Thursday 31 December 2009

it's just typical isn't it

I went to Carmarthen the other day to have my annual eye check and they found that my prescription needed some minor changes , I'm basically becoming more long sighted in my old age.... which means I can see a car number plate at 7 miles but can't read a book unless it's attached to a broom handle and held out in front of me .... anyway ...... I agreed to have different lenses fitted to my existing frames because despite being practically bullied into buying new frames...... I resisted, because my existing frames are comfortable so why change ?... so far so good you might think ?


This morning I sat on my very expensive frames shearing the left arm off completely on the day I was supposed to be having my glasses re-glazed ..... Joy !!

ahhh well, apparently they can fix broken frame arms, although knowing my luck I'll end up looking like Jack Duckworth complete with sellotape fixed arm....


Not too bad I've just got back from the opticians only £10 to repair the arm or £24 if they have to replace both.... (that makes sense ?)

Sunday 27 December 2009

Duran Duran

Has finally given up its secret for not starting reliably in the mornings/afternoons and nights... in fact any time was a bad time to start the Pug unless it was tinder dry and everybody was gasping for moisture in the zero humidity of the Gobi desert .... I had suspected for a long time that the underlying cause was electrical not carburettor related and today I finally got around to stripping down the electrics to see the what was causing the engine to turn over with not so much as a cough or even promise of a cough from the engine.....

I started at the coil and bridged a hefty screwdriver from the coil to about 1/2 inch off the bodywork turned the engine over and it flashed several times an even heftier blue/white spark.... with that evidence I saw absolutely no need to test it with my tongue whatsoever.....

Which led me to take off the distributor cap...everything seemed in order .... no cracks, arc burns , small furry animals or hibernating hedgehogs ......or anything in fact remotely suspicious... so I turned my attention to the rotor arm on first inspection it looked ok.... and I was about to put it back on but then I noticed a tiny gap between the centre contact and the arm outer contact .. I noticed on closer inspection less obvious HT arc damage I tested for continuity and there was none....Duhhhhhhhhh.... of course the HT would jump across the gap before it even got to the distributor cap contacts... which would account for why it was incredibly hard to start on damp mornings.... the slightest amount of damp would re-route the spark to earth... hence no ignition or very little.... The reason I had sort of ignored the rotor arm was because I had changed it less than a year ago... it just goes to show never assume anything... it must have been a faulty rotor arm for it to fail so quickly !!!

So left with no choice I have had to call on my father to give me a lift into Halfords to get a new rotor arm.... I await his arrival with duff rotor arm in my pocket !! :)

Ohhh and I've got a new phone.... Andrea was shamed into buying me a new one after losing mine just before Christmas (I've never lost a phone in my life !!!) .... She seems to think I'm not grateful ... but I am.... even if I have lost all of my numbers ........ not that anybody ever rings me.... but you never know Mrs Pitt may tire of her husband ;¬)


addendum :- It's the next day now .... and I can confirm that Duran Duran starts within a few seconds..... even on a bitterly cold and frosty morning.... previously it would have entailed endlessly turning the engine over.... flooding it with petrol.... flattening the battery.... getting out the boost starter/charger and eventually and probably more luck than anything the engine would start.... but it springs to life now !!! :) brilliant !!

Monday 21 December 2009

There is going to be a big bang soon .....

This 2460 metre (8070 foot) monster volcano called the Mayon volcano in the Philippines..... is showing signs of stirring, it's only slightly smaller than Mount St Helens.... So I have a feeling it may go when it does with an enormous big bang..... apparently tremors increased from 200 a day to over 500 a day and they have started evacuating people...... ahhh well it will keep temperatures down for a few years ;¬)

I just hope they get everybody evacuated from the danger area before she blows......

The only other thing of note is that I've lost a huge filling in one of my back molars its the one that had it's root canal dug out after a failed attempt/stab at by the ex spetznatz trained KGB dentist "Yolanda" ..... who has now been exiled back to Poland and is supplementing her salary by digging ditches in Poland in addition to her full time job of coal mining and power lifting in the Polish Olympic team..... to be honest I think it's beyond repair now .... :( but what a time to lose a filling on the 21st December !!! Well technically it wasn't a filling it was a small boulder of white resin which had I lost whilst chewing would have smashed my remaining teeth into small shards.... because you never stop chewing until you hear the bone shattering "CRUNCH" do you .... and you always think it's something you've eaten before you even register that it could be a filling..... Well in my experience that's what happens .......Anyway we shall see what year the dentist can fit me in when I eventually get through to the receptionists who NEVER answer their phone......

We are having my parents over for Christmas dinner, so that should be nice after their trip to Australia....(spoiled they are) even though they have already had a Christmas dinner in Australia albeit an early one....

Freya is stupidly excited about Christmas, although we are unable to put any presents under the Christmas tree because we would simply come down one morning to find them all opened and Freya probably playing quite happily with the empty boxes.... it's her first Christmas that she is going to remember probably.... She is at least showing some recognition that something is building in the excitement department... We will only have my step daughter and Freya present over Christmas Andrea's ex is having the boys, and that's because my step daughter is going Skiing to France, although the recent snow may well hamper the school's plans to fly from Luton Airport on boxing day..... we shall see .....

Well here is wishing you all a Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year and don't cane the Baileys too much ;¬)


Saturday 19 December 2009

Aren't mothers great ???

She has given me all her remaining photographs she has of me and anything else relating to me, When I left (spelt D.U.M.P.E.D) my first wife I didn't take the photographs my mother had given to me and my ex wife, so I had very little left to show my new family.... but thankfully a few have survived the many many years tucked away in a drawer....

My mother even found a collection of stories and pictures by Rhiannon my middle daughter.... she had quite a fixation with Disney characters especially dogs it seems... some of the stories are lovely .... even if they only go to one chapter... but all very well laid out and neatly done :)


This one above is of me in primary school at around Christmas the twatty hats kind of give it away I think, the things you could do with crepe paper and glue in those days .... I'm probably about 5 or 6 years old here ..... I'm the one third row back left.... it's weird I can still remember some of their names ... Andrew Declaire with the hat over his eyes.... Andrew Mculloch.... Nicola Bainbridge (I think).... but it's over 40 years ago now so a lonnnnnnnnnnnnng time ago....

And here is me with my elder sister Christine on my first day at school.... I remember it vividly .... and Gawd look at the modern car in the back ground ;¬)

... It's mad looking back at your life in photographs.... they take you right back there... something you can't do with a digital photograph.... you can't actually hold it in your hand..... ahhhh well .... I guess I must be getting a bit sentimental over Christmas.....

We'll be having NONE of that !!!


Bahhhh Humbug !!!

Friday 18 December 2009

How ridiculous


Some thieves in Poland have stolen the iconic sign above the Auschwitz camp, first off if it was stolen to order, who in their right mind would want to display it ? .....even if it is in a private collection and secondly if it was stolen in the hope that somebody might buy it on the open market I think they will have a hard job getting rid of it..... I certainly hope it doesn't get destroyed.... because it symbolises the cruelty and inhumanity and also highlights the sneering Nazi's of the time stating that "work makes you free"...... I hope they bring the thieves to justice quickly and it gets put back in it's rightful place as a symbol to all that was wrong with the Nazi regime.....

it just goes to show that even these days if something IS bolted down they'll steal it, and nothing is too sacred to be considered off limits.....

Monday 14 December 2009

Woohoo it's official

I'm a veteran !!


I have no idea what all this is about, I guess it must be some kind of PR stunt by the government. The only thing it's done is make me feel old !!!


Damn I'm going to have to practice the......

"you don't know what it was like man.....you weren't there man !!! (and of course the famous thousand yard stare)...."


I'll probably get another letter next week saying "due to your acceptance of your veterans badge this equates to acceptance of continued colour service" .....next stop is being booted out of a C31 transport on Khandahar air strip blinking in the bright sunshine, wearing a teflon sauce pan for a helmet and armed to the teeth with a pitchfork (not that the MOD is underfunded or anything) .....

Joking aside and although I don't actually agree with with war in Afghanistan, I've got to take my hat off to the lads and lasses out there who don't have a choice whether they fight or not, it's politicians who go to war not soldiers, soldiers just fight it for them, whether the war is right or wrong...and in the words of Lord Tennyson :-

"Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:"


I should imagine if you put an assault rifle into most politicians hands and told them to go to war instead, there would be far fewer of them.......wars....... not politicians that is.... but fewer politicians would work equally well :) .... I would also imagine that the majority of them would actually and finally, be able to sprout diarrhoea from the correct orifice.....and who knows it may reduce the expense claims in Parliament.... In fact I think national service for politicians should be compulsory !!!

Good luck the lot of you out there..... and keep your heads down and hopefully one day you'll get a veterans badge too !! ....(although don't hold your breath like all things Army/Navy/Air force it's all brass and bullshit) ;¬)



Friday 11 December 2009

Unbelievable !!

A London gallery is looking for a £3,000 brick called "revolting brick" by artist Gavin Turk which went missing and was replaced with a worthless 40p equivalent.... no doubt titled "cheap trick brick"

No !!

They are looking for a signature on a worthless 40p brick .... he didn't make it !! (actually I personally think the brick is worth more than Gav's signature any-day !!)

I find some modern art unbelievably pretentious, first off who would pay £3000 for a brick with a signature on it ??? Some idiot no doubt will....where it will sit on some equally pretentious £6000 coffee table with a box of matches tipped into the centre of it .... "That's a Gavin Turk that is....." .... "Really ? I thought it was a brick" ..... "Oh please don't strike the match on it.... it's modern art!!"

I'd have been more impressed if he had actually made the brick from scratch rather than just write his name on it with a black Sharpie Pen.... apparently he did (signed) ten bricks and the one that's been nicked is 8th in the series....

That's about all that needs to be said about this pathetic excuse for art...


On a slightly different note, I've just been reliably informed that the old Milk factory in Carmarthen which houses the Nolan Windows factory is in the process of burning to the ground !!! So all you people who have ordered new double glazed windows and conservatories .... I think your order may be delayed until after Christmas ... or possibly forever ..... I should imagine 1st KMH are pretty worried as well, because they are right next to the old milk factory... and it must be true because I can see a pall of black smoke drifting across where the dual carriageway is about 5 miles away and seagulls are dropping from the sky.... The insurance company isn't going to be pleased but at least Nolan's ledger will look slightly better after they've paid out.... (call me cynical)


Ps/ I have 2600 bricks personally signed by me at the bargain price of just £2999 each .... paypal or bank transfer only ... Thank you :)

Sunday 6 December 2009

Gordon Brown is an arse.....

Not only has he brought this country to it's knees with his long standing economic policies, but now he is saying climate sceptics are .... and I quote :-

There is an anti-science group, there is a flat Earth group, if I may say so, over the scientific evidence for climate change

Flat Earthers ???? Anti Science ???

There are plenty of real "scientists" who dispute climate change being man made, which I presume is what he is harping on about by carefully wording it as climate change rather than global warming or even worse anthropogenic global warming...

The climate on earth is an immensely complex subject, and the problem with some scientists is that they seem to think they have accurately described the mechanisms of climate and what it is doing and why.....

We sent man to the moon on hard science, we knew what was ahead of us, how gravity effected orbits and the complexities of propulsion and trajectory.... and we succeeded, because we knew what was out there.

Climate on the other hand is not a cut and dried equation that has been solved by any means, I would go as far as to say that as a "science" it is still very much in it's infancy... but here we are about to discuss and possibly make laws at the Copenhagen summit on emissions and carbon trading, which will have far reaching effects on developed countries economies, increased taxation, and spiralling costs..... do they seriously think that by buying carbon credits to offset their pollution it is in some way going to radically alter Earth's climate ? and furthermore who is going to oversee the billions of dollars that will flow into the carbon credit fund ??? This isn't about "saving the earth" this is about "making money" ..... The only "tipping point" we have reached is the one where we are about to tip all our money into an enormous sink hole of bureaucratic waste and spiralling costs......

Saturday 5 December 2009

Rockbox !!


Since updating my iPod to version 1.3 I've had nothing but problem after problem with it... so I've completely given up on Apples software for my Ipod 30G Video, because it was simply hanging the ipod or it would behave sluggishly on the click wheel, or simply stop working and required a hard reset .......

So I dug around on the internet to find something to replace it.... As some of you know the Ipod is basically a mini computer and some clever people have reverse engineered it and compiled a linux version to control the ipod

you can read about it here

It's a bit different to Apple Ipod software but doesn't take very long to get used to, plus it extends the battery life of my ipod by about 20% !! .... AND it loads it with games including DOOM! !!! would you believe it !!! and of course you can choose from a plethora of themes, some of the themes are pretty damn amazing.... and if you're interested you can even get right down into the nuts and bolts of your iPod and control "exactly" what it gets up to .... you can even record sound with it !!

The real beauty is that you can still use Itunes to update your Ipod but honestly .....once you have it installed and it comes with an idiot proof installation program, you'll never look back to Apples software to run your Ipod again ....

It doesn't invalidate your warranty, and if you don't like it you can simply restore your Ipod via Itunes ( you will lose your music library on your iPod if you do a restore mind you !!) and you're back to the normal software provided by Apple....

I'm very pleased with it now... it's actually usable again instead of it being a very expensive white doorstop/paperweight which sometimes works as a music/video player....when it feels like it :)

Friday 4 December 2009

what is going on with Google/Yahoo/Bing

Something funny is going on .....I've been following Climategate on Google/Yahoo/Bing search engines... and you know when you put in the search item on Google for instance it offers a drop down box of possible things you could mean ..... well yesterday if you typed in "Clima" and nothing more it would suggest "Climategate" ... similar on Yahoo and Bing.... basically it's showing you what is popular and most searched for on the net....

Today if you type in anything to do with Climategate it produces nothing but I know for a fact that Climategate is probably THE hottest topic on the internet right now.... What is going on ?

Censorship ?

it's the same with Yahoo and Microsoft Bing... although Bing does show Climate-Gate with a hyphen still..... although I'm watching it to see if that disappears today .... hmmmmmmm

STRANGE BEHAVIOUR !!!

Wednesday 2 December 2009

Climategate Again.....

<--- This is him, Professor Phil (in-the-data) Jones


Have you noticed that very little is being said in the news about Climategate ??? I'd say that maybe the media has been warned off this little gem ? Apparently the BBC had hold of the stolen emails a few weeks before the story broke...but they didn't break the story themselves...... what does that say to you ? Surely not the impartial BBC sitting on a story of this magnitude for what ends ??? makes you wonder doesn't it ?

I suppose when you get wind of corruption in a multi-billion dollar industry and potential green tax cash cow, which I might add has sprung up out of nothing .... maybe bending a few arms to your own ends is beneficial ?? The problem is that the whole Global Warming (Anthropogenic or otherwise) debate is practically over, the spin has been spun, the suckers sucked in, the sharks are actually in the feeding frenzy.. the pigs are in the trough....the billions of dollars pumped into research.... to do a U-turn now would be catastrophic .... not to say a tad embarrassing....

Think of Kyoto and all the other summits held to reduce CO2 ..... it doesn't matter how many times you hammer home that an increase in CO2 follows a rise in temperature not the other way around..... the die has been set, CO2 is evil, petrol engines are evil, Oil Consumption is evil, Coal burning is almost satanic, each cow that farts knocks a penguin off it's perch in Antarctica ....... the same old song off the same old songsheet, the record's stuck again...blah de blah.....

But the really maddening thing is, if you don't believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming and have never eaten a lentil in your life......then you must be some kind of nutjob, who is blind to all the evidence from all those well respected climate scientists....

I say what evidence ? a string of numbers so badly mashed by a climate modelling computer program which has added all the numbers from the telephone book and then averaged it by the combined salary of the CRU "Team" and then divided it by the number of mammoths dug up in Siberia ??? ..... I think not....

People seem to forget that CO2 is food for plants and through photosynthesis they make sugars and and grow and that their natural by product of this process is Oxygen.... which we happen to breathe..... but then we go and spoil it all by breathing out CO2 again.... DAMN !!!

Governments are in a no win situation here ......it will take major back peddling by any government to admit they were wrong, they got it wrong because they listened to bad science , peer reviewed by "mates" on the same gravy train. (20 Million quids worth of gravy train)..... so I'm going to predict the death of Anthropogenic Global Warming but long live Global Warming....

They will save from the carbon free ashes the golden tax cash cow from slaughter..... Actually I'm quite resigned to the fact that we are going to be taxed to the eyeballs on something based around very shaky science .... and I would have been far happier if the government had re-introduced window tax, at least then it's far more honest of them and you could decide how bright you wanted your home to be... but lets face it the governments have taxed us up to the eyeballs on everything we buy or use.... they may as well tax us on how much wind we pass.....

Tuesday 1 December 2009

Climate modelling at its best .....

; PLOTS 'ALL' REGION MXD timeseries from age banded and from hugershoff
; standardised datasets.
; Reads Harry's regional timeseries and outputs the 1600-1992 portion
; with missing values set appropriately. Uses mxd, and just the
; "all band" timeseries
;****** APPLIES A VERY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION FOR DECLINE*********
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,'Oooops!'
;
loadct,39
def_1color,20,color='red'
plot,[0,1]
multi_plot,nrow=4,layout='large'
if !d.name eq 'X' then begin
window, ysize=800
!p.font=-1
endif else begin
!p.font=0
device,/helvetica,/bold,font_size=18
endelse
;
; Get regional tree lists and rbar
;
restore,filename='reglists.idlsave'
harryfn=['nwcan','wnam','cecan','nweur','sweur','nsib','csib','tib',$
'esib','allsites']
;
rawdat=fltarr(4,2000)
for i = nreg-1 , nreg-1 do begin
fn='mxd.'+harryfn(i)+'.pa.mean.dat'
print,fn
openr,1,fn
readf,1,rawdat
close,1
;
densadj=reform(rawdat(2:3,*))
ml=where(densadj eq -99.999,nmiss)
densadj(ml)=!values.f_nan
;
x=reform(rawdat(0,*))
kl=where((x ge 1400) and (x le 1992))
x=x(kl)
densall=densadj(1,kl) ; all bands
densadj=densadj(0,kl) ; 2-6 bands
;
; Now normalise w.r.t. 1881-1960
;
mknormal,densadj,x,refperiod=[1881,1960],refmean=refmean,refsd=refsd
mknormal,densall,x,refperiod=[1881,1960],refmean=refmean,refsd=refsd
;
; APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,x)
densall=densall+yearlyadj
;
; Now plot them
;
filter_cru,20,tsin=densall,tslow=tslow,/nan
cpl_barts,x,densall,title='Age-banded MXD from all sites',$
xrange=[1399.5,1994.5],xtitle='Year',/xstyle,$
zeroline=tslow,yrange=[-7,3]
oplot,x,tslow,thick=3
oplot,!x.crange,[0.,0.],linestyle=1
;
endfor
;
; Restore the Hugershoff NHD1 (see Nature paper 2)
;


===========================================================

Why are these people getting paid to produce this kind of artificial data manipulation ? ..... I was particularly amused that he called the variable that applied the artificial smoothing the fudge factor.... (see link) .....

There are rumours that Professor Phil from the CRU has stood down whilst a full review of his "team" and his "teams" practices get under way..... lets hope it's not a whitewash like his AR4 report/data to the IPCC ??? They've had 20 million of public money to hack up a valid data set, manipulate it to show what they want it to show, throw a few hockey sticks ....and then promptly lose the original data...when somebody asks for it through a freedom of information request..... incompetent doesn't even cover it .....

There is a particularly good article about all of this here ... it's in pdf format and well worth a read

Saturday 28 November 2009

Microsoft / Google Maps

I thought that they only refreshed mapping data every once in a blue moon, but I was surprised to find out that they have refreshed the mapping on Microsoft maps quite recently, when I zoomed in on our house and you can clearly see the trampoline and tent towards the top of the right hand side of the screen, and the workshop on the left, you can even see Duran Duran centre screen with the Terrano next to it.... it must have been taken in or around the time of my stepdaughters birthday because that is when we had the tent out on the back field... amazing level of detail, I can even see Freya's slide on the back lawn....

As for me I'm suffering from either swine flu or a very bad head/chest cold, Freya's already had it and she turned into the amazing green snot monster with a temperature at one point of 40c !!..... It's not often I refuse to go out but I had to turn down an invite to our friends daughters 3rd birthday, which I was a bit gutted about, but I honestly do not feel well enough to be let outdoors let alone socialise.... I've got one of those hacking coughs which hurts your head ... hopefully I'll shake it off soon... I don't do being ill very well ......(sigh)

Friday 27 November 2009

Engrish..... It's just funny


^^Love this one ^^










^^COLESLAW ???^^

^^Makes you wonder how big their assault rifles are ?^^


^^ I think they meant BBQ flavour^^

^^I have to admit it does look a bit dodgy to me as well ^^

It reminds me of when Mitsubishi had the Mitsubishi Colt car here in the UK then they released for sale the next in line of their "equine named" range of cars ... but somewhere it got lost in translation and was badged "Starion" here in the UK.... I think they meant "Stallion" .... although Mitsubishi meant "Star of Orion" ..... (yeah right I can't imagine the car being called Betelgeuse, Rigel, Saiph, Alnitak, Mintaka, Alnilam, Hatsya and Meissa because they are the stars that form Orion ) besides the previous car was called a "Colt" go figure !!!

There must have been a few embarrassed faces at the launch show, and many many scraping bows.....

Thursday 26 November 2009

Dump your shares in alternative energy companies !!!

Unless you've been in a cave for the past 20 or so years you'll have heard about the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth, and now even governments are listening to the IPCC (who are mainly a political group, not scientific) .....

It seems a hacker has stolen 61 Megabytes of emails between global warming scientists at Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia and it's pretty damning stuff in that :-

Collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, Conspiracy, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and more......Oh dear the gravy train has been derailed.... you silly, silly scientists .... (pah)

and here is a taster of what has been going on.... Oh It's in the public domain and has been disseminated to thousands of servers around the world now so prosecution is remote to say the least ;¬)


From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@xxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ
UK

The "hide the decline" statement is about the tree ring data which at 1960 suddenly stop on the IPCC graph... they stop because they didn't want to show that...... embarrassingly instead of the tree ring data showing the earth was warming it actually shows a decline in temperatures from 1960 onwards.... hardly science is it ? to simply NOT show the data because it puts your work very firmly in the camp of "Oh shit we're wrong" ???... I thought scientists were supposed to be independent ??? it smacks of the fear of grant money being withdrawn to me.....

They've also sent emails to each other stating that they should delete emails from certain people because of marital problems... or in other words we have to be careful especially when a woman scorned is about....who knows ? but why would they want to delete emails talking about the AR4 data ??? did it show exactly the opposite of what they were trying to prove ? again hardly science..... and I LOVED the....

"Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years"

I'm sorry but that is an EPIC fail in accuracy, massaging the figures to make them look right ??? you remember the saying don't you ? there are lies, damn lies and anthropogenic global warming... sorry statistics..... the only anthropogenic warming going on is the hot air being generated by the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia !!! Global warming does exist but it's not through anything we as humans have made a great contribution to, the biggest contribution to global warming is the sun and water vapour... NOT CO2 !!!

This is going to blow the whole AGW myth wide open.... (hopefully) Remember the 1970's and the impending ice age ?.... well this is much more serious because billions of dollars have been ploughed into this myth.... heads are going to roll.... OR the CRU will be discredited by the Global Warming lentil eating hippies....but that's pretty hard because the IPCC relied heavily on their data (sorry that should have been spelt GARBAGE) I reckon we should push for Jeremy Clarkson to head the committee to look into the fraudulent claims for government grants into global warming research

You can download the hacked emails & documents from here

(might be a good idea to run your antivirus checker on it, although mine showed it as clean and it's mostly documents and text files, the text files look a bit strange because they are from a unix machine, but you can still read them, they are missing the CRLF that Windows requires to format it correctly)

Sunday 22 November 2009

Oh here we go again.......

It looks like the Scottish Parliament will be given powers to ban air weapons, because they have had a spate of air weapon injuries and deaths up there.... You only have to ask if the banning of hand guns after Dunblane had any effect on the circulation of illegal weapons ? or a decrease in gun related crime .....well did it ?... no it didn't... there isn't a day that goes by where you don't hear about some shooting somewhere in the country....

When are the politicians going to learn that banning something doesn't make it go away, you only have to look at drugs, they are banned.... are they off the streets ? do we have any less drug addicts ?... are there any less drug dealers ?..... of course not... but I guess if some document exists somewhere whereby the government has said "Thou shalt not !!" somebody else will exist where they say "Up yours !!"

But getting back to firearms, and just to fill you in on some of the legalities of air weapons.... not airsoft, paintball or BB guns, I mean something designed to fire a projectile usually made of lead or some similar type of material at no higher muzzle velocity than 12ft/lbs .... because make no mistake about it air weapons are firearms, they are not a toy, and certainly shouldn't be used by children unless under supervision, and any air weapon that fires a projectile at a higher muzzle velocity than 12ft/lbs requires a firearms certificate and a lockable gun cabinet.

Air weapons can and do kill in the wrong hands, some people simply do not realise how fast a pellet of say .22 calibre leaves the barrel of an air rifle.... and to put things into perspective what exactly does 12ft/lb mean ?

in answer to the first question .22 pellets can leave an air rifle barrel at between 650 feet per second and 800 feet per second (some faster some slower)... but it is very dependant on how heavy the pellet is, a .177 calibre pellet can reach speeds of over 1000 feet per second... so what is 650 feet per second ? well that's around 443 miles per hour and 1000 feet per second is 681 miles per hour....

12 ft/lb means it's muzzle velocity in feet per second times the projectile weight in pounds and air rifle pellets are weighed in grains average being 12 - 16 grains

basically it means that most legal air rifles @ 12ft/lbs can easily penetrate a human skull at ranges of up to 30 yards....

So yes air weapons can be lethal, but the same could be said for any bit of machinery in the wrong hands, a car for instance ? a bread knife ? cricket bat ?

It's all down to who is in control of them and what they are using them for.... banning an inanimate object doesn't stop the person who wants to use the object to injure/kill/maim somebody, nor does it reduce the circulation of them... since 1996 (Dunblane) and the political knee jerk reaction to it...... gun crime has increased by four fold not decreased..... go figure

Saturday 21 November 2009

I've got the unenviable task

Of re-installing Windows XP on my computer.... it's not that XP crashed or got infected with a virus, it's just that I've kept it limping along after many registry repairs and re-installs it was getting a bit ridiculous waiting for it to boot up every time... (we're talking a good 5 minutes here and my computer is no slouch it's just XP had accumulated so much driftwood over the years that it spent most of it's time fighting it's way through it ....) .....The last time I physically installed XP on this hard drive from scratch was about 5 years ago....it's since had a new motherboard, new CPU new sound card, and various other new bits and bobs....... so that's not bad going .... I've now got a check-list as to what I need to recover from my backup to bring me back to square one once more....

You simply do not realise what you actually use on a computer until it's gone.... no doubt over the next few weeks I'll have to dip into my offline backup drive to resurrect some utility or the like ....

The only other news of note was that Xbox boy is now Xbox man...... he had a good night last night for his 18th birthday party, we had some friends come over and Andrea's Dad... and a surprise visit from Xbox man's girlfriend...and the wine and beer flowed along with with pretty nice food..... and then today we all went down to the Quayside Restaurant for a slap up meal courtesy of Andrea's father, unfortunately Andrea's mother couldn't make it because she was working, but lots of pictures were taken and Xbox man had his first legal pint !! :) He also got more money for his birthday than he has ever had before..... He's also doing very well at his new job... things are looking up for Xbox-Man !!!

He's off out tonight with his girlfriend and some of his mates, no doubt he is going to paint the town in a rainbow of colours, and knowing Xbox man probably a few pavements as well.... ahhhh well you're only 18 once, you may as well get the liver damage in early while your body can still hack it eh ?

Thursday 19 November 2009

Labels ..... how I hate them !!

It seems the British Humanist Association you know the ones behind the "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" plastered all over 30 buses in London... Now I'm the first to admit that I don't believe in God, I used to but I don't any more.... but that doesn't mean I will be ramming my non belief down my daughters throat as she grows up.... I'll let her decide what she wants to believe in .... if she asks my thoughts on the subject then I'll tell her what I believe to be true.... as I'm sure any level headed Christian would.

I can see both sides of the coin on this one, on the one hand the Humanists are saying "let children grow up and make up their own minds, instead of having their belief indoctrinated into them" and that goes for Christians and any other faith such as Muslim, Buddhist or even Jedi.

But Humanists are just as guilty as Christians in that some impose their belief system on their children.... so there is little difference really except one is at one end of the scale and the other at the opposing end..... The whole point is we all "believe" in something be that God or the lack thereof.....

Religion has caused a LOT of trouble over man's existence, if it wasn't Crusaders chopping off heads in the holy land then it was the Saracens hacking the knights to bits.... more recently of course we have Jihad with extremist Muslims waging war on the west and all things western.... and of course our governments commitment to shooting/killing as many Terry Taliban's as possible....

So you see Religion has a lot to answer for over the years, rather than bring people together it's brought out the worst in them.......but that's the problem with having a higher brain function than the other species around us... we have to go that one step further and think beyond ourselves....

Lions kill when they are hungry, as do Sharks and most other predators.... Man on the other hand will kill because you go to a different church, or are simply a different religion, or even if your mobile phone is better than theirs..... or sometimes simply for fun.....

Anyway getting back to more current religion caused arsery ...... We seem to have forgotten that the USSR (as was) tried to control Afghanistan but were beaten by the Mujahideen, which it is rumoured were trained and supplied by various governments around the world who didn't want a communist Afghanistan. Then when the USSR pulled out because they were getting hammered the Mujahideen turned on themselves and had a bloody civil war.... then of course the Taliban emerged or "Students of Islam" as it means......and we are pretty much up to date..... We aren't going to win this war, just like the Russians didn't.... you can't fight religious zealots <- oh the irony in the etymology.

The British Government is starting to wane on its commitment in Afghanistan recent press reports are outlining that an exit strategy is on the horizon... I think they have realised that the death toll is simply going to continue and that although on a smaller scale, Afghanistan is turning into a British Vietnam..... see humans NEVER learn their lessons through history do they ????

Tuesday 17 November 2009

Laugh ? I nearly fell off my chair......

You have got to read this David Icke fella .... I think he is actually suffering from something quite delusional and quite probably serious... but the thing that made me laugh the longest and hardest were all the credit cards and methods of payment he accepts at the bottom of every page.... Hmmmm so maybe he isn't as loony as he makes out eh ??? a true loon wouldn't charge for his snippets of wisdom or services, he'd want to evangelise for free....like prophets of old.... "those are my juniper bushes !!!" now wouldn't he ? .... apparently he is a conspiracy investigator whatever that is.... or is he ? maybe he staged the moon landings himself in Elstree Studios , or quite possibly has a collection of grassy knolls in his back yard (all signed and limited edition of course....paypal accepted)

His latest exposé is all about the swine flu vaccine and how it's been engineered to kill us all
and how the H1N1 virus was engineered to allow the reptilian overlords to control us and reduce the population..... not to mention the sea monsters which will swallow up all the BP oil drilling platforms.....

No..... if you EVER think you are going slightly mad have a quick read of what David Icke is sprouting about it will clearly make you realise that you are in fact as normal as the rest of us and not a few slates short of a full roof, or indeed several sandwiches short of a picnic


Ohhhh and the LRO from NASA has photographed most of the Apollo landing sites and you can actually see the LEM that was left on the surface when the Astronauts left..... I guess that means David Icke will have to sell all his moon rocks at a cut down price now .... who knows maybe he could re-market them as Reptilian gall stones ????

(hmmmm mind you the conspiracy theorists won't trust any multimillion dollar spacecraft because it was sent by NASA who of course staged the whole Apollo mission in the Mojave desert back in the 60's !! .....Damn foiled again !!! ) bloody lunatics !!!

Sunday 15 November 2009

What a miserable day .....


Made all the worse by the fact that my parents are enjoying Australian sun on their faces (well tomorrow at least !!) .... I can handle bad weather like snow, ice, hailstones... I actually enjoy that kind of weather.... The most fun I've had outdoors was traversing Crib goch in my crampons and ice axe on a near white out in December in North Wales hanging on for dear life... I'm glad it was low visibility have you seen the drop ??? .... Anyway I digress .....it's just the dreary wetness that seems to continually empty down on us here recently.... but getting back to my parents they flew out on the enormous Airbus A380-800 so they should at least have some leg room .... I tried tracking them on google earth but although I knew the flight number I didn't know the ID they used.... I think I got them as it was the only A380 going in that direction (Singapore) but then they dropped off the radar for that particular airport... I presume they went out of range rather than hit the deck like a dart.....or to use the words of Billy Connelly

Our Broadband is still rubbish, BT have sent us another hub but even the new hub gives up at night.... so no nearer a fix.... I've had to re-flash the old version 1 Homehub to run the original Speedtouch 7G firmware to give us ANY broadband .... long story... needless to say it works.... well better than any solution BT have given us thus far ....

Freya aka "Destructo Girl" very nearly chewed my "very" expensive ipod earphones to death... how they survived I have no idea .... but I guess they were just too chewy to resist !!

Saturday 14 November 2009

Australia

Well my parents have been flying now for three hours and forty five minutes on their way to Perth, Australia to visit my cousin Sue and her family.... My mother was really nervous about flying, she hasn't flown before, I'd presumed she had flown out to Holland when she was a young woman before meeting my father but no.... she's never been on a flight before or a plane of any description.... so here she is signed up to fly on the biggest jet airline thus far the A380 Airbus.... she's DVT socked up to the eyeballs as is my father .... They have a stop off at Singapore airport for refuelling then off to Australia and Perth. My mother couldn't get it into her head the time differences ..... either way I think her body will tell her she's just flown nearly 24 hours even if her watch won't !!!

They have a busy time out there because Sue has an itinerary with all the good places to visit and my parents have promised FOMO boy a boomerang (real) and some aboriginal art for teenage moody strop daughter because she's doing that in her GCSE syllabus.....

They will have a blast I'm sure, it will be so hard lazing around the pool at my cousin Sue's house in the suburbs of Perth ......waited on hand and foot.... rather them than me .... (not!!!)... seriously though they deserve a decent break.... and three weeks isn't bad in Auz !!

We've just had our friends around Niki and Justin and they have plied us with mulled wine and beer and some festive mince pies (bit early but who cares ?)..... Xbox boy's 18th birthday is looming I'm sure he will have a blast, he usually does...... regardless

as for me ..... well I'm waiting for the Ipod to die again .... to give me something to do !!! ho hum




I did however take this rather stunning photograph of a rainbow just outside our house this morning...... as you can see the weather is lovely ...... bet they don't get rain in Australia like we do here in Wales ;-) .... I'll have to visit our neighbour to see if I can steal his pot of gold !!!

Friday 13 November 2009

Itunes and rain

It seems the latest incarnation of Itunes (version 9.0.25) has killed quite a few ipods, I was thinking it was Freya killing ours with the Sharpie pen and consequent rubbing with wet wipes... but my iPod died again.... Itunes has definitely something to do with it judging by the numerous posts on the Apple forums.... I've resurrected ours again ... how long it will stay resurrected is another thing ... we shall see....

Then there is the rain of which we have had plenty of these past few days, I took xbox boy for an interview for a job in Llanelli (which he got !!) and on the way back the heavens emptied it was like driving underwater on the back roads from Llanelli.... Needless to say Duran Duran coughed and died when it was driven past a moist hedge on the way back.... to be fair it was more than a moist hedge the water was at least 5" deep on the road, and even though I crawled through it at just a bit faster than the spread of bacteria.... it still coughed/backfired twice then died... so I had to wave the traffic past us on a pretty sharp corner.... I wasn't looking forward to getting my feet wet, but thankfully the engine sprang to life after a couple of tries.....phew :)

The trip back home after picking up FOMO boy from school early because of the torrential rain was a bit more exciting.... we have a T-Junction at the bottom of the Bancyfelin road and it was completely underwater by at least 5 to 8 inches of water.... just scraping the sills on the door I think.... we got through that on a wing and a prayer, only to be confronted with nothing short of a running waterfall that was our normal road home ....... the hill looked like a very flat waterfall.... I've never seen so much water on a road before.... it was at this point I thought "we aren't going to make it up this hill...." it was that bad if you had got out of the car and stood in the middle of the road the water would have been shooting past your knees with the spray off your feet... but Duran Duran did us proud .... coughed a few times but got us up there....

apparently it's not the worst of it we have more on the way ... St Clears I think is going to be particularly badly hit because the Taf and Cynin rivers have a flood warning and St Clears floods if somebody spits their drink out in one of the beer gardens.... so I think they are in for a bad time...... We are already cut off at our T-Junction and Meidrim is probably out as well....Andrea barely made it back from her marathon training session ......that only leaves the back way to Banyfelin left .... mind you if the water reaches our house..... all my readers are dead anyway !!! not that we are high up or anything ;¬)

Wednesday 11 November 2009

Wasn't expecting this at all !!

I was doing my usual trawl of the BBC news website when I came across this item about an old friend Brannan Tempest .

He lives in Leeds and is madder than a box of frogs, but I was sad to hear his girlfriend Pippa had been injured in a car accident....I hope she fully recovers...... That said it does kind of follow that only Brannan could get a 2.4 metre high carved horse from Indonesia nicked from outside of his house......

This is the man who found a display firework mortar bomb which hadn't gone off at Rounday Park in Leeds after a commercial firework display....you know the ones where you hear the "thump" as it's fired into the air from a mortar tube then you get that massive star burst.... well he took it home and set it off in his field.... I think that's where the US military got the idea for the "Daisycutter" bomb.... his field remained pretty bare for several weeks....I suppose it's one way of cutting your grass !!! ..... thankfully he wasn't injured .... just deaf for a while... ahhh the things you do when you're young eh ?

Anyway it was nice to see him even if it was on a BBC News report about stolen wooden horses I hope they catch the thieving swine's !! I'm pleased to say he has less hair than me.... but not by much ;¬)

Addendum :- I've since found out that they recovered his trojan horse from a place called Castleford and it's been handed back to him !!! :)

Tuesday 10 November 2009

This made me laugh.....

A woman has been convicted of being too noisy whilst having sex apparently they recorded noise levels slightly in excess of 47 decibels !!! horrendous !!

or so it seems until you look at a scale of comparable noises made everyday .....


For instance a Jet taking off at 25 metres is 150db and you would probably suffer eardrum rupture and then at the other end of the scale you have breathing .... you know in ....out.....in....out .....well that comes in at a deafening 10db.... 47db comes in between what you would experience in a quiet library or possibly a conversation in your own home..... hardly causing blood to spatter out of your ears..... now is it ?

but their neighbours were probably right.... things can sound REALLY loud if you have your ear to a glass on the wall ......

It reminds me of my old neighbours in Kippax, my ex wife and I had a bit of a war with them when I was renovating the bathroom and putting a power shower in (all the rage in the 80's you know ;¬) ) .... I'd warned them that I was going to be banging nails into the bathroom floor in readiness for bracing the floor for the ceramic tiles to be laid, and I'd told them I was going to have to hammer in a LOT of nails to get the marine ply to stay put....They were ok with all of that ...... but no sooner did I start driving the nails in than "MogaDon the mad monk of Kippax" and "Manic Maria" his wife started hammering the partition wall with something ...... so the devil in me rushed into our bedroom on the other side of the house and started banging the partition wall ... then running back and hammering a few more nails in on the other side of the house..... mind you they were strange.... I was once woken up by Gregorian chant music blaring out at 3am in the morning !!! (hence the mad monk title)..... So nice now to live without neighbours :)

Gary Glitter / Paul Gadd

I've just watched a drama set in a parallel Britain where the death penalty had been re-introduced for murder or rape of children under 12 years of age.....

it was called "The execution of Gary Glitter"

Now I'm no fan of Gary Glitter/Paul Gadd (never was ...not even in the 70's in his hey day !!) he's been convicted on numerous occasions of sexual offences against children and not only in this country.... thereby confirming that he is indeed a paedophile.... BUT

I think Channel 4 overstepped the mark on making it into a docudrama type program, mixing fact with fiction and indeed mixing real life people with fictional characters.... Yes Gary Glitter is a child sex offender, but it wouldn't have been that hard to disguise it's parallels with the real Paul Gadd by calling Gary Glitter .....say......Donny Sparkle or Paul Cadd.... I mean we are all pretty intelligent (well some are) and would have made the connection anyway.....

Paul Gadd is a Paedophile and in most peoples eyes he is lower than a skunks backside.... but does that mean he can have his name used like this ? can a TV company get away with this ?

More worryingly what was the point of this Docu-Drama ? was it to point out the realities of capital punishment....or was it to show how great it would be if we could kill every convicted paedophile ? or was it to poke a stick at what Channel 4 thought was sub human and had no rights, therefore wouldn't sue them for defamation of character because nothing they said wasn't true and the rest was quite obviously artistic licence ???? does that make it fair ????

They are treading on very thin ice methinks, and I thought it went just that bit too far, yes Paul Gadd is scum but that doesn't mean it's an open season on him or anybody else for that matter to allow anything to go by uncensored.....

They'll be portraying Gordon Brown as a literary genius and wordsmith next .......to you, you and you, isn't you ;¬)



Monday 9 November 2009

Sagem DVR Update

It's been a long time coming.... an update to fix a minor problem with my 250GB DVR .... it's only a minor problem but it's bloody annoying....

Anyway today is the day the official update over the air arrives ..... (sigh) and my DVR has been nudging me to do the update .......I've tried it four times now and each time it comes up with ER14 which means :-

Er14 - Faulty data signals received by the digital-box

or translated into human means a car or possibly a small insect with excess static charge built up in it's wings has passed by the house and disrupted the signal so badly it's corrupted the update..... (double sigh)

I've just got to pick a time when no cars or statically charged objects are passing.... (or maybe it's my 1970's nylon Y-front underpants causing the interference !!!) it's a bit of a problem when you live in a fringe signal reception area and you have a TV aerial the size of a small planet perched on your roof going through a mast head amplifier then onto a distribution amplifier which has the ability to decode SETI signals from outer space let alone from the Preseli transmitter !!! to say our TV reception is sensitive to outside influences would be an understatement .... and to think some people can pick up TV signals with no aerial at all !!!

(make that a 5th attempt to update it.... it failed again !!!)

it's going to have to be working before my step daughter gets home to watch
Hollyoaks .....or her life will be over !!!

for those of you searching for Sagem Error Codes ... here they are :)

Er00 - The software that was available for upgrading was of an older or of the same version as the one already in the digital-box.

Er01, Er02 -The upgrade failed. Some information was missed out.

Er03 - The internal memory is not large enough to receive the upgrade.

Er04 - The signal was disturbed during the upgrade.

Er05 - Wrong type of data was received during upgrade.

Er06 - Not used.

Er07 - Access problem in back-up memory (EEPROM).

Er08 - Access problem in video memory.

Er09 - Can not find any data to do an upgrade.

Er10 - Poor or no cable-TV signal.

Er11,12 - Not used.

Er13 - Unauthorised data signals received by the digital-box.

Er14 - Faulty data signals received by the digital-box.

Pb01 - A problem in the ROM memory is detected.

Pb02 - Memory size is too small.

Pb03 - A problem occurred during start up (initialisation problem).

Pb04 - Internal communication failure.

PbF9 - Hardware error identified during start-up


oh and if your Sagem gets stuck with an error message... wait until the error message appears then press the standby button on your remote.... that will revert to your previous firmware :)


Addendum:- It looks as if they have pulled the update.... by the looks of it many people were getting ER14's when they tried to update.... Ahhhh well nice try Sagem but no cigar !!!

Sunday 8 November 2009

It's official.... Simon Cowell is a cock

I was under the impression that X-Factor was a singing competition so why oh why did Simon Cowell decide to put Jedward vs Lucie to the public vote ? He knew what the outcome would be he just did a Pontius Pilate on us..... have a look at what they are saying about him on Twitter


We all know why he went to the public vote, it was ratings/money vs talent....

I'm not going to watch X-Factor any more he's blown any credibility he had with me and as far as I am concerned it's not a talent show any more it's all about ratings and money.... who the hell would buy any music Jedward produce ????

I guess Ireland didn't have a catastrophic phone system failure after all :( ........shame

Poor Lucie she must be gutted to lose out to those two performing seals..... I hope somebody signs her up with a recording contract that girl deserves so much more than what she got tonight !! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Saturday 7 November 2009

Ipod 5th Gen Video

I've just spent the best part of two days trying to revive an ipod from a fate worse than death.....ie/ Freya !!!

It all started with a Sharpie Pen... you know the ones which are impossible to remove from anything and everything ? Well Freya got hold of one..... a lovely black one.... and after she wrote all over the lovely white wall next to my office, she saw her masterpiece and thought why stop there ? She then started on the lovely white Ipod, she wrote all over the screen and click wheel.... fortunately Sharpie pens are not as indelible as they claim to be.. and also fortunate for me that I had a rubber protective case over the ipod, otherwise she would have coloured the whole thing in black.... but she was VERY pleased with her artistic streak :) ... There was only one thing for it !!


Step one :- remove Sharpie Pen scribblings with wet wipes.... it all came off bar a little bit on the click wheel.... phew !! (and now that's gone as well.... it does make you wonder what they put in those wet wipes ??) .....

Step Two :- power up Ipod

Step Three:- stare in disbelief as Ipod has a monumental hissy fit..... and promptly shuts down after a horrendous clicking sound.....

Step Four :- Start Ipod up .... watch it shutdown again chirping merrily as it goes

Step Five :- Connect Ipod to PC and watch as Itunes completely wipes out all the songs and films it contains.... stating very dead pan that ......"your NEW Ipod is ready for use."... (it wasn't by the way ... it was VERY broken)

Step Six:- Start it up again and swear profusely at white doorstop as it displays everything in Chinese....or possibly Mandarin...... Gotta love technology


After much scratching of my head I realised that it had had what amounted to a monumental brain fart and consequently thought it was connected to an Apple computer which probably accounted for the HFS+ file system I could see on the Ipod thank God for Mac Drive Software !!! which is free thankfully.... for a 7 day trial at least..... it's back in the land of the living...(I think) after creating a vanilla VMware virtual machine running XP on my XP system (go figure !! my copy of XP refuses to even acknowledge an IPod has been plugged in !!) and fooling it into thinking it wasn't a doorstop but an Ipod ......but it wouldn't surprise me if Freya used it to hammer something into the wall... watch this space for Ipod obituaries in the near future.....


For anybody else out there suffering the same problem I have an INF file which I've created which can drag your Ipod 5G back from certain death ;¬) and the magic numbers and letters are USB\VID_05AC&PID_1209\000A2700162D7F32 .....


addendum:- I've fixed my PC not recognising the Ipod.... it involved a fresh copy of USBSTOR.INF file and the USBSTOR.SYS file being placed in the C:\Windows\Inf directory you'll have to un-hide the directory with explorer under tools/folder options.... how they got hosed during all of this is beyond me... Anyway it's 1:41am in the morning and I'm chin strapped .... but I have a happily syncing Ipod sitting next to me :)

double addendum :- iPod Diagnostic Mode

Not many people know about this, but I am going to share it with you how to boot your Ipod into diagnostic mode :)


Steps:

1. You need to restart your iPod before putting it into Diagnostic Mode. Check that your hold switch is off by sliding the switch away from the headphone jack. Toggle it on and off to be safe.
2. Press and hold the following combination of buttons buttons simultaneously for approximately 10 seconds to reset the iPod.
* Original iPod 1G to 3G: "Menu" and "Play/Pause"
* All newer iPods, including 4G, 5G,Video, Classic, Nano, and Mini: "Menu(top button)" and "Select(centre button)"
3. The Apple logo will appear and you should feel the hard drive spinning up. Immediately press and hold the following sequence of buttons:
* iPod 1G to 3G: "REW", "FFW" and "Select"
* All newer iPods, including 4G Video, Classic, Nano, and Mini: "Back" and "Select"
You will hear an audible chirp sound (3G models and higher) and the Apple logo should appear backwards (older iPods). You are now in Diagnostic Mode.
4. Navigate the list of tests using "REW" and "FFW" on older models, or using the scroll wheel on newer ones.

Once you are in the Diagnostic Mode, use the "Forward" (>>) and "Previous" (<<) buttons, or scroll wheel on newer iPods, to navigate the menu. Each thing you see on the list is a certain test that can be done. To start a test, press "Select". To exit a test, press the "Play/Pause" (>||) button. For more information of the details of this menu......... happy testing :)