Telling it like it is

Before knocking this monster off the roof (because it was pulling our Christmas lights down), I thought a photograph was in order to illustrate what happens when snow slides very slowly off a metal roof when it's this cold. This is really, really cold. Needless to say, the forecast high for the ski resorts tomorrow is -18°C. I love my newfound interest in skiing, but not that much. I'm sorry. I'll be staying at home tomorrow....

I couldn't get the Scooby looked at today, so I took matters into my own hands and backed it out of the garage this morning in the balmy -18°C weather and started her up with the hood open. I followed my nose and lo and behold, there was the fuel leak, right in front of me on the drivers side above the cylinder heads. Exactly like the WRX problem only on the other side of the engine - the hose clamp on one part of the fuel system was loose, so I snugged it up and the leak stopped. We'll see if it lasts.

The Subaru smells like it might have fallen foul of the Impreza Raw Fuel Smell syndrome. Apparently when it gets cold enough, some of the fuel rails and rubber hoses on Impreza engines loosen off and they leak raw fuel on to the passenger side cylinder heads. It stank pretty bad when Paula came home tonight - she'd noticed it after the Scooby had sat parked in -10°C all afternoon. I took it out and the smell went away pretty quick - I guess as the engine bay heated up. I'm going to try to get it in to be looked at tomorrow morning if possible. I don't like the idea of a fuel leak, even if does only happen when the engine is cold. I want it sorted out, whatever it is.

The lyrics to Atom Bomb are super relevant when it comes to America and its attitude towards war, Iraq and specifically thinking about Divine Strake: Baby's got an atom bomb Twenty two megaton Baby got a poison gas Baby got a heart attacks Baby got a pain on tap Baby gimme some of that Baby got a nobel prize Given for the perfect crime Baby got an alibi Baby got eight more lives Baby got a satellite Baby got second sight Baby got a masterplan A foolproof master plan Baby got purple hair Baby got a secret lair Baby got an army there I ain't ever seen baby scared (Gimme some of that) (Gimme some of that) Baby got a crystal ball Baby doesn't care at all Baby's having too much fun Baby got an atom bomb Baby got a fleet at sea And a submarine called Emergency She got a motorcade She got a monorail Going coast to coast on a campain trail Playing deck of cards in an armoured car She got a kung fu star as a bodyguard She got a juju charm She got a magic spell She got a genie ...

Here we go again. The Divine Strake test is back on. Just to remind you all, Divine Strake is a plan to detonate a 700-ton heavy ammonium nitrate fuel oil emulsion bomb 11m deep in the Nevada test site. Divine from Bush's intolerable belief that God is telling him to wage war (oddly, not reported in America, but made the headlines everywhere else in the world last year), and Strake from the definition of a plank of wood used to level or wipe-clean sand laid in construction. In other words, Bush perceives this bomb to be a holy weapon designed to wipe the sand clean. And by Sand he means Desert. And by Desert he means Iraq. The Nevada test site is the same one that is still off-limits because of radiation from the original atom bomb tests. The "officials" from the government say there's nothing to worry about, because the bomb isn't nuclear. Well that's shovelling horsehit by the bucketload isn't it? They neatly sidestep the simple facts that a 700-ton b...

Things are looking good. Cocksure Gordon is now down to 22nd place in the Dakar, 58 minutes behind the leaders with a shiny new 13 minute penalty to his name. One of only 8 cars in the first 125 with a penalty, and the second largest one at that. He still doesn't get this "big=better" mistake of his, does he? Come on you prick - crash out and don't ruin it for the rest of us.

Apple have shown the iPhone at MacWorld expo then. And I have to ask : why? The iPhone is just another in a long line of needless convergence products. Apart from the Apple name, it will likely suffer all the same problems too. ie. it will be a poor browser, a poor PDA, a poor phone, a poor video player and a poor mp3 player. On top of that it looks like it limits you to a single carrier and Cingular aren't known for their brilliant service outside the US. Unless you get awesome Cingular reception (and judging from all the Cingular subscribers I know, that simply never happens), then the iPhone is essentially useless. Why tie it to one provider? Why not just make it an unlocked GSM so you could put your own SIM card in it? To tie it to one provider seems insane to me. The interface looks nice, but it's a glossy plastic screen on a black background which means Apple didn't bother to look at the complaints about the black Sony PSP. Plus because it's a cellphone, it means...

The Dakar rally is on again - the most competitive and ferocious rally in the world. And American Blunderkind Robby Gordon is back too. Last year, he assumed because he'd won some Baja rally a couple of times that he could sweep the board in the Dakar. A couple of days in, his arrogance got the better of him and he destroyed his car. Red Bull dropped him and so this year he's back with a - wait for it - Hummer. This typifies the American approach to sporting events - throw more money and more power at it and you'll win. The thing is, with Dakar rally cars, lighter is better. The H3 replica that Gordon is racing weighs 2045kg and has a 6 litre V8. To put that into perspective, the VW Race Touareg 2 vehicles weigh 1788kg and have a 2.3l 5-cylinder diesel engine. Guess who's got the top 5 spots and who barely finished the first stage? Gordon got bogged down in soft sand that even the damn trucks managed to get through. By the end of the day today he's in 21st place o...

8575 vertical feet. 9x Moonbeam, 2x Sunrise, 1x Apex and I didn't fall over this time because Mike showed me a shallow way off the top of Apex. I'm bloody knackered.