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Showing posts from April 24, 2005

Channel 4 documentary

If anyone reading my blog knows of a good site for one-off British TV file torrents, drop me a line. I'm trying to find a program that aired on Channel 4 last weekend called Britain's Cold War Superweapons, which amongst other things, covered the V-bombers. I've tried my usual bookmarks but couldn't find anyone who'd ripped it or was sharing it. Bummer :(

The A380 flies!

Five weeks early, the A380 took to the air in Toulouse today at 75% of it's maximum allowable takeoff weight and did a 4 hour test flight without a hitch. So, Boeing, Airbus haven't got a wing that'll carry the A380 eh? It didn't look like that to me....

Want free petrol? Buy a gas-guzzler.

In another dazzling display of incompetancy, owners of gas-guzzling SUVs and other heavy vehicles who use them entirely for business can get "President" B*sh and his government to pay for four or more years of fuel costs - in the form of tax breaks. It's hard to think of a worse formula for wrecking the country further. This (well-publicized) tax break applies to vehicles with a gross weight of at least 6,000lbs. ie. the weight of the vehicle full of petrol, passengers and cargo. Because of this, gross weight can be a good deal more than the empty weight of the vehicle. 41 domestic and 15 foreign SUVs qualify for this tax break. The hideous Porsche Cayenne is among them. As a consequence, those claiming 100% business use of these SUVs can deduct 100% of the $89,665 price of the Porsche Cayenne Turbo. That write-off represents an immediate income tax savings of $31,383 . That's a lot of petrol.

The grass is always greener.

Our lawn is starting to recover. The Senske guys came and did their thing a couple of weeks ago - aerated, stripped the dead grass, treated for billbugs and overseeded the whole lawn. We've been running up a national-deficit-sized water bill having the sprinklers on twice a day to germinate the new seeds and on sunday, Paula finally spotted the first green shoots. This morning I looked and the bare patches of lawn have a soft, fuzzy green look to them - seems the new seed is taking hold nicely. You never know - we might have a lawn to be proud of this year instead of a bug-infested piece of dirt :-)

Oi. CBS. No!

We started to watch CBS's lacklustre coverage of the San Marino Grand Prix today and gave up in desperation. Thank God Speed Channel are doing it properly although a week late on friday. The CBS commentators clearly had no real idea what they were watching, and didn't know anything about Formula 1 or it's rules and nuances. For example, when Fisichella spun off, the CBS commentator said that "his traction control must have gone." Well, yes - about 7 years ago. Traction control is banned on F1 cars. It was mortifying to listen to these three guys who just had no idea what the sport was about.