Snooze

Anyone seen this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2207229.stm Nissan are putting an XBox 360 in their new concept car. When the car is parked, you can use the actual controls to play Project Gotham on a drop-down LCD screen!

Anyone else feeling the petrol shortage here? I'm down to less than a quarter tank after the trip out today and there doesn't seem to be any Optimax or BP Ultimate left anywhere in the Guildford area!

LFS is a great game. I've never played a driving game which actually feels as close to the real thing as LFS does. Highly recommended to all. The demo from http://www.liveforspeed.net/ is free and let's you play around with 3 of the cars and a couple of the tracks. My only gripe with LFS is that the computer AI is atrocious - don't play unless you are planning to play online against real opponents.

Bathroom scales. Girls love 'em!

Careful with this one. Com, soc & dom insurance is supposed to only cover travel to and from your home to your place of work. As soon as your company is paying to cover your mileage, you're getting into dodgy territory. Oh - and

The Chain - Fleetwood Mac

Ack - after I just missed you yesterday, Paul, I was planning to come visit you one evening this week. Now I'm going to have to get mine all cleaned and shined up if I have to park anywhere near that! Nice looking motor! That said - at least I've got you beat 1 - 0 on spoilers (I'll give you a call once I've managed to make some sort of sense of my schedule for this week, if that's okay?)

Nice! Love the bit where it sets the alarm off!

~18mpg here, and mostly that's just a 5-mile commute, including outdoor cold starts at the moment.

Tell you something tho' - I read that whole article just waiting for what I thought would be the inevitable: "Sarah Smith is filing a claim for £500,000 for psychological damages following the incident." But no! The company is being fined, and rightfully so, but no mention of a personal claim anywhere, just a couple of thousand in costs. Maybe the "claim culture" isn't as bad as I thought yet......

Disagree here. Although I think their old rally cars were pretty stylish (but, sorry, the RS200 is still THE rally car for me ), I think the quattro 4WD makes for pretty uninteresting road driving - even compared to BMWs more "refined" RWD. That said, I've only really had a very quick go with an old Audi - most of my Audi experience is from newer (last 10 years) stuff - - maybe the older ones were more fun?

Before I bought my Supra , I was in a similar position to Matt here - couldn't really afford the Supra so I thought I'd go for something with performance but with renowned reliability - help me save a bit of money. I dropped £8k on an E36 328i. Was quite happy with it to start with - was my first RWD car, so I had a bit of fun with it. It was no M3, but the 328 was no slouch and I learned a lot about driving RWD in it. Unfortunately, I'd only had it for 18 months or so before I noticed that I was burning oil at a horrible rate. Long story short, the valve stems were knackered. Eventually found out this was a "standard problem" on the early 328's and that the engine couldn't be fixed and would need replacing! The car ran for another 6 months and then blew up. Literally. Flames, sirens, hoses - the works. Two weeks after the insurance money came through I picked up the Supra ('93 - 2 years older than the beemer - 70k miles - 'bout the same as the beemer). Early days yet (3 months or so), but the Supra is running sweetly, even with me abusing it as an everyday, cold weather toy! Don't want to put Matt of the BMW - mine was an early E36, so I guess that contributed to the design flaw, but let the buyer beware who trusts in the German car = reliable "myth"! Good luck with whatever you decide, Matt!

Personally I think the problem here is that in the "real world", these things clearly differ radically from case to case. The real implications of the event depend hugely on the comparative maturity of the people in question. For example, I bet there's as many 20 year-olds out there with the emotional and sexual maturity of a 14 year-old as there are 14 year-olds with the maturity of a 20 year-old. As for "being in authoritative position" to them, that is also clearly a huge grey area, as the level of authority that actually exists can't be accurately determined. Unfortunately, the legal system can't afford to allow rulings to differ too much from case to case, or the judicial system becomes an absolute nightmare - especially with legal precedent still forming a large portion of law in many places. The ONLY way that a enforcible legal system can work in this instance is by placing precise, and most importantly, MEASURABLE boundaries (ie. "underage" being defined as a strict, physical age rather than the undefined "level of maturity", which is actually the real thing in question). As a result of this, it means that some cases "slip through the net", and innocent people DO get prosecuted where they shouldn't, and some guilty people DON'T get prosecuted when they should (eg. the mature 14 yr old vs the immature 20 yr old). And that is why there is such confusion: society and law NEEDS to define strict boundaries in order to work effectively, but real people and human rights understand that every case is different.

I have to agree with you in terms of corruption and personal financial interest. That is clearly something which has be shown and proven with the current government (you should see some of the financial involvement of some of the european parliament, by the way - some of it is beyond belief!). Especially as they seem to have, in some cases, gone at lengths to "hide" their financial interests - I guess the real point is whether their honesty (and therfore trustworthiness) is in question? And yes, while I would have to agree that it makes me extremely suspicious of those people in power, I don't think it's enough to condemn all the decisions they make that I don't agree with. Mostly because, as above, I don't believe I necessarily fully understand the issues, but also partly because I'm not sure I would trust myself in the same situation - I mean, I would like to think that I would make the "right" decisions in the same situation, but I don't think I'd be unwilling to try and improve the financial security of my family at the same time. I would like to think that I would be upfront and honest about anything I was doing, though.

...for a lot of these decisions, I would have to say personally that I simply do not know enough about all the facts, figures and future to categorically say what IS and ISN'T the right decision, and I suspect the majority of people don't have that knowledge either. eg. yeah - the government might be making it ridiculously expensive to run a car, but isn't that better for the future of the environement? Personally, I don't know - there's plenty of arguments for and against, and I will happily admit that I couldn't say for sure what is best for the future of the inidividual, the country, the EU or the planet! In fact, could it not be argued that the increasing number of complaints about the government and decisions being made are actually a result of people feeling the affects of decisions made on them as individuals and not actually being in a position to understand or consider the long-term, global ramifications of the decisions being made. ie. selfishness?? . Personally, I admit that I do have more selfish tendencies than I would like (I blame it on growing through my formative years in the Thatcher era!) and I think the average UK citizen is becoming increasingly selfish and less socially-concious. To be honest, I'm kind of doing a "devils advocate" here, because to a large degree, I agree with what you are saying, and there's a lot of decisions made that seem completely ridiculous in the real world. Oh - and as a disclaimer, I actually have no interest in UK politics at all!!! Just my 2p - it's all IMO. YMMV.

Have you considered breaking the PC down into separate components too? Claim insurance for the motherboard/graphics card/monitor/CPU/memory separately? I know people who have succesfully done this.....

Whereabouts in Surrey are you? I'm in Guildford myself. There's a few around here, but you don't see 'em too often! Promise you'll get a flash and a wave if I see you, tho!

That was my first "spotted" I'm actually in Guildford - you spotted me not more than 1/2 a mile from my door. I live within walking distance of the Guildford cruise (tonight, actually, I think?), but haven't been there for many years - it doesn't seem to be the same as it used to be :thumbdown

Hey Jon! That was me on my way to work - since I've got the Supra, I've been able to get a couple of minutes extra kip and make the time up on the road!

That'll be me! - was just on my way to fight the traffic into Guildford town centre. I saw you up ahead at the lights and pointed your car out to the missus as you swung round. Nice looking Skyline there - I guess it'll do for a backup if you really have to do without the Supra for a day! I actually imagine we may have met briefly - I was at the Fairmile for the first time last month (I was one of the new people looking nervously awkward , but wasn't able to hang around for long) - afraid I can't put names to faces to cars, but I seem to remember the odd black Supra in amongst the swathes of silver and I think I saw your name on the list? Hope the MOT went okay! Regards, ben

About half an hour ago! (Friday morning). You flashed. I waved.

Men's vs Women's Diary Her diary, his diary... HER DIARY: He was in an odd mood Saturday night. We planned to meet at a pub for a drink, I spent the afternoon shopping with the girls and I thought it might have been my fault because I was a bit later than I promised, but he didn't say anything much about it. The conversation was very slow going, so I thought we should go off somewhere more intimate so we could talk more privately. We went to this restaurant and he was still acting a bit funny, so I tried to cheer him up and started to wonder whether it was me or something else. I asked him, and he said no but I wasn't really sure. So anyway, in the car on the way back home I said that I loved him deeply and he just put his arm around me. I didn't know what the hell that meant because you know he didn't say it back or anything, this is really worrying me. We finally got back home and I was wondering if he was going to leave me! So I tried to get him to talk but he just switched on the TV and sat with a distant look in his eyes that seemed to say 'its all over between us'. Reluctantly, I said I was going to bed, then after about 10 minutes, he joined me and to my surprise he responded to my advances and we made love. But he still seemed really distracted, so afterwards I just wanted to confront him but I just cried myself to sleep. I just don't know what to do anymore. I mean, I really think he is seeing someone else and that my life is a disaster. HIS DIARY: England lost. Gutted. Got a shag though.

......bacon

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Someone at my work just pointed at that in actual fact, with all this queuing at petrol stations, we're actually all using MORE petrol than we would otherwise be using for the upcoming week, therefore generating MORE income for the government and the petrol companies. I like the public transport idea. Although if as a result I don't get to work and thus lose my job, then I may NEVER have money for petrol!