Stutopia

A little mod, with a big bang. LEDs for the dome. The kit. Quick Test. Done. They're not quite as blue as they appear in the photo and the light is a bit more diffuse than these would suggest. Very pleased.

Quick trip to Grinspeed today to have the clicky axles sorted and also pop the Berks on. Thanks to Tarmac for those I quite like the new sound too. Grinspeed Berks - might be a pain to keep shiny As usual top service from Stevie at Grinspeed, skilled tech and always got a good story for me. MOT is up next month so need to make a little cash pool, just in case. If that goes well then some mod money should be available

Little vid of the trip, mainly for my records but I thought I'd share. Not sure how you embed, but here's the link anyway.

I think the big black pot is runner up. Sorry

Cheers! You won't regret it Gangzoom, even the "boring" motorway bits between the incredible mountain passes are beautiful a lot of the time. I think I only caught a glimpse of one cop car in two days and 1000km Most of Switzerland away from the cities is empty How weird is it shifting right handed BTW? I'd only driven LHD autos before, took some un-learning, kept slamming my fist into the door! But the weirdest thing was getting back in the Zed after. Everything was so much heavier and immediate and louder, in just a few days I'd got very used to simply stomping on the throttle! Wasn't sure I preferred the Zed... for the first 3 minutes around town

As well as the geekfest at CERN last weekend, I spent the few days before checking out Switzerland. I'd found the passes below when I was planning a pan-europe jolly, but time wouldn't allow that, so I crammed these into my two and bit days driving round the Alps. http://www.ultimated...p?route_ID=9011 http://www.ultimated...p?route_ID=4011 http://www.ultimated...p?route_ID=9007 http://www.ultimated...p?route_ID=4001 I'd had big ideas about renting something a bit spesh for a short time, but budgetary constraints and idiotic rules about being banned from France sank my dream of taking a 911 round. So I followed my first rule of the road trip. Always rent a convertible, in this case a cheap one. I rocked up in Geneva Airport ready to be surprised with either a Volvo C70, Lancia Flavia or an Audi A3. Not driven any of these so didn't really have a preference, the valet chucked me the keys to the Audi in the end. It was only a tiddler, but nicely appointed throughout if you like black plastic with chrome bits, which I don't mind. Super quick roof, which operates at low speed - perfect for unexpected rain bursts - and decent boot for a small car with a rag top. Over the few days I found the Audi to be a lot gutless, the torque of the Zed was long gone, but my first car was a 1.2 Clio so an underpowered FF was something I felt at home in. The little turbo in there is quite cute, and if you keep your foot in there's a bit of poke. In terms of alpine driving, if you want to pass something on an incline, drop it three gears and stick your foot in and it does the job. The strangest thing about it was how quiet it was, even on the limiter you could barely hear the engine, my Zed idles louder! All in all she did well, and took quite a bit of stick, brakes didn't fade too much and she never missed a beat in a thousand klicks - I only had to fill her up once If I was the kind of person who wanted a little city car, with a drop top and a bit of fun I think the 2.0L version of this might be just the ticket. Strangely being in an Audi, I didn't once feel the need to drive 2 inches from the car in front. The Swiss aren't big speeders, I rarely saw anyone over the limit, but they do love to sit off your back and also pull in tight across you when they pass. God only knows why, as the roads are deserted. The best roads there are ones that are still challenging within the speed limit, which is great for keeping out the way of the local PD. The roads themselves are sensational, so empty, so dramatic and by and large well surfaced. This would be perfect for a Classic Car Rally, but a little unforgiving in the drop offs if you get a bit too spirited. Some of the edges off the road were quite serious but being a 3 times bike veteran of the Death Road outside La Paz, it was a piece of cake. Anyway, few pics of it all and I might even have a little video too. Hope you enjoy and please think very seriously about doing a trip like this in Switzerland, not the chepaest place to go but stunning, great driving, friendly people and bags of fun! PS - Do we have a "great driving roads" section? If not, I think it would be a good idea... Here she is, relatively clean on Day 1 - wish I'd taken an emergency MF and some QD though. When's the last time you saw one of these? Lake Leman - one of my favourite snaps of the big lake by Geneva up to Lausane. Atop one of the many passes. Text book waterfall. One of the little valleys. Angry clouds eating mountains. Stop for a bio-break, found this. I love driving down into these places. The scenery is top notch. Fun road. Never seen a glacier before. Or a gents with a mountain in, with a sign saying please don't **** on the mountain. More fun road. Couple of classics. The view for breakfast. I know it's childish, but I'm like that at times. The world's biggest Baybel - mini just doesn't do it for me anymore. Hopefully a vid to follow but it's taking an age to edit!

This is very true, but that reality of it is extremely far from the perception of it. As discusses previously the actual sums lost to fraud and the likes are tiny in comparison to UK budget at large. If news stories were only allowed to occupy column inches and tv exposure directly in proportion to their impact on the UK as a whole, we'd find ourselves presented with a very different news agenda.

Simply because to withdraw foreign aid would look to the world like we won't help people who really need help. We'd much rather paint people in the UK, who need just as much help as anyone who we send foreign aid to, as dodging, lazy, faking, idle, stupid and worthless. Then it seems like we're on a righteous crusade, not simply f***ing over vulnerable people, when Mondeo Man reads about it in the tabloid media. By "we" I mean uk government of any party political leaning.

I was on board with this post until the Daily Mail bit. I wouldn't buy it if it had a headline of, "Free inside today; five vouchers for a week with Monica Bellucci in Sacramento, lube included." And I really liked Sacramento.

They'd simply dream up a new reason to harvest the same taxes. In the same way smokers pay for their treatment in the NHS by paying outrageous tax on a packet of fags. They justify it by saying it's paying to treat you as you're extra high risk, blah blah, but the revenues generated pay for treating smokers many times over and lots of non-smokers too. The green label is just the most palatable, trendy excuse to gather revenue. Something else will come along that they can justify it with. Window tax, candle tax, both non-modern examples of made up taxes for taxes sake. It'll be the same if global warming turns out to be a massive hoax. Anyway why would scientists make it up? To simply furnish governments with revenue tools, or is it the classic, to justify their own grants? It's fundamentally opposed to the mindset of the vast majority of scientists. They don't get a slice of the green pound in their pockets in anywhere near the same way as the pro carbon lobby, which is driven entirely by shareholder profit maximisation and commercial pressures.

Give how many cars he's driven I think he must be a Gone In 60 Seconds style professional car booster! He's a threat to us all. Strong views with sound reasoning often upsets people (talking generally here not about posters here), the kind who switch to name calling when they've been disproven. They exist almost EVERYWHERE.

The point above about "green" being an industry we can't afford to upset, is frankly insane, when you compare it against the industries dependent on fossil fuel consumption or carbon production or carbon absorption reduction. Which are far wider ranging than the impact green has on consumers. Aside from power and it's main consumption being industry not consumers, or aviation, you could stretch it is far as deforestation to create space for soya bean crops in Brasil. Green industry is so much smaller than carbon industry it is crazy to even draw such a conclusion.

If you get a chance, jump on it. Hugely interesting even for an amateur like me. Also Switzerland has the best virtually empty roads!

If I had 50k burning a hole I'd take three years off work and see some more of the world!

PM your address and stick a tenner in the forum donate and it's yours.

We don't always agree Ekona but I'm with you one hundred percent on that. I am sick to death of people (unemployed or otherwise) moaning about the cost of having kids. Can't afford em, don't have em! If only there was a system where you could have a Zed by accident and then get state funding to subsidise the cost. I have to put my hands up and say I am guilty of taking the free car tax on offer for 1 car per disabled person. And I stick it on my Zed. Now that's the kind of system I rate. Wasting it on kids is beyond me

you wana sell it lol? Did you not get your order in or has it just not arrived yet?

Few more from the geek fest. If in doubt, cable tie. An actual black hole. Errrr, is it meant to bed red light on whilst were in here? Goodies from NASA. Something gold. Scientists like cars too. The whole place runs off one mac mini since they got rid of the 20,000 PCs First ever walkman prototype tape. Old skool tech. More apple goodies. One of the many corridors in the data centre, with links to others around the globe. Just because you understand physics doesn't mean you can brew up.

Just a few snaps from CERN, I'll post some up of the road trip round Switzerland when I get through them. CERN was super geeky but also really cool, the stuff on show was incredible and the sheer coordination to make it all happen every day is astonishing when you look at how many bits and pieces make the whole thing tick over. It was all about getting one of these. Not many get to go underground, even fewer get to go in the tunnel due to the radiation normally present. What's there. Going underground - 100m down The tunnel. More explanation. No idea, cool hardware though. More science. Safety procedures. More beam stuff. Loads of robots. Nothing is wasted. Prototype Zed radiator. Metals you can see through. Tooling around

Vouchers would just end up being sold on a black market to unscrupulous types for less than their face value so people could have cash instead. Then you're back with people having less money and having to go extra curricular for their spending. It's so tough to balance carrot and stick, I truly believe the majority of people want to earn a living, doing something they like, or if need be, something they don't, to make ends meet. I think the size of this problem is massively over stated by politicians looking to be populist, not people who want to try and increase social mobility. It's relatively insignificant sums when compared to the millions we pi**ed away in Afghanistan or Iraq or Libya or we will on replacing Trident.

We don't always agree Ekona but I'm with you one hundred percent on that. I am sick to death of people (unemployed or otherwise) moaning about the cost of having kids. Can't afford em, don't have em! If only there was a system where you could have a Zed by accident and then get state funding to subsidise the cost.

I got double boxed again! Depending on how busy I am I may write another email to let them know.

Non-compliance = benefits suspended = where do I get money from without working as I'm totally unemployable? = a bit of light robbing and low level crime = spell in court then prison for free and an ankle tag to monitor = actual cost to taxpayer > than paying the benefit in the first place There has been and always will be an unemployable percent of society who refuse to engage, keeping them out of everyone's way on the bare minimum of cost is as good as you can hope for. Dole is cheaper to us all than prison and associated costs of going in and coming out. The only way to really save on the terminally unemployable is summary execution outside jobcentres, which I imagine the Tories will wheel out as a policy just before the next election so they can shift another few pence off the top rate of tax.

The frustrating thing with anything you read or see around global warming and climate change is you simply can't peruse it in the press/news and expect a balanced viewpoint. For whatever reasons, there's the Guardian type on one side trying to push a green agenda then the Mail/Murdoch Group trying to push the other side, most of the stuff you do read cites only the research which supports the specific journo's angle. Most of the press couldn't give a @*!# about being right or wrong, just sensational. Then you throw in your average bellend saying, "well it snowed more last year in my postcode area than ever before, so that proves the world isn't warming all over, given a multi-thousand year timescale". That leaves you with having to go through peer reviewed material yourself and most of that will be impenetrable. It's an extremely tricky one to weigh up, but science doesn't need to be right, it just needs to keep posing, testing and refining theories. There are no absolutes. Sadly the people who have the loudest views on it in either the media or press, seem to be only interested in absolutes. The use of the word theory doesn't mean something is not correct, it's just the approach. Equally just because Newton had Laws of Thermodynamics, does mean they can't be disproven tomorrow.

Blade silver in tidy condition, I waved but I was in a Black Audi not The Shark. Zed looked good on the cosmopolitan streets of Switzerland. Any of our international brothers?