- Job's gone... Lost out at interview twice to other candidates with either better qualifications/experience or greater gift of gab. So the contract wasn't renewed. Oh well.... having to find a new direction now. Opportunity rather than obstacle and all that. Life's certainly been a lot less stressful since, even with six weeks of unemployment where I bare got a moment to myself thanks to mum's insistence on me hunting for a new job every. second. of. the. god. damn. day. (i *HAD* wanted a weeks holiday, first.. no such luck, thanks to a few soul-stripping glowers), a week working at a building site putting covers on residents' cars, and this temping job I'm now in, being a librarians' assistant at City College Birmingham. Not missing the mental strain, no sir. Got a nice �44 amazon voucher from them, which was generous and fairly touching. Like a fool I haven't got a proper thank-you together yet, but I did want to decide what to do with it first (and, had I more time, to visit the old place again and say hello). Think I'll charitise it (with a matching contribution from myself), as really, I've got enough stuff already that I don't watch/listen to hardly ever. It'd be fitting use of a hospital staff whip round.
- Um........... and really that's about it. I think I was going to split the above points into two or three each but they kind of ran on. Not a great deal going on in life :-) Time to kick back, finish the ECDL (rocketing through it now I have the opportunity!) and maybe watch a few movies, apply for some better paying jobs. Can't complain at �6.80 an hour right now though - it's more than I've ever earnt in any job before in my life, save time-and-a-half on new years at the belfry.
Right, I should leave this now as I've been typing far too long.
Oh, nearly forgot - another bloggery / photo dump type place in the form of My MSN Space is also open for your delight (or not).
Cheers, have a nice life.
--MP
(older stuff follows)
Yeah. Um.
Well I'm no blogger, but eh, I reckon it's high time I updated this again anyway, as it's the last point of contact some people might have with me right now.
The polo is going... it's not gone, but it's going, and so a deceptively important section of my life is passing away --- ownership of the first car. Despite steeling myself with all the warnings, I can't help but feel an abiding love for the thing. In my family's eyes (well, at least, my mothers and brothers.. gawd knows how many others) it's a horrible old rattle trap that's seen me down the garage more than a few days in the last year, and that's probably quite true. When adjusting the speedo readings closer to reality, it's acceleration is questionable (whether it exists!), it has extreme trouble cracking 90mph, and it's doing what would be the top of most people's overtaking revs range (5000-5500...) whilst "cruising" there in 4th gear, which is also it's top gear. It has crashy suspension, a distinct lack of grip and collision safety, little room in the back and boot, far worse fuel economy than should be allowed, etc. But it feels like so much more of a "real" car than it's replacement. Maybe because it feels like a motorcycle rather than a car, and as can be easily demonstrated, motorcycling is addictive even if you've only got a poxy 14hp, 125cc yamaha training bike.
It has no power steering... so you have to get involved and put some effort into the corners and can feel weight building up as you start to take it too fast - and ebbing away as you start to lose grip, particularly in the wet, and you can tell exactly when it's going to give way at either end... ditto the brakes, though it does have a token amount of servo assistance, and the suspension / hyper basic seats ("seat of your pants" being much more than just a figure of speech)... that also acted as some sort of futon, preventing far more back/leg strain than they cured. The lack of A/C or any decent ventilation in the rear could be a pain, but it cleared up surprisingly quickly, and once clear the all-round visibility was legendarily good, like driving a greenhouse...
The simplicity and low tuning of the engine, gearbox, etc all meant there was little to go wrong. The only real weak point on the previous generation engine (bar the classical cambelt), the crappy old pierburg carburettors, replaced by a rock solid injector, means the only engine trouble i've had is a suggestion (in the last couple thou' miles) of worn piston rings - from hammering it so hard. Starts first time. EVERY. TIME. That sort of reliability is hard to dislike, even if its got no performance behind it.. it gets you there. A "farewell" play around in the Matlock hills, getting no more than 35 or 40mph over the course of a couple hours was great fun - the direct steering, transparent feel of the road, and the low-down torquiness of the engine meaning that few gearchanges (out of 2nd/3rd) were necessary added up to a great go-karting time. Wish I could keep it just as a weekend/shopping runabout, when I don't need the extra "stuff" of the new one, but unfortunately it has to go. No driveway space. No spare cash for insurance, tax, MOT etc.
So there it is --- up for sale if anyone wants it. I'm continuing to do little repairs on it in my spare time until mum holds a gun to my head and says ---- ITS GOT TO GO THIS WEEKEND ---- but you may stop me any time with an offer if you like, on the condition you're not going to trash it. Details as described below...
* 1043cc, 4 cylinder, single-point-injection engine with semi-electronic ignition --- 45hp at 5200rpm, 55lbft at 2800rpm, though other folks rolling road figures suggest the torque is stronger and a little lower down the rpms (it'll pull - gently - from idle in 4th uphill, after all), and the power approximately right but again at lower revs. Gets about 30-35mpg when I drive it - potential for 55 to 60mpg in the right hands (ie anyone else)..
* Engine needs some attention - think it's got a head gasket oil leak (no water loss / contamination) and worn pistons on cylinder 1 (2 bars of compression lost). Still it pulls as strongly as ever - just honks through a litre of oil every 500 miles so you have to keep topping up to avoid it seizing. Maybe a blocked oil breather too. I'm working on fixing these or just replacing the engine outright like-for-like.
* 4 speed gearbox, nice firm, smooth positive action though a bit "notchy" - and the position/length of the lever can throw you a bit. A bit low geared but makes it (feel!!!) spunky round town and on the B-roads, just have to take it a bit easy on the A-roads / Motorways else your economy suffers (still! 45+mpg at 70). I'll be changing the oil on this if i can reach the bolts (ongoing project). Always wanted to stuff a wide ratio 5-speed in there however (or even a medium-width "GT" box) - it would certainly benefit from it. It'll still do 29mph in first however, which is good for squirting out into traffic if you can keep the revs high without spinning the wheels.
* 81000 miles on the clock. Probably the equivalent of 100k on the engine, but going by most other polo's longevity, there's another 50k in it yet if the rings & gasket are sorted.
* H-reg / 1991 registered, and not long after it was built (i refuse to give it a gender by the way - even naming it.... "popey"... was a "gnngh!" moment).
* Allegedly good for 90mph and 0-60 in 20 secs. I wont lay money on it but seems reasonably accurate. When you thrash it. Doesnt sound like muc but it's enough to outpace most people who aren't putting any effort in.
* 3 door hatchback style, with a very steep slant on the hatch, almost square, and biiiig rear windows (non-opening) :D
* Nice navy blue colour!
* Badly-replaced passenger door after the ding mentioned (far) below. Bastards. Still it opens and shuts, just where the screws (!!) rub on the frame is a potential rust point, it needs re-aligning to stop the slight leakage in heavy rain, and could do with a quick extra coat of paint and a t-cut...
* No power anything, except the brakes. Keeps the weight down and the fun factor up!
* Seats 4, 5 at a squash. There are 5 belt points...!!
* Nice interior - the seats especially, as they've been replaced with barely-used ones... Rear headrests, too! (rare in a polo)
* The interior doorhandles are in a retarded position, i'll tell you that for free.
* Good Sony radio/cassette, 4x40w, RDS, music search, CD/MD changer compatible, etc. JBL speakers up front (the best they do in 8cm size.. coincidentally the only 8cm you can get without hassle! they sound good, even got some fair bass) and homebrew hack ones under the parcel shelf that, to be fair, would benefit from a modest amp, but do ok so long as you fader WAY back and put the volume up.
* New aerial! (the original one broke off in a halloween balloon-related incident!). Fitted by yours truly, but amazingly, it still works perfectly.
* Bodywork is in pretty good condition - there's a couple spots of surface rust that are on course to be treated and covered, and the arches have the usual bubbles that are going to get a damn good sanding and respray, a couple dents probably need pulling/tapping out - but all the important stuff is mint. Not bad for an adolescent eh!
* All other important parts seem in good nick - 4 good tyres (size dependent on "options"!), brakes are alright - rears recently had shoes & cylinders replaced and handbrake reset though i dont know how long is left on the discs/calipers (still *work* 100%), suspension is good (new track rod end) etc etc.
* New petrol tank and filler neck installed and rust-proofed at fair cost and hassle last summer!
* Will be supplied with good spare tyre, VW standard jack (useful for doing a wheel and owt else), and (basic, nasty!) wheel wrench. Maybe a boot liner of some homebrew description to cover it with.
* Side/headlights that work at the front, working sidelights, brakelights, fog/reversing lights at the rear, functioning indicators all round, and aftermarket foglights installed! (Need the wiring altered so that they can come on with the dim-dip sidelights as well as dipped headlamps, however i'm not touching THAT until last)
* What else can i say? It's a nice little go-kart that has seen me cover the entire equatorial circumference of the planet in mileage terms over the last 2 and a half years, and i'm only getting rid because i wanted something a little quicker with five doors and five gears - a condition satisfied in the new car... a 1.6 R-reg Astra in Listless Silver... like a space ship in comparison but completely devoid of soul.. or road feel, thanks to the PAS, soft suspension, velour seats and the numbing effect the pedal position has on your legs!
* Oh yeah --- options are available... if you're dying for them then let me know, otherwise i'll put the standard kit back on and flog it to other needy polo-ers over the net:
*** Rev-counter dashboard, with digital clock, in place of the normal analogue clock and "Polo" badge. Mileage, other guages, all unaffected as it's a plug-in pod I'll just swap over.
*** Silver blingin' Mk4 wheels. (The car itself is a "Mk3" or "Mk2-F" polo)... they're bog standard on the Mk4 1994-1998 car, but transferred to this one they look quite unique and halfway to alloys - regular 10 (?) hole steel wheels, with very hardwearing silver paint and plastic centre caps to hide the bolts without being obvious full-size trims. Tyres are 155/70 R13. Otherwise it'll have regular black 5-hole steels with tacky full-size plastic silver-sprayed trims, on 145/75 R13s. Either way the spare will be the black steel type. (Silvers carry a minimum price i'll entertain, as i'll have to put at least a �20 budget tyre on one of them owing to a sidewall puncture)
*** Leather gear gaiter, silver/chromed external doorhandle strips --- they just add that little bit of subtle class.. the originals were a corrugated plastic thing, and dark bluey grey rubbery things. Probably makes no diff to anyone but the enthusiast.
*** "PoloAce" / Fahrvernugen engine management ROM chip. Hasn't seemed to add any power (would have done, had i a custom intake / exhaust / de-cat - legal on a pre-92 car!), but smooths out the power delivery lower down by removing a couple of flatspots added so it would pass certain noise and emissions tests at registration time. I can get rid of this for at least a tenner, so i would otherwise put the regular chip back in for selling.
So now... any takers?
...
Yeah ok apart from that car bollocks, i am also in a new job - college is long gone and the bel air is down to once a fortning. I am a Trainee Clinical Technologist in Nuclear Medicine! Try saying that with your mouth full. I'm working at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in birmingham, just above the cancer centre. They're not letting me inject people with radioactivity yet, but it won't be long. Be afraid. :D
No, of course, I'm always solidly professional in my approach. The enormous barrel of shit that could be poured on me for any screwup just doesnt bear imagining, i dont fancy being the next harold shipman so being totally straight with it is the only way.
Working at the bar however :D allows a bit of fun.
Oh yeah ----- the new job also has me stuck at Nottingham Peoples college FAR FAR too often. It's a nice enough place, and the tutors do their best, but it's fifty miles from home (which soon adds up on block weeks - that and/or even the "clearance" hotel room rates) and the administrators couldn't organise their way out of a wet paper bag that's already had a couple of holes punched in it and a big neon sign installed inside pointing to the opening saying THIS WAY OUT. Makes life just a little bit frustrating. Managed today to get onto their "blackboard" intranet thing (that i should have been using for the past four months) for about the second time ever. Telling me i've got an assignment for the end of the week, which i somehow need to teleport into the hospital for, that i didnt even know about before. Grrr.
I'm also 23. Still no significant other. Saves cash at least. My relationship statuses are wierd at least..... less said the better. just too much of a coward to start anything, (or get down off various fences / hangups) and besides --- i only just have tiem to update this, no time to go taking folk to the movies :D :D ... i aint moaning... i just wish i could organise my time a little better, spend a bit less of it on the net, and that my brain would make it's god damn mind up about who (or even what) i like!!
I've ordered an NPod from Novatech. It's like a 20gb iPod. But the size of an iPod mini. Better sound quality than iPod's closest rival (Creative Zen). Voice recorder. More cheaply replacable battery.... less software bullshit... and a built in FM radio (that can be recorded from)! Sweet. Plus, it's only half the price of a full size apple device.
Um.. apart from that.. not entirely sure what else to add
Oh yeah -- my brother graduates this year. That is FUCKING SCARY. Sorry for the bad language but it deserves emphasis.
And my social interaction continues to nose dive. Time for therapy (the college is already offering me *something* but the impression i get so far is that they only want me for the funding they'll get off it)
Have a good year. Probably catch up with you later once i've stopped obsessing over a scrap-value 800kg lump of rubber and mild steel.
Nighty night.
The above title is in honour of the fact that right now, if you're one of the few people adding to the disgustingly enormous 42 pageviews I've had year-to-date (yay, woo, go me), it's because you've seen this sight rolling around my hometown and thought.... what are those web addresses?
I gotta get to bed. Perhaps I'll put something interesting here later on.
The ocean's dying, the plankton's dying... Solyent green is made outta people
yknow that sort of thing. and maybe a tirade against george bush. seems popular these days. he is a bit of a dick after all - did you happen to catch the d-day speech? hope he beats on his speechwriters once he figures out how badly they strung him up there.
PS Oh yeah, I've got a new carpet down. It's lovely and thick and soft and a very similar shade of blue to the wallpaper. Sweet.
.
END TRANSMISSION
For one thing, I've graduated, and have done about six months so far of McJobs ("let me put it another way - I have an extensive collection of hair nets and name badges") and am still looking at home, hunting a career, or even an idea of one. It sucks. But at least I'm not in overdraft any more.
For another, my carpet has disappeared, which is the reason I first came back to this site today in the first place :D... here are some pics.
I assume it melted and slipped thru the gaps between the floor boards. I went to work, and when I came back, the carpet was gone, but everything was still in the same place. Very wierd, very X Files.
And, I still have the same car. Not so much in love with it any more (it's a slug, and a thirsty, argumentative one at that), but coming to somewhat more of an understanding of the machine and the whole affair of driving. Its addictive, for one thing. Expensive for another ;).....
And.. there I have to leave it. I've got to get a 90 minute catnap in between my daytime saturday job and the nightclub shift I also work, if I dont want to lose all of sunday (career hunting day). Ciao, love ya.
-MP
Well, sheet, according to my stats (yeh i actually looked at 'em), this page has had 12 views since I last updated it, which is about 13 more than expected... which means I can be arsed to update again - my website seems to be turning into a highly infrequent running 'blog' type affair, i hear they're very popular these days, with some odd cases catalogueing every little detail of their daily lives.... feh.
So what to say.... heh...
* I'm still pretty useless at keeping in touch with people. Jenny, Aidan, Elliot, you better call me again and demand a visit :-) Cuz I'm truly meaning to do it, there's just other things that get in the way. Such as work, or meeting even more people i'm losing touch with (fight among yourselves..), or trying to tax a car - a ten minute job, yes? - and losing a whole afternoon to it because of other people's stupidity >_<
* Oh yes! I have a CAR :) wheeeeeeeeeeeee. A H-reg Volkswagen Polo, no less, all shiny, shiny, SHINY navy blue �650 of it. �1000 if you count the work that's been done since and tax... urk! But only 56-thou miles on the clock when bought, which is hella low (and there isn't any evidence of it being a ringer or clocked!!).
* What else now.... :)
* A palm pilot in the summer time is a fairly useless piece of kit. Kinda annoying, really!
* A 14-inch monitor, no matter how hard it tries, is totally useless for the internet. Hopefully the replacement for the burnt-out 15-inch will arrive soon and I can stop juggling my screen between the decidedly odd modes of 896x672 (at 75hz, for comfort) and 936x702 (at 72hz, for that essential few % extra screen area with difficult web pages) and put it back to work on my own machine at a more comfy 800x600. Before realising that I'm going to have LAN net access in a month's time and should consider getting a bigger screen myself... OZ computers look good, they sell some pretty sweet reconditioned Compaq monitors for bargain basement prices with 12-month warranties. Link will appear when/if i can be arsed. Email markpenrice@yahoo.co.uk if you're really desperate.
* Meh..... beware of www.fark.com (am avoiding linking it for obvious reasons). It will eat your time.
* Beware of little brothers. They will trash your mum's 15 inch monitor, trash her PC to the point where only voodoo magic will make it even power up (and the lost knowledge of the incas make it connect to the net), before having eight mates around to trash the house and expect you to clean it up. Fuckers.
* As far as filesharing goes, it may be the new digital frontier, but I really can't be arsed with it at the moment. It's a sport for geeky types with far too much time on their hands (and no websites to write). I've got cities of gold, I've got enough ghibli movies to know that DVDs of all of them would be sound purchases, enough mp3s to last a couple lifetimes, and enough of Nadia Secret Of Blue Water to know that it'd be good to get more when there's time to watch it, but it's not life threatening to miss.. I'll get my entertainment input the traditional way I think.. Thru A/V stores, television, and if utter lack of cash dictates, wind-up radio.
* Maaaaan it's late.... i had some things to put here but i really cant rememeber much of them. only one sticks in the mind right now... that being -
* Finally knuckled under to cliche/herd-dom this evening, and went out looking for people with my name on the internet. And, unlike the intrepid Dave Gorman (who so far has 54 others, the famed pack of cards with jokers), i've found but three. One of them, the one with the largest internet presence (three links) was me. Another, the stepfather of a psychotic killer in Texas (cool..). The third, also pretty cool, a ranking contender in some cycle race taking place not too far from here. Now, although I have a Scott mountainbike now, and this happened close by, and there were Sutton Coldfield contestants, I know that it wasn't me. Why? Cuz the guy was from Glasgow, and to my knowledge (and shame?) I havent yet crossed the scottish border. Funky.
* I might be becoming a peer guide/mentor type person this year. Spooky. At the very least they want to use my (inspired, if i do say so) map of bangor for a handbook, with it's useful pinpointing of all the cashpoints and fast food outlets (oh, and faculty buildings) in the town, along with all 40-odd of the pubs and bars, numbered in dare-you-to-try-it crawl order.
* As noted just above, I got a bike to replace my farked up one. I am now feeling pretty stupid for letting the insurance company railroad me into using their stupid mail-order-only supplier instead of getting them to just give me the cash and going to halfords or ASDA. Apparently the bike I have got, a Scott MX-5 (it's also got some silly other name that I forget), is worth �215, which entailed both �50 excess and �15 upgrade payments on my behalf. Bullshit says I, I probably could have got something with a similar spec as that for �65 if I'd gone to ASDA on a sale day.
* I have a PROPER job now. Proper summer job anyway (you didnt think all of this paid for itself, now....). A week at Clive Marks schoolwear at first, which was pretty shitty. Even so, I picked up on what i was supposed to do, knuckled down to it and got on with the work and everything else asked, and was pleasant and helpful to all the customers. Even put in unneccesary overtime at an evening show. Which is why I was pretty pissed off at the end of said week for 'not getting it' (not getting what? maybe that's part of the reason...) and not pulling weight etc. Was very hacked at that for all of like an hour (had started to make friends there in the opressive atmosphere, had even been told i was doing well not two hours before), before realising that the job was shitty and moving on to look for a new one. Come on... �3.80 an hour with no breaks, even for the toilet or a drink (THE MANAGER LOCKED THE STAFFROOM DOOR BETWEEN SHIFT CHANGES!), in a hot, un-airconditioned cramped store, hawking overpriced, unfashionable, uncomfortable garments to bored children who really would prefer not to wear them and confused, harassed, broke parents who would really prefer not to be buying them... screw that.
Well gotta go again. Still short of time to say many more things, but those that have been left are leavable. I need to just check the status of my savegame on kieran's PC whilst he's out (Civilisation 1, baby, still the king of the Civ games!) and go to bed so I can be up for half six.. laterz.
* Just finished 2nd year at university. Hot damn but that went fast. Shared a little terraced house with 5 other anonymes, all 3rd years annoyingly. Good times that are over all too soon, even though we didn't get to know each other too well. No trips to the beach or anything :(
What else to report, what else.. not much really. Life goes on much as it has this past age, etc. Not really anymore ideas for things to put on this website, much less the time to do them. Perhaps some kind of anime section in future, just to raise the webs anime & porn content from 99.98888884% to 99.98888885.. Perhaps a thinking persons look at the whole situation & all that.
And a load more photos of course.
Now for the old stuff
OK it's been nearly a year since I touched this page. The last prior update (below) was 11th Feb 2000. It's now 1st Feb 2001. I'm always planning to do something here, but somehow never manage to have ideas, motivation and spare time all together. If you happen to be looking at this site right now, please send me an email with a short comment about it, preferably along the lines of "Keep it" or "KILL it!!".
But, please, before you do that, take time to peruse what I have to offer. Assuming all the links that I *think* are here *are* here (you think I can be bothered to check? nahh..) then there's some moderately interesting/amusing stuff here *SOMEWHERE*! Just wait until I get the Mp3s up on the VE-Records subsite. (They're effectively out of copyright now thanks to the local bands in question splitting up and selling out of all their CDs - and never having copyrighted them in the first place)
Regards, Tahrey
OK, I'll admit, I did check just now. The links I thought were there, aren't. So here are my usual set...
V. E. Records a young enterprise company I was a part of. Good music actually - just gotta remember to upload it sometime.
Jamie Carbery's Painful Kitchen of Vesey House Shame (or was it Shameful/Pain?). Some slightly amusing photos you might like :)
Tahrey's Uniphotos. Again, more stuff that may hold some interest, but possibly it's a little more specialist...! I'll soon be adding some more (and more entertaining) pictures once I can fight my way through the crowd surrounding the library scanner.
Thingy/Somewhere-Net may actually be this page - so dont be surprised if nothing happens when you click - or it may not. I'm sure there's another page out there somewhere than needs including, and this is probably it.
Errm.. this is sort of a mini version of that angelfire site above.
Aaaaand that's about it. I think. Get your exploring legs on! I now return you to the previously scheduled programme.
ARRGGHHH!
OK, I was going to restore my old site 'by popular demand', after a load of people seemed convinced that is wasn't here any more. However, for you blind fools, there has been a link to it since posterity on this page... just check further down.
Click here to see what is going to totally take over from this site ASAP. Unfortunately, that *does* mean 'as soon as possible', not 'immediately' or 'within the month'... :-). What you see is an extreme alpha concept-version. However, since I have Netscape Composer available to me now, I can spend a lot longer on design and content, and a lot less time on ironing out bugs and errors! Whahey! Finally, maybe I'll get to work some quality into this thing. Also to come, a long overdue electronic postcard from Tenerife, and Jamie Carbery's drunken record of Vesey House Debauchery!!!
TO PREVIEW THE NEW SITE (STILL BEING CONSTRUCTED), CLICK HERE. (CLICK YOUR BROWSER'S 'BACK' BUTTON WHEN YOU'RE DONE LOOKING).
TO GET TO THE OLD WORKING SITE, CLICK HERE.
Click here for my 'What a cool dude!' subsite. Currently being made whilst I'm online changing this. It will be in existance about 10 minutes after this link first appears. Today, only Simon Mayo is in there...
.
Ahh, now that I've ironed out most of the problems in that new main page of mine (the background, links, animated gif and music all work), I can get on with optimising it and doing all the other pages. In the meantime, see my Newbie experiments with tables, straight out of the textbook, and a pair of new images for my site; Large and small copies of my funky new Phun wiv Phish logo. Sadly, Sushi (the fish in the picture) passed away from unknown causes recently. A memorial page will be erected somewhere in the PWP subsite...
Talking about getting ahead of myself - i've actually started preliminary construction on an entirely new subsite without having even restyled the old ones! You can see the page from which the idea sprung HERE. The name will stay secret for now to stop it being nicked.
Kerbash!
And a job, as an NHS trainee in Nuclear Physics, starting in september. Betcha didn't see THAT coming.
Hello once again
Well it's been a good year and a bit since I last wrote anything here, the results of which you can see below. Seems the page has been a little more popular since - perhaps from the FriendsReunited effect of people searching out my name and hitting on this (and the kitchen of pain, etc). Things have happened, attitudes have changed etc.
Foo...... (28/8/02)
Mind you I'm going to go into quite a lot of detail here, but only about detailed things. Seeing as I do this once every three months tops, I think that's fair. (Hell I only did this because I looked up my name on yahoo and 'rediscovered' the page)
Apparently, every last one of you looking at this uses a screen resolution of 1024x768 (a stat that is surely false, as at least one of those hits should have come from this highly knackered PC currently running 896x672.. no typo). And bizarrely, a good three quarters have linked here from my brother's quake clan website. A site with only one, short, templated page, that hasn't been updated since he created it in early '98. WTF?!
Warning, I have a lot to say on this subject, as it's all so new, complicated, novel, and downright exciting and full of stuff that i would never have considered until now.
Yes, even though I bought a pretty cheap motor (about as cheap as parents would allow), certainly a spectacular value one, it's sucking money like there's no tomorrow. Hello Mr Overdraft, how lovely to see you again. Not.
BUT there is good reason for all this expenditure, at least in my mind. Two of them being the slowness (and often, coldness/wetness/exhaustionness/coughing-on-fumes-ness) of cycling, and the all-round slowness, expense and two faced lying fucking bastardness of trains. The trains thing especially, came to a head recently when a journey to a friend's party that would have taken about an hour and a half and cost about �10 petrol in a car (even including manchester's infamous traffic) ended up taking SEVEN HOURS and costing somewhere in the region of �24... �30 if you include necessary tucker to keep me going. Bloody hell. Set off at 1, expecting to be there by 4 with plenty of time to freshen up and look good. Arrived, finally, at 8, just in time for the start. Feeling completely bombed, and having changed into my smart clothes in the car park outside the venue. Had travelled around much of the country, including fifty miles in the wrong direction on a stoke train that i was assured went to manchester. Bastards.
No pictures of the car yet, as still no digital camera and a half film left in the increasingly malfunctioning APS (i'm sure you can find some pics of 1991 polo's if youre desperate), but they'll come soon... wanna show off the lovingly restored & touched up paintwork that took me about a week of evenings to sort out. SHINY.
Heck 'Shiny' is one of the few things going for it. Speedy, it definately is not. A 1043cc engine that would probably fit in a school backpack is all that lurks under the alarmingly empty bonnet of the beast (in america, they sold it with a 1.8...!), and it's an old-design 8 valver. Which means the bhp is fairly conservative for the size (45) and what torque there is comes in (thankfully) pretty low, around 2750rpm, almost diesel-like (hell, check out the tractor-esque noise too!)... couple this to a trusty 80's four-on-the-floor and you have a formula that equates to a tolerably nimble town package, but a complete lack of guts above 55mph (so much so that it takes about 12 secs to 50... and 20 to reach 60)! Oh and the clutch seems a bit worn so it ain't too hot on the fast starts either. Argh :)
Luckily it's a 1991 model that was made just after the mark-II facelift and refit, so the engine is injection at least.. hopefully a bit more efficient and sturdy, but full of complicated things that could go wrong in baffling ways - hey, at least a carb is a fairly easily figured out mechanical device.. injection ECU's and injectors, from previous experience, tend to have a mind of their own..
Overall though, it's got -just- enough mojo to still play with the big boys, even when two-up with a little luggage and a half-full tank. Which is nice. Able to just about hit 90 on the flat, with still air - rattling, bouncing and screaming fit to burst (think one of the front tyres is out of balance..;). Haven't yet hit the ton, but only because a passenger (my brother) complained that he wanted to reach the bottom of the hill in one piece! :) Had a nice battle with an asshat in a volvo though, who alternately held me up on twisty A-roads and zoomed away in towns at the same cruise-control 48mph.. got on dual carriageway and blatted past whilst exiting a roundabout. This of course was a challenge to the Big Car Guy's virility and so he gave chase and eventually passed me.. I refused to give in and it seemed the BCG just couldn't hack the pace of going over 50 for too long :) dusted, hehe
Can't do too much of that though - it's not the lightest or most aerodynamic (or best tuned) car in the world so economy suffers REAL bad with sporty driving. First long motorway trip, in the rain, keeping between 55 and 70 depending on conditions, managed about 48mpg. Coming back, on A-roads, going a little quicker (including the asshat battle), did 42... still respectable. Recently, been ragging it pretty hard around town, and countriside roads, running tight-deadline errands and seeing nature/testing the machine's limits respectively. Down to 36, like my dad's big 2 litre auto 'box Xantia tank. Ouch.
Going on a trip to bangor tomorrow, a nice 150 mile pootle, there on the A5 and back via A55/M6, will have to see if it's possible on the 8 or so gallons left (hopefully!).. hmm.. have to bring back the old tricks of killing the ignition at junctions and down hills. Thankfully it's a whole lot easier to bump-start the engine (& safer) than other cars I've driven, due to both the heavy body, teeny cc's and an odd wiring system that includes the lights (and wipers!) staying on no matter the ignition setting.
Such long hauls are part of the considerations made when deciding a car to buy. Initially I was for all out cheap banger purchase - hunt out an old 1-litre FIRE-engined Panda going for about �250, and get 3rd party insurance on it. Hey, it'll do 85 (and 60 comes up in 14 secs..), hold 5 people at a push, return 50mpg, group 1 insurance... can be fixed with a hammer.. hehe. But also dangerous, a complete rustbucket, uncomfortable as anything, and a near-zero luggage capacity.
The Polo is beholden to none of those problems. Safety is a bit of an unknown factor, but it certainly *feels* solid, like an only slightly shrunken Golf or Bora. The doors actually have some width to them, as opposed to a Panda's simple single-fold sheet of metal with a bit of cushion stuck to it. Heck the entire machine seems hewn from granite, which certainly explains the weight and somewhat scary (lack of) handling - and the almost completely unblemished bodywork. Apart from the unavoidable chips and scratches in the paint, and some *TINY* spots of rust (don't believe? wait for the photos) resultant from, it simply doesn't look like a car swiftly heading towards it's twelth birthday. Hence "shiny".
The other things, too.. five people fit in *comfortably* as the machine's slightly more sensible length places the wheels behind instead of beside the rear seat passengers :) and the ride is fantastic. What the suspension doesn't knock out, the unbelievably soft and comfy seats absorb. This is one of the few noticable upgrades of the 'CL' spec over the basic 'C' - very nice seat trims. Decent fabric, leather edging, and supportive sport-style seat wings.. cool. (also in the CL spec... ummm.. an offside mirror, temperature guage and a tape deck on the radio?? not much ;). Plus the luggage space, for such a seemingly small car, is ENORMOUS. Externally, and to the common eye, it appears sort of fiesta-sized. With the seats down, it becomes more apparent that the reason for the elongated rear windows and almost completely flat hatch-back is load space closer to an escort estate. Just the thing for taking a reasonable amount of life kit (PC, TV, hifi.. oh and cooking equip, clothes, books!) back to uni - or my diving gear tomorrow. Just how the engine will cope with a combination of a few hundred kilos of man-crap and cymru's love of 1-in-8 hills remains to be seen!
The stereo.... what can be said? Dear Lord on High, the stereo SUCKS TOTAL ASS!! Hehe... it's a Blaupunkt Boston CC20, three-band radio (hey digital tuning, what luxury... no RDS tho) and utterly basic cassette (single sided play and fast-forward, nowt else, rubbish equalisation) with a minimum of power output and features. Just like the car.
I really don't understand. Most people seem to rate blaupunkt pretty high, but all BP stereos I've encountered have been complete PsOS. They have a one-way ticket to sucktown and aren't afraid to use it. The speakers are horrible, far too tinny (and make a HORRENDOUS buzzing noise when the bass gets too loud IE loud enough to be just below the threshold of hearing), dont have quite enough power to drown out the engine above 65mph, and are too small to be replaced with anything except expensive offical VW parts (which will still suck) or even more pricey custom Sony jobs.
The radio is generally OK, but will sometimes have trouble getting even a strong station if the aerial is down - and it tends to crackle and then cut out when it overheats, which it does a LOT.
And the tape deck.... oy... the head must be severely out of alignment or something, but most tapes so far have sounded like they're playing down a bad phone line. The rest are worse. Luckily if I put a CD tape-adaptor in upside down the sound quality is much better. After a short period experimenting with my discman and minidisc player, i've settled on plugging a cheap tape walkman in there! The ultimate kludge.. instead of getting a decent stereo (because, hey, that would *cost*), I'm running my tapes in an otherwise abandoned walkman via an incorrectly inserted CD adaptor. Rock and Roll.
The oddest thing about this car... apart from having no wheeltrims on the left hand side...? I'd gone round so many places with my dad and then my mum, looking at different cars... Fiat Uno, Renault 5, a horrendously knackered Peugeot 309, even a Skoda 'Estate' *cough*bullshit*cough* (nice car, 5 doors, bit more space and economy than the polo.. but a very low driving position and a gearbox seemingly taken from a 7.5-ton truck)... and the fun of sitting in all the silly priced machines in Carcraft (a Cinquecento for five grand? you WHAT? it's a bloody go-kart! and the newer model is selling for that much now..). Then I go and spot this one sitting in the car park of a block of flats, from the window of a train-replacement bus of all places. Serendipity, c'est maginifique, nez paa?
Final Thoughts - 1. Never buy a car with dark coloured paint, only two vents (and two opening windows) and no sunroof in the height of summer. Arrrgh. No wonder it was so cheap! 2. If your dad parks it up and the handbrake snaps off in his hand, put it down to fucked brakes instead of his clumsiness, and walk away. 3. NEVER assume that a gearbox is going to do what you expect in the first few hundred miles, before you're 100% used to it, lest you get reverse or third instead of first, when you least expect it (eep!) 4. Always ask how the mirror got that intriguiging set of cracks, otherwise you'll only start to wonder about it a couple weeks later when it's too late to find out. 5. Even though it's nice to have a StopLok thrown in (along with a full-size spare wheel, mats, a boot blanket and a bottle of triplewax shampoo).. always be sure to ask how it works, otherwise you'll spend ages before figuring out what the 'trick' is with your particular one. The all-metal 'claw' type I got with the polo is particularly odd!
Final Final thoughts - even with the best intentions of carrying on cycling when driving really isn't necessary, it's a bit like a drug (or a new mobile phone :) Hopefully it'll wear off... been finding myself driving to the shops, etc, when really the bike would have done or may even have been better (certainly in the park). It's not even as if it's raining much at the moment. Hopefully this mania will wear off when I realise how much the fuel is costing.
So have you got any almost near-famous not-really namesakes?
As bikes go, it's a bit like the polo, but at the completely other end of the value stick. It certainly feels well put together, and will probably 'live' for a lot longer than my old halfords apollo jobbie. But I don't WANT it to, because it's such a lump of arse. This cycle seriously isn't worth �215, unless skilled labour costs far more than it used to.
The three things it has going for it are the good brakes, which are already starting to lose power (still, it's nice to be able to lock up the rears and/or throw myself over the bars on a whim if only for a little while), the massively squidgy front suspension (which, like the apollo, is doomed to die a swift death) and the indestructible pedals. That last one shouldn't even be considered an intentional pluspoint either - they're only indestructible because they're made of CHEAP, solid hard-type plastic, instead of the expensive lightweight metal of my last bike, which ended up getting bent... after it had been thrown down a hill, and i had smashed into a wall when losing control outside the station!
Bad points are many. The whole thing feels and looks cheap. The tyres are cheap, some kind of chinese all-terrain knockoff that the red army probably fits to scrambler bikes and are pretty much unfit for road use. Even after a few months of use, the rubber has the sorts of cracks only previously seen on ten to fifteen year old junkers.
The wheel rims themselves are pretty rubbish, having some kind of 'special adonised coating' that the book extolls as being good (anti rust?) but only seems to be making the brakes weak as it runs in (OPPOSITE to what should be happening).
The frame is made of really huge oversized tubes throughout - whether this is good or bad, I dunno, but it makes it hard to lock up. The saddle is nasty (squidgy, but thin) and very hard to adjust (always pointing UPwards at the front!). The handlebars are covered with some horrible, flesh-eating kind of rubber that means for the first time ever i'm wearing gloves to protect against the bike rather than the elements.
Worst of all though, is the gears. Oh boy do the gears suck. Yes, they're Shimanos. Which for some reason the gimp on the phone sounded like he was coming in his pants over. Get this straight; sure shimano made good stuff, but like the beatles, they are as capable of churning out the occasional batch of shite from time to time, and thats what's happened here. Ostensibly a fairly standard 21 speed gripshift (no argument).... but ugh.
Grips are a pretty arse idea in the first place for many reasons, one of them being lack of flexibility (requiring use of the whole of the correct hand to shift, rather than being changable by just one finger or thumb from either hand). It's hard to read the display showing which gear you're in, which is innaccurate half the time anyway.
Oddly, the grips dont shift the way you expect them to - IE it's bass/ackwards to what a person comes to expect with standard thumbshifts. Pushing forwards on the left shifts up, and down on the right, yes? Not with grips. It's exactly the opposite, and it's probably going to be YEARS before I get used to it. It's as if someone was to turn your car's gearbox 180 degrees.. probably a similar feeling of disorientation to the old porsche tiptronics, where defying all convention, if not so much logic, you pushed forwards to shift up. GRRRR!!! Most annoyingly, it wouldn't even have been so hard to do it the other way around - it all rests on the positioning of one little wire above or below a centre line. It's not like it would have been a major engineering problem to make it work 'properly'...
Oh and did i mention the vanishingly small width of the actual shifting section of the bar? It often requires moving the hand inwards from a comfortable, two-fingers-on-brake position to a whole-hand-on-bar, almost clutching the centrepost position to get a useful hold on the shifter. In all, pretty bloody annoying and none too safe.
This however would be forgivable.. if it wasn't mated to one of the crappest derailleur setups in the history of the world. Never have I come across an equip better suited to being a complete pain in the backside. Derailleurs are normally difficult to shift down when applying great pressure on the pedals (ironic, no?) and can have trouble accurately getting top or bottom gear, but this equip has it down to a fine art.
Even though the 7-speed gear cassette is one of the wide-gap old school types, making the chain jump to where it's supposed to be often requires thought and trickery. Even the slightest of hills or wind requires a drastic slowdown or even dismount and raising of the rear wheel to effect the much-needed gear change. The chain will often snarl across gears and jam a little if you attempt a swift block-change (never a problem before).
Occasionally it will refuse to find 1st or 7th; much more often it will overshoot and jam in a fashion that requires dismounting and removal of the rear wheel to remedy! (thank goodness for quick release bolts). More than once this has happened in heavy traffic...
The front chainset gearing is pretty nasty as well, except that it tends to be able to find the gears properly (as it's only a three speed it'd be STUPID not to). But on the 2nd & 3rd wheels (the big ones) the chain rubs against some part of the frame or gearchange assembly and makes a grinding, clanking noise. Plus it occasionally falls off of the 1st wheel, and - get this - there's no chainguard between the gearteeth and the pedals. Several of my trousers have small oily rips in the lower right leg now, and I am getting into the habit of tucking them into my socks when going for a ride. It's a pity that bicycle clips are almost nonexistant now (though they'd probably not fair much better anyway), but it's also shameful that they should be even needed. Every other bike manufacturer in the world has cottoned on to the fact that chain guards are handy pieces of kit and only cost about 50p a throw, so why hasn't Scott??
Finally, on the bike front... they asked me if there were any accessories that needed replacing from the stolen bike. I said yes, a high quality full length rear mudguard (slight untruth - it was a budget full-length :), a good pair of road toad lamps (true - including a dimmable xenon front light and a multi-function rear LED lamp), and a trusty tho rusty combination-lock rubberised chain.
What I recieved as replacement, ready-attached, were: A really NASTY half-length rear mudguard that keeps shifting out of place and bending (though that doesnt matter much, as it doesnt keep my backside dry in the wet ANYWAY), the world's second cheapest bike lights (you know they're bad news when they have C-size batteries and require a screwdriver to change 'em) with low effiency bulbs and single functions. The placements for which were ready attached shards of metal, one of them fouling abrasively on the rear brake cable til I moved it. Finally, a good-looking but crappy operating replacement for my bike lock, a similar but much thicker device with a keylock instead of a combination (surely less secure, as a small combi takes longer to run thru than a lock does to pick or screwdriver). WITHIN TWO WEEKS the bloody thing had rusted bad enough that I almost couldn't unhook the bike from a certain lamppost (the other didnt rust in about ten years, until it was finally defeated by a pair of bolt-cutters). Replacements have been bought, but they'r still fairly crappy. Seems decent bike locks aren't on sale any more...
So, now I'm working at a branch of SPAR, not five minutes walk from my house. I operate the hot food counter and the ovens & washing up thereof, and often the tills as well. Sure it's a bit tough doing a 7am-5pm shift, but there are plenty perks. For one it's a four-on four-off day rota... coolness. Wages are a little higher (�4.12/hour) and the work is full time but with similar free time all told (odd) so I can actually afford my car insurance. The shop is spacious, bright, air conditioned with huge windows. The customers actually want the stuff they come in for, so a hard sell isnt called for, only the occasional helping of a granny who has got lost in a three-aisle store, or the explanation to a skinhead that the stuff on the hot food counter that has 'pizza' written above it on a sign (and looks, smells like pizza) is indeed PIZZA. hehe... the work is somewhat repetitive and simplistic, but rarely boring or overly stressful (straddling that comfy middle ground) and best of all, the owner-managers are pretty honest, genuine guys who have the (pretty unique, these days) ability to treat their employees as fairly equal, merely administratively inferior, human beings. IE we can take breaks, go to the toilet, have a minute or two outside in slack periods, and are not viewed as being brainless unfeeling incompetent cattle merely because half of us are students (despite, well, the fact we're at university in the first place being a mark of *some* kind of ability.. methinks CM's manager has some kinda complex) Crack on....!
Plus there's the little matter of any food that goes a day past date being taken thru to the back room as free-for-all free lunch fodder :) wheeee!
So, for the 3 people per month that randomly end up here (according to the stats), here's a little update on what's been happening in my oh so interesting life in the last 15 months, some of it even relating to this page.
* Heck, since I last updated, I finished my FIRST year as well! That was much more fun. Lots of good friends, drunkeness, football, beach trips... ah them's the days. (sob)
* Summer jobs 2001.. Serving in a bar during the best summer the midlands has seen (arse!) and cleaning the corridors in a local hospital. Well, it paid the bills at least.
* Got an APS camera (did i already have it before?). The 110 conked out and quite simply nowhere sells them or processes the films anymore, it being a format almost as old as 35mm and all. APS actually sucks quite badly, in terms of picture quality and price, but it'll have to do until I either learn to load a 35mm or save enough for a digital.
* Got a longplay minidisc player. And broke it. Gah! Those things are sweeeet though, highly reccommend you get one for yourself now prices are dropping.
* Ran my bike almost into the ground and had it nicked a week before I planned to replace it. Sutton has psychic theives. Nice.
* TOOK UP SCUBA DIVING! A pleasant pastime but not one for the poor (or those who can't tolerate being poor) or weak/easily bruised/panicky. Ooohh... fish. Ooooh... rubber suits. Mmmmm... 50-odd pounds of gear, �100-plus items of kit.
* Discovered DivX video underground on web. Signed up for broadband connection. Now proud owner of near-vhs quality complete run of Mysterious Cities of Gold. Joyyy!
* Through the above, discovered Studio Ghibli. JOY. Revelled in Pricess Mononoke. Traced origin of mysterious anime music video on The Box 6 years ago (On Your Mark), and highly pretty steampunk film (Laputa) glimpsed on BBC some Christmas back to there via Nausicaa net. Suggest you do similar before disney implodes.
* Cant remember where it was at when I wrote the original page, but the music obsession continues unabated. Have pretty much given up on tape since getting the MD - too bulky, too noisy, treble is crap! CD collection approaching critical mass. Albums alone almost fill three standard Index plastic stack-racks (ie, knocking on for 200). Help!
* Joined the digital generation... bought a dvd player. An SM Electronic Supervision 2500 if you must know. The stupid name is because it's German. Only cost �80 thanks to the Joy of Lidl and it being cobbled together from cheap and humongous chinese parts. Works very well though, certainly a major major bargain. DVDs and audio CDs come out brilliantly. Lots of sockets - S Video, built in DD5.1 decoder with outputs, optical, projector etc. Mp3s too. And the killer app.. VCDs... highly nonstandard VCD tolerant no less, so Lord of the Rings DVD screener rip happily goes onto one 81 minute disc :) :)
* Wanted: Someone to take a load of old CDRs off hands. Perfectly good content (audio, video, etc). Only thing is that it's been superceded, or was only ever protoype. There's probably a good 50-75 discs knocking around :) No payment necessary, but swapping for a decent legal DVD would be nice.
For a fright, try the Oh Lordy! page of the kitchen....hehehe
Geocities might kick me for this - and they'd probably be justified - but I've found that Angelfire is somewhat of a better service, and if I could just be bothered to put in the effort, all of this crap would be over there by now. You get 50mb instead of 15mb (yes, that does make a difference even though we're still in the age of the steam-powered modem), the file management thing is somewhat more friendly, the page provision is FAR, FAR faster and reliable, --- and it lets you upload MP3 files!
Geocities DOES NOT. Even if they're legal and/or you rename them to something else, you simply can't get them on the site, the server blocks them. So V-E-Records will either have to stick to realaudio, or move to angelfire... Sort it out, Geo!
(Checked it out - bloody thing doesn't actually load a page. But I know that the redirector works, and that link *used* to work, and I haven't yet deleted any pages off this site in the five years I've had it... so it's Geo's fault again. Raaaagh!)
Also from my browsing through this once more it's pretty much apparent that I haven't worked on this place AT ALL for a full 12-13 months now - including everything on this page past this intro - so don't hold your breath for any updates. I'll see what I can do....
OK PEOPLE, WHILST I AM IN THE MIDDLE OF UPLOADING AND UPDATING MY SITE, MY NEW MAIN PAGE HAS CURRENTLY NO WORKING LINKS.
HOWEVER I WOULD LIKE TO SHOW YOU A PREVIEW OF IT, ALONG WITH KEEPING THE OLD ONE WITH THE WORKING LINKS AVAILABLE.
And Here for the 16ton awards. Ditto, except in here today is -------- who think it's fun to steal your newspapers.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME, THE PROPER SITE WILL SOON BE TOTALLY IN PLACE. THE PREVIEW IS MISSING SOME PICTURES FROM THE MENU BAR AND THE FONT MYSTERIOUSLY CHANGES HALFWAY DOWN, WHICH WILL BE FIXED LATER, BUT IT DOES FEATURE BACKGROUND MUSIC IF YOU'RE USING MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER.. OR AT LEAST, IT SHOULD!! SEEYA AROUND. (LUV FROM TAHREY/EDDYH/MSP).
