30 Oct 08 Nearly had to buy new alloy wheels!

As anyone who knows us will be aware of, gemma little polo has been an absolute pain in the bum! It does seem to of been one problem after the other with the pesky blue vw, but when its clean and running well we love it - so we keep fixing it!

The other day i started taking the alloy wheels off the front of it, so that i could change the disks and pads and one of the driveshafts (got a bargain driveshaft from some car breakers in chesterfield, er the viaduct?) What i found underneath made me feel sick.

The hub nut on the side that i was changing the driveshaft on was hand tight, and about fell off after a slight turn. EVERY SINGLE driveshaft bolt was finger tight, and some were completely loose!

I recon if gem had used her car only a few more times, the bolts would of totally come out and she would of been skidding down the road with no alloy wheels on the front!

A scary thought, but it was close to reality! I feel a lot better now i know they are tight, but im gonna get 12 new ones as the bolts have been nearly rounded off by someone.

Be careful who you let work on your car!

Tags: alloy wheels, breaks, car breakers, driveshafts, vw polo, warning

30 Oct 08 I want a camera phone again!

It sucks.

Ive had a good quality camera phone, and been in the habit of unloading pics and uploading them to my picture site for years. Almost 6 years in fact.

Fairly recently my Nokia N73 camera phone has stopped working, and as i have had it for so long i cant get used to using my Nokia 6301. It takes OK pics when its bright daylight but if there is a shadow or its dark your screwed.

Ive looked at other phones, i have looked at the Nokia N96, the Nokia N82 and the Nokia 6220 Classic. Im swaying more towards the 6220 classic as its not going for daft prices on eBay.

My iPhone 3g dream has been shattered, but im not bothered. Ive weighed it up in my head, and now i dont work in a factory there is hardly any need for me to get a MP3 focused phone. I just want a good camera, and the nokia interface im so used to.

I have to wait till after xmas though

I might see if i can fix my N73 before i go on holiday, hmmm

Tags: camera phone, iPhone 3g, Nokia 6220 Classic, Nokia N73, Nokia N82, Nokia N96, xmas

28 Oct 08 I think i’d like my own country please

For some reason i had the urge to Google “inside sealand” this morning, as i wondered what the inside of the famous pirate principality looked like. I wasn’t expecting an underground city, more like a house floating on the water somewhere.

I totally love the idea of being able to do whatever you want. The royal family (the Bates’) have their own currency, their own flag and their own laws. I bet they dont pay tax or anything too! In addition to being cool as fuck, its also the ideal platform to run a large datacentre style operation as you are outside of any countries laws so can host dodgy shit, or just offer very secure hosting for normal shit.

After a bit of digging i found that sealand wasn’t the only independent “island”, and that a chap called Stuart Hill was given a small island off shetland and has declared it to be called Forvik.

he’s built a little house on the 2 acre island, but according to what i have read the weather is pretty shit most of the year, and the island is in fact pretty uninhabitable.

I have to say though, i admire these people for wanting to do something a bit bizarre instead  of growing up getting married having kids then dying.

I would love to visit Forvik, or even Sealand for that matter - and i would like to one day also declare myself a king of some island somewhere. Preferably a hot one though

Tags: forvik, independent, king olstar, sealand

20 Oct 08 Multitasking lowers your IQ more than smoking cannabis

I was looking at some videos online about how to increase productivity and manage your time more efficiently. One of the main points he mentioned was the importance of NOT multi tasking. He said we have become a society of people who will drop everything to ensure our emails are responded to immediately and will come out of meetings in order to reply to a text message.

Its not good really, is it?

He also mentioned some scientific studies that had been carried out which proved that your IQ is lower after multitasking, than if you had just smoked some weed.

So let me get this straight…

Simply by responding to a text message which pulls you away from what you were initially doing, or checking your email to find there is a new one, and replying to it, has more of a negative effect on your brain than if you smoked ganja.

You know what i say to that dont you?

Pass the dutchy!!!!

Tags: infomania, IQ, multitasking, shit, weed

09 Oct 08 Ancis-FM - My old work domains are up for sale

I was just browsing the internet - as you do - and i found myself looking for old work collegues on shitbook. I couldnt find any of them, and i figured most of them would of been too old to use things like the internet by now. (Joke, guys!) 

This then led me on a trail of domain name snooping. I always check domain names that i know belong to friends, associates and ex-friends of mine so i can keep my eye on what they are doing.; I noticed at one point a while back a lot of the domain names that we owned whilst working at Ancis were still active, although they mostly led to holding pages or BT Connect error pages.

So i found myself checking a few of them, and digging a bit deeper on a few that we used as the main ones. The description on a whois tool i use was something along the lines of ‘Deleted and available for resgistration’ - so i double checked with 123-reg and sure enough all the domain names we had are now available for regestration. All except one of the .co.uk’s which is still owned by Ian - but has nothing on but a 404 page from 123-reg.

I seem to remember him carrying on the maintenence contract for the I-Centre, so maybe he carried on the ancis name, too? 

I still think that company could of done really well if it haddnt ran before it could walk. They spent too much and didnt think about what they had, and what it could of been used for. If only they had stuck a few windows and linux servers in there and ran some form of web hosting company too - they’d be laffin!

I’d love to hear from some of the guys that worked there, so if when you are searching one day, you stumble upon this blog. Then pop a comment on.

Ancis-FM, Ancis-SW, Ancis-PC, Mansfield

Tags: ancis, ancis-fm, ex-work

02 Oct 08 A society that favours the slackers

I have had a recent spurt of comments on a post i did about the wheelbase motor project in Nottingham. The comments are from “clients” and employees of the project, and they all seem to completely miss my point of view on the whole subject.

I do understand why these projects exist, and why they work. And i totally agree that school isn’t for for everyone - but you know what? It probably wasn’t right for me either. But i did not smash stuff up or resort to pyromaniacism (is that a word?) i simply got on with it and did what i had to do.

I don’t for 1 minute think projects like this shouldn’t exist - but i feel they should be opened up to all kids at a certain age. When you do your “Options” maybe one of them should be to join a manual labor style placement instead of sitting in a classroom.

I spoke to a friend about the matter, and they told me of a relative of theirs who was a degenerate type, messed about in school and generally caused a nuisance. He was rewarded with day trips, and a trade placement when he was 14. He now earns more then my friend, who is 3 years his senior.

I guess its just another example of how this country favours the doleys and drop outs over the hard workers.

Roll on a fair britain, eh!

01 Oct 08 Prison Break - Did you know?

According to wikipedia - in the first season of prison break, most of the filming was actually done in a de-comissioned prison called Joliet Prison in Chicago.

Lincolns cell was the same cell they used to house a guy called John Wayne Gacy who was labled the “Killer Clown” after raping and murdering 33 young boys and men and dressing up as a clown called “Pogo”

Many of the film crew refused to go in his cell - as they thought it was haunted!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_Break

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy

I bet you didnt know that, did you!