We needed to pick up some household stuff - so on Saturday rather than use public transport I decided to hire one of the electric cars our block rents out. This is done as part of an effort to keep London clean & green.

The G-Wiz from Reva is a tiny electricity powered vehicle. Think
of a silver wind up kids toy. It performed quite well given the fact that I had no experience of electric cars and had decided to completely ignore the instructions till we returned. OK as you probably guessed I didn't see them in the door compartment until the
car was parked again.

The G is small, slow and also not damaging the world health. The controls seem to be very similar to regular car. Brake, accelerate and
clutch. However there are some differences :
- the rather go cart'ish hand brake
- the gears are shifted by the turning of a dial similar to the dial
on a washing machine or oven. Yes I have on occasion used both these
pieces of equipment.

The gear settings are R,N,E and F. With a little fiddling we cracked the code:
R = Reverse
N = Neutral (you're getting the hang of it, now)
E = seemed to be go forward, we assumed Economy or Ejector seat. This
was later validated to be economy.
F = we were undecided on this - Full, Full lights, Faster, Forward,
Fun (if it was fun it was a temporary setting), Fly (no, no wings transformed out the side). It was in fact F for faster.

When this was discovered I began to suspect that the G was either made in a North Korean
sweatshop or the kinder chocolate factory.

Low point - discovering that the power doesn't really last for 8 hours.

Lower point - discovering this less than half way to our intended
destination. At this point we worked out that we had about 60% power
(including reserve power) and had 70% of our outward journey to
complete (not including detours and the inevitable getting lost
because of poor road signage*). And yes we still had the return leg of the journey to complete. . Naturally we decided to put our feet down and go for it relying on St. Michael Knight (patron saint of driving) to sort it out. An added concern was that we had tickets to see the Shaolin monks finale performance of the wheel of life and any delay would mean disappointment. Did I mention we were expecting Guy Fawkes Bonfire night traffic too?

High point - The incredible spectacle of plugging & unplugging the car into a wall socket to power up. For real you can plug the car into a regular power point to charge like a mobile or camera. Incredible!!


*On a related topic I have been told that the Uk road signage is crap because: during the WWII all road signs were either removed or hidden. So that any invading Germans could not find there way around. Ok the wars over. Let it go. It's just annoying. Put them back please .

Found this diagram today.

It shows a map of comments made in 2005 quoting "x is the new". Its pretty cool. looking forward to the 2006 version. I'm keen to see how different it looks.
Click here to view.

Looking north west (Millennium eye -Big Ben)

I also had a chance to poke around the Jam Factory one of the locations I had scouted for the Bat cave. JB has a top floor terrace with a 360 degree of London's skyline. Breathtaking!! What you lose on the straights you make up on the corners. The view was awesome and made me fall in love with London all over again. Especially with all the pre Halloween & Guy Fawkes fireworks on display.

For non locals - from Halloween to Guy Fawkes (or till demand drops) is a period that every yob & his dog will try make as many attempts to irate me by setting off as many Rockets, Screeches and Crackles as possible in my immediate or just close enough proximity to be a hazard.

Again I notice how every bedroom in London seems to be 5 X the size of mine.

I great time was had by all, met loads of interesting people and had some really decent conversation spanning:

- cultural differences
- first impressions of London
- why my XDA is the best device in its space
- security in South Africa
- Sri Lanka vs. the Maldives
- the source of the Thames
- Louis Vuitton's Bond street turnover
- the Euro debate & unification of Europe as well as hearing an informed perspective on the UK's stance on the Euro from a Frenchman
- discussion around iPod vs. Sony Walkman and their software
- my complete lack of any dance skills
- the spectacular view from JB's penthouse terrace and architecture.

By the way, Germany & Spain are on the line and they want their architects back???

The Naked & Nearly Gay Racist
Its the final weekend of the Eddies season and we were invited to a viewing of the best acts from this years Edinburgh festival. The show consisted Of Phil Nichol's doing to performances in succession. The shows were the highly rated: The Naked Racist (2006 winner) & Nearly Gay (2005 winner). Phil was the originator of the viral "The Only Gay Eskimo (In My Tribe)".I didnt know much about Phil (OK I knew nothing about him) before the show so here is a quick bio (recent highlights):

2006
Winner of the if.comeddie Award for his Edinburgh show The Naked Racist. Appeared as the producer in Rob Brydon's BBC Three series Annually Retentive

2005
Appeared in BBC Two's Broken News, as camp showbiz reporter Josh Cashman on this BBC2 spoof

2003
Chortle Award nominee for best headliner

2002
Nominated for the Perrier for his Edinburgh show: Things I Like, I Lick
Chortle award nominee for best male circuit comic
Appeared as Philip Salon in the Boy George musical Taboo in the West End

Sorry - once again no pics allowed in the auditorium. Phil was running on hi - energy for both shows being filmed for his soon to be released DVD. His focus was by and large racism, predjudice and cultural differences as portrayed from his experience and perspective. He is a cleary very talented performer shifting between a multitude of characters including Billy Halliday singing the songs of Queen with a backing band. His show is edgy and perhaps a little to racy for me taste, although he did have me in stitches for most of the evening. Be warned his show is called the NAKED racist for a reason

To celebrate the imminent arrival of the 21st Bond film "Casino Royale", Sony unveiled the new limited edition Sony Casino Royale Spy Gear, integrating a Sony VAIO VGNTX007C notebook and a Cyber-shot 7.2 megapixel digital camera.

With an attractive attache case complete with the "007" logo, the laptop offers all of 11.1" WXGA widescreen (1366x768 pixels) goodness. The display supports XBRITE technology for higher brightness levels and natural color.

Just 1" thin, the VGNTX007C weighs 2.8 pounds and is made of multi-layered carbon fibre for enhancing the durability. Sony claims the VAIO TX offers up to 11 hours of battery life. The camera, on the other hand, is the sleek Cyber-shot DSC-T50 that uses a 7.2 megapixel Super HAD CCD and boasting a big 3" preview LCD.
In order to prevent others from viewing your screen from the sides, Sony also includes a privacy filter: only the person sitting in front of the screen can see what's going on.

The Sony VGNTX007C Limited Edition James Bond Casino Royale 007 laptop will be available starting November 15, 2006.

I've had my XDA Exec for a month now & have been reserving judgement on it until I have given it a thorough working over. If you are unsure of what an XDA is see here , In short its a handy device developed by HTC a brilliant Malaysian based company that are delivering on promises made by film & commercial directors over the last couple of decades. HTC make the devices that are then branded up by the local mobile providers (02 - XDA, Orange - MVP, etc).

About 3 years ago - After research into a device that could do everything I wanted (see below) it came down to choosing between the Sony Ericsson Palm OS P910 or the XDA. Did I stay brand loyal or try a relatively newcomer in the field? Ultimately the Newly released XDA II
won on:

Screen size - (how could Sony expect me to watch video on a screen that size?)
even if they had a real keyboard.
External memory - fork out for a Sony Memory stick Pro after spending
so much on regular side memory cards that were not compatible. I felt
let down.
Battery life - the XDA pipped the P900 in both talk & standby time.

It would mean a learning curve moving away from graffiti. Oh the XDA supports graffiti. We have a winner.

Recently my XDA II has been looking a bit dated. I should mention it still held a certain Millennium Falcon retro appeal to me plus its still way more advanced then devices that are being released today. Anyway I decide an upgrade may be in order. After a bit of research my winnowed choices were:

HP - built in GPS
Blackberry - Love their innovative development (RIM are the new Apple)
i.e. borrow good ideas & have a loyal use base.
Xda Exec - it looks big, clunky & none of my current software will work on it.

My requirements for a handheld are an all in one device that can acts as :
- a phone
- contacts management (could be used as full CRM system)
- music player
- video player (screen size important)
- Tube journey planner
- dictionary
- encyclopedia
- Tom Tom local & international route planner
- low-res camera
- communication centre inc. VOIP over wireless networks
- wirelessly email & web browse
- sms (or UK txt)
- game console (the usual solitaire, backgammon, chess as well as more
graphic intensive Tomb Raider or Quake) OK not really a requirement but
I was impressed that after installation on my XDA - the aforementioned
games worked
- multilanguage translator
- dictaphone
- able to note/blog/document/spreadsheet on the move
- portable office (runs windows mobile - word, excel, PowerPoint, etc.)
- had a decent battery life
- decent keyboard (I did not know this at the time as I was always v.
Happy with the XDA's virtual touch screen keyboard)

Pros over my previous XDA II
1. It has an integrated webcam as well as a regular 2mb camera (when you consider that my first digital camera (Sony Mavica) was only 2.3MB its not so bad. - I should mention that I have not used either camera, the webcam is supposed to be for 3G calls, video conferencing and the
such. If only I knew someone to interface with. The other camera's rez is to low , but I suspect that there may be a time that a pic will need to be taken and I won't have my camera at hand.
2. It has a real QWERTY keyboard (which as I write this on the tube I am loving more & more). Originally I favored my XDAII as it had no clunky appendages such as a QWERTY keyboard. After all mobile device keyboards are to small to be of any real use, (despite what users may think,they need) they were just a gimmick that would never catch on. Boy, was I wrong a real keyboard is great. I have even moved to stage 2 of usage. Stage 1 being trying to use both hands to wack out docs (picture a cartoon Arnold Schwarzenegger hunched over a tiny typewriter). I have reached stage 2 - the 2 thumb type. Great for walking & typing (surprisingly more useful than you would imagine) & stabilizing the X on bumpy tube rides, say for example the entire Victoria line.
3. It transforms from a mini laptop (so cool) to a tablet (touch screen) PC like my old X
4. It has built in wireless functionality oh so useful in a wireless
network environment. Ok my old X had an SD Wireless card, not 100%
reliable and to make SD slot available I would have to remove my
storage card.
5. The real keyboard
6. The earphone jack is 3.5 rather than the previous 2.5 so I can plug in regular audio headsets without an adapter that doesn't work very well.
7.A mini usb jack to connect and sync with a desktop (or laptop).

I'm guessing the 2 main barriers to it being heralded or marketed pro actively at a grass roots level or:

The price - Don't understand this. If you were to add up the cost of all the devices that the X could replace; Blackberry, mobile phone, PVP, MP3 Player, PSP & GPS device (ok I still need a GPS receiver). Also think of the space you are saving.

Ease of use - OK! you are going to have to actually engage your brain to use this device. It seems that more focus was placed on operation and functionality than intuitivity.