LOL

MTV Headline:

"Kaiser Chiefs complain that there is too much average guitar music about"

(no subject)

Thankyou, Radio 4.

"So, where do we find the Bacons of tomorrow"

Me: "ON THE PIGS OF THE FUTURE!"
Siani: "ON THE PIGLETS OF TODAY!"

They were, of course, discussing portrait painters...

Of course, from the Today programme, who also yesterday provided the utterly-no-hint-of-irony-at-all signoff from a reporter "And those were two literate young men from Peckham", having interviewed a couple of kids about the shooting t'other day with an astonishing amount of patience. Every second word was "innit" and "lack" (Like?) was a punctuation that.made them.talk.like.this.

Snow today is mild, little Ashtray was unbothered. I've topped up the RX8's fluids, checked the tyres, and I think I should be alright tomorrow. Mostly today is work and trying to chase up getting this MOT done!

(no subject)

kweilo sort of prompted this here..

Snow time! How are your tyres? Most mainstream cars cost about £150-200 to replace all four these days; if you are in doubt about the tyre quality and wheel alignment, remember that tyres are all that keeps you on the road. What's your insurance excess? More than your tyres? Both steering and driven wheels need good tyres, but for FWD cars, good rear tyres stop the back end snapping around.

To slow down in snow, USE YOUR GEARS. Do not slam the brakes on. Unless you have a LOT of loose snow and are heading for a brick wall, all that slamming your brakes on will do is make your car lose what little traction it has.

I may have my own accident avoidance techniques in snow, and they MAY involve hoonage, but the best way to avoid them is to anticipate, drive smoothly and avoid sudden changes in wheel RPM.

This is just advice, not gospel, and many people will have different approaches - but this is what generally works for me.

Also: ABS brakes are not skyhooks. They don't let the wheels lock up. This is a good thing on good surfaces, but means that your brakes will simply not function on snow when applied hard. Locking the brakes in dense snow can be useful in some situations (you build up a wedge of snow in front of the wheels) - having ABS won't let you do that, won't let you stop (as they just release as soon as the car skids). Hence it's very important to anticipate - if you think that the person in the car ahead is going to stop for any reason, leave a VERY large gap, as you can't just stamp on the brakes - you may not skid into them, but just carry on as if your brakes weren't connected aside from the juddering of the ABS system.

IF you are going to hit something solid and need a last resort, remember the handbrake. This can backfire on you, so I'd only suggest it at 15mph or less as an attempt to get the car sideways and have more friction - at high speeds in a modern car remember that the car is designed to be safest in frontal collisions, so the risk of hitting something sideways makes applying handbrakes a bad idea. A well adjusted handbrake should pull the car up straight, but they're rarely well adjusted.

Hydropneumatic Citroëns (C5/C6 may differ) have front wheel handbrakes, as do older Saabs IIRC. These are very useful.

And if you have traction control on your car, learn how it works and how to disable it. The system fitted to some Fords, for example, will not actually fix the torque distribution between the wheels, but will kill the engine, thereby resulting in the car just not moving. If you can disable it (most cars will provide this feature, some Vauxhalls may need a fuse removing) then you will a: be able to spin the wheels which can be useful in tackling gradients (as long as you don't back off and keep the car straight), and b: may also disable ABS on some cars.

Finally, if you have a modern AWD car without a locking centre differential - you may find the car is actually heavier and harder to handle in snow. Some rely on sensing front wheel slip to pass drive to the rear wheels. Depending on confidence and tyre quality, this means that for most drivers, slower speeds make sense, but for confident drivers higher speeds can be maintained. Know your limits and drive within them :)

And anyone with an old-fashioned Fiat Panda 4x4 - you lucky bastards. Best cars in snow, ever, IMO!

Remember, this is just my experience. If you pull on your handbrake at 60 and die, it's your own lookout.

(no subject)

Ah, today is off to a good start.

Postman delivered:

Soul of a New Machine hardback from Amazon (ordered for myself when removing items from my Wishlist)
An extended battery for the SPV (it has a sort of humpback arrangement - I'd actually found the SPV's battery life to be quite good, but this doubles it apparently and was only a tenner or so, vs. $70 from PDATechs for what looks like exactly the same item).
UNLOCK CODES!

With trepidation, codes were entered into the SPV, and it's now unlocked and running on Vodafone! It says UMTS-VF-UK instead of "Vodafone", but it connected; need to install SIM manager to it now. I can theoretically now fit my old "Three" PayG SIM in my N70, and the Orange SIM can go in my spare K700i (locked to Orange) - and I can text like a demon on my usual contract account (prior to Whitby I'm going to change the package to allow 3G data and more texts, since I'll be texting loads at Whitby with a full keyboard device).

Now I just need to set up the SIM manager so the SPV can select appropriate message centres for either SIM.

Also need to let SPV charge for 14 hours apparently.

(no subject)

Quart in a pint pot.

Roland TD3KV into RX8 won't go. Not in a million years.

Fortunately, having all the original packing means it can be shipped easily :)

(no subject)

Happy Birthday, oddlystrange!