Matthew Hutchinson

In recent on-line chatter over buying cars, the argument was put forward for more fun. Yes, Fun! with a capital ‘F’.

RWD, open-top and general ‘side-ways around corners’ was favoured over smooth driving, electric everything and ‘I feel like I’m doing 5mph when I’m really doing 80’.

Enter the (german made) Wiesmann GT, checking all the boxes. German made yes, but performs and looks every bit like a British sports car classic. With a BMW V8, BMW brakes and gearbox, Wiesmann work hard to make 500 cars every year. The lead time on ordering one is about 6 months. Another photo here, and a review at PistonHeads.com explains more.

And, here it is making some nice noises

Starting at £72,000, its a little pricey though. A killer-internet app and a quick sale to Google/Yahoo should sort that out; to the Bat mobile robin!

Today, I got my (almost daily) ‘hot products’ from Amazon, and here’s the email they sent.

Now picture your average (non-technical) home Windows user, faced with this choice in their in-box. Do you go for the Ultimate, since it sounds the best? Ultimate Warrior, you could shout! – ‘Premium’ sounds like you’re being ripped off – ‘Basic’ insults your intelligence, ‘Business’ could be the right one, but you’re not wearing a blue-tooth headset and talking out of your ass today.My initial answer choice would be ‘none of the above’, there are actually 7 different product names (!)

And what’s that Vista Resource Centre all about? Is it an optional extra, like alloy wheels you say? Well its NEW! so it must be good. And don’t get me started on the number of different Office versions too, no wonder Amazon have chosen to include 5 different books in the email as well. Lets face it, you’ll need at least 3 of them to make a decision.

Along with these ridiculous product names, Microsoft’s seem to be pushing their entire marketing campaign on the fact that their task manager, goes a little bit 3D. See the featured screen-shots in this BBC news article, and the WOW ad’s on TV.

My rant is over. Now decide which CEO goes to talks about creating passionate users?, Vista – you are coming to a sad realisation, CANCEL or ALLOW?

Last week I finally gave in and placed an order for a new 2Ghz MacBook Pro. Being a PC user all my life, this will be my first switch to working on a Mac environment. I chose the MacBook Pro for 3 main reasons;

• to test websites and work in a mac environment
• for portability (I currently don’t own a laptop)
• performance-wise it seems like it will have enough longevity to last me at least 3 years

Gearing up for this monumentous event, Ive been collecting bookmarks of Mac tips and tools I hope will be useful;

• Mac Icons, Screensavers
• Tada Lists Widget
• Bye Bye Dashboard
• GL Terminal
• TextPander
• Screenography, Record your screen
• Screenshots to the clipboard
• Spirit-Level Dashboard Widget
• Parallels Workstation
• PDF Lab
• Pairing your remote with your MacBook Pro
• SSH on Mac OS X for Worry-Free Wireless
• Spam Sieve
• Slim Server
• Pyro for Campfire
• Cocktail
• 10 essential Mac Apps
• Ruby on Rails Mac Development
• Xyle-Scope CSS Tool
• Magnolia Blossom
• Multi-Alarm
• KisMac
• Cocoa Mysql

And for people switching from Windows to a Mac, or for those trying Bootcamp (Windows on an Intel Mac)

• Tips for BootCampers
• BootCamp Tutorial
• 2 Button Apple Mouse in WinXP
• Familiar tools for Windows->Mac people
• Overclock GPU with ATI Tools
• Virtue Desktops
• Growl Notify
• Growl Tunes
• Switchr
• Trick your TextMate Snippets

As expected the yearly, ‘threaten to leave your mobile phone operator’ pitch worked a treat – giving me a great new contract deal and a newly released handset all for free :) – I choose to ignore the slightly increased monthly rate, since I’ll be saving on calls, at least thats what I tell myself – in fact I usually say; I’d be wasting money if I hadn’t gone for this deal.

Adidas and Nike

I'll post another photo in a years time and we'll see how their doing ...