I have learnt several new things over the weekend:

1. If ones removes the fairings, fuel tank, nose cone, mirrors, headlight, and speedometer from one’s motorcycle it looks like a Soviet manufactured pile of rubbish.  One is also left with vast quantities of bolts, most of which require different tools to fasten / unfasten them.
2. ScottOilers are very clever bits of technology, and are the way forward.
3. If one replaces the fuel tank on one’s motorcycle and forgets to re-connect the fuel pump, it doesn’t start.  This causes one to worry, scratch one’s head, realise one’s mistake, utter many profanities, and then take it all apart again.
4. If one tries to start one’s motorcycle without the fuel pump connected, one ends up with a lot of fault codes logged in the ECU, and a very annoying service light which stays illuminated on the dashboard even when the problem has been corrected.
5. When one takes one’s motorcycle to the dealership to have the aforementioned fault codes removed, one is asked (in a very sympathetic and friendly way) whether the message “IOB” appeared on the digital display.  This, apparently, is an abbreviation for “idiot on bike”.
6. If one had not been so conscientious by going to the dealer and had ignored the service indicator altogether, one would have gotten away with it.  Apparently fault codes for “IOB” errors clear themselves after the bike has reached full operating temperature having been run from cold on three successive fault-free occasions.
7. It’s really very hot this Summer.  Especially after removing one’s rather heavy fuel tank for the third time, trying to figure out why it won’t start.

I have just been rendered completely speechless.

Apple have released a completely new product, the iPhone 4, and yet it has no more storage space than the last one. What on earth were they thinking? The only reason that I have not bought an iPhone so far is that my iPod Touch (32GB) is already full and I need not only a new phone, but also an iPod with more storage. I was hoping to solve both problems at once, and if there had been a 64GB iPhone 3GS I would own one by now.

I am phenomenally disappointed. I desperately wanted to like their new product but now I have been forced to think again.

I am not an eco-warrior by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, my impact upon the world’s resources would doubtless make many a hippy burst into floods of tears. However, on the flip side of the argument I am not that environmentally reckless either. I always recycle just about everything possible; paper, card, metal, plastics, glass. I take my used batteries to be recycled, and the same applies to my empty printer cartridges. I don’t often throw things away when they break because on the whole I have the skills and patience to repair them. But I found myself descending into a state of irritated muttering yesterday when I unwrapped four new shirts that I have bought. Why? Well because of the absolutely ridiculous amount of packaging that was used to market and present them. Here is a photo of the unnecessary waste material from just four simple shirts:

It’s madness! What the hell is wrong with a simple coat hanger? I could at least re-use that in my wardrobe. AND it wouldn’t leave the new shirts in a crinkled mess. AND I wouldn’t have needed to devote ten minutes of my life trying to remove it all from my new clothing. Well then Next, are you listening? I like your clothes but would you kindly stop taking the piss and think about your packaging; a shirt does not need to be molly coddled in this way. Just hang it on a hanger and I’ll still happily buy it.

I’ve noticed that supermarkets are getting just as bad. I was in my local store the other day and I found a pre-prepared plastic tray containing cling film wrapped new potatoes. Errr – what?!?!?! It’s a flippin’ potato for goodness sake. Just dig it out of the ground, wash it under the tap for 30 seconds, and then cook it. It’s hardly complicated, is it? Then I saw bags containing grated cheese. Agggggghhh! Don’t even get me started on the pre-grated cheese.

Sadly this reflects rather poorly upon our society, and it proves just how lazy we’re all becoming as a species. Fortunately there is an alternative, and it’s one from which supermarkets need to learn. Local food businesses do still exist, and they still sell very good quality fresh produce but without all of the faff. Take my local greengrocer for example – One enters the store, one takes a brown paper bag from the hook on the wall, and then one proceeds to fill one’s bag with whatever items of earth covered fruit and veg happen to take one’s fancy at the time. The bag is then weighed at the till, during which one can have a very decent conversation with the shop keeper about what’s in season and ought to be tried, and one then hands over considerably less money than would be necessary at the supermarket. It’s fantastic, it’s fun, it’s sociable, and it’s actually a rather refreshing experience. So with such an agreeable alternative on offer, how on earth have we descended into this absurd state of affairs whereby every item of food has to be packaged and presented in such a prissy, namby-pamby way?

Well I’m revolting; and not in the modern accepted sense of the word that will have some of you tittering under your breath. I’ve decided to abandon the supermarkets for my basic needs whenever possible, and I’m going to use my local independently owned butcher and greengrocer whom both have shops which are very near my home. In fact they’re in the same street, within easy walking distance, and I now get service from friendly people who know what they’re talking about. Sainsbury’s – watch out – because I’m sure that I’m not alone.

Right then, today I’ll start with a question.  What are these?

Yes, correct.  They are small sachets of salt and pepper.  Specifically in this case – they are sachets of salt and pepper which I picked up for free in a motorway service station yesterday, and which I intended to consume with the nutritionally questionable pie and chips that I had purchased just moments before.  However, having sprinkled the aforementioned condiments on my meal I then began to read the packaging.  No, I wasn’t reading it because I’m sad, but simply because I was travelling alone and therefore I had very little else to do with my life at that precise moment in time.

It was the title of the packaging that caught my attention; “Lo salt”.

Now we’ll ignore for a moment that the manufacturer can’t even spell the word “Low”, but even when we’ve cast that factor aside there is still a glaringly obvious issue.  What on earth is the point of having low salt salt?  The whole point of the exercise is that it’s salt!  One chooses to use the product because one considers that one has insufficient salt for the activity in question.  It’s like marketing low oil oil, or low wax wax.  Why oh why would anyone want to do it?

Intrigued, I read the packaging further…  Apparently this particular product boasts that it contains 66% less sodium.  I paused mid-mouthful.  So what, I asked myself, was I eating apart from the salt that I wanted?  The packaging, as perhaps you might imagine, failed to provide the required answers so I chose to visit their advertised website and soon found that I was eating one-third sodium chloride and two-thirds potassium chloride, plus some anti-caking agent.  Furthermore, this product has apparently been specifically designed to help lower my blood pressure.  Well guess what Mr or Mrs LoSalt?  My blood pressure is now significantly higher than it ever needed to be; not because of the chemical composition of your product, but because I am now worrying about precisely what your ingredients are doing to my innerds!

What I wanted on my chips was just salt.  Good old-fashioned, plain, simple, sodium chloride salt.  If I want to consume less salt, then I shall adjust my diet in a very quick and simple way; I’ll sprinkle less of the damn stuff on my meal!  Frankly, I think you’ll be forced to agree that my solution is quicker and considerably easier to implement as well.  I’m an engineer and therefore I am taught to make the solution to every problem as simple as possible.  This problem is arguably an extremely simple one, and therefore the solution to it certainly does not require the intervention from a bunch of trumped-up, ponsy, nannying do-gooders who are fascinated by the unnecessary faffing about with the fine details of my diet.  And to add insult to injury, this new miracle wonder-product is doubtless costing the service station a fair amount of cash, which in turn is escalating the cost of my pie and chips.

Well thanks, but kindly stop it.  I want salt – is that clear?  Right, thank you.

I generally don’t have that many regrets in life, and I am quite proud of that fact.  Certainly I have done my fair share of stupid things, and there are often times when I wish that I could erase those incidents from history.  I suspect that we’re all the same though, so I generally don’t let myself get too bothered about it.

However, one of my lasting regrets is never learning to play the piano properly.  This probably sounds weird, and perhaps even a tad obscure when compared to all of the other possible regrets that a person could have.  Nevertheless, I started to learn to play as a teenager and I stopped before I’d really given myself the chance to get good at it.  And I regret it -- badly!  One day I hope that I shall have the chance (and the spare time!) to put things straight, but that day sadly may not come until I retire.

Meanwhile, I shall simply have to continue admiring other pianists in the world.  A few names spring instantly to mind; Freddy Mercury, Elton John, and perhaps the king of them all -- Billy Joel.  But then today I found a video clip on the web, and I was completely and utterly mesmerised from start to finish.  How on earth does anyone become so good at doing one thing?  Oh, and please nobody say “practice”, because in this case it just doesn’t do the end result any justice!

Like many people,  I enjoy watching movie trailers.  This is because, perhaps obviously, it allows me to very quickly decide whether or not I shall bother to transport myself to the cinema and part with my hard earned cash.  Generally I make good judgements, but there are times when I watch the film and end up rather disappointed.  Recent disappointments have included the most recent of the Indiana Jones films, which rather unfortunately massacred a lot of very good memories from my childhood.  I loved the original trilogy, but despite retaining the original cast I think that the most recent film should not have been made.

But today, I have discovered a bit of a dilemma.  I have just watched a trailer, and it certainly makes me want to see the film.  But I am horribly concerned that if the film turns out to be rubbish, then it might ruin yet another load of very good childhood memories.  The film in question is the A-Team movie.

Now if you were born later than about 1985 then you probably won’t understand (nor indeed care) about this issue.   However, if like me you are male in his early thirties, then I might just be about to infect the same dilemma upon you.  So all I can say is “sorry”.

Two hundred and seventy four pounds? Good grief, that’s just obscene!

What am I talking about? I’m talking about how much money Orange want to provide me with a shiny new iPhone 3GS – that’s what. Now I shall not deny it – I am indeed a bit of an Apple fan-boy and therefore I went weak at the knees when Orange started to offer the new iPhone. But prices like these are just silly. £274 is simply not a reasonable amount of money to pay for a new mobile phone, even if it is the coolest gadget on the face of the planet to be manufactured in living memory.

What particularly wounds me is that I’m told that I spend quite a lot on mobile phones. Usually when I walk into the shop to upgrade, the sales staff suck air through their teeth when I point out my latest choice of technological pornography and they utter the words “oooh, that’ll be very expensive”. Then they tap a few keys on their computer, view my account details, their eyes widen, and they say “oh, I see you spend quite a lot with us Sir, so your upgrade will be free today”. “Thank you” I think to myself, “that’s much better”.

So how on earth can Orange expect me to pay over two hundred pounds this time around? Well I wont, so there. Sorry Orange, you’ll have to do better. I have a price in mind, and it certainly doesn’t contain three digits. Well, not unless you include the pence anyway.

iPhone? iThink not.

Its amazing that peoples ability to use simple thing’s like punctuation mark’s is not better.  Its also really annoying when corporation’s cant get it right either.

Now then…. many of you will by now be internally screaming.  Some of you may even have suffered an uncontrollable verbal outburst at the true horror of what I’ve just done.  I should perhaps make it completely clear at this point that my first paragraph was written deliberately, and it pained me dearly to do so.  If you have managed to read this far and you have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, then hang your head in shame but do please keep reading.

I’m talking about this….

Most of you will recognise it as an apostrophe, which is a marvellous little feature of the English language and when used correctly can save time, space, and generally allow a sentence to flow an awful lot better.  But the simple fact is that there is far too much abuse of this little punctuation mark in the world.  I have been doing my absolute best to correct it whenever I can, but one has to be very careful when correcting others if one doesn’t wish to end up looking like an arse.  It shouldn’t be the case, because after all it’s merely the act of preserving the English language so that it doesn’t get abused any further.  Now perhaps this makes me a language snob, but I just cannot ignore the fact that there are plenty of people in the world who believe that the basic principles of our language can be cast aside for the sake of social acceptance.  Well, I’m afraid that I’m not one of them.  Innit.

To make matters worse, I see far too many incorrect signs and posters which have been produced by multi-million pound corporations.  How on earth can this be allowed to happen?  Do they not have marketing departments whose job it is to check such things?  It’s a slippery slope – the BBC will probably be doing it next, and at that stage I may have to emigrate on general principle.

So imagine my joy when I found that some clever soul has managed to tackle the subject of apostrophe abuse in a graphical and fun way, by producing a website to educate the masses.  Here is the link, and I am only too pleased to share it with you.