Warning, Parking Brake faulty! (This month’s Renault blog.)

Waking up this morning, on a cold, crisp February 1st morning, I thought about the Renault and considered that, at last, I had managed to make it through the whole month of January without a single thing going wrong with the car.

At last, I thought, maybe all the niggles are working their way out of the system. 

Indeed, the most sinister thing to happen throughout the past month was that I discovered the car suffers from a very severe paranoia complex: SERVICE! the display screamed at me earlier in the month, accompanied by the soothing tones of the onboard computer’s voice over-riding the stereo and announcing: “Warning, fault, return to Renault dealer immediately.”

Prepared to curse loudly and smash an axe through the car’s windscreen in frustration, I investigated further and discovered that the whole cause of panic was that the windscreen washer bottle was empty.

Topping it back up again, the car appeared satiated and we carried on as normal.  Nothing else, it seemed, went wrong.

Indeed, the car hasn’t been used much this month so the performance figures are low and it hasn’t really had much opportunity to get itself in to trouble, but – for the first time since purchasing it in June – we had a trouble-free month of ownership.

Until this morning, that was.  It’s Jacob’s seventh birthday today and he insisted on being driven to school rather than using the bus, so we obliged.

“Warning!” Announced the soothing voice of the onboard computer as the car was started up.  “Automatic parking brake is faulty.  Return to Renault dealer immediately…”

Renault Vel Satis 3.5V6 Performance Log

Because of the weather, a quiet month business wise and other your-lips-are-moving-but-all-I’m-hearing-is-blah-blah-blah excuses, the Renault hasn’t been used much during January, which has brought some of its performance figures down further.  Good job, really, as this bloody handbrake problem might have surfaced sooner…

 

Fuel Used: 18.6 gallons (down from 36.9)

Economy: 20.0 miles per gallon (down from 22.9)

Distance: 372.2 miles travelled (down from 846.3)

Average Speed: 25.4 miles per hour (down from 30.0)

Service due in: 12’200 miles

Odometer reading: 66’229 miles

The iPad – is it out of date already?

Like Mélissa Theuriau, the iPad looks great but makes no sense to me whatsoever.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the iPad recently.  Mainly because every time I watch the Internet, somebody’s talking about it.  Or about John Terry bedding the wife of one of his football buddies.

Most of the people talking about the iPad thingy are full of praise for the way in which it’s going to revolutionise the computer industry.  I have to say I’m completely unmoved by it.

This isn’t because I dislike Apple – admitting to this sort of heresy in public is likely to have me swinging from the pub sign before the day is out – but I do have to confess I’m not a huge Apple fan.  It’s a personal thing, you understand.  I don’t like football, either.

I did, however, watch the launch of the new iPad with some interest.  Everybody was talking about it, so I didn’t want to miss out.  But when Steve Jobs produced a very big iPhone, all I could think of was Dom Joly’s mobile phone sketch on Trigger Happy TV.

The iPad is undoubtedly very pretty, but then Mélissa Theuriau makes watching the French news interesting too, even though I have no idea what she’s saying.

And that’s my problem with the iPad – it looks fantastic, but I have no idea what it’s saying to me. 

It does everything the iPhone does, on a much bigger screen, yet it doesn’t fit in my pocket.  The iPhone has that wonderful twiddly thing you can do with your fingers that allows you to zoom in and out of pornography easily whilst watching it on the bus on your way home from work.  The iPad does the same, just on a bigger screen so the bloke sat behind you can enjoy exactly the same bit of the movie that you are.

You can read e-books on it, which is probably causing Amazon’s Kindle some sleepless nights.  And so on and so on.  All the arguments for and against the iPad have been heard countless times.  No point in repeating them here.

There is no doubt that Apple’s latest baby will have put the willies up one or two manufacturers, but despite the Apples Are Ace crowd screaming that it signals the death of the PC and the printed document, I can’t quite believe it does.  In fact, it may already be out of date.

This video, featuring MIT genius Pranav Mistry, takes “smartphone” computing to a whole new level that even Captain James T. Kirk would struggle to get his head around.  Best of all, this technology’s apparently already available.  And Mistry has made it Open Source…

The video’s fourteen minutes long, but it’s worth finding the time to watch.  It might cause the iPad some sleepless nights.

2010 Formula One Car Launch dates

“When, oh when?” people ask, “are the Formula One cars launching?”

Well I’ll tell you.  Okay, I won’t – autosport.com will.

The first one is tomorrow, with Ferrari officially launching their 2010 contender on the 28th January, swiftly followed by McLaren on Friday.  Sauber and Renault are launching theirs on Sunday.  Michael Schumacher’s new team – sorry, Mercedes GP – will launch on Monday 1st February, as will Williams and Torro Rosso, while sister team Red Bull won’t launch theirs until February 10th and new-comers Lotus will launch on February 12th.

That just leaves Force India and the remaining three New Boys – Campos, US F1, and Virgin – to announce their launch dates.  If they turn up at all.  Which I’m sure they will…

“Have you found any cock yet?” And other text message blunders…

Years ago, while returning from a long-distance meeting, I sent Ali a text message that said “On way home, be naked, I want a snog.”

When I got home, Ali was tucked up in the corner of the sofa, wearing the thickest woolly jumper she possessed, and hiding behind a magazine.  She also looked a little bit worried.

Showing me her phone, the text message she’d received said “On way home, be naked, I want a pooh.”

Understandably, she was unsure of my intentions and had chosen to watch Big Brother instead.

Over the years, similar such text message blunders have occurred when the predictive text language has opted for another word instead and I’ve not scrolled through the options, including once assuming a friend’s wife’s name was Yummy before I’d finished typing in Yvonne.

This morning I sent Ali a text message suggesting she stop by the local garage to pick up some coal as we’re still waiting for the delivery.  What she received was “You better go to the garage for some cock.”

Interestingly, I’ve just discovered the same permutation of letters results in anal, too.

Memo to self: always check the text message before you press send.

So, has anybody else had any amusing text blunders?  Or is it just me…?

Gran Turismo 5 – the elephant in the gaming room…

What is going on with Sony’s flagship racing game, Gran Turismo 5?

Originally the idea that spawned the games console itself, GT5 is – was – the driving game to beat all driving games, needing a much more powerful console to render itself on and therefore being probably the only reason to invent a whole new games console, the PlayStation 3.

Indeed, when the PS3 was launched it originally came with a teaser game, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, just to whet your appetite and get you excited about the prospect of spending fifty quid on an upgrade of your favourite driving game.

But, since it’s launch in 2007, nothing else has come of the game itself.

Sony keep releasing online trailers, teasers and, just before Christmas, a Nissan-based competition game just to keep fans excited about the three-year wait for the game.

But gamers are getting bored and now Sony have released information that the game, which had been delayed again until March 2010, will now be postponed “indefinitely”.

The company are citing production related difficulties behind the ongoing delays, but I’ve got another idea: perhaps they’re just scared by the level of competition out there now and maybe GT5 isn’t going to be as good as all the hype has promised. 

I’m beginning to think I should jack the PS3 in, get an XBox and play Forza Motorsport instead…