Category Archives: Non-geeky

A general category for all posts except technical/geeky stuff, for those who don’t care for that kind of content. (For instance, the majority of my Facebook friends.)

My new house!

OK, I’ve been meaning to post up a few pics of my new house for ages, but finally got round to it. So, here they are!

This is the front (ours is the one on the right, it’s split down the middle (I wish it was the whole building :)

Our new house - the outside

Inside, looking at the front door:

Inside our new house, looking to the front door

The French doors out into the garden:

French doors out into the garden

Looking across the garden:

Looking across our garden

The bathroom:

The bathroom

The bedroom (it’s slightly bigger than it looks in this picture, there’s a little alcove that goes round the corner on the right too):

The bedroom

The (admittedly quite small) kitchen:

The kitchen

In time, I think we’ll re-fit the kitchen, making better use of the space – the current kitchen is pretty badly planned, and doesn’t make good use of space at all.

And finally, this is the view looking out of our front door:

View from our front door

All in all I’m chuffed with it – it might not be a huge mansion, but it’s a good start! Above all, it has a reasonably sized garden, so we can throw BBQ’s whenever we actually have reasonable weather!

Got my bike back!

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:
Continue reading Got my bike back!

Moving house tomorrow!

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.

First decent leisure ride of the year

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.
Continue reading First decent leisure ride of the year

Motorcycle breakers part search websites

Two websites I’ve used a couple of times to send parts requests to motorcycle breakers:

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).

Review: Ghost Rider

I watched Ghost Rider tonight, and I have to say I’m actually quite impressed.

I didn’t know whether it would be any good, and I have to admit it was somewhat far-fetched in places (but then, it’s a fantasy storyline, based on a Marvel comic, so I guess that’s allowed!), but overall it was very good.

Nicolas Cage put in a rather good performance as the Ghost Rider, alongside the rather aesthetically pleasing Eva Mendes. Continue reading Review: Ghost Rider

Now *that’s* a scary blowout

A biker on Visordown had a front-wheel blowout on his Aprilia Tuono.  Now a blowout on a motorcycle is always a scary occurence, and something that all bikers hope they’ll never have to deal with, but this one was even more scary – it wasn’t the tyre that let go, it was the wheel itself!

“Docca” made it to the side of the road safely despite the damaged wheel causing the bike to shake violently, almost to the point of a tank-slapper – fair play that man, good riding!
Continue reading Now *that’s* a scary blowout

Props to Herts County Council

I’m quite impressed with Herts Council. There’s a well-used roundabout near me that needs resurfacing, the road surface has deteriorated a lot, and is now quite dodgy for motorcycles – you have to pick your way around the holes. If you go off your line and clip one of the holes, some of them would be enough to cause loss of control, or at least a scare.

I reported it to the council using their online reporting facility on 21/02/2006, and noticed one morning this week that a sign has been put up advising of roadworks starting soon.

Continue reading Props to Herts County Council