Jnr offroaders

Spent a week at Gleneagles in Scotland last week. Everyone in the family had something special to do. Dad enjoyed the clays - though on the 2nd day they were disappearing in the FOG!

The kids got to try their hand at offroading. Gleneagles have 1/2 scale series 1 land rover replicas. Electric power. Instructor carries wireless remote control kill switch just in case!

The small folk even have their own special course with includes obstacles such as: Rumbling rocks, tilting bridge, turtle backs, logs, camel humps, off set logs, windy ridge, moguls etc

What a weekend!

Drove 10 hours Friday from Scotland to home after holiday (more on that soon!), then Saturday/Sunday was a friends 40Th birthday party.

The problems started at 7pm. Started to drink beer, the i remember various curries being cooked, snacks etc, more beer.....then just after midnight things started to go wrong!

Most of the neighbours and folks who weren't staying started to leave, which left the hardcore Scottish and Irish contingent.

The problem came when one of the madder Irish folks decided to make cocktails. Ingredients included: Whisky, Rose wine, vodka, blackthorn cider and some orange juice. I was told Sunday that the trick is to "mask" the alcohol so people don't slow down. Well it worked! We partied to 3am! Luckily the hostess forced us to drink 2 pints of water and take paracetamol before crashing. I'm glad as i don't know how i would have felt Sunday morning without it!

We have a couple more parties before it's mine in June 08 - more practice :)

Clarksons guide to sporting clays!

All i can say is click here

Good album

Back to the music! Radio 1 from the BBC in the UK turned 40 this month. They have a 2 disc CD set out. It's great. They take a track from each of the last 40 years and someone does there own recording of it in there own style.

All along the watchtower (originally by Hendrix 1968) but done by the Fratellis anyone?

Band on the Run (Wings/McCartney 1974) done by the Foo Fighters?

Englishman in New York (Sting 1990) done bu Razor light?

Definately an album for the collection

T Minus 5 sleeps!

A major KPI used by the short people in the house is "number of sleeps before something happens". We are counting down till 1/2 term holidays. Ladies and Gentlemen we are officially at "T minus 5 sleeps" before the Landie, guns, a the rest of the kit heads North. Scotland here we come.

Cinema.

Been spending sometime with the back room boys and girls at the studio's recently. All very interesting - but it's been a wee while since i've been to the cinema and seen any of their output. Time to be one of their customers. Been travelling this week and managed to get out to cinema where we hold our quarterly employee meetings as a fee paying customer. Saw "Kingdom" with Jamie Foxx. Actually thought it was a good film. Hollywood actually has produced a film about an emotive subject and i think got the balance about right.

Normal service will be resumed...after Nokia rips me off!

I have two phones - one work, one personal.

The personal one is just a phone - No 3g, no camera, no funky stuff.

Works well as a standaling phone and i can get it connected via bluetooth to my new land rover. A friend's just bought a jag, with basically the same bluetooth setup in the car (thanks to ford ownership) BUT he has alot more funcationality. For example, the ability to scroll through contacts on the phone and select. Me i have to push the numbers in on a keypad on the dash. A little distracting!

Documentation from Land Rover states i need a certain software release on the firmware on my phone. So in an attempt to get a better working setup i check with Nokia on upgrading the firmware. The answer is:

- you can't do it over the air
- you can't do it with a USB cable
- you have to phyiscally visit a Nokia Service Centre (15 miles away)
- you have to leave the phone with the service centre (2 trips)
- and you have to pay £25 to the service centre for the err......service.

Feels like i'm being ripped off! Customer satisfaction very low at the moment.

I hope it works after all this hassle. If it doesn't i might buy a blackberry instead!

Red Light

Cool young band, working hard on their music, and one's related to me! The lead guitar/vocals is my 13yr old nephew. Someone to watch in the future. They do sound good. Me? I'm just a very proud uncle.

What's also interesting is that the stereophonics (hero's of mine) have connected to the on myspace. How cool is that ? :)

If you think your drivings bad!

Check out the 67 yr old from belfast who has a long driving record !

Some Technical Mumbo Jumbo for you!

So i was wondering why the playback from the IPOD was so good on the TV!

The video's/TV are recorded as MPEG4 with a H.264 codec which is great news as alot of the broadcasters use this . Both HD-DVD and Blue-Ray have H264 as a mandatory part of the player as well :)

Back to today though. So the content i have uses the H264 codec. Great news

Apple's 5th Generation iPod can play H.264 Baseline Profile up to Level 3 with support for bit rates up to 1.5 Mbit/s, image resolutions up to 640x480, and frame rates up to 30 frames per second. This device also plays MPEG-4 Part 2 Simple Profile video, up to 2.5 Mbit/s, 640x480 pixels, 30 frames per sec. Playback at full DVD resolution does not require any firmware modification to the iPod.

So content, storage device and output are all good. Now to the TV. I have a Sony 32" WEGA CRT. DVB compliant and also PAL format. So what's taking the signal and converting it to play to the TV? Something smart is going on.

Err, this requires more research or answers from a reader.

Move it with you!

So the future is definately DLNA (digital living network alliance) to move content around the home. The problem is i'm waiting for a digital TV from SONY to come to the UK with DLNA in it (hint hint SONY!)

Until then i have tried streaming audio/video from PC wirelessly. Nice try tonto! So many integration issues + the fact the PC has to be on all the time, the media server software is rubbish etc etc. I have a life and can't be bothered to go through all the issues one after another. ROi is just not worth it!

Found a stopgap if your an iTunes/Ipod user. Buy the AV connection kit. I was a little skeptical as i play music vides purchased via iTunes on a 2-head flat panel monitor setup. Playback is a little pixilated but acceptable. However, connecting the IPOD to the a 32" Sony WEGA TV in widescreen mode playback is good and will be a stop gap for the next couple of years. It's so good i've actually bought 3 TV shows off ITunes to checkout playback of those. Just for the record - South Park, Pimp My Ride and Jongleurs unleashed were the only "suitable" shows i could find for research purposes. Cough!

The good olde D 'n' V

Been ill over the weekend (not self-inflicted..a bug!). I will spare you the details but you have got to love the medical profession as they call what i have been experiencing - D 'n' V! I will let you figure it out yourselves.

Some other medical acronyms for you to consider:

- NFP

- CTD

- GROLLIES
- TTFO

- FLK

- GLM

- GPO

- TEETH

- UBI

Answers on a postcard....