So Christmas has come and gone...

... only five months or so till my next week off.
Anyway, for Christmas I got:

• A 235-piece tool set, to gather dust in the garage use in the restoration of my TR7.
• Two books : Blood, Sweat and Tea by Tom Reynolds, and Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze?.
• Various choccys.
• Three jumpers, which to be honest I could do with.
• A cordless doorbell-cum-alarm-clock (wtf?)
• A £20 WHSmith giftcard, which I spent on The Berlin Wall by Frederick Taylor and the V for Vendetta DVD. I went in there hoping they'd have an MP3 player. Heigh ho.

The time off so far has been good, except that a couple of nights I've not been able to sleep. In fact, I read The Berlin Wall one night. Not a book for getting you to sleep.

I've not worked on the TR7, but should tomorrow, once we've cleared out the garage.

By the way...

The PS2 finally arrived. Two months after it was ordered. At least I got some decent free games with it: Splinter Cell Double Agent, Tomb Raider Legends and GTA Liberty City Stories. The kids want a new one for Chrimbo, but I'll (or Mrs MnG'll) be getting that from a shop.

Tom's Angry

Me? I'm just stunned. Stunned and awed by this man's compassion and skill with the English language. Stunned that 786,432 dots of light can cause me to feel, well, kind of scared. I salute you, Tom. You and all the boys and girls in green uniforms.

I know it's not in the same league, but I had a friend (to be honest, a fellow cadet in the Air Training Corps squadron I was in when I was a teenager) die from inhaling butane. Even though I hardly knew her and hardly spoke to her, it's left a lasting impression. A stupid, stupid waste.

It appears they've worked out deaf people buy stuff too...

Mrs MnG was using her noisy Craft Robo cutter while Love, Actually was on. So I put the subtitles up and was intrigued to learn that adverts have subtitles these days too. Except CD adverts. Funny, that.

I saw this and thought of you.

Saw this pic on Suman's Amateur Transplants blog/:

Canley news

Development on Canley, my car restoration management program, proceeds in fits and starts, but I managed to get a fair bit done last night.

Here's a screen shot. I've still not done the parts tree, but I've moved the photo area to it's own tab. This gives more space for notes.


The second screenshot shows the restoration tab in more detail. It needs fine tuning but you can see that the top list shows all the tasks that need doing to the selected part, where as the bottom list will show supplies and spare parts needed.

Still to do:

• The parts tree.
• A wizard for adding parts.
• Help system.
• Reports.
• Other stuff I haven't thought of yet (Suggestions welcome).
• A bit on my website about it. Come to think of it, my website does need some work.

It will be ready when it's ready.

15,897,600 seconds older than me.

Happy birthday to the esteemed Tom Reynolds, who is 35 today. According to http://www.timeanddate.com, I'll be 35 in 6 months and 3 days. Tom, you'll find your present over there...

Christmas is nearer than my birthday, so if anyone wants to buy me a present, you could do worse than buy me Tom's book...

PS Still no PS2...

Just saved meself £18

I've got a Panasonic DVD recorder, which until now has been resolutely Region 2 only. Most of the cheapo players and recorders have a code sequence you can enter using the remote, but not the quality ones. Panasonics also use a sequence of infra-red commands to change the region coding, but one of the commands is not on the standard remote. You had to either buy a multi region player, or pay £18 or so to buy a special remote to send the command sequence. As I only have a few region 1 discs, I never bothered.

Then I found this site. These guys have not only been hacking Panasonic firmwares, but they've discovered the hitherto unknown command sequence to make the majority of Panasonic DVD players and recorders region free! There are methods to suit just about any device with an infra-red port (I used a boot CD for a laptop), and you can make your player any region you wish. Now I can watch The Last Starfighter (unavailable on a region 2 disc!)

Kudos to Tom & Martin!

Yeah, right.

Among my RSS feeds (the only way of keeping tabs on the blogs I read), is the most excellent Tom Reynolds. It was his blog (which pointed me to Dr. Crippen's also most excellent blog) where I found out that apparently parts of the NHS spent too much of the money allocated to it on doctors and nurses. So presumably somewhere there are too many doctors and nurses kicking about somewhere. I suspect they're bussed about to wherever there might be politicians and/or TV cameras.

Thinking about it, I guess we should've kept the cushions.

Took the 3 piece suite to the tip today. Hope the new one comes tomorrow...

Welding

Been doing some welding this week. Mrs MnG had a Forever Living cosmetics party, so I banished myself into the shed to join bits of metal with electricity.

I'm using 0.8mm gasless wire, so my results aren't as neat as I would like. Maybe when I get round to getting some gas and some 0.6mm wire things will be neater. The gasless wire produces a bright light which makes it difficult to see what's going on. But it seems to have good penetration, and it's strong.


I also had a look at a rear panel I bought off eBay for the princely sum of £3 from a nice bloke in Manchester. It's in pretty good condition as you can see. There's some surface rust, but the areas around the light apertures (which is where my car is rusty) are solid. Good news, as these panels are unavailable new.

On another note, me, Mrs MnG, and kids #4 and #5 have all been struck down with the vomity flu bug going about. No pics, you'll be pleased to know...

Still no PS2. My mum's been badgering Kay's for me. I've asked her to try and blag some games as compensation.

Is there a PS2 shortage?

Recently my PS2 died. I can't complain. I bought it off eBay as faulty, had a fiddle with the insides with the help of one of those guides I found on that interwebby thing, and it worked fine for a while. Now it's died, I stuck it back on eBay to someone who can be bothered to have a bit more of a fiddle, or strip it for parts.
To replace it, I ordered a silver one out of my mum's Kays catalogue, to match the cable box, video, etc. Later that week, we ordered a 3-piece suite to replace the one my inlaws coerced us into having offered us from a friend.
This was four weeks ago. We've had a call about the suite, which will be delivered next week. Would've been this week, but their lorry broke down, apparently. But no PS2. First they said 14 days, then on or around the 30th October. So where is it? Surely it's too early for the Christmas rush?

Something that makes me look good.

Your Vocabulary Score: A

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary!You must be quite an erudite person.

How's" Your Vocabulary?

testing 123

If this works, I'll have sent a blog entry on my phone. Cool.

Something curious I found.

You Are 4: The Individualist

You are sensitive and intuitive, with others and yourself. You are creative and dreamy... plus dramatic and unpredictable. You're emotionally honest, real, and easily hurt. Totally expressive, others always know exactly how you feel.

What Number Are You?

I'm not sure about the last part, I'm so quiet and withdrawn normally, people can't tell...

And the first bit's comlete bollocks. I'm undergoing psychiatric treatment for suspected Asperger's Syndrome, and I'm terribly unintuitive.

Books and Canley

I got paid today, so I've bought a couple of books from two of my favourite authors:

Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett, and

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson.

(How do I add images from Amazon??)

I've also done a bit on Canley, my classic car restoration database. Here's some features:

• Multiple cars.
• A parts hierarchy. Parts have subassemblies which have sub assemblies, etc etc...
• You can add photos to cars and parts.
• You can add restoration details to each part, such as tasks to be completed, suppliers, costs, etc.

And they'll be reports, such as parts lists, shopping lists and so on. Here's a screenshot...

The big white space is where the parts tree, showing how all the parts are linked, goes. The big grey space on the parts details tab will look something like the similar area in the Edit Car window. The picture is just a random one for testing purposes ;o)

My Triumph TR7 DHC Sprint

Here's a pic of my 1980 Triumph TR7 DHC Sprint, which is in the garage while I find time and money to cut out rusty bits, and replace other worn out bits, ready for cruising in the summer! Which summer, I hear you ask? Stop asking stupid questions...

I plan to paint it Toyota Balearic Blue, (this colour), with MG Montego wheels painted anthracite, and either original beige check trim or grey and blue alcantara.

Die Mühe mit deutschen Filmen ist die Titten.

(Apologies for the Google-translated title)

I like German films, which causes problems. Most people associate German cinematography with actresses like the delightful Betty, who seems to enjoy being coated in various bodily fluids.
However, I just happen to like films in German, as it makes a refreshing change from Hollywood blockbusters. Trouble is, because the German film-going public are possibly less prudish than us Brits, and because most German films are made for the domestic market, the actresses seem to be more willing to get 'em out, so to speak. Now a nice pair is all very well, but they tend to undermine my argument rather. Most subtitlephobes (like Mrs MnG) think all I'm after is the tits-out action, which is quite wrong. Honest.

Two Hellos?

Sorry about that. I had trouble getting Blogger to work, and so I typed the hello messages twice. I really did go to the bonfire, which was great fun, although it's lost much of the personal feel it had when there was just a dozen or so of us. Now there's up to a hundred people there. But the personal feel returns a bit later on, when people start to go home. I've some pictures, and a video of some of the fireworks, which I'll post when I've uploaded them from my phone.

Hello!

Well I did it, finally signed up. This blog'll be full of me wittering about things like my Triumph TR7, the car restoration software I'm trying to write, as well as a tiny bit about life. Possibly.

I'm going to a Halloween-cum-Guy-Fawkes-Night party this evening. We go every year. My friend's dad is gatekeeper or something at Calke Abbey in Ticknall, Derbyshire, and him and some other friends blow up half a field.

Hello!

Well, I did it. Finally got a blog. I've gotta go to a bonfire party tonight, so I'll fiddle with this some more later. Oh, by the way, I'm 34, from Derby, UK.