Upcoming engagements- for those who want to find or avoid me:
- Wednesday 29th - Rain, rain and more rain?
The weblog itself:
- 2009-04-28 Helped a friend fight off Getty Images. Sheesh. Imagine getting a very legal-looking (it isn't) demand for £8000 the day before you jet off on holiday.
- 2009-04-27 Watched Ashes to Ashes for the first time. The quattro's engine wasn't running as it "arrived" at the gypo camp - after all the work I did on that damn car, have they broken it?
- 2009-04-25 Fun MB. Not been touched since it was built twenty years ago - factory seals still in place on fuel mixture and timing. Both, by now, seriously out. Another fuel starvation job.
- 2009-04-24 Dufflegoat better than expected. Half expecting a hairy folk group. Not true.
- 2009-04-24 Got pinged by an admirer.
- 2009-04-23 Bebop at the Harlequin. Occasional piano difficulties (!)
- 2009-04-22 Bazooka at the Woodseats WMC. Not at all bad - sole member of audience for second set.
- 2009-04-21 To Cross Gates to undo a bolt. Undid it, waited ten minutes, did it back up again, and came home. What excitement.
- 2009-04-20 Gocompare.com penalised by Google. Won't be the last, either.
- 2009-04-16 John Smith's (honest) 1987 WR through its first MoT for five years at the first attempt. That's FIVE in six weeks.
- 2009-04-15 First "Google Bionic WebEx" - but it would be at 19:00 BST, wouldn't it? Furgles the evening.
- 2009-04-13/14 Nice day at home, mostly washing.
- 2009-04-11 Strut top mount tests inconclusive. Damn - I liked that theory. Not many people have an industrial light engineering workshop at home - still fewer have seven garages.
- 2009-04-07/08/09 Slough again. Still no bombs, friendly or otherwise, so the air-conditioned bright canteens and the man with the double chin survive. At least for now. Kashmiri nan for tea, with a real Kashmiri family.
- 2009-04-05 Beautiful weather for the Winsford meet - pictures here. I like the one of Isabella Chui with a pen. Fantastic little camera.
- 2009-04-04 And the Witton Chimes has lost much of its magic. Michelle was not in evidence, about a third of the punters coming in were already zombied and barely able to stand, and Thunderpig lived up to both names.
- 2009-04-04 Sadly Wei-wei (the incredibly bendy dog) has died at the age of 30 months - cause of death unknown. I shall miss the beast. Replaced by a bitch from the same parents.
- 2009-04-03 Really eerie feeling fixing up an engine and then cleaning up the secret place you make your mark - to find you've signed it already, eleven years and 70,000 miles before.
- 2009-04-01 Google promotion? Now a "Webmaster Help Bionic Poster", a "Top Contributor" and "Google Clubhouse Member". I shall try not to worry.
- 2009-04-01 Hilarious and long-plotted "red PageRank" April Fool stunt worked a treat. The Trip in Nottingham lovely and sunny - have I already seen the summer? Sour Mash very poorly attended, but has a reason been found?
- 2009-03-31 The windy hill wasn't, for about the first time ever. Lovely and sunny. Got plastered, though - footprints everywhere. And comprehensively sniffed at Nottingham station.
- 2009-03-28 DBD called. She's "trying to cook food like she used to eat while growing up" and what vinegar did Daddy put in his ham glaze? Raspberry. Also soft brown sugar and a tiny pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg. Cooked on request - see contact details above. She's now down to one crutch after tripping over a cat's toy at the head of the stairs last week.
- 2009-03-28 The "Leeds MB" lives again. This pearlescent white MB ur-quattro car was in dry store (in the same shed) for around twelve years because its owner was in dry store (in the same cell) for twelve years courtesy of a High Court Judge. Twelve years has not been kind to the tank lining and it proved impossible to get enough "motion lotion" through the fueling system to get the thing on the road and running for more than around eight seconds. A secondhand tank fixed it and Mr MoT man smiled upon it. Now to fix the upper suspension bushes and exhaust manifold. In passing, the only thing that purges the taste of BP Unleaded is Scrumpy Jack, but it hurts just as much if you wash your eye out with it.
- 2009-03-27 The Broadfield for Roger. Much improved and they were good already - a true delight.
- 2009-03-27 Caught by Andrew Chui - looks like next weekend is going to be Chinese over in Manchester. Singapore Fried Rice at After Five? I haven't been to a Saturday gig at the great Witton Chimes in Northwich for over a year. Will the result be F600 going back on the road?
- 2009-03-26 Fun to meet an old friend. A new owner presents his MB ur-quattro for which I must take a little more responsibility than usual - I built it. Anyway, it's fine after a short visit from Daddy.
- 2009-03-25 Took a salad to my desk with a bottle of dressing and a can of beer - shook the wrong one. (I did promise banality, didn't I?) Mental image of Hugh Grant saying "You utter penis" all night - eventually found the clip on Youtube.
- 2009-03-25 The flat downstairs (subject to the eviction of the tenants at 03:00 by a howling mob a couple of months back - I started this blog too late) has been comprehensively photographed by serious dudes. It's now sealed off behind 3/16" mild steel plates.
- 2009-03-24 Is an hour too long to stare at a strut top mount? Not if you think you've found the reason they're all failing. This is a safety issue that's been a bother for some time - is it over-tightening?
- 2009-03-21 Second engine with crumbled pistons in eleven years - four weeks after the first one. What is it with these coincidences? Fantastic trip home in the double wheelchair space on a refurbished Cross Country HST - laptop on mobile broadband and room to waltz.
My previously held position - well known to my fellow Google Bionic Posters - that blogs are a pestilence is unchanged. I find nothing more annoying than searching for a good camera shop in Sheffield and finding some nonentity's blog complaining about how hard it is to find a good camera shop in Sheffield. Keyword pollution. So this blog carries robots noindex tags and all the other secret squirrel paraphenalia that keeps search engines at a reasonable distance.
It's intended for those of you (and I'm amazed at how many there were) who enquired after my health over the New Year via phone, text and email. Around twenty. Honest - I was just busy. But I'm going to try and keep a log (necessarily of trivia) here to save you the trouble in the future. As above, this is no bid for glory - it's not Youtube or Facebook, the search engines are excluded - the only way here is by a link from the biography page. So if you're reading this, it's entirely your own fault and and don't blame me if it's banal in the extreme - it's only intended as a sign of life.
Dates are ISO 8601. Get used to it.
Anyway, email is phil@isham-research.co.uk and the poserphone is 07833 654800.