PreshBlog

Oh dear – just had a spam comment that got past Akismet.  That’s the first one it’s missed, out of 842 spam comments it caught, so it’s really not that bad :)

The comment included links (as most spammy comments do) so it was held for moderation anyway.

So far I’m dead happy with Akismet.

Finally, I have my bike back! A few weeks back it started to struggle on the way home on the motorway, running like a pig, and emitting worrying amounts of smoke from the back of the engine (from the crankcase breather it turns out).

To use a technical description, the engine was shagged, so it now has a new engine in (one that’s done 7,000 miles, courtesy of a very helpful eBay seller).

I went out for a lovely ride today, covering about 45 miles and loving every one of them. I took some pictures with my camera phone… here’s one of the nice country lanes I enjoyed riding on:
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Here’s a good reason to never piss off a JCB driver:

A man is walking in the park one sunny afternoon and comes across a little girl who is playing.

“Hello little girl and what is your name?”

“My name is ‘Petal’”.

“What a lovely name little girl. How did you come to get a name like Petal?”

“When I was a baby my mum put me in the garden in my pram and a gust of wind blew a rose petal onto my forehead. This is how I came to be called Petal”.

The man thanked the little girl for her story and walked off.

Not long after the man came across another little girl who was playing in the park.

“Hello little girl and what is your name?”

“My name is ‘Rosebud’”.

“What a lovely name little girl. How did you come to get a name like Rosebud?”

“When I was a baby my mum put me in the garden in my pram and a gust of wind blew a rose bud onto my forehead. This is how I came to be called Rosebud”.

The man thanked the little girl for her story and walked off.

The same man then came across a little boy in a wheel chair.

“Hello little boy and what is your name?”

“Breeze block”…………………………..

Exciting times – me and my fiancee are due to move into our new house tomorrow!  (All going well, touch wood, etc).

Just gotta wait for the call tomorrow to say we can go collect the keys from the estate agent – tomorrow morning is going to be a long morning full of anticipation!

Expect a post once we’re all moved in, with pictures of our new place.

A clip from the beginning of Taxi (a rather good French film by Luc Besson):

This biker makes an amazing save from a highside, being mostly thrown off the bike but managing to get back on! He’ll be glad he was wearing proper leathers and boots.

I’ve been using wifi on my Dell Inspiron 1150 laptop courtesy of a D-Link AirPlus DWL-G650+ Wireless Cardbus Adaptor. It’s been a great little card, but there’s no decent native Linux drivers supporting WPA encryption (or, at least, there weren’t when I first installed it). Now I’ve finally decided to move on, and purchased an Intel 2200BG mini-PCI wireless adaptor.
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OK, I took these pictures with my camera phone when I went out for a ride last weekend with the intention of sticking them on here straight after, but I didn’t get round to it.

Now that we’re starting to get some slightly sunnier weather, I decided it had been way too long since I last went out for a ride just for fun, so I went out. Unfortunately my GPZ500S is still sitting in the garage with its new engine fitted, just waiting for a breather pipe to arrive and be fitted, so in the meantime I had to take out my little 125 instead.
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Two websites I’ve used a couple of times to send parts requests to motorcycle breakers:

• http://www.gissit.com/
• http://www.bike-breakers.info/

Well worth a try if you need to find a certain part and want to see if any breakers have them available, saves ringing round all the breakers yourself.

If you know of any other good ones, feel free to post them in the comments!

(There are similar ones out there for cars, too).