Doughie

No. Reason there's no overtaking is massive dependence of the car's on aerodynamics for grip. If you put on big slicks and completely removed front and rear wings, no rear diffuser etc, you would get some great racing. You need to make the cars more like giant very powerful karts. Anyone who races competitive karts knows how much overtaking there is there, and also in Formula Ford, F.Vauxhall Jnr (now defunct i think) and similar formulas that are not dependent on aerodynamics.

Doubt it, simply because you're never going to have more than about 12 or 15 GPS satellites in the sky, wherever you are on Earth and whatever time and day it is. USA is launching some more GPS satellites and these are superior to the older ones but i think these are intended to be replacements and it's not going to bump up substantially the number of satellites in orbit. Oh yes - thought you might like to know that GPS receivers work out of a plane window too (small window though they are). I got my max. recorded speed this way on my Garmin etrex Vista - 556mph !!! Try not to let a stewardess see you though - they tend to get a bit nervous about it and think it's a missile homing device or mobile phone or something. One saw me using mine by the window in about 2002 and asked me what it was. When i told her she said that the pilot already had one of those and that she didn't think we needed two on-board ! I switched it off....

HC42 is a fine cam and should serve you well. none of the Sony's like that come with a firewire cable. you can buy one pretty much anywhere though.

Road car : 308GTS or Ultima Canam Open Wheel race car : Generally all fairly ugly but i'll pick Brabham BT44 Closed Wheel race car : Ferrari 333SP or 860 Monza Pics: (you can work out which is which)

I've got a Sony HC1000 (3 CCD) and it's great. Am upgrading to a Hi-Definition one in the next few weeks though - Sony A1E. Am travelling a lot to a lot of nice exotic places so i wanted the hi-def resolution. HDV format is 1440 x 1080 pixels for the video, as opposed to normal DV resolution which is 720 x 576 pixels. The number of pixels on the CCD/CMOS sensor is not the resolution that the video will be. Standard def. DV is 720x576. Hoewver, more pixels on sensor will give better stills, i agree, but for that it's far better to use a stills camera anyway. This new Hi-Def cam will give almost 4 times the resolution of my current digital camcorder and the video quality in good light is very hard to distinguish from the GBP3300 Sony Z1 or Sony FX1. Editing packages that edit HDV (Hi-Def) are now avaialble for PC and Mac, although it is mighty stressful for your hardware to edit HDV, so you gonna need a top-spec PC or even better a G5 twin-processor PowerMac, running Final Cut Pro 5. Doughie CEO, video nerds R' Us.

Win 98 was a TRULY horrible vile unreliable buggy weird and f*cked-up OS. Often it would just plain refuse to log-out and shut-down at all. I had to just manually power-off with the power button and then next time i booted up it would patronise me with a message like "you idiot you shut down without logging off. Next time try to do it properly you stupid user." I don't think i ever managed to read that message once without verbally abusing Gates, his junky OS, and his wa*nky crapware company.

previous one was 'terminator' er, wrong. - Edward Furlong was not in Terminator (1984). He was in T2-Judgment Day. (ps. OT, but i think Claire Forlani in Meet Joe Black was bl00dy gorgeous.) carry on chaps - sorry to interrupt.

An afternoon with a coupla bottles of T-cut should sort that out.

Ah yes Glynis Barber was a BABE. Ok here's another : Purdey from New Avengers. (aka a young joanna lumley).

Er yeah i've done karts for about 8years. (not the last 2 though due to being a bit beaten up). Indoors : 'The Raceway' used to be a fave place about 3 yrs ago. It's about 4 minutes walk from Kings Cross tube/train station. Up York road. I presume they're still going. They did a track revamp about 2 or 3 yrs ago and i didn't approve of it (they made it less technical in my opinion) and so didn't really go there again. I've done maybe 20 or 30 endurance races there - 3hours continuous for an endurance race. Ahh!! just checked and here's their site: http://www.theraceway.net Also there's an indoor place in Streatham, South London (all these tracks seem to be in dodgy areas!) which is run by playscape. info : http://www.playscape.co.uk/karting/Streatham.html Dayona run a track in somewhere in West london. didn't like that track much though - too mickey mouse. Far better is Daytona International up in Milton Keynes. ou can get a train to Milton Keynes and then a taxi to the track. it's a good track, quite varied, you can do sprint or endurance in pro-karts (twin-engined, 4-stroke, 2x5.5bhp) or in Thunderkarts (single-engined, about 390cc 4-stroke). Choose Thunderkarts if you can cos the pro-karts are like driving a truck and are horrible in the rain. Massive turn-in understeer. not nice, not fun. But generally DAytona International is good fun. if you want proper karting, then 2-stroke karts are the only way to go. For this THE place is Club100. http://www.club100.co.uk Call them, ask for Jon Vigor and say Stuart gave you the recommendation and tell him i want an old-busted-up-man's discount when i next race ! club100 run sprint and endurance 2-stroke kart races outdoors all over the uk with a bias towards southern circuits. most circuits you're gonna need a car to get there. you can do a test day to get some practice in too. (you'll need it if you haven't done a 2-stroke before. light at 75kg per kart, no clutch, no starter, no gearbox, direct-drive, PROPER throttle response, spin it and you stall it. that should keep you going cheers

Cheryl Ladd, the blonde one from Charlie's Angels (bought late 70's). Showing my age, i know...

Lucy. yep she was great - that intellectual but sexy especially as she wore glasses i think and i think with them off she'd have been a belter.

"No come on Steve - you know i wasn't really ready that time. Let's do it again and don't go for it until the word go this time yeah?" - me after not being quite ready for a late-night arm-wrestle with a mate. The 2nd time we did it, there was a horribly loud cracking/snapping noise as my arm broke into 4 pieces, and slammed into the table. 4 hours of surgery, 7inch plate, 11 screws, and quite a lot of shouting and screaming later, i was good as new. (ish.)

Prob with ex-F1 engines is that they have, relatively speaking, no torque. They're all about BHP, not lb.ft. That's why they don't make good road-car engines as a supra is nearly 3times heavier than F1 car. (asides from all the other issues).

Williams has always been my favourite F1 team for donkeys years but the list of reasons why next year is not going to be good is growing: - loss of HP as title sponsor. Potentially therefore less budget next year. - "loss" of BMW = maybe good/maybe bad, but it's change and change always take time to overcome. - loss of Gavin Fisher, chief designer. He was good. (Tlicense how is he now after his bad bike smash ?) - BIG ONE THIS : Change from Michelin to Bridgestone. Probably will result in biggest single loss of lap-time. I think Williams are counting on the sole-tyre supplier in 2007 and think it will be Bridgestone in which case they will have (in theory) a year's headstart in getting to grips with B'stone but just LOOK at how Ferrrari (the evil empire) have struggled with the damn tyres this year. - Loss of Nick Heidfeld. - a very quick reliable and under-rated driver. Webber is good but makes too many mistakes. Top bloke though (have met him at Brands). - Switch to Cosworth - this may be a good engine but again, it's all about packaging and differnet engine has big knock-on effect on all kinds of ancillary components and until Williams knew 100% they were designing car round Cosworth next year, they wouldn't have been able to go full-speed ahead on finalising 2006 design. I'd like to be wrong, as i do like the team a lot, but 2006 has got mid-field at best written all over it, and very possibly somewhere near the back of the grid. ps. i've got a good mate who works at McLaren and he gets the odd bit of goss and info about bits and bobs and it is quite enlightening I must say. in his job he gets to meet pretty much everyone. drivers, mechanics, managers.

yeah i agree that the catwalk thing is maybe the worst bit for a vertigo-inclined person. Honestly it's a must-do and if it helps jim overcome his fear of heights then all well and good. i've done bridge-climb twice now on 2 separate trips. Er, i would advise against climbing Ayers Rock though. - ludicrously dangerous, bl00dy high, bloody hard-work, and the locals take it as an insult as Ayers Rock (or Uluru) is sacred ground. A lot of people have died climbing it and when you go to the base and look up the "route" you can see why..

nope but maybe i should ! LOL just start typing and then i think of another thing which leads to another etc.etc. Oz is great. nice looking chicks too.

oh yeah - forgot that. The Great Ocean Road is a must-do. It starts about 1.5hrs West of Melbourne. Take a couple of days at least for that. Great scenic road. Oh and it's no longer the Twelve Apostles !!! LOL !! One of them FELL DOWN a couple of months ago. So now there's only 11 of them !! I got pics of the 12 though. One place that you MUST do is 'Lake Elizabeth'. It's a lake about 1 hour off the Great Ocean Road. In the middle of nowhere but it's the most amazing place. A dam burst in the 1950's upriver and zillions of tons of water crashed down the valley and smashed everything in its path and created Lake Elizabeth. The 'petrified' tree stumps of trees killed 60years ago all stick out of the lake. it's very weird. great for photos/videos. Oh yeah - i also went Hot Air balloongin too. BRILLIANT ! you can do that in a lot of places, but i did it out of Alice Springs. just fab thing to do, and you're dropped off back at your hotel by 9:30am !! ps. the hot-air burners make stunnign video when the balloon is still on ground, and they're heating up the air. Whole ground glows orange (it's just before sunrise) and makes for amazing video footage. Take a good Mini-Dv-based digital camcorder. I got two, shot 40tapes, ask me anything on that sort of stuff. cheers again

OK i spent 3 months in Oz earlier this year. Brief summary - Melbourne, then flew Alice Springs (slap bang in middle of Oz), then Darwin, then Cairns, then Whitsunday Islands, then Sydney, then Melbourne again. Here's my recommendations on specifics: Melbourne is great - my fave city i think in the world. has the best looking women of anywhere i've been. You will NOT see any fat women there. - it's illegal for fat people to live in Melbourne, and they're specifically barred from walking down the street. I preferred Mebourne to Sydney. Sydney - DEFINITELY 100% do the Harbour Bridge Climb. No make that 200%. It's brilliant, and it's easy to do, the guides are very funny, great fun, great views, totally safe as you're secured with a line all the time. - Opera House of course is great for pics. - Botanical Gardens is GREAT and brilliant for pics. Right near the Opera house. very chilling to wander through there. - Get a Ferry or Cat to Manly. Very cool place. loadsa surfers there. BLUE MOUNTAINS = MUST DO !! they're about 60 miles or so West (inland) from Sydeny. Head for the village of Katoomba in the mountains. SPEC-FUKCING-TACULAR VIEWS !! Go to Echo Point, and also some other views a few miles away. I might try to post up a few pics tomorrow. The Blue by the way is a super-fine oil mist coming from all the Eucalyptus trees. Alice Springs = highly recommended. Right in middle of desert. It's population is about 25,000 and it's the largest town almost anywhere in Oz that's NOT on the coast. i.e. there's a whole lot of nothing much for 1000+ miles in any direction. Ayers Rock (=Uluru) is DEFINITELY worth the trip. It's an amazing chunk of rock and fapping huge. do the sunset/sunrise thing. It rises 348mtrs up from the desert floor (that's approx. 2/3rds the height of the former-World Trade Centre). Flies are BAD, so buy a cheap AUD8 fly-net and an Aussie bush-hat. Wear fly-net over hat and you may retain your sanity. Nearby are the Olgas (huge rock formations) and they're great too. Also do the West MacDonnel ranges. It's a mountain range, a day trip out from Alice Springs. Go to Simpsons Gap, Stanley Creek etc. Oh by the way, on most roads in Northern Territory there's ...... NO SPEED LIMIT !!! yes sir ! Now you're thinking "great i can max. it the whole way". Er, no. The roads undulate quite a bit, there's no kerb just gravel at side of road and a lot of people get it wrong and get on gravel and roll it and die. So about 130kms is sensible. also (this is no joke) try NOT to drive at night, cos you will likely hit wildlife. Fukcing kangaroos everywhere and they're BIG. Also i had 5 wild horses just stroll across road in front of me at 10pm. STROLL. they were slap bang in middle of road, i came round corner, they just stood there. hit the anchors. sh1t scary. if you hit a horse you're in trouble. (i know i know, bottle of T-cut will sort it...). Also i saw buffalo in Oz ! short-tempered b*ggers those things. 15 coming towards me when i was video-ing them and so i backed off and got back in car. OK - go to Kakadu National Park up near Darwin. highly recommended. Take a boat trip at White-Water or white-river. something like that. Loads of crocodiles there. I got great shots of croc feeding. One was 4.7mtrs long - about 15 or 16ft. do not mess with crocs. OK speeding it up - Cairns= great go there. Port Douglas is 1hr north of Cairns = very cool relaxed place and completely different to Cairns. Great rainforest trips there. Book one of those either from Cairns or Port Douglas. Billy-Tea tours is brillaint. Say hi to John - looks a bit like Father Christmas ! Whitsunday islands = very pretty load of islands off Queensland coast. recommended. Brisbane- to be honest, i wasn't impressed. it's just another city. In general in Oz, stay out of the cities cos it's the scenic stuff you want to max. on. Take a GPS with you. I have a Garmin etrex Vista. You can see exactly where you are as it draws a line of where you've been and you can compare to shape of line of road on your map. (you do have a map don't you??). Also you can plot in waypoints, see how far you've got to go, it'll give you an ETA to destination, also altitude etc. About 200quid in the UK, though you can get cheaper ones. Take SHEDLOADS of water if you're going on a mammoth drive + food + maybe UHF radio. Mobile phones don't work in desert dued, and it can be days before another car comes by if you're on a really small road. 2 men (locals) died of thirst in Simpson Desert when i was there. their Land-rover broke down, they had no map, only 20ltrs of water (i did say take a lot of water didnt i?) and no UHF radio. They were found a week later, died under a tree, everything had had a nibble of them. Ok i'll shut-up now. PM me if you want further info. I'll try to post a few pics up in a day or two.

er... yes. not a nice event at all. makes a very loud snapping/cracking noise too. Almost makes it worth keeping a bottle of nitrous round the house in case of any nasty accidents. I didn't even know before that ambulances carry it, but now i know. Recommended ! (NOS, not the arm-wrestling)

4th pic from left in the 1st set is Moraine Lake nr Lake Louise in Alberta Canada. do i win a prize??

Nitrous? - It's bloody marvellous to inhale just after you've broken your arm into 4 pieces in the middle of an arm-wrestle. Been there, done that. (seriously).

Conalex i've been several times. Best place i think for location and value is a Red Roof Inn. http://www.redroof.com I stayed in one very near Empire State Bldg. 34st i think. Also it really was a good deal - BIG room, nice fridge, nice ensuite, tv, all usual stuff, and i think it was USD110. something like that. This was in May though, so inevitably you are ALWAYS gonna pay a lot more at Xmas time at almost ANY tourist-popular destination in the world. But yes, try redroof - best deal i found. rgds ps. now found link on that site to the exact hotel i was at: http://www.redroof.com/reservations/inn_details.asp?innNumber=605 cheers

the ONLY good thing about the N.O. disaster is that a few more people in the States may realise what a clueless, lying, war-mongering, international criminal George W. Bush is. All of Europe know it already, and half of the USA, it's just the other half to go. This is a man they RE-ELECTED. Idiots.

it happens because at higher speeds there's more aerodynamic drag (vs. very little at low speed) and therefore more load on the engine and more boost. That and/or cos you're in a higher gear too. Someone will be along soon to explain properly..