Dash Rendar

My wife's Scooby (2001 WRX) misbehaved today. According to her: she struggled to get it into 1st when stationary, there was a terrible burning smell, some noise (she said "banging" rather than "grinding"), and when she finally did get it into gear, she said she couldn't make the car accelerate. This was explained to me over the phone. Thinking it was probably the clutch, I asked her if the revs were going up, while the speed was relatively static. She replied that this was exactly what she was getting. Bugger. New clutch, I'm thinking. But then I got home late this evening, and took the car out for a test drive. I only drove it for a few minutes, but I put it through all the gears, and gave it some beans too. It seemed smooth, with no slippage, no judder, and no smell. Reversed it up the driveway with no problem. So... Can a clutch misbehaviour intermittently? Is it possible to temporarily cook a clutch through bad clutch control, for it to later recover when it cools? Sorry... Don't know much about clutches!! I've checked the clutch fluid, and it looks clean and at the right level. Not sure when it was last changed.

Thanks dude. I'll give that a go.

Hi guys. The catch to lower the back seats in my Supra is broken. I can pull it most of the way out, so I guess it's broken off whatever it should be attached to. Can anyone tell me a solution?

I reverse-parked behind a big 4WD that, as it turned out, had a MASSIVE extension to their tow-bar. It poked out the back of their car by about 2 foot. Fortunately, the only thing it hit was my driver's side front indicator. Anyone got one of these I could buy? I've noticed at least one trader has these, but sold as a pair. I'd really prefer to buy just one. Not sure if this is possible? (Obviously, loom not required.)

Nice work.

Sure am mate. We just want to move somewhere a bit bigger. Where we can put in an indoor gym! That's frikin' genius!

Ha ha! Good idea. That's true. But they are... cheap.

Alas, he didn't. His *picture* from the front was awful! My wife took some more from the front. There are angles that hide the neighbours, but it doesn't really show our house in the best possible light. Ho hum!

Hi guys. We're in the process of selling our house. The new neighbours next door have been doing a lot of renevations to their house, and have left the last two weeks worth of their house-gutting rubbish out the front of their house. But they wont move it as they're lazy gits! The feedback we're getting from estate agent is that the photo of our house is putting people off due to the rubbish out the front of the neighbour's house. I was wondering if anyone with some photoshop skill would be able to photoshop out the rubbish next door, so that it looks tidy? I realise it's a big ask. I'm okay at basic photoshop stuff, but I think I'd make a right mess of this one! I've uploaded as a zip, since the attachment limit on zips is much larger than images, and I didn't want to compromise too much on the image quality.

My Wife 1.0 found this rather funny. She comes bundled with GetOutOfMyKitchen 2010. The Cleanhouse2008 you mentioned is a nice feature, but I've yet to work out how to disable the "Hide my important stuff in random locations" option.

Now that's some quality advice from DamanC.

I was pro-AMD for years. I switched from Intel to AMD when the K6 came out, over 15 years ago, and I've stuck with them ever since. That is... Until the Intel Core i5 came out. Now that's one amazing bang-for-buck CPU, and - as others have stated - the overclocking potential on them is truly immense.

That's the one.

I think FSX is pretty awesome. But I also concur that you can't beat a beat of Tie Fighter... Or maybe some Wing Commander Prophecy. Anyway, I would highly recommend the Thrustmaster HOTAS. It's a combined throttle and stick, with 10 buttons and a hat switch, and the stick twists which is typically used for rudder control. But the best bit... It's under £40!!! I've got one and I think it's absolutely awesome. It's certainly not cheap and tacky (like a lot of Saiteks); it's a really sturdy, heavy-duty bit of kit. You can separate the throttle and stick, but I tend to leave the components together. The controls are easy to setup in FSX. I use it for various combat flight sims too. Comparable bits of kit by other manufacturers will set you back well over £100, so I think this is incredible value for money. Honestly, you can't go wrong with one of these.

The Terminator would win. That said, Termi was a bit thick. You'd think it would know that you can't buy a phased plasma rifle from a gun store in 1984... Unless it was being ironic. In which case, Termi deserves to win for also being a deadpan comedy genius.

Yeah, not to mention it's the second time they're going to replace it! Maybe there's something else at fault...

We've been having some heating trouble lately. A few weeks ago, the heating would only come on IF The water was turned on. So, during the cold snap, if we wanted heating, we had to waste hot water to get the water to come on. We called out Homeserve, who provide our gas heating insurance. They replaced the 3-port valve, which appeared to fix the problem. But shortly afterwar the 'fix', we realised that heating comes on whever the heating is meant to come on, but also whenever the hot water comes on. I.e. no independent control of the heating. (It wasn't the thermostat, as the thermostat would correct control the heating coming on if only the heating was meant to come on. But if the water was on, then the heating would also come on regardless of thermostat setting.) So, we called out Homeserve again. They attended today. The guy fiddled for about half an hour, concluded that the 3-port valve needed replacing (again), and left, saying it would be a couple of weeks before the part will arrive. But since he's left, it's no longer possible to turn off the heating or the water!! Turning them off via the controller doesn't work! So, we're wasting energy heating water and the house, and it's nearly 30 degrees at 2230 at night!! Any ideas?

Can't argue with that.

Actually, I figured it was too late to wish you luck, so this seemed the most unobtrusive way of registering my interest. I sure hope there's a cool ending to this story though. The suspense is killing me!

Imagine how many boot releases you could buy with that. I somehow sneezed out my orange juice reading that.

Bless you!

If you look hard enough, you can pick up some nice non-yellowed 1200s on Ebay. Also, it's possible to chemically treat them... I've read that leaving the keys in peroxide + Oxy Action for a couple of days does wonders! I've been playing IK+, Xenon 2, Elite and Shockwave.

It sure is a Python. I'm currently using WinUAE to emulate the Amiga on my PC. You can download something called "WHDLoad" and its supporting game packs under the "Abandonware" licensing. Basically, the packs give you just about EVERY game ever released on the Amiga. If you download all the packs, they occupy a few GB. And the WHDLoad application allows you to install them onto an Amiga HD (or emulated HD) EVEN if the games were never designed to be HD installable. (Which most of them weren't.) So basically, my emulator is now setup to run any Amiga games I want, with no floppy load time! It's very cool. And I can even use the emulator to load a real physical HD for an Amiga. Bung it in the Amiga, and you're good to go, with all the games pre-installed!

I made a 9-pin-to-USB adapter yesterday out of a cheap gamepad. So now I can use my old digital Amiga joystick on my PC, for that authentic retro feel when playing emulated Amiga games!! I bought the gamepad off Ebay, and soldered a 9-pin D-Sub (from Maplin) to the circuit board in the gamepad. Et voilá! So, now I plug my old Amiga joystick into the new 'gamepad-shaped' Adapter, and it works a treat! Yep, I know this all sounds a bit tragic. But, I've never soldered anything in my life, so I was quite pleased when the project actually worked! (The last time I actually held a soldering iron was a few years back... It was Homer's, and I managed to, er, melt the power cable to the iron. I reckon I still owe him a replacement!)