We stopped off with a friend in London for the night before getting up for an early start and heading down to Folkestone for our 0950 departure on the Eurotunnel. 35 minutes of train and we were in France – it’s pretty impressive on the convenience front, even if it’s boring: you sit in your car for 35 minutes of tunnel. Still, we were in Calais.

We quickly headed onto the motorway and headed across northern France over to Belgium. Nothing particularly exciting about the drive – it was over land that was quite flat, lots of agriculture. I was munching on a piece of M&S cocktail sausage when it went down the wrong way and spent the next 10 minutes coughing, so we pulled into a service station for a break. No sooner had we stopped than a wasp flew into the car – Sean whacked it with a cloth and flung it straight at me, where it stung me on the neck.

Once I’d finished swearing and Sean had finished apologising, we got ourselves sorted. Apparently, you have to pay 30c to go to the loo in service stations around here. That was a bit of a pain since we hadn’t stopped at a cashpoint yet…

Anyway, we got to Brussels with no idea where we were going and asked TomTom to take us to a car park in the center of town. A nearby Novotel pointed us to the tourist information center in the Grande Place….whereupon we walked into the middle of a huge beer festival. Of course, we were driving, so couldn’t take part much to my disappointment. After pottering around for a bit, we had a Belgian Waffle (what else would you eat in Belgium?) and wandered around taking photos before heading back to the car. We drove around a few of the sights before heading back out on the motorway. I’d love to come back here, it’s a beautiful city with lots to see.

The drive to Luxembourg was more scenic, crossing valleys although by the time we got there we were both exhausted – we’d not had much sleep the night before. So after a bit of food, we headed straight to bed.

Miles so far: 513

Last week I bought myself a toy that I’d been waiting for some time for – a TomTom Go 740 Live from Amazon.co.uk. I’ve been keeping an eye on the SatNav market for a while, and though the TomTom has a major limitation for me in that you can’t navigate to an OS Grid Reference, the quality of the software, the user interface and the navigation itself have always placed it ahead of its competitors in my book. I will say that I have had a TomTom before – this was TomTom Navigator version 2 on a PDA which I’ve had some 8 years. By now, it’s mostly useless, with major problems with maps and the PDA is obviously creaking at the hinges a bit.

So, when it arrived I was immediately impressed with its size – it’s a lot thinner than the 910 I played with a while ago, much lighter as well. I plugged it in and got the TomTom Home software installed – available for Mac as well as PC – and downloaded all my updates. I used the “Latest map guarantee” to get all the latest map updates, and with the x40 series, you now get 3 months free subscription, so I downloaded all of those updates as well. I was also very impressed with the windscreen mount – it’s rock solid, far better than the old one.

Off I went…and that’s where the problems started. The device simply refused to connect to the mobile network – it has a built-in SIM and ‘mobile data’ connection. Not good, the menu wouldn’t even give me the serial number of the hardware. I raised the issue on Friday with TomTom on their website, and they acknowledged that they were seeing a temporary problem with their servers and suggested a reset process for me to try out once they’d fixed their servers.

Now, being a bit of a geek, I spent a few hours researching this problem (Error 1001). A number of forum users have had the problem – some noted that the excuse given out by TomTom of “server problems” appears to be bogus. I had nothing to compare it against in this case, and those reports were typically US-based, so I gave TomTom the benefit of the doubt.

So roll on Monday morning and lo and behold – the process completes but I still can’t connect. I replied via their online problem system and by mid-morning, I was to impatient so I called them. A very friendly lady led me through a number of procedures, none of which worked and gave me one last one to try at home (I’d forgotten the cradle behind). That also failed, so that night I raised it with Amazon who shipped a new unit out to me.

This morning the replacement arrived. I plugged it in and immediately had some trouble – you can only register one new TomTom device per account every 6 months. This is to stop you from buying one for your friend as well and both having updates – fair enough. So a quick call to TomTom confirmed this and the lovely lady solved that problem within half an hour (Thanks Brandy!).

The new TomTom replaced the old one fine (TomTom gives you several options including backing out of the change – very handy) and off it went to grab updates. Once that completed I immediately checked signal – and yes, it was connecting. Great! But wait, it refused to download my “HD Traffic” updates. Apparently my subscription had expired…and a quick phone call to TomTom (thanks Jade this time!) revealed that with the account reset they’d performed that morning, the 3 month free subscription that had been added was gone. That was quickly resolved and I now have a fully working TomTom.

What about the device itself? Well, navigation is as good as I expected – I have yet to use it in rush hour on a busy route, so I’ve not really used the IQ routes nor the HD traffic functions in anger. But the navigation is good – it takes the routes I know are fastest around here; it updates quickly when I go my own way; the announcements are clear; pronounciation of street and place names is pretty damn impressive, especially for some of the places around here and it even recognises “Senghenydd” when I told it when I was testing the voice recognition.

So, TomTom the device – 9 out of 10. Sorry, but you lose a point for not going OS Grid Reference. TomTom the company – 9 out of 10 – you had some mistakes but you corrected them promptly and politely. Very impressed. Well done, folks.

This is basically a review of it, so if you’re not interested, move on.

I started juicing when I was working nights for Mistral. Working nights is probably one of the worst things I’ve ever done to my body. I didn’t realise it at the time, but over the course of several months I completely screwed my body up – sleep patterns, digestion, skin quality, energy (or lack thereof) and a whole host of other problems. I’d have frequent headaches and my weekly shopping included a pack of painkillers. I had a bit of a wakeup moment towards the end of my time there where I realised that this was Not a Good Thing and with some help from Steve we both started eating and living more healthily. One of the things we both discovered was Jason Vale’s books on juicing. I won’t go into the details here, but going from a crap food diet to a very healthy diet; dropping coffee almost completely; drinking lots of water – these helped turn things around. Within months I was feeling great and had lost weight. I’d also finally got off nightshift and eventually changed jobs.

So I’ve been juicing on and off for a while – the biggest problem is the cost. Fruit, especially in winter, tends to be fairly expensive so requires some careful budgeting. I’m back on that particular bandwagon again in an effort to boost my fitness having discovered a job that in its first year saw me gain almost a stone. My first juicer, a Moulinex BKA14 JuiceMaster Junior, lasted quite well but has a few problems. The juice jug is too small; it doesn’t extract enough juice – and most importantly, mine no longer actually spins.

Which? prompted me to look at a few juicers and I finally settled on their top rated one – a Breville JE27 which I ordered from Amazon and it arrived a few days ago. I couldn’t resist – as soon as I got home, it was out of the box and plugged in, ready to juice.

First of all, it’s heavier and bigger. The design is slightly different too – the meaty bit is effectively a grater disc which a metal sieve at a shallow angle. As it spins, it mashes your fruit and with the speed it’s turning at, it works its way up the sieve, with the juice going through and pulp eventually being thrown off, where it goes into some kind of repository. The Moulinex juicer had the repository at one side, with the problem that the cover would collect large amounts of pulp as it whizzed around which occasionally fouled the sieve and sent it off-balance. The new Breville one has a different design. The pulp collection bowl surrounds the whole sieve, which means that any angle the pulp comes off at is fine.

There are a number of other changes – the juice jug is bigger and the motor is a lot more powerful. The sieve is better quality as is the mashing-bit at the bottom. It generally feels like a better quality product as well – oh and it has a full-size chute so I can thrown a whole apple down. Saves a lot of time. Also, lots of parts have rubber seals on them where they link up to another part – this solves the major problem I had with my old juicer where after dismantling it you’d find half your juice was leaking into the guts of the machine -under- all the parts you could wash.

So, I turned it on. After looking around for the helicopter that I thought was starting its engines, I lobbed an apple down. The pulp that came out was a) smaller pieces than the old juicer and b) considerably drier. From four apples, I managed to get nigh on half a litre of juice. I’m impressed.

Cleaning is easier as well. This has 4 parts to clean - the old one had 7. It just makes life that little bit easier. They even include a little scrubbing brush to clean the sieve – oh and that’s important. The pieces are all marked “Diswasher safe” but to be honest, I wouldn’t want to wash the sieve in a dishwasher. It has very small holes that by the time you come to wash it are full of very small bits of fruit. Very small. If it dries, it’s welded on. So first of all, it needs washing immediately. Secondly, the easiest way to wash it is to just scrub it under running water. Takes about 30s – if you want, you can wash it with soap afterwards as well.

So yeah impressed. It takes -ages- to spin down from full speed, and the amount of juice it gives you is seriously impressive. Chalk this customer up as a happy one.

2 years ago, my Discovery failed an MOT with some £2k of work needing doing on the body. With a resale value of £2.5k after doing the work, I opted not to throw my money away. My next car turned out to be a lemon and was scrapped. Following that, I had an old Rover for a while until the head gasket blew recently – a common fault on these cars, mainly because the engine is a bit crap. For the few weeks after that I had some rental cars (new Mondeo saloon – very nice indeed; a brand new Corsa – not bad, but too small for me; ML320 – nice but waay out of my reach) while I desperately looked for a new car. I had a recommendation to go and visit a garage in Risca so off I went.

Stuart, of Trustworthy Motors in Risca didn’t have anything in my price range out front and since it was a Sunday the office was deserted. Nevertheless, you don’t often get a used car salesman with such a glowing recommendation so I grabbed his phone number and left a message. Stuart called me back and we had a chat. He took the details of what I needed, my budget and so on and I was left with a feeling of confidence that he could find me something decent, even though my budget was fairly tight. Then at the end I had the big surprise – since I was a friend-of-a-friend he offered to lend me a car for a few weeks so that he could have a chance to find something and it would at least get me on the road. Once I’d picked myself up off the floor I gratefully accepted and a few days later picked up a Renault Scenic. With that taking a weight off my mind and wallet, life settled back into a routine again.

A week or two later I had a phone call – he’d found me something. An R reg VW Golf Estate, 1.9 diesel (no turbo). Initially unenthusiastic, it was a little over budget but I popped over to see it. Immediately I saw it, I felt better – a 4 door, small family-sized estate, loads of room in the boot. It even had a dog guard and a boot protector. My fears over a lack of turbo were put aside as I drove it and after chatting over the price, we shook hands – with a payment plan that suited me perfectly as well.

Of course, I’ve already told the story of what happened next, not two weeks into the ownership of my new Golf. The good news is that the rumble was just a balancing problem and I’m back on the road with a fully working Golf. It needs a little TLC for the bodywork and a new wheel, but other than that, it’s back to normal. The drive is lovely – it’s such an effortless drive to Aberystwyth, there’s more room in the boot than almost any other car I’ve had and all in all, it’s a cracking little car. My experience with Stuart has boosted my confidence in used car salesmen tremendously and I can’t speak highly enough of him.

Makes a change, doesn’t it?

This has revolutionised my TV viewing habbits. I no longer watch what’s known as “linear TV” – that is, switch on, pick a channel and watch. Instead, I come home, turn the TV on, bring up the PVR’s recorded programmes menu, pick something I want to watch and enjoy it. I can fast-forward through the commercials and enjoy what I want to enjoy when I want to enjoy it.

Add to this the fact that Sky have an online interface where I can browse the TV Guide online and remotely chose a programme to record, it’s really brought my TV viewing into my control. So when Sky recently announced Sky Anytime – their Video on Demand service, I was not only interested from a consumer point of view, but since I might have to implement this at some point, I’m interested from a professional perspective.

Technically, this is a slick product. Download the client, and although it opens in fullscreen, it’s obviously configured for a 4:3 ratio screen, not my widescreen laptop. No matter, I have a look anyway. Very slick, the whole thing looks very nice, it’s quite a simple interface and it gives some great information.

So why did I uninstall it tonight? I have a basic package – I don’t pay for Premium movies nor Sport packages on my Sky subscription. So seeing as their VoD service is aligned with their normal subscription, I didn’t expect to get the extra content for free. What I did expect was to be able to pay for a programme individually – I don’t want to upgrade to all the movie channels – but you can’t do that. Gah. Box Office content (their normal pay-per-view content) is still PPV.

Moving on, I start browsing the content that I do subscribe to – and to my surprise, it’s chargeable. What? I’ve already paid for this, why do I have to pay it again to download it to my PC?

Now to be fair, if I used the VoD interface through my set-top-box, I’d get content I subscribed to for free. But, and here’s the clincher, you don’t get the same content through the two interfaces – and you still have to ‘upgrade’ to a more expensive package to view movies instead of a PPV approach.

I’ve uninstalled the client now. The last straw was that the “feedback” link just directs to the anytime front page with no obvious way of giving feedback. If anyone from Sky reads this (unlikely) then here’s a few suggestions.

1. Make the content I’ve already subscribed to free – I’ve paid to watch it once, why should I want to pay £2.50 per programme to watch it through VoD?

2. If it’s content from a channel I don’t subscribe to – give me the option to upgrade or buy it on a PPV basis. I saw a film tonight I want to watch, but I don’t fancy paying for an upgrade – but I’d pay say £2 instead of renting it on DVD.

Let’s face it VoD is nice, but it’s basically competing with video rental shops – it’s just got more content.

So, thanks Sky, but not for me.

Since the 1930’s the police of the UK have been using a system of car driving invented by a racing driver who was consulted by the Metropolitan Police to try and reduce the horrendous number of RTAs that they were experiencing.  Sir Mark Everard Pepys, sixth Earl of Cottenham, along with input from SCH Davis and Sir Malcolm Campbell created the system of driving as a methodical  system designed to allow drivers to identify hazards and react to them. Initially each student copied the notes out by hand, but in 1954 they were compiled together into a published document and a year later Roadcraft was published by HMSO. So the system isn’t anything particularly new – though it has changed a little over the years, I’m sure those first students would still recognise it now.

So you can just go out and read the book and become a better driver right? Wrong. The book definitely gives you food for thought and makes you think a little bit more about your driving and your perception of what goes on around you. But it’s no substitute for a well taught course of instruction – and that’s what we had this week courtesy of South Wales Police. In addition to the basic theory, you get a practical view of it from experienced drivers – our instructor had spent 6 years as a traffic officer and another 5 years as a driving instructor for the driving school. Of course, she’d made her mistakes over the years and so that’s also a great benefit. Finally, there’s nothing like being taken out by an experienced instructor and being shown how to use the system and other techniques and more importantly having someone experienced correcting you.

So I’m now happy that this has given me enough skills and basic knowledge to respond safely on blue lights. Where do we go from here – and a question I’ve already been asked is how do people not so fortunate get here?

Two organisations that I’m aware of can help you – IAM and RoADA both of whom offer advanced driver training specifically in the use of the system. From the instructors at the driving school, they’re apparently pretty similar, but one of the interesting comments was that the depth into which they will take the system in their instruction is nowhere near that which the instructors achieve in the police driving school, even on a one-week course. That’s not to say they’re no good – they are excellent and most will have police drivers as members who can instruct you.

I for one believe that the standard tests for young people should be extended. They should be taught to the level of a basic police driver, the same requirement as that which you need to join IAM or RoADA. They should have time on a skid pan to find out how easy it is to lose control. They should be shown what ABS does, what traction control does. They should learn how to read hazards, how attitude affects your driving. I have no doubt that it would reduce the number of accidents on the road and with that reduce deaths and insurance premiums. I’ve already told Sean to ask around for instructors who can teach him the system of car control as part of his driving lessons – he’s seen the difference in my driving and is just as enthused about it as I am.

So that’s my driving course. I’m hoping to join IAM to try and get past their test – it will certainly help with my insurance premiums. I’m happy that I’m a safer driver, but it’s not going to let me get complacent. This is a skill that you need to practice and I’m sure over the coming months, I’ll slip into some bad habits again. I think having seen the course, the drivers and the results, I can honestly say if you’re not using the system, you’re not as safe a driver as you could be.

Last night, Mal and I went up to the Welsh International Climbing Center. I’ve been there before but it’s come under new management since then, and one of the lads on our team works there which is good because we get regular updates on what they’ve done to the place – which is actually quite a lot.

So we wentup and changed and decided to do some bouldering to start with…and just carried on bouldering. They’ve completely revamped the bouldering room which is great – there are some 40 or 50 puzzles in there now, each one graded and laid out clearly, each one, it seems, concentrating on a particular skill. We started on the V0 graded routes, which equates to around a 5a/5b (ish). Now I know that I have climbed a 6a before in this center, but that was on a longer route, and isn’t really comparable to bouldering problems, where it’s pretty much all technique. There may have been a single point where that longer route was a 6a, but the rest was quite simple. We tried 4 V0 problems last night, of which I managed to do 3, and think that I completed 2 of them cleanly – the third I needed a bit of a nudge to get started. The last one was a traverse under an overhang with some real jugs for your hands, but I just haven’t got the upper body strength to do that kind of manouvering yet. So that route is my goal at the moment.

There’s explanations of how bouldering grades works here and here.

WICC has had a major facelift in terms of the walls – they’ve got two of my faovourite walls out of action at the moment as they’re rebuilding them, and I know that the staff they have there now are excellent. They really do offer a whole lot more than just a climbing wall though, especially with their artifical cave which rocks. Looks like they’re on the right track anyway, so I for one will definately be going back there.

I would like to pop back to Llangorse now that I’ve got a bit more experience than when I went there before, just to cast an eye around. It’s too far to go regularly, especially with WICC just around the corner from me really, but it might be interesting as a different place every now and again.