The new Aristo rocks....

I'm fairly happy with my new Aristo. It's now fully modified to replace the old one....and the blue colour is growing on me.

Smooth at low speeds, and brutally fast at higher speeds thanks to the Tein/Daizen suspension with Cusco 2-way differential. It truly does two jobs - comfortable, luxurious ride and frightening fast through corners and on the straights. Still have a boost creep problem, but only rears it head at 100mph+. The old car had the same problem, but it's more profound on this one and boosts generally 10-15% more with the Garett turbos.

I'm going to do the final air/fuel checking and run the TOMS ecu full time - if the boost looks off at 1.15/1.20 and creeps then it's OK setup until I mod the exhaust with a small plate for restriction. Either that or I have to change my actuators.

Nintendo WII fitted with ARGON chip

At last I've joined the WII revolution.

But it was a long haul - firstly, I wanted a WII fitted with ARGON chip for playing of backups.

Secondly, I wanted a WII that was compatible with the NTSC downloads I was getting. Sadly, you need an NTSC or American WII. That mean $$$$ to import.

OK, so once I'd shelled out £300 for an NTSC WII, on with the ARGON chip. That cost me a further £35 and fitting by a friend for £50. It's a tricky job, only the best solder-master techs should be used. We actually found soldering to the bottom of the board was easier than onto the pins.

OK, we're in for £385. Plus an additional controller brought the grand total to £410....! Considering a standard WII is £180 I found this to be a helluva chunk to pay.

But here's the good bit...

All the WII backups work. A lot of them are crap right enough, and almost a crime to charge £30-50 for.

Now for the next good bit - Gamecube backups play also! Having missed around 5 years of gamecube games, this is a great bonus.

So far the best game is Mario Strikers Charged. Just wicked. And I'm just downloading the latest Defender game for the Gamecube also. Groovey!

The new ride....

4x4 is the way forward...no more potholes, parking on pavements is no problem, deep puddles are a joy to drive through.

Ride quality supreme but cornering speed sucks. Well, it's OK but a bit roly poly. 200hp under the hood keeps it swift.

So far, so good apart from annoying oxygen sensor issue and the over-sensitive alarm.

Aaargh...PC crash...I need my data recovered....fast!

My laptop went down.

No booting when I turned it on in the morning.

Turns out the hard drive had failed. We found this out from seeing the prompt on bootup.

After much trawling, I found several data recovery companies, but finally decided to take my laptop hard disk to 123 Data Recovery.

Price was OK, £117.50 and the company was local so I dropped the drive off and cross my fingers. Next day, 123 Data Recovery called me and told me they had restored all the data onto DVDs. Great, my data was recovered! They could also transfer all the data onto a new laptop hard drive and re-install into the laptop, even better. This cost me a further £100 but it was worth it to get up and running with all my data recovered.

I was most happy with the data recovery service from 123 Data Recovery - it's not often I recommend a company but these guys really saved my bacon.

Better make backups in future!

Weather soooo grim...

It's gone sooo cloudy and wet....that means basically I've given up on such things like motorsport circuit racing, barbeques, mountain biking and kite flying.

It reminds me of the summer of 1986 - 1990...just wet and wonderful...

The heat, the heat

The weather has gone tropical warm this week...unusual for Scotland.

It's warm and clamy, my jeans are sticking to ma bawz as they say.

Last week it was freezin'. I just don't understand this weather....

Dry roads = fast driving = danger

Today I did my usual overtake at the hairpin onto the straight, I got in before the kink/bend....then on the next straight I was pretty much full throttle - only to see an Audi overtaking...!

Fortunately, Audi got in, I had the anchors on big stylee also.

Pretty much good driving from both me and the Audi, I didn't even think when I hit the brakes, it was instant.

But of course, it's worth noting that the roads are busier and faster in the warm weather and even if you're doing everything correctly, another fast car could arrive round the corner....