tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar has given you the call

Off to the land of the sheesha today. Or the West London variant in any case.

I've worked in various countries around the middle east, where the caterpillar's favourite smoking device seems to be referred to as a sheesha rather than a hookah. Adding it as a suffix to an order for coffee seems to bring the full paraphernalia.

In London it's fairly commonplace to see them around Edgware Road, mainly in those cafes that can have a sort of sheltered outdoor section, which is a kind of weather adaptation.

The system reminds me of a sort of reverse barbecue, with the coal on the outside and the smoke going downwards into the water. I was once told that a single session with one of those pipes was the equivalent of inhaling the smoke from 100 cigarettes.

We were inside the restaurant to enjoy Fattoush and maybe some Sambousek Jebneh and even a Kafta Khosh-khash whilst chatting in the early evening.

I did think briefly about that pine nut and rose water rice pudding too, but it will need to wait for another day.

waiting for the van

Domestic chores today waiting in for the replacement washing machine. It arrived with two separate vans of fitters.

Then the phone rang to say my car is finally fixed.

So a convoluted journey through today's snow to drop off the temporary white car, and then to wait around to get a lift to the garage where my own car has been resting for the last month.

"Any paperwork?" I asked.

"No just the key; all the charges go to the other company." That's the company who originally replaced the windscreen. They've run up quite a tab with the windscreen (on insurance), the making good, which I think was quite expensive, plus the hire car fees. I waited around idly watching the snow whilst they retrieved my car from the lot. It was clean and sparkly like new again.

Then the strange feeling driving my own automatic again after a month of varied manual gear vehicles. How do I activate the wipers? Oh yes, the lights do come on automatically. All those windscreen sensors must be working.

As a side-line whilst waiting in the morning I'd figured out a small adjustment needed on the red car. It was a missing a software driver. No, not a person to drive it - a piece of software.

The little button on the steering wheel really does mean the car has an embedded Windows operating system for some of its functions. And, like a printer, there was a missing software driver. It's one of those things where a dealer would just say "it doesn't work with this model." I loaded the software and the missing function started up. When did it get so complex?

It shows what a few minutes of imposed down time can do. More productively, it's given me a chance to plan a new mini-project. But more of that later.

cross town traffic, so hard to get through to you

The yellow lines and parking bays were switched off and most of the shops were closed for the long weekend.

We were on our way to a Spanish pirate restaurant for a late lunch tapas before heading south across the river for a family occasion.

El Pirata de Tapas has that casual London thing with close tables and a buzz. We enjoyed the selection and the time whizzed by. Then to the south. One of those situations where a few wrong road choices could add a penalty half hour to the journey.

We did okay though, not taxi driver precision, but still a good route south, including through some of those areas which I'd place slightly off of my own beaten track.

As always, there's little cross town routes that work better with instinct over knowledge.

car software stacks

I'll move away from talking about cars soon, but there's a few extra things I've noticed recently because of the sudden and unexpected range of vehicles that I've been driving.

It's the increasing complexity of the software required to make them work. A case in point is that a couple of the cars I've been using have that little extra 'Windows' button on the steering wheel. It helps with phones and media control.

It mainly works, but there are also some incompatibilities.

A case in point has been the upgrade required for one of the systems so that it could recognise the various phones being used.

It's a Microsoft devised solution for end users (drivers) and involves downloading a software system description from within the car onto a USB stick plugged into the car. Then plugging the USB into an internet attached computer.

The USB stick's content is then used by a web site to determine which files to download. After that completes, take the USB stick back to the car, plug it in, switch on the car ignition without starting the engine and wait for the car to update.

An 'updating' message displays on the dashboard. It is supposed to take about 10 minutes. The radio switched on and off a couple of times and then the update finished.

It worked but was hardly intuitive.

As shown in the simplified diagram, there's quite a lot of subsystems to make it all work, and even then, some of the parts like navigation are shown 'outside' of the solution.

I got the phones working, but there were a couple of loose ends, so I had a quick peek at the full manual. I know, manuals are usually a last resort. On this occasion I was also struck by how old some of the documentation is, for items that are in 2013 edition cars. I suppose it's the lag between invention and distribution.

It's making me even more impressed by space travel.

the best apps to download to the car's dashboard?

I've returned the little red and black American car now and we have back the fully functioning Italian one. I'm still waiting for my own car to be fixed.

When I returned the Ypsilon, the chap in the dealership asked me what I thought of it. I politely answered that it had an interesting personality.

I could kind of tell that he wasn't that keen on it himself.

I mentioned that the speedometer was on the wrong side. He explained that more smaller cars were being designed with the console in the middle instead of on the driver side. I could understand this if they were really trying to drive down manufacturing costs - no need to change that part of a Euro car for the UK market.

I was less sure about the safety aspect although I assume that this quirky design has passed the necessary tests. I suppose it was also handy for my passenger to be able to easily keep an eye on my driving speed.

Apparently the current generation of cars are adding even more telemetry systems beyond sat-nav and active safety. This little one had a spot to add a further plug-in sat-nav, which amusingly also featured an additional speedometer. It was connected to the inside of the driver's mirror mount.

Naturally it also had speech recognition for hands free operation.

But the next set of options appear to be to do with social interaction and that somehow feels wrong to me. There's already a facebook option on some cars and now there's the ability to add new apps to the display console.

I still see people driving whilst holding cell-phones most days. It will seem even crazier if they could be on facebook or downloading apps.

centre weighted dashboard analytics

Okay, so I've checked out the trend for putting the dials in the middle on cars. It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, but it is allowed so long as the dial is within direct field of view of the driver (UN/ECE R39 /2439)

Citroen have gone central and even programmed a set of computer readouts which display the speed only on the passenger side in a UK car.

I see they have reverted to including some normal dials on more recent models.

I can't understand why the Saturn Ion does it, because I thought that car was only available in US markets, where the steering wheel is always on the wrong side in any case? And they've slanted the dials towards the left hand driver.

Toyota seem to have had doubts on their Scion where they have added an offset pod still outside of the normal area. Like they forgot and had to tap it on afterwards.

Another more deserving example is the Toyota Yaris, where the dial has been in the middle of what is actually quite a small car, so I guess it's like sharing it with the passenger anyway.

Although on the new one they seem to have changed back to a set of dials by the steering wheel.

So I'm not still sure about this Chrysler trend.

ogooglebar may become a good pub quiz question

I see there's a bloggbävning* developing now that Google has taken issue with the Swedish adding 'ungoogleable' to Swedish words and is threatening some kind of trade mark infraction.

I can't help thinking it's drifting across the informal mantra of Google which runs along the lines of "Don't be evil"

I get it that Google may attain more press coverage and sliddersladder from simply making a fuss about the trade mark question, but it seems to be somewhat kuf, as the Swedes might say.

Of course, ungoogleable has been used for a long time in the UK with reference to the 'ungoogleable' round in pub quizzes, designed to stop the nomofobs from winning. And the people who bring their paddas. Some things should remain in the köttrymd.

Along the lines of these easy examples:

72 p in a b?
DSOTM by PF?
What have these three items got in common? brush, wrap and fur
Which is the odd one out? roundabout, helter-skelter, revolution, taxman

And for a bonus, What's the one word answer to the hidden missing question in the last one above?

You get the idea.

Even if Google doesn't.

* Bloggbävning = blogquake
* Nomofob = (Swed-lish for no mobile phone phobic)
* Padda = generic name for iTablets and other eTrinkets.
* Köttrymd = non digital world. Literally meat space(!)
* sliddersladder = gossip
* kuf = oddball

two loan cars and a broken washing machine makes three

"I wonder what the third thing will be?" said the washing machine repair man.

"Don't say that" I replied.

He'd looked at the machine for about ten seconds, wobbled the drum and said it was dead. It was apparently repairable, but would need new bearings, a new drum, a gasket and some other parts.

"Around how much?" I asked, secretly knowing it would probably be nearly as much as a new machine.

And it was.

At least as much as some of the new machines. This machine was eight years old and it hadn't ever gone wrong before. In the scheme of things, it's probably had a pretty good innings.

"It doesn't make a lot of difference nowadays" he explained, "whether you go for a cheap machine or a 1200 quid super machine. They are both about as likely to go wrong."

I didn't think more about the Third Thing, although by Monday it had happened.

My car is still off the road awaiting complicated parts. I still have the white loan vehicle. The blue car has been sold and the brand new red car has replaced it.

Except the brand new red car has a fault.

It doesn't go along the road very well. It's not my car, but I drove it on Monday evening to check. Sure enough, an ominous yellow light has come on. Sometimes it flashes. I had the task to phone to get the car back to the dealer.

So the red Italian car has been replaced with the temporary red and black American car. It's another type car I've never seen before. The logo on the side is squiggle. I think its called an ypsilon. Presumably the Y stops it being confused with something After Ford.

It's a curious vehicle. I'm confused that it has American branding, but it somehow seems almost too small to be Chrysler and maybe even too quirky. Kind of Euro-styling with an American grill that looks even bigger in real life than in the picture. A most un-American lack of air-con. It's engine is just two cylinders. It has secret rear doors. And unbelievably, the speedo is on the passenger side. It somehow reminds me of a stretched Ford Ka designed after too much coffee.

So two loan cars and a broken washing machine. Yes. That's the three.

saving for a snowy day

A few things I might blog about...Almost a Thursday Thirteen, on a Saturday.

• Pantone 185 vs Pantone 15-1157TPX: Short version, its a good season for we lovers of orange.
• How much beer I'd need to drink to save £1. And how long it would take.
• Cyprus and MOKAS - its anti money laundering unit, and Magnitsky.
• On using 'This is my jam.'
• Why my temporary Spanish car lets snow in: when I wind down the windows to clear the snow, it falls inwards instead of onto the ground
• тройка being used to ironically describe the EU, IMF, ECB.

• That groundhog legal action (I know that the picture is of meerkats)
• Those augmented reality ad clicky things where you beam the phone at the picture or the product

• Early april fools, or not? e.g the Fiat expresso machine in the car
• Yet another City coffee bar where I randomly met a friend. That's three co-incidences in less than two weeks.
• The bearing gods have decided to terminate our washing machine: time to check spin speeds on new ones, although I suspect they are the same components on most models with a different link cut on the circuit board.
• The good bank and bad bank model - how much do we all pay?
• See, it couldn't be a Thursday Thirteen: there were only twelve. Without this one, that is.
  

As for whether I blog about any of the listed items?

Maybe.

It depends how long it snows.

spring awakening and then a-slumber

Wednesday saw a technological sign of spring, as the solar powered garden lights came on in the evening.

Today, they are covered in snow.

In the distance a white roof edge blends with snow-filled sky. I wonder whether the repair-man in van will brave the conditions to visit today.

The washing is beginning to pile up.

somewhere there's a gamblin' man with a ticket in the rain

making the powerboat picture scroll out of view

In the interests of anyone else reading this blog - and from yesterday's feedback - I thought I'd better write a slightly longer post today.

The main reason is so that yesterday's post scrolls out of view. It's all very well seeing the animated powerboat in yesterday's entry swing around for a few seconds, but it does seem to go on for an awfully long time.

So my objective is to write enough to be sure that Sunday's post has scrolled out of view.

So let's start with an update on my car. It's still broken.

I still have the white replacement car whilst they are waiting for something to be shipped from Stuttgart. Actually, I ordered some replacement ink toner last Thursday, from Hohenbrunn, Germany. That's near to Munich. It arrived on Friday via Deutsche Post, so I don't think it's the logistics of getting the parts to England.

My car is also only two years old, so I'm ruling out that the parts are hard to come by. The chap in the dealership said they don't get much call for whatever it was, hence the lengthiness of the ordering process. They've also regaled me with a story about someone's Very Posh Car that took 12 weeks to get the part. I don't want to be in that sort of competition, thank you very much.

I'm still thinking about the revenue model for all these car manufacturers as they add ever more complicated parts to the vehicles. Not being able to fix a windscreen is a case in point.

Meanwhile, in other automotive related news, we have had the little blue French car MOT-tested and it's now at the point where it's ready to sell. The shiny stylish red Italian replacement arrived on Saturday although I doubt if I'll ever get a chance to drive it. Maybe I can hum the theme tune from the Graduate when I'm a passenger in it.

Of course, the old car was a convertible with one of those fancy folding metal roofs. The new one has reverted to a panoramic sun roof, which makes it light inside without the full force of the elements. Strangely enough, now I'm cycling more, I feel I get enough of the 'open-top' experience on two wheels.

Actually, I think I got almost too much of it yesterday afternoon, until the sun eventually returned. I could gently steam on the last part of my inward trip.

Which will bring me to my recent cycling mileage. I've just clicked over 1,600 miles for 2013, which was my original full year target for 2012. Admittedly I exceeded the 2012 target significantly, but it's still interesting to look at the difference in my own expectations a year along.

Now, I've just been typing for ten minutes. If I add a couple of pictures to this, then the powerboat image should have scrolled out of view.

Just
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V