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Thu, 12 Nov 2009

Car stereo suggestions wanted

I need a new car stereo, cos the fancy detachable faceplate on the cheap piece of shit I've got right now keeps falling off, and so the music stops. Anyone got any suggestions?

Features I need:

  • it Just Fucking Works - is this even possible, or do they have stupid proprietary connections? It needs to plug into an 04 reg Toyota Hilux.
  • both bass *and* treble
  • no fucking disco lights
  • aux in so I can plug my ipod in
  • a USB port would be nice, but not essential
  • no fancy removeable bits to fall off and get lost
  • if it has to have slots for old media, it should be CD and not tape, but even that's not essential
  • DAB would be nice. If analogue radio, it must do LW FOR GREAT TEST MATCH SPECIAL JUSTICE and MW for the World Service. Not particularly fussed about FM, as that's just shitty doof-doof noises.
  • cheap
Posted at 20:01 by David Cantrell
keywords: cars | music | travel
Permalink | 0 Comments
Sun, 16 Dec 2007

Public Service Announcement no. 1

Using airport codes like EDI to refer to cities (EDI is the code for Edinburgh) is neither big nor clever. In fact it makes you look like a bit of a dick. Similarly, using airport codes to refer to airports (eg saying "Ell Aitch Are" when you mean "Heathrow") also makes you look like a bit of a dick unless you are both:

  • in the travel industry; and
  • talking to someone else in the travel industry

Thankyou for your attention.

Posted at 21:26 by David Cantrell
keywords: etiquette | transport | travel
Permalink | 0 Comments
Mon, 26 Nov 2007

Go news

[originally posted on 20 Nov 2007]

A couple of weekends ago I went to the Three Peaks go tournament, on the 10th and 11th of November at Ingleton in Northshire. It was my first tournament of the year because I've been a goddamned slacker busy for every other tournament so far this year. I won three out of my five games, which was nice. At the tournament I met Anna, a fellow Saaf Landan go-ista who had talked last year about setting up a club, seeing that all the other London clubs are a bit inconvenient. She talked about it again, and four days later on Thursday the 15th, the Putney go club had its first get-together, at the Queen Adelaide on Oakhill Road.

The aim is to Go weekly on Thursday evenings, which will occasionally clash with London.pm, but I can live with that. So I'm Going again in a coupla of days time. And also hoping to get to the East Midlands tournament next Saturday.

Update: I got to the East Midlands tournament just as the draw for the first round was being announced, so missed out on that. But the two games I did play were very close indeed, with margins of 0.5 and 1.5 points - one in my favour, one against. Actually, I did play three games, but my first was against another late-comer who is much stronger than me. With nine stones, I lost by 20-ish points, which is about right for an 11 grade difference between us.

Posted at 21:20 by David Cantrell
keywords: go | london | travel
Permalink | 0 Comments
Thu, 28 Jun 2007

YAPC::Europe 2007 travel plans

I'm going to Vienna by train for YAPC::Europe. If you want to join me you'll need to book in advance, and probably quite some way in advance as some of these trains apparently get fully booked.

arrdepdate
Waterloo1740Fri 24 Aug
Paris Nord2117
Paris Est2245
Munich08590928Sat 25 Aug
Vienna1335

The first two legs of that are second class, cos first wasn't available on Eurostar (being a Friday evening it's one of the commuter Eurostars and gets booked up months and months in advance) and was way too spendy on the sleeper to Munich. Upgrading to first class from Munich to Vienna is cheap, so I have.

Coming back it's first class all the way cos upgrading was nearly free ...

arrdepdate
Vienna0930Fri 31 Aug
Zurich1820
Zurich1402Sun 2 Sep
Paris Est1834
Paris Nord2013
Waterloo2159

Don't even think about trying to book online or over the phone, or at the Eurostar ticket office at Waterloo. Your best bet is to go to the Rail Europe shop on Picadilly, opposite the Royal Academy and next to Fortnums.

Posted at 14:40 by David Cantrell
keywords: geeky | holidays | perl | travel
Permalink | 1 Comment

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