UPCOMING: Mickey & MINI 4
August 18, 2008:
John Cooper Works garage
From the same (forgotten!) source as my Fake Invaders CDROM, some photos of John Cooper Works garage taken at the end of July 2006, right when the place was closing down - memories for some (including me) and sorry-I-didn’t-make-it for others …
Wonder where these pictures are now?!
A sad view:
(at least I still have my JCW bear!)
August 14, 2008:
Fake Invaders
Another from my collection, a CDROM this time, from England:
Remember Counterfeit MINIs (and good to see the website is still up)? In England MINI did a similar campaign, but instead of disguising cars to look like MINIs, they went for trucks, and even sheds!
The CDROM contains a version of Space Invaders, vaguely themed on the UK counterfeits … I’ll assume it’s the same as the “giant size” game that was playable at the UK motor show in 2006:
(picture from TheAverageGamer)
If you’re on Windows, and don’t mind downloading an EXE file, click here and play (it seems to be a packaged ShockWave game, and it plays too fast for me to crack the first level!)
If you prefer not to run the program, Paul Mullett put up a video on MINI2, from his visit to the 2006 UK motorshow, that shows the game being played.
August 7, 2008:
Why did the duck cross the road?
Tonight heading home, traffic was at a standstill on Essex causeway, while ducks crossed from the river to Woodmans parking lot.
I grabbed for my camera, but ducks walk fast! Most of the ducks had crossed, but one wasn’t sure if it was safe:
Here’s the rest of the ducks disappearing behind Woodmans:
After a short wait (and a few cars passing), the final duck decided to cross - by now I was ready:
(click for bigger animated version)
So why did the duck cross the road? … To join his friends, of course 
August 4, 2008:
MTTS’08 badges
Back in 2006, I got a really nice MINI Takes The States badge / fridge magnet from Todds MotoringBadges website; although I’m much less thrilled by this years event, I still wanted to adorn my fridge, but it seems MotoringBadges is quiet now …
Instead I saw that CooperFlags had produced a nice looking magnetic badge, so I ordered a couple, although a little wary from my original experience with that company, that was a long time ago and I think the company has changed hands since then.
Still, after waiting a couple weeks with nothing delivered, I wondered, but happily the badges arrived today and are well worth the wait
(the new Cooperflags ones are bottom right!)
July 30, 2008:
MobileMe for the rest of us
Apple have spent the last couple of weeks trying to turn themselves into Microsoft, rolling out their new MobileMe service … in theory, it’s a great idea, providing a way to automatically and instantly synchronize your iPhone to your home computer. In practice, it’s not so great - not only do many of it’s features not yet work as originally advertised, some users messages are lost, but even without the hiccups it will only work if you “jump in the deep end” with them, changing your email address and everything to fit their scheme.
My friend Robert has been cursing them regularly - and publicly now over at TwistyBitz:
Personally, I don’t want to pay $99/year to have yet another email address; I’m perfectly happy with Gmail and all the other free features they offer - I already have my Gmail sync’ed with my iPhone (OK, not in real time, but close). And now - thanks for the heads up, Josh - I’m able to have my Google Calendar sync’ed in real time with my iPhone!
If you have not heard of this yet, head over to NuevaSync and check out their service … like MobileMe it’s suffering a little from the sudden increase in demand from iPhone users, but unlike Apple it won’t break anything if it doesn’t work, and anyway tonight it’s working well
Basically, if you have a Google Calendar, you set up an account on NuevaSync, link it to the Google Calendar, then set up your iPhone to access NuevaSync as an Exchange service. After that you enable Calendar sync’ing, and your Google Calendar magically appears on your iPhone (and any changes you make to it, get sync’ed back the other way!)
One warning … Apple will wipe any calendar data in your iPhone when you start this process, so make sure your Google Calendar is up to date before you begin.
