October 2007

Saturday 27^th October 2007

Ferrari Driving at Goodwood

Yesterday, I went with my Dad and Uncle to Goodwood Circuit in West Sussex, England.  For his birthday, our family paid for my Dad to drive a Ferrari 308 GTB three laps around the track with an instructor.  Here are some photos from the day:

Ferrari 308 GTB

My Dad did enjoy it somewhat, but we think that for £99 you could have got more.  For example, the instructor could have driven the car himself for one lap to show what the car is capable of.  Also the instructor could have allowed the driver to drive without so much instructing, at least for one of the laps.  But I suppose you get these things if you're prepared to pay more.

eBay

Also, the buyer for the 1.8 Zetec engine I listed on eBay came and collected it today - after trying to sell it on and off for about two years.  If only all eBay transactions could go this well (no I didn't receive the wheels yesterday as they promised).  I'm giving them until 7^th November before I ask for my money back.  I'm not sure what the process for that is yet.

Tuesday 23^rd October 2007

Welcome

Welcome to my blog.  My reasons for writing this are to keep you informed as to what I have been getting up to with regard to martin2k as well as other things that I am doing.

Originally I wanted to write the blog in the Forum using the blog plugin, but as some people were not interested in writing blogs themselves, this feature was not installed hence the reason why I am starting it on the main site instead.

This is not going to be a replacement for the News section of the Forum (as far as my topics are concerned anyway) - I will still post major changes to the News section.

TWAIN for NoteBook

Recently, I have been working on trying to get TWAIN to work with Visual Basic 6.0 (which I still use).  I found a website called Dosadi, which has a free DLL file available for this purpose.  Unfortunately there is a problem with the file in that when the cancel button is clicked on in the scanning dialog box, the whole program freezes and VB can only be closed with the Task Manager.  Luckily a helpful member of their forum has recompiled a version of the DLL, with this problem fixed, which he sent me today.  The reason I need TWAIN functionality is because I think it would be a very useful addition to my NoteBook program.  Now I just need to find a good way of writing JPEG files...

'New' Wheels

On the 13^th September, I bought some refurbished alloy wheels for my car from eBay.  Unfortunately due to problems with the couriers, I have yet to receive them.  The wheels are 16" rather than the 17" ones I currently have.  I have heard that larger wheels can slow the car down, but my main reason for buying them is their subtler looks:

16" Mondeo Wheels

They are the same as the original 15" Escort GTi wheels, but are 16" from a Mondeo.  They are due to arrive on Friday and I will let you know if they do...

New Graphics Card

Lastly, I have been looking for a new AGP graphics card to replace my ATI Radeon 9800XT.  I want to spend around £50 and I think that the NVIDIA 7600 GT maybe the one to go for, but I have not decided on this completely yet.