of rechargeable batteries.

When you get them they are already charged, pop them in and fire up your camera or whatever and you'll get just as long as you would expect.
Due to the new technology in the batteries they are ideal for low use applications like remote controls or similar where normal rechargeable batteries would self discharge before you got much use from them.

We have a multimedia PC keyboard for example, normal rechargeables are almost useless as you need to charge them up almost every time, give them a week or two idle and they run down.
The same goes for battery packs like Wii remotes, unless you put them back on their cradles they self discharge and your back with normal batteries.

These ones though, charge them up and pop them inside something or just put them in a container to one side, 3 or 6 months later take then out and put them in the item you want to use them in and they are still charged.
Effectively you get the convenience of alkaline batteries with the cost savings of rechargeable.

Other advantages are the ability to retain charge even at low temperatures and better hi current ability.

Sanyo call their version"eneloop" - http://www.eneloop.info/home/technology.html, the ones I use are Camlink batteries as they are about 50% cheaper.

Although I get my batteries from "Bupak" - http://www.budpak.co.uk
I found our local Home Bargains store selling 2 x 2100mah batteries with a charger for just £2.99, not bad when I paid £5.99 for 4 batteries.

If you need flexible power handling and have a mix of low and high demand products then these are the future, I no longer use my 2800mah high performance batteries as amazing as it seems these ones last longer.

I can charge them, put them in a torch, use them then transfer to something like an Xbox controller and use them, then put them away for a month, take them out and they are good to go.

Its all a bit technical how they work but the Sanyo site has the technology papers on etc, all I know is that these batteries work from the moment you open the pack or several months after you originally charged them - apparently they still retain most of their charge 12 months later even though you have not used them.

Ubuntu 10.04 imminent

Now many people may think being a little excited about a new release is just plain daft.
However, having seen some fun and games with Windows 7 and the fact I've not used Windows now for a good 2 years and I'm happy this is providing me an alternative that suits my needs.

Even my own team at work who have had Windows 7 installed have had amusing fun, one lasted 10 minutes from turning on his newly built machine to find it blue screen in front of him, finger print readers fail to work, bit locker security is causing us issues so we've had to turn it off, security programs won't work properly, our Cisco soft phones won't work properly and so on.

Don't get me wrong, Windows 7 when it's all sorted should be fine but lots of hardware fails to work, drivers are not working and so on.

So keeping my home computers on Ubuntu is a good choice and one I'm going to stick with, I even got a HP mini note 2133 working on Ubuntu 9.10 last week including the wireless (which was a bit tricky to get working on 9.04) and it runs perfectly.

so 10.04 is imminent, I've installed it on a virtual machine but also ran the live CD on some units and it looks the best release so far.
Fast boot up times (not that 9.04/9.10 were slow), added features like Gwibber (a social networking client to connect you to twitter, facebook etc) and lots of bits just fiddled with and generally made all shiny.

My laptop running 9.10 has given no problems at all, originally it had 8.10, then 9.04 then 9.10 and not a single crash ever.
My file server runs 9.10 and again has never crashed or locked up, my media PC is running 9.10 and again no lock ups or problems and so on.

Compared to Windows the housekeeping is far less, the stability far higher and things like on line banking are less stressful.

If you have some older hardware that might not work well on Vista and Windows 7 is not running too well then this is the way to go, my next steps are to try OpenVZ, the virtualization software that can run as a modified Ubuntu core with better distribution of resources than VMware on PC etc, and perhaps make some virtual containers so I can try several virtual machines running at once.

One chap has even had 1000 virtual machines running at once on OpenVZ so it's worth a look.

I'll get the full 10.04 installed on April 10th then will rant and rave on here.

So far it looks like more fun than a bus full of 20 year old Nuns all high on alcohol and drugs.

Here's a thing

Or a few to be more accurate.

The National bullying help line said it had received calls from people working at No. 10 Downing Street about being bullied by the Prime Minister.

Think for a moment .... these help lines are supposed to be confidential so by admitting someone has called you has breached that trust ?

Imagine if your local hospital put up a notice in public that someone in your office had Aids, surely that would make you all point fingers at each other and speculate?
That's the same as the help line saying they have had calls from people who work at Downing Street, surely the reason to ring them is for total confidentiality, they should refuse to comment and refuse to admit who has called them and why - without sounding judgemental would this encourage you to ring them ?

I can imagine them saying to your company "Yes, we've had several calls from people who say they are bullied at your work" - eyes will be looking at each other and fingers pointing.

Anyway, even more interesting is the new Derby inner ring road is going to be called Lara Croft Way ... I'm fine with this but though perhaps a few more gaming influences could be put into some more ?

How about ........


Wii Way
Xenomorph Street
Supply Drop Street
eLiTe SnIpEr StReT
Sonic Street
Super Mario Highway
Warcraft Way
Pro Tennis Court
Red Faction Rise
Xbox Live Lane
Bioshock Bypass
Banjo and Kazooie Road


and the list goes on - personally I'd like to live on Wii Way.

I cooked it and I tasted it

The question is did I love it ?

I've had the lamb shanks in Rosemary and Mint sauce and without trying to sound over the top they were awsome.

After much haggling over the frozen food counter today (which was ironic seeing as our fridge/freezer has gone wrong) we settled (after many arm punches and foot stamps - quite childish I know but I'm only 46) on the Pork shanks this time.

Put these suckers in a pan of hot water for 45 mins to boil in the bag, add to that the Aldi steam in the microwave veg (69p) and some new potatoes (popped in our steamer), we realized we had mad a massive mistake.

We didn't realise how much or how thick and rich the gravy was - a lesson we didn't remember from the lamb shanks, so steamed new potatoes were nowhere near absorbent enough, you need a big pile of fresh mash to soak this up.

The 69p steam in the microwave veg took only 6 mins to cook and they were spot on as well.

So ... the big question ? Did I love it ?

Top marks Aldi, melt in the mouth meat and plenty for one, but a big label is needed on the box to say "By law this must be eaten with a large pile of mash" (although I loved it with my steamed spuds).

10/10 for this one guys, I gotta hankering for some lamb shanks again (with mash !).

MMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Daft people shall reign

Funny how driving comes up so much as a topic of general ranting.

We were out locally and the main road our road joins onto is pretty busy including the fact it's a bus route so when people are parked its a bit of a zig zag drive to get down.
It's not made any easier by people who drive like loonies down it at break neck speeds.

Anyway, one end of this road has an almost 90 degree bend with no visibility from either direction, now you have to guess where one daft idiot of a woman decided to stop her lime green open top Nissan Micra ? you guessed it, right on the apex of the bend, to get past I had to go on the opposite side of the road but without knowing if anything was coming.

Fortunately nothing was but while I gave her the evil eye and a few choice words she didn't seem bothered.
A couple of seconds later a white van came past me and I could see in my mirror he had to stop quickly as it was obvious someone else was doing the same, with any luck the woman in the Micra is now off many peoples Xmas card lists.

On it's own that was amazing enough to see but later we came out of our road (which is at the other end of this main road and this has another bend of almost 90 degrees), now we've had people park opposite our road which although it's a traffic offence has so far not caused an accident but even I was amazed to see a woman in a Peugot 206 parked on the apex of this bend, passenger window down and having a chat with a woman who was pushing her push chair.

We squeezed past and just as before watched a van slam his brakes on as he got to the corner then realized he was 0.9 seconds from impact.

They say things come in threes, well we were wondering where the third one was but didn't have to wait too long as there was a three car pile up which closed a major A road only a stones throw from our house, our thoughts were another stupid woman must have parked up to sort her hair out or adjust her glasses thus causing the pile up - having watched the antics earlier I feel this is the most logical and scientific explanation.

Hopefully they didn't go home and use any dangerous appliances ?

Complete Crap

Many years ago when I used to travel around and fix computers (normally in the happy days before Windows) there was a town which was a bit tricky to drive through and had some blooming fiddly roads and messing about.

Someone then had a bright idea to sort a lot of problems in one go by carving a dual carriageway through it and making a new ring road as well, effectively forming a link from the M1 in Nottingham to the M6 and shaving a good hour off transit times through several villages etc etc blah blah.

So tonight I leave and drive down towards this town only to find one of the main reasons it really really really fucks me off more than any town I can think of.

Before you click the back button and start writing to the local clergy to have me exorcised for demons I will explain further.

Imagine for a moment the only way from the M1 to the M6 was either going right down to the M6 (at Junction 19), or if your a little further up, taking the M69 from Leicester (either way is fine depending on your point of origin and both motorway routes take you straight from the M1 onto the M6 with no problems at all). The other way is to go right up the M1 until you get to the M62, quite a busy junction and you then cross the Pennines which more than makes up for it on the scenic journey.

Now if your not a fan of country routes these were your options, if you want to go straight over then you were stuck with a tricky crossing through several towns depending on your route and I've known the journey to take 2 or 2.5 hours for the 30 odd miles it takes.

So now your up to speed and you've forgotten the naughty swear words above your perhaps wondering "What's crap?" - the answer is yet to come.

The route over the Pennines is not an easy or comfortable one if your finding this your only option so the A50 was built in its entirety and I quite often trampled muddy fields to service the computers of the engineers who built it.

I'm not even upset that they built the Dual carriageway from the worst material known to man i.e Concrete, if you could only imagine the horrors of the noise you get while driving on it and even worse the noise that any local residents must hear when cars are screaming down it - it really is amazingly bad.

The real issue is not even the A50 through to the final town itself, nope thats fine, it links onto the A500 which takes you either North or South to the M6 so thats fine, what then is my gripe?

It's simple and like all things it's the simple things that matter.

The conundrum is answered when you ask yourself, given that two motorways link by Dual carriageway and are therefore very very busy, and given that the final town is also busy anyway what one thing would you do that would seriously fuck up the road system ?

Amazingly the answer is so simple it's probably bypassed you, now tonight it took me an hour to drive no more than 4 miles through the Ring road of this town, the ring road should be moving at 50mph and normally it is, so to completely fuck this towns road system up some complete and utter twat has built a football stadium right next to the main junction between the A50 and A500.

The words Fucking Wanker don't seem to do my rant justice, I would dearly love him to come to this town and sit in the fucking traffic with the smell of burning clutch pedals around him, cars fighting to get into lanes and the whole road system completely fucked up.

Why am I not surprised ? Well this town used to make pottery, and obviously toilets are included in this list so to who ever put the football stadium next to Stoke On Trent's main roads your a shit and deserve to burn in the hell you made for yourself - I swear that no hell is worse than the one you made for everyone who was just going about their business and had to endure this on a regular basis.

May the fleas of a thousand camels infest you and may your spirit never know peace but sit in a ghostly car for ever trapped in the fucking nightmare you created.

What a bastard !

It's a funny old world

Well lots has gone on in the last few weeks, the local council decided that despite more snow it would simply be easier to not bother putting any grit on the roads and let people take care of themselves in hedges and ditches.

Anyway we've then had the Chip and Pin credit card verification cracked (no surprise really, if people can crack Xbox and Play station protection then this must be a doddle), we've had the mad vicar Angus MacLeay preach that women should be silent in church (if questions can be answered by their husbands) and that they should submit to their partners in "everything".
Fortunately he's not within striking distance of my wife otherwise his next sermon would be delivered through a Stephen Hawkins style wheelchair computer with someone providing sign language subtitles for the deaf (and of course submissive women).

Randomly changing subject back to UK roads I noticed in the last month the massive number of people with broken headlights, I counted 1 in 20 the other night (yes it was a dull trip home), one chap had no side lights, no headlights and one fog light ..... mmmmm a song comes to mind ... "I can see clearly now ... ".
Even better through was the chap behind me yesterday in a Fiat Punto that was only 30 minutes away from the scrap heap, smashed head lights on both sides (nice touch) and only the passenger windscreen wiper working, it was amusing seeing him in the rain with only his empty passenger seat getting a good view.

That's the thing with the UK, the Police only seem to bother when they need to get their quota up and if anything you see more people than ever driving while on mobile phones or with cars that are on deaths door with defects and parts falling off.

I blame it clearly on the fact the police don't have guns, I'm sure life would be a lot simpler if they could shoot offenders then ask questions later.
Although this might be an issue for passing motorists etc in reality it would help in reducing over crowding in prisons.

On the positive side though, Nasa have just added a large window to the space station so as long as it doesn't blow out and suck the astronauts out then that will be fine and the UK is now home to the largest spider crab it's ever seen (in Birmingham Sea life).

It's not all doom and gloom so as long as we can keep sliding down the roads (in cars with clapped out brakes), drive with no lights, steering or windscreen wipers make sure you remember we've got a lovely big spider crab.

I see no ship....

Last night was a turning point in my life, I managed to emit a single tone fart which lasted for about 15 seconds, it was clearly the longest and possibly loudest fart I had ever done.

So loud was my fart it woke the wife up at 2am as she thought there was a timer alarm going off although in reality it was more akin to a ships horn in pitch and loudness.

This got me thinking that throughout life you need to gather feedback so I propose the PISS, the Partner Informative Scoring System.

With this you can provide honest and constructive feedback without fear of reprisals, in fact I believe it should be put into marriage contracts i.e "Do you promise to take the PISS whenever it is offered ?".

How would it work ? What use would it be ?

Well it consists of 3 simple scores, similar to the dancing programs on TV at the moment but not as shit.

Basically .....
Preparation - How well did the person prepare ?
Overall Content Delivery - How well was the item delivered or in the case of food, taste ?
Consideration for others - Quite often an important score.

Here's some examples.

Your going out and your in your best outfit, your wife pops on some jogging bottoms and dirty old white trainers, she asks "how do I look ?", normally your doomed if you answer anything to this but now you can answer "PISS 1,1,1", under the rules your wife can then ask for clarification to which you say "Preparation = 1 - you were ready in 2 minutes, Overall = 1, you clearly didn't think this through and look like shit, last but not least your likely to scare the living shit out of anyone looking like that".

Your child might put some hastily finished homework in front of you and ask "how's this ?", again you might say "PISS, 2,3,3" and advise a summary "Although you appear to have used paper and a pen it looks like a spider has drunkenly wandered over your work, you've clearly thought about others though as you've made notes from MSN in the margin".

Meal times is an area of considerable conflict to bringing PISS to the table should help.
Imagine you have just come home after a busy day at the office to find 3 burnt fish fingers, some lumpy packet mashed potato and the whole lot is swimming in green liquid from the tinned tepid peas inhabiting your plate.
Obviously you can shortcut any conversations i.e no need to wait until your asked, just shout "PISS 1, 1,1" - you may elaborate ... "Although I appreciate you have been at work too, taking 3 fish fingers out the freezer, charring them until they resemble charcoal and dumping them on a plate with globs of phlem and something resembling fish shit is hardly worthy of a score, may I recommend you return to the kitchen and attempt again a meal suitable for the master of the house ?"

I'm confident that if more people gave and took the PISS then marriages and relationships would be more stable, people can honestly and openly pass constructive comments without fear of reprisals or intimidation.

Review time ....

Just had a chance to watch District 9, some recent Sci-Fi films have been less than impressive - I'm a great fan of the original "Day the Earth Stood Still" but the recent remake was very wooden (Although I did like the "Your planet ?" bit), War of the Worlds was OK though and had some nice special effects, it's difficult to escape the "shoot em up" genre of some Sci-Fi films though.

District 9 was spot on, flawless special effects, documentary style film making (similar to cloverfield) and a cast of nobodies so you had no pre-determined expectation on the key characters.

Great touches like the aliens being called "Prawns", signs "Non-Humans banned" etc on shops and parks etc, alien weapons that won't work when held by humans and my favorite bit, the aliens obsession with cat foot (you can barter anything for cat food).

All I'll say is what a hell of a film, one or two moments of wooden acting (the Mercenary commander for example) but a top notch film - Hopefully they will make a sequel and the aliens will return and put humans in the slum camps ?

I found one !

After more than 3 weeks of snow and Ice I finally witnessed the rarest of breeds seen in the British isles, a gritter.
It plodded past me on it's lonely journey, oblivious to the fact that it's numbers are obviously dwindling and soon they will be an extinct species.
Amusingly the hill it gritted as I traveled home was virtually impassable the next morning so a cruel twist of fate if ever there was one.

True to form the local council then announce they only have enough salt for the next three days i.e until today and they have been putting less on the roads to conserve stocks - now anyone with a radio or TV will have seen plenty of notice about the snow and ice coming and plenty of notice that it was going to be here for quite a while but as usual these things always revolve one thing and one thing only - Money.

Fair enough, I don't expect my cul-de sac to be gritted (it never is) and once we were snowed in until all the residents dug the entire road out but you expect Main arterial roads to be usable.

Trundling down the main A38 was "lively" to say the least with more icy patches than a badly organized wedding anniversary, most people were being sensible and driving in the inside lane but as usual you get the loonies who think it's dry and sunny, you can see them sliding as they fight to control their vehicles but death it seems is not a deterrent for this part of the gene pool.

I got onto the Motorway which was better and was passed by Captain "I'd like to die soon" in his BMW at well over 100mph, now had he bothered to look through his tinted view on the world and actually realize the other objects moving near him were other motorists he would have seen that anything rear wheel drive was having serious issues in this weather.

So at the moment we have the local council not putting anywhere near as much grit as they would bother to, gritters nowhere to be seen anyway and the whole system creaking under strain. In the confusion and general fun and games it's nice to see the loonies don't care if it's gritted or not, they see such things as mere inconveniences anyway.

The perfect example of this was a part of the A38 that widens to 4 lanes (left lane turns left, 2 middle lanes are straight on and the right hand lane runs for about 250 yards then filters right).
Bear in mind the right hand lane had 4 inches of snow on it and only the left and middle lanes were clear enough to use I spotted a Zafira shoot out of the middle lane into the outside lane (people often use it to try and out run the traffic because they can't wait 10 seconds), he was about 200 yards in front of me and obviously wants pole position at the lights.
The lights changed and off he pops, all you could see was snow spraying from his wheels, his car slipping and sliding left and right violently and amusingly all the traffic undertook him, he then got to the limit of this lane and decided to try and swerve his car in front of me - Under normal circumstances he would receive a good dose of my car horn and hopefully lip read the word "Wanker" as he makes eye contact but in this case I decided it was better to let nature take it's course as I'm due a new car soon so if he smashes the right hand side up then it will just speed up the process.

Unfortunately Mr. Dim the driver of the Zafira noticed me just in time and in between his slipping and sliding managed to slip in a few cars later on.

I often think the real issue in this weather is these idiots, yes I like to drive fast but there is a fine line between placing the odds in your favor or against when it comes to obtaining fairy wings and a harp.

No amount of grit will get past these people, I'm sure they have an anti-grit mentality anyway, I've seen more cars in ditches than ever before and looking at the skid marks many of them were doing a fair whack.

So the freeze continues, Britain is running out of grit and the loonies are happy anyway, darting about the roads wondering what the problem is and smiling out their tinted windows as they look upon a world that one day they hope will conform to their way of thinking and abandon common sense in favor of all out stupidity.

People may think I'm being harsh but if your out in these twitchy and unpredictable conditions take a look at them as they zoom past you and smile as you know it's only a matter of time until they get enough points on their card to qualify for the celestial wings and harp.