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Bought this for our Australian roadtrip, from JB Hifi somewhere in Sydney for $80 or so. Usually I object to expensive “Made for iPod” accessories… did this one work out for me? Continue reading…

Anyone who’s ever visited South East Asia will be familiar with this scenario. After a morning coffee with the guide book, you’ve planned your route for the day, taking in the back streets, the rivers, the sights, tastes and sounds of the city. You step proudly out onto the street, ready for whatever new experiences the day holds.

20 minutes later, you’re world-weary, cynical, and every 2 steps automatically barking “No thank you”, “NO” then “IF I WANTED A TAXI I MIGHT HAVE SAID YES TO THE TWELVE GENTLEMEN DIRECTLY NEXT TO YOU TO WHOM I’VE FIRMLY SAID NO”.

While they definitely serve a purpose, the self-defeating cycle of increasingly aggressive sales tactics which in turn put off the potential punters and make them harder to sell to has undermined the core value of their services, and tourists are so hardened to saying “NO” clearly and promptly as soon as eye contact is made that the very option of taking a bike is never considered.

For self-destructive sales tactics and generally being a blight on a tourist’s day: Rating:

As I relax on the sofa, with the oil radiator thawing out my frozen toes and a large glass of Glenfiddich in my hand, I reflect on an evening misspent.

A journey from the Norfolk coast to London, which should have taken around 3 hours, 2 trains and 1 tube, took around 6 hours, 4 trains, 1 bus and a very long tube. The root causes were A: rail replacement work by Network Rail and B: an unexpected overhead line fault somewhere near Chelmsford.

However, tonight will be remembered as a sample of both the best and the worst of British… Continue reading…

Yes, it happened. While I’ve been very impressed by the build quality of my beloved Eee PC, just the other week the first real sign of wear and tear became apparent. Quite simply, the C fell off. I don’t know where it is. But henceforth it shall be known as my Eeep. Undecided whether to remove all the other shiny letters so it looks all intentionally recessed and black, or to just deal with it and move on like a grownup.

I came upon this scene in the kitchen yesterday, after a morning of working frenetically on another ambitious work project I could only blame myself for getting into.

Note that I’m “cheating” – I’m not using my nice sealed pots of self-ground coffee, I’m using these very tasty Arrabica ESE pods from Gaggia which are like compressed teabags, and pop into the filter holder with a special adaptor: they’re essentially just a block of espresso grind coffee. I bought several hundred of these in bulk direct from Gaggia, so we’ve got to get through a few before we emigrate to Australia!

Anyway… 4 coffees in a morning (the foil packets are empty)? So good, it’s got to be bad for me. <twitch>