Recent Happenings

Just watched the latest Top Gear – the one with Jezza in the train, May in the car and Hammond on the bike. There is the problem, it would seem that Hammond did the journey on a different day; the weather so different. 

There you go - not only did he have little hope of winning on that old nail, but he couldn't win as he wasn't on the same road on the same day...

Also, the thing about Schumi being the Stig is cobblers. What's the bet that Top Gear wanted that black Ferrari on the show and were told they had to have Schumi to drive it at its best, then TG thought – why don't we get our money's worth out of him?

See, anyone can be a TV producer – not difficult is it?

I've given the SB-600 a bit of a workout over the last few days, and its amazing that this has turned a camera with IMHO mediocre indoor performance, into a very capable device. I now need to get the manual out and work out the wireless capability.

Another fortnight away, this time with the added bonus of the purchase of an SB-600 for the D80, at about £50 less than the UK. The car was a Pontiac Grand Prix, during my stay GMC announced it would be ending the Pontiac brand, by my singular assessment of the Grand Prix, this was overdue. The 3.8l V6 engine was punchy, to the point where other team members weren't keen on driving it. The brakes had no feel and the steering was heavy.

They say travel broadens the mind and whilst these trips always make sure you and those with you grow a little more each time, seeing Georgetown and experiencing the extreme weather (well, extremeish anyway) was fun. The tree pollen being so thick on the bonnet and boot of my hire car it was as if a shake-and-vac had been used on the car. This same pollen then being washed away by the rain to form a slimy goo on the black-top was a new sight.

I also experienced a banana latte, or at least a sip of the same in a coffee shop in Georgetown. I very much wanted to loathe it and pull a screwed-up face, but it was actually rather pleasant, though whether I could drink a venti size cup of it is debatable.

Other new things included using the netbook to do a video conference with the folks back home, which after some teething troubles, worked quite well.

So here I am, back on Virgin VS021 to Washington Dulles. A few observations so far, air travel appears to attract strange people, or is there a class of people who fly who are strange only when they fly. There are the endless sky blue trouser wearing weirdo men, fidgety women who have 1001 strange habits, people who shout – we have them all.

Taking the latter, the shouter is embodied in a middle aged man trying to look about 21. He is a man whom by the shouting at his colleague (wearing noise canceling headphones – natch) has an opinion on everything, yet knowledge of very little. He has an iPhone, he plays with it regularly, he must be a dork. We also have two aged sisters who argue with each other, one of whom is reading Hello magazine about the '..secrets of Celeb A and Celeb B's fairytale wedding'. Excuse me whilst I vomit...

Yes, O2 appear to be on planet Zob again. This gem was a note and leaflet exclaiming that I was now an O2 Priority Club member; apparently I am now a priority to them. How nice. This means that I get priority on tickets to events at the Dome, spiffy. Although I'm only on the ground level of this club, because to get to the hallowed tiers of super-plebs all I have to do is spend £45 a month. That wont be happening, principally for one reason – their network coverage is dire.

Even at home now, its almost impossible to pick up a GPRS connection, let alone Edge- my Blackberry simply reverts to plain old GSM.

Please wake-up in Bath Road, Slough. Now I am dependent on O2 it is painfully obvious how poor the coverage is compared with Vodafone. It'll be interesting to see if and how the network coverage increases come June this year as I was told some weeks ago, after the network upgrade.

Well my previous positive thoughts were dashed, its a mere sharing of cell sites and facilities – power/HVAC etc. No network sharing. Well there is a surprise.

A meeting in Brussels sees me on the Eurostar again – this time the experience was more pleasurable in that rather than being the last minute tickets at a considerable cost, this was a longer planned trip, so a return Leisure Select ticket was £80. Better still, the meals were all available, no missing choices as were the wines. The satnav on the Blackberry still showed 187mph though.

Got to see a bit of Brussells this time and can't say it did much for me. The beer at Midi station did though.

This last guy in particular was sheer class. Every time the trainer made a point he would manage to see a facet of that point that either wasn't there, or was so obtuse that you really wondered what were in his cigarettes!?
 

Is it any wonder the world is in the shape it is when people, this close, speaking the same language can't even understand each other.

Is this the worst film ever? It should be, it has the right ingredients – poor (non-existent) plot, laden with famous actors desperately out of their comfort zone and worst of all - trying to sing.

Have arrived back from another trip to the US. The weather was worth a mention, t'was -9C for a couple of nights and didn't get above 0C for a few days, though come Thursday and Friday, spring like weather arrived, for the weather, and only the weather, it would have been nice to stay for the weekend.

The trip was a success, the car was a Chevy Impala – the Vauxhall Vectra of the US rental fleet; the airline was Virgin, so all good there. Though I so disliked the behaviour of my seating companion on the way to the US, I asked to be moved...to Economy. No matter, I was happy and out of the way of a flu-ridden, fidgeting, selfish individual. Even the seating companion on the return journey's endless fidgeting was bearable compared to this loser.

As usual Heathrow is a shambles and South Eastern Train's decision to cancel my homeward train rather took the edge off the trip.

This afternoon, about 25 hours after committing the spend for the new kitchen I received a call from the supplier of the hob and oven asking when they could deliver! I know the economy is on it's knees but I'm struggling to understand if this is the result of little demand or just a superb supply chain.

Given I wrote a piece about the experience of flying from T5, it's only correct I follow through (as it were) on the return experience. Superb tailwind meant we were down on time even thanks to the stack. We were sent to the only stand without a jetty, so it was a walk down the steps in the open – minus 1C at 6:30am – to be squashed in a bus. The result of this was thankfully that we ended up right in to immigration, for which the queues were mercifully short; much butter than the scrum at T3 anyway.

A short wait for the luggage meant I headed off for the WC and then it got bad. The stench of BO ridden travellers made me want to gag. In these enlightened times, this should not be, we know so much aboout airflow and usage patterns – indeed we can model both with convinving accuracy – we shouldnt have this sort of issue.

The travel out of customs onto the HEX was pleasant enough. So mixed feelings, architecture still nice, but form must follow function and on that basis i'm not sure its quite there.

There has been a fatal plane crash in New York, I'm sitting here at 5.30am watching NBC News 4 Washington and they have an aviation expert. He says he has been flying for ten years. When pressed by the manly Jo Krebs if he has ever flown the plane concerned, a Bombardier Q400 turboprop, the 'expert' says – 'No, I haven't had the opportunity to fly [that aircraft], but I have flown three different kinds of jets'.

Well Mr Expert, I've been a passenger in a Q400 turboprop - twice, which appears to be more than you have.

The word 'expert' really needs expunging from the English language to save people from themselves.

When I fly to the US for work we normally go with Virgin, however due to lack of availability and relatively last minute approvals we ended up going with BA. In itself, that tells you something; Virgin, full; BA, space.

The T5 building is mighty impressive, lots of exposed architecture, clean fresh feeling, a feeling of space that alludes the normal T3 experience, though even that is better now.

Check-In : Queues everywhere. For reasons that need not be exposed here, I wanted to check in with a human being. But having stood in the queue at the appropriate check-in zone for around ten minutes a BA person comes by and says 'this is the bag drop, if you don't have a boarding pass you cant drop your bags.' Cue my ranting that the machines never work; 'you must try' he says.

So off I trudge and lo, the machine works, I suspect this is due to me pre-selecting my seat and registering my BA Executive Club details, but I'll never know. I then get back in the queue to go and drop my bags at the, wait for it, Fast Bag Drop. I think we need to get the Trades Descriptions Act out. Fast? No.

The eventually the same BA drone directed some of us to another check-in zone where the queue was only just spilling out of the snaky lines rather than the spewing of people all over the polished floor of T5 which was the previous check-in zone.

The check-in staff were unhelpful and didn't give me the visa forms, which I know I can get on the plane, but I like to complete them before I get on so I don't have to juggle both my passports on the postage stamp sized table.

Off we go through security which actually wasn't bad and didn't have the tedium of the laptops out (I now have two to carry..). The shopping appeared to echo of a time when there was wealth, say three or four years ago. The west London shop, the one beginning with H was there and it wasn't flogging the Rule/Cool Britannia crap that appears in T3 either.

Having purchased breakfast for the four of us at a diner style outlet - £35! I got the feeling that the lease costs were high. If I had been on my own or with Angela, then I suspect that Mr Ramsay's place might have had a visit, but not really the done thing on a work trip. The transit tram that takes you from the terminal building to the B gates was interesting, though the escalators were interminable.

But now for the flight, I'm going to keep this short as it doesn't warrant a huge rant. The walk down the jetty showed the paint peeling from the tail, this set the tone. The inside was old, the polastics were yellowing, the carpet was peeling.

Service was surly, inattentive and one on occasion sarcastic. It had the feeling of a WI day out, less twittering and more service please. I cant complain though when one of the staff let me gaze out over the right wing as we flew over the sea off Greenland – seeing the RR turbofans spinning always amazes me. Food was ok-ish, in terms of quality, but not the Virgin experience where the bowl of fruit appears, or perhaps and ice cream or brownie. Very much cut to a price, which is where I will end this on the service front, the cost of the BA Premium Economy – 'World Traveler Plus' and the Virgin Premium Economy is the same. Someone is pulling a fast one, and for once it isn't Mr. Branson.

To end on a good note, the wind going into Dulles was brisk and there was a fair bit of turbulence, but the actual touch down was as smooth as silk, even if the final approach was rough.

At the station this morning was the latest issue of Kent Profile. A free glossy that attempts to talk up Kent. A strap line on the front cover exclaims the 'A new twenty-year vision'. So upon turning some pages to take a look, a photo of the cover of the Kent Country Council report, with a headline of 'Unlocking Kent's Potential: opportunities and challenges' with a strap line of KCC's framework for regeneration 2009-2020.

So that'll be eleven years then, not twenty? Is it me?

After much deliberation I decided to splurge on a Netbook. Ive been interested in these for some time but needed to wait for the right model at the right price. The Samsung NC10 in black was the eventual choice. After a few days searching and avoiding a lot of dodgy looking web shops appearing to specialise in Netbooks I went for an offer from Dixons – difficult for someone who habitually avoids places like this. But the deal was right, so the pride was swallowed.

First impressions are good, lots of thought into the overall package, for example the charger is small and the cables light weight. I have seen a 13.3” Sony S-series laptop spoiled with a charger akin to a house brick and, my corporate HP laptop's charger is ruined by cables so thick that they wouldn't go amiss in a cooker circuit!

Further in you see that the thought continues to run through the device, after setup you are given the opportunity to repartition the hard disk in order to use the Ghost-like image software.

All good so far...