Unlike my previous trips I had little access to the Internet while away and failed to take writing materials. Many of my observations and thoughts were lost but here’s what’s left in my mind:

Driving in France was less terrifying in my own car than in the left-hand drive rental cars I’ve used in the past. The run from St. Malo through Rennes, Le Mans and up to Paris was uneventful punctuated only by the unidentified random songs and the splatter of unfortunate insects emptying their stomachs onto my windscreen at 140kmh. I went through Paris, around the five lane ring-road several times and even drove along a section of road where I could see the fabled Arc de Triomphe, noted across Europe for being a top spot to avoid while driving because of it’s twelve avenue junction that surrounds it.

Wondering what happened to Cable & Wireless’ planned 1MBit ADSL upgraded service? Their web site has been very quiet so I emailed and got this response I thought I’d share;

Dear Customer

Contrary to popular belief iTunes and the iPod aren’t perfect and are in fact host to a number of my own personal peeves, including:

If you are previewing a song in the music store then it will be abruptly halted the moment you visit another page. Let me just clarify that, people are here to listen to music they might want to buy and you are forcing them to spend most of their time sitting in silence while they browse. Can you get any stupider? It’s easy for Apple to fix, simply add underneath “Music Store” in the “Source” list a “Previews” play list. Every time a user clicks on a track add it to that ready to be played after the current preview finishes it’s 30 second play. Leave them there for a couple of hours perhaps and let them jump back and re-listen to a preview they are still considering, even if it streams again.

The agenda for my trip is coming together although various changes had to be accommodated because of factors outside of my control, the biggest one being me now returning home right after Nuremberg followed closely by the change to take my car across for the French leg.

The timetables from Saint Malo are sketchy at best and we still needed to get around between Saint Malo, Disneyland, Paris and Charles De Gaulle airport. So with haste I equipped my Nissan Silvia S14 (200SX) with the headlight converters, first-aid kit, warning triangle, jump leads and a spare bulb kit. A map, torch and compass may also be useful if I can find decent ones locally, failing that I’ll muddle through. It is being serviced tomorrow night and hopefully the Pioneer iPod adapter will spark to life too.

LemurGirl has passed me a music meme, so here I go!

It goes all the way up to eleven! Uh, “1,966 songs, 6.7 days, 10.48 GB” according to iTunes.

I’m still feeling a little ill but I guess the worst of it is past, poor Clarissa is still very unwell :(

I thought I’d cover some of the bits and pieces going on in Guernsey at the moment for a refreshing change…

My girlfriend Clarissa has given me a bug, and not the sometimes fun type that involves single-stepping to locate and subsequently fix. She has a very high temperature and her doctor has signed her off work for a week.

Either I’ve got that to come or I’ve been lucky. Why is the human body so incapable of signaling to the brain exactly what the problem is, perhaps with a shopping list of useful nutrients and vitamins it could do with to help the fight?

Okay, so the memory was sorted which left me with two things I wanted doing. The parts this time were from UK supplier Overclock, not to be confused with Overclockers from the previous posting. Both suppliers delivered very quickly and automatically took off the VAT for me, one of the perks of living in Guernsey but one that is all to often eroded by inflated shipping costs, neither of which these two suppliers can be accused of :)

A quick scan through the few options available led me to the AeroCool CoolPanel. It features an 8-in-1 card reader, two USB 2.0 ports, an IEEE-1394 (FireWire) port, two Serial ATA (SATA) ports, composite video out, audio line in/headphones/mic sockets, two fan speed controllers and a blue LCD display showing two temperatures via it’s thermal diode cables and the fan rotations of the two fans it is controlling.

I recently performed a few upgrades to keep my PC up-to-speed and thought I’d share a few tips.

You really need to know what’s going on inside your PC and Everest is a great package to do just that. It will tell you more information about the components in your PC that you’d care to know about and can also be used to peek in on the temperature of the CPU, hard-disk and graphics chip providing your system supports it. Best of all the Home version is free although there are commercial versions for corporate and “ultimate” usage too if you have a few dollars ($29.95 at the moment) to spend.

I really like Hitchhikers Guide, a lot. I’ve read all five books and listened to the radio series on CD far too often. I then put them on my iPod and listen to them regularly. I’ve got the original TV series on DVD, it replaced my VHS copy…Recently things got moving again with a new radio series and the long-awaited movie…

The original radio series was published on CD imaginatively titled the Primary and Secondary phases. The radio series continues this tradition with installments packaged as the Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential phases.