shibbyonline

The Day I Met James Toseland

James Toseland is the current World Super Bike Champion, and now the best British bet at winning the MotoGP. Think of him as the motorbike version of Lewis Hamilton.

Now I will level and say I have not always been up to date with my knowledge of motorcycling, so put me up against a die hard fan of Mr. Toseland and honestly could not answer questions about his beginning’s in trial bike riding. Or how he got signed into the 125cc class and worked his way up to his current Tech3 Yamaha MotoGP deal.
But I do follow the sport and I know a good rider when I see one, you can also tell that James has a stand up personality. So when I heard that he was going to be visiting Bowers Motorcycles in Bury St. Edmunds I decided to go along and have a nose.
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No Longer Lost

How long has this show been running?
I remember I first started watching series 2 a few years ago. In fact the first episode I saw was the beginning of series 2, with Desmond going about his life in the hatch.
At the time I had Sky television and so could watch the show, yet I felt lost confused as there were references to the first series I did not get, there were also too many questions needing answers and I lost interest.
Then when we moved we had to scarifice Sky; the joys of listed buildings. But Lucy had a friend that lent us weekly installments until he left and we missed out on series 3.

But now thanks to the wonders of borrowed dvd’s, iTunes and the odd visit to the ABC website I am fully up to date. From the very first opening of the eye in the pilot, right up to Meeting Kevin Johnson. Deep down I was hoping it would answer some questions I had, like the reference to the Polar Bear, but no, in fact I’m now more confused; why was there a Polar Bear in the jungle.
But that it the key to Lost, the story is just so intense that you can’t help but be totally sucked in. It is the reason that on some days I was watching 4 episodes in one sitting. I don’t mind that with each episode now you are left with more thoughts in your head, conspiracy theories left right and centre and the deflated thought that it will be another week until you get some answers.

Nice one IE

Over the last few days I having been bringing back my old Vaio laptop from the dead.
I purchased the laptop many moons ago, before my adventure into the world of Apple. But once I had found utopia with OSX the little Sony got put away some where and forgotten about.
Meanwhile Microsoft have seen sense and 180′d on their views and IE8 will be the first fully functional standards aware MS web browser. The beta landed at the beginning of March and I’ve been keen to try it out. So what better chance to format, install and rebuild the once forgotten machine.

So off I went, install XP, service pack, updates, more updates. Now onto web browsers, update to IE7, then find the IE8 beta page. Right install. Whilst I was watching the bar as it checks for web updates I thought to myself will this install over IE7? Or will I have to versions of IE I can play with?
It was the first, installed over version 7, so all I have is IE8 beta. Not a problem as also installed on there is Firefox, Opera and Flock (got me some browser love going on).

Thinking nothing about it went about my routine. Ahh rumours of Service Pack 3 for XP are running through the vines, lets do an update and see what is about. As most people know, windows updates are just web pages with activeX magic that update your system, but they need to be run from Internet Explorer. But here is the kicker, not from IE8!
On firing up the update screen I was greeted with an error screen to say my browser was not supported and that I should be using IE5.5 or higher. Clever that I always though that 8 was higher than 5.
Panic set in as I thought I have now upgraded the only web browser that will work with Windows Update to a browser that it not know by Windows Update!
But to my saving IE8 has a clever little feature ‘Emulate IE7‘ this not only makes pages look like they would in IE7 but also convinces Windows Update that you can update your installation.