You never really forget

Every once in a while I get the urge to try my hand at a racing game, and there's not been one that I've found which beats the old Colin McRae Rally 2.0.  The later versions just didn't do it for me, and the DiRT demo just completely failed to load, so I never took that one any further.

What's really interesting is the 'upgrade' path within the game.  There are several four-wheel drive cars available to start with, and you open new options once you win championships at whatever level.  However, I usually stop trying after getting the novice rally championship - because that's what unlocks the Ford Escort Mk 1.

Rear wheel drive excellence - my first car was an Escort (I can still remember the registration number!), and it slowly metamorphosed into an uncomfortable road rally vehicle.  I think it was the Granada rear springs that did it in the end - CD8's, if I recall correctly.  Made it corner as though on rails, even if the rear end didn't always follow exactly in the tracks of the front - I always knew exactly where it was and what it was doing.

And it looks as though I haven't lost the knack - I'm slowly demolishing my own four-wheel drive lap records and section times in Rally 2.0 with the relatively underpowered Escort.  Get it set up right and it's only the ultra-fast, straight sections where it doesn't dominate.

Wish they made an car like the old Escort nowadays...

They're all out to get me

It's clearly a conspiracy.  Summer's here, or at least what passes for summer in Scotland - the occasional sunny minute between the rainstorms.  My wife is talking about finishing work, with the result that I won't have to drive her in every day.  I've been looking in the garage, wondering what to do about clearing things up.  Petrol price rises show no sign of slowing down.  And my colleague at work has given up the car for the time being for a more convenient mode of transport.

I'm going to have to get back on two wheels.  Maybe not the 1 litre bike that's currently languishing in the back of the garage, maybe look for a 250 or 400 cc supermoto or similar (I rate manoeuvrability way beyond top speed, especially with all the cash-generators, sorry, speed cameras around).  There used to be some superb models in this range, but now it seems to go from 125's straight to the 750/1 litre sports-tourers without much inbetween.  I'm not sure I want something of the weight of the KLV/V-Strom type, but the old Yamaha DT400 would have been ideal.

Perhaps not this year, the finances are not that flexible.  But a winter project of fixing up the KLV to make it saleable again, followed by a tour around the local dealers for a used, mid-range bike , may be on the cards.

KB940510

Quote from Dave T on the Vistaheads forum:

"So can I assume that if I am not running pirate software I don't need this, and if I am running pirate software I don't want this?"

Absolutely typically paranoid update from MS, of no value to anyone - yet they term it 'important'.  Must be another difference in the English language as spoken by our trans-Atlantic cousins.

How not to do it

I've mentioned O2 support here before, with mixed feelings. It seems that it's a case of 'the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak' generally, and my recent experiences support this.

Some months ago, I swapped my mobile phone (a dysfunctional XDA Exec) for a nice new Orbit2. This had all the functionality I might want, after I paid for extra Internet access, right down to reading email etc via a VPN link back in to not only my own work servers, but also connecting to our clients' systems.

After a couple of weeks, it stopped working. Knowing that I'd hacked things unmercifully, I didn't worry too much about this for a while. Then, this week, we've had need to prove the connections once more, so I set about fixing the phone links. Everything looks perfect, we know the server end works, but the phone would not connect. Having seen problems with a phone purchased from Three, who were able to confirm that they didn't support VPN (and who got the phone and contract back in very short order), I decided to check with O2 to see if they had any ideas. Their reply astonished me:

"You won't be able to set up a VPN link from your O2 Xda. to your company network. This is because this facility is available to our business customers. As you're our (sic) offline customer, you won't be able to create a VPN link."

Hold on - this used to work, it still does work for one colleague with an O2 (non-business) phone, and it was clearly specified when I ordered the phone. Now I'm happy to work with O2 to resolve this, but what gets my ire is their insistence on sending boilerplate replies to my emails, just reiterating the above. So far, I've been told twice that the subject will be passed on to specialist advisors, but I still get the same emails. Do these people have any idea of customer service? Do they realise that no-way will I be returning to an O2 contract if there is not even an attempt to manage this problem?

It's clearly not a technical issue, more a bureaucratic one. This suggests at least one solution (no, not firing all the support desk people - they do a hard enough job), but I'm going to let O2 find it. Or not, as the case may be, in which case they go down another step and lose even more future custom.

Don't go there...

As the old joke goes, if it hurts, you shouldn't do it.

So why did I keep going back to the WRC home page?  Especially when the browser just crashed every time?

Because I'd just loaded Firefox 3, the real thing, after all the betas and all the hype, and wanted to see how it worked out.  And every time I tried the link back to the home page of www.wrc.com,  the entire application just disappeared from the screen (taking all and any other tabs I might have opened en route), asking me if I wanted to send a report to the Firefox team.  If this sort of thing is happening to even a small percentage of the downloads (3 million or so in the first four hours, according to Wikipedia, although I can't find confirmation of this figure on the spreadfirefox site itself), then they are going to be one very busy bunch of developers.

The WRC site looked like a good test - not entirely straightforward, lots of internal links, and video.  It plays like a dream on IE, but Firefox won't recognise or play half the videos, and keeps on crashing.  I had been having a similar problem with IE, but eventually tracked it down to injudicious use of the pre-fetch function in IEPro, something I've now given up.  However, I can't find a similar reason in Firefox, and I'm reluctant to switch back to the pretender unless something concrete turns up.  IE has been growing on me recently - I'm no fan of a monoculture from a security point of view, but the integration and just pure and simple ease of use and dependability are too good to pass up just on a point of principle.

Anyone want to buy a slightly tatty, one owner only, copy of Firefox 3?