The Ramble

Yesterday whist looking at new Apple Mac hardware for work I came across the Refub Store on Apples UK website. On there, they had 60G iPods in black or white at £175 compaired to their original price of £299 with free delivery. Granted they look to be 4th Generation players as apposed to the newer 5th. With the refub discount its now the same price as a new 30GB version – and you still get a full years warrantee. It’s very tempting. However there are three reasons why I so far have held off buying an iPod – or any other portable mp3 player.

1. My current phone, a HTC Wizard runs WM2005 and with its 2GB mini-SD card there’s plenty of space to store a few albums, and would I want to be carrying round both the phone & iPod
2. With my Mini’s CD player playing mp3 CDs containing upwards of 10 albums its unlikely I’ll have to listen to the same song more than once. In the Classic Mini I’d rather listen to the noise from the exhaust.
3. I can’t stand iTunes (although I’ve tried not to experience it for more than a few minutes at a time)

Still I am tempted…

Friday night took me out to a family friends 30th birthday do. Whilst I enjoyed being there, it did bring to my mind that my own 30th is now less than nine months away.
Not too long ago 30 looked like a milestone that was somewhere away in the distance and that I didn’t have to worry about. Now it’s the next junction. Now I’m starting to feel old. I’ve even got a pension.
Perhaps its time I stopped worrying about the consequences of what I might do and just live life a bit more care free?

So the Formula 1 circus woke from its winter slumber overnight. New drivers. New colour schemes. New rules. Goodbye Michael Schumacher. Goodbye Michelin.
Yet again the season is being hyped up as most open/unpredictable/surprising in recent times. What this usually means is that one of the top teams drops of the pace a little to be replaced by one of the upper-middle teams. Will Alonso regain his title? Recent history points against this with the last three World Champions to move teams (Nelson Piquet from Williams to Lotus in 1988), Michael Schumacher (Benetton to Ferrari for 1996) and Damon Hill’s move to Arrows in 1997 all failing to do so. Although of the teams, only Williams were able to take back the No1 spot the following season with McLaren’s Senna(88) and Williams Damon Hill(97) taking the honours.

The initial Practice times show us little difference with the end of last season with perhaps the biggest surprises being the customer teams outpacing there factory rivals - Williams with their new Toyota engines being faster than the Toyota works team and Supa-Aguri ahead of Honda. With engine development frozen its could take lots of wind-tunnel-time to reverse this.

So who will come out on top, I don’t really have a clue, but suspect the car may well be red.

Hello.
So where do I start. I guess at the beginning is as good a place as any.
I didn’t actually think of what I would write when signing up to this. So lets just say I’ve enjoyed my day away from work today even if I did nothing more than get a haircut and listen to BBC 6Music. With only three calls from the office it has been on of my quieter days.

Roll on the weekend and several pints of Guinness…