A quick post – here is a gallery of pictures of various forms of transport I took on my European Cruise.

People in France and Italy seem to have a liberated approach to transport that makes the UK look dull in comparison (not difficult).

Their use of scooters is particularly interesting to me. I saw two teenage sons dropping their mother and sister pillion passengers off in town for some shopping, a young mother holding a baby in her arms whilst her husband weaved their scooter through rush hour traffic. Numerous toddlers standing up behind scooter windshields holding onto the handlebars above their head. People carrying all shorts of things in one hand (pizza, laptop etc) whilst using the other hand to accelerate, steer and brake. A common practice is to jam a mobile phone down the side of an open face helmet – a kind of rudimentary hands-free.  It looks like a free for all – but imagine what would happen if all these people were forced to drive cars instead – gridlock. Better to let things work themselves out organically.

Vehicles here aren’t cherished prized objects – most of them are battered and dented. People park up against one another and no one seems to mind. A near-miss I saw was greeted with an apologetic wave from the offender and a never-mind shrug from the driver who nearly T-boned them. A lot different from the swearing road-rage scene that would have no doubt ensued in the UK.

As far as the cars go – the supermini is king. I’m particularly fond of the original Fiat 500s – they actually make the Smart car look bloated and are still being used for everyday transport rather than kept as cherished classics. Many of the American tourists had never seen a Smart car before and were amazed at this vehicle which is already a familiar well established car in most of Europe.

If anyone wants to look at the transport options for the future they need to take a long hard look at a city like Rome to realise that if you step back and let the people figure it out themselves, then they might just do that.  The weather does play a big part though.

 

This scooter was in Cannes - The Leopard Skin is actually flock not paint

This scooter was in Cannes – The Leopard Skin is actually flock not paint

Another shot of the custom fluffy scooter.

A local police car in Portofino (Italy) A Fiat Panda.

A nice Alfa Romeo for the Police (Portofino Italy)

A Fiat 500 sized up next to some other more modern ’small’ cars.

Police in Rome outside the Vatican

I’m not sure how this thing drives home at night (Rome)

A Battered old 500 with a Canvas sun roof (Rome)

Two Smart cars demonstrate the benefits of being short – This parking is actually legal in Rome

Another Smart Smart – Rome

Nice Line of professional Scooter riders in Rome

A BMW Police Bike – Rome

Another great Fiat 500 – Rome

Businessmen mingle in with other scooter riders – Rome

A Smart against a BMW C1 – Still lots of C1’s on the road in Rome – Must be loved.

Rent a bike – Rome

How many people could park in this space in traditional family saloon cars

Check the shoes – Scooter driving can be stylish.

A Guilera Fuoco

Another well stocked snack van – Rome

A more modern city car – with a motorcycle engine – Rome

A mint condition Fiat 500 – Rome

A beautiful flower van – Naples

A todder with a dummy on a Scooter driven by mum – Naples

A Spiderman 2 Bike – Naples

A nice row of Scooters – Naples

Often it’s hard to get onto the road from the Pavement due to wall to wall scooters – Naples

I haven’t posted for a few weeks as my house is undergoing a considerable amount of building work – leaving very little time to sit down and relax. Part of this building work involves the construction of a Conservatory. This is entirely the wife’s idea – but it does mean that I now have the opportunity to fill another room with entertainment equipment. I’m not too sure about putting a TV in a room made of glass – so I decided it would be a good opportunity to get a nice new speaker dock for my iPhone.

I would have been happy to continue using my  old JBL On Stage for a while, but it doesn’t work with my iPhone 3G – so I went on the hunt for a new stylish and compact speaker with excellent sound. I took my iPhone to Costco and stuck it in a number of different speaker docks to try them out.

The system I came home with wasn’t just a speaker, but a fully fledged bookshelf Hi-Fi system – the Panasonic SC-HC3DB. It won me (and the missus) over with its excellent sound quality and its ingenious solution for neatly storing the iPhone away whilst at the same time keeping it’s display visible.

As usual, I’ve put together a short video and I suggest you give this one a look if you are thinking of getting a new iPod/iphone speaker or a bookshelf HiFi – It really produces an amazingly detailed and rich sound which belies its modest £175 price tag. I’d have happily paid that just for a speaker this good and I had to check the shelf price twice when I saw that this included a CD and DAB/FM radio as well.

Highly recommended.

Like anything I do with regard to technology, the simple idea of adding a Sat Nav to my scooter has got a little bit out of hand.

A couple of weeks ago on this blog I demonstrated the case I bought to attach my existing Car Sat Nav (a Navigo flashed as a TomTom) to my scooter. I noticed at the time that the tiny Navigo looked a little bit lost in the large case, so I started shopping around for a new Widescreen Sat Nav. I also decided that my new device should have the ability to somehow wirelessly transmit it’s voice instructions to a receiver in my helmet and as usual I wanted to spend as little money as possible.

In the end I settled on a TomTom 520.

Other than my familiarity with the TomTom OS  the main reason for choosing this model was that it was the cheapest device I could find that could transmit its sound output over FM to a radio receiver. My intention with this was to keep a small FM radio in my jacket pocket and wear in-the-ear headphones inside my helmet.  So I tried this out, and it was working fine – albeit with some interference – until I did a firmware update on the TomTom – at which point it then stopped working.

Apparently TomTom had to remove the ‘transmit voice instructions to FM’ feature because it’s illegal in a number of European countries. By some strange quirk – it is still legal to transmit the voice as long as the TomTom is playing music at the same time!? The work-around then is a simple matter of playing a looped silent MP3 continuously in the background.

However – and perhaps as a concession to disgruntled owners, the new firmware also added the ability to transmit the voice to a ‘Bluetooth HiFi Device’ – presumably a car stereo. So I set about finding a suitable receiver for this function.

I came up with the Sony Ericsson MBR-100 The MBR-100 is a tiny rechargeable A2DP receiver/transmitter. It has one button (on/off/connect) and a 3.5mm phono socket. Paired with a suitable device it can either transmit or receive sound via bluetooth.It works perfectly with the TomTom – it picks up the sound and relays it to the headphones without any interference.

So now I have bought a £40 Case, a £130 TomTom and a £30 Bluetooth Receiver. For £200 I have assembled my complete bike Sat Nav solution. I imagine that the only advantage a purpose made Bike Sat Nav would now have would be an easier to read screen. My TomTom 520 display really does wash out badly in normal daylight and this is something to bear in mind when deciding whether to pay the extra £150+ to get a purpose made motorbike sat nav.

My Sony Wide Angle Lens – the VCL-HGE07TB – arrived this week and I spent my lunchtime today in Manchester trying it out.

I’ve put together a video comparing the normal camera lens against my original Magnetic wide angle lens solution and the official Sony one.

The Sony one is 0.7x and the Magnetic one is 0.45x (I think). After a few minutes of testing, the Sony solution was the obvious winner. It is definitely worth the extra cash despite the slight reduction in the width of the image compared to the magnetic lens.

The main difference is that with the Sony the whole image is useable without any vignetting in the corners. The vignetting on the Magnetic Lens is not visible on the camera’s LCD when filming – it only shows up when the footage is transferred for editing (the camera films more than it shows on its screen). This means that clips taken through the magnetic lens  normally have to be reframed when editing (which takes extra time and effort)

The lens fits well (despite it being designed for the newer model) and stays firmly attached. The lens does seem to blur the footage slightly, so its probably best to only attach it when its really needed. It will be invaluable for indoor shots in confined spaces. On my next holiday I’ll probably clip it on automatically whenever I enter a building I’ll be filming in – like a museum or gallery.

In the video I label the footage as Normal, Magnetic Lens or Sony Lens – hopefully that’s self explanatory. For earlier posts about the magnetic lens and the Sony TG camera click here.

I’ve put another video review together, this time of the AEE MD80 Mini DV Spy Cam.

The video explains all the details – so if you think you want a tiny video camera make sure you have a look at this  first.

I’ve got to try and  make these clips smaller in future – I know that people have an attention span of a few secs – yet I still go on about nothing for minutes. The ebay seller I used for mine was inesun – a reliable Chinese exporter. You can also pick this up in Maplin in the UK.

UPDATE –  After a few suggestions on the Youtube comments I tried the camera again with a different memory card and I’m happy to report that it doesn’t jerk any more. The card I originally used was a Lexar card supplied with the camera – perhaps the memory was a fake, there is a lot about. I feel that I didn’t give the camera a fair review, so I have added a new clip taken with the new memory card in it. The card I used in the end was a 2gb Sandisk, it’s not SDHC just SD (micro) and I imagine it will be a class 1 or 2.

NON JERKY CLIP….

Just a quick update. I bought a sat nav case holder for my bike and put a short video together showing how it works. Sat Nav for bikes is ridiculously expensive, they start from £300+ whereas a similar car model is between £60-£100.

The main difference between the two is that the bike one is waterproof and usually come with bluetooth to speak the directions through a  wireless headset worn inside the helmet. I only want to use my Sat Nav on the bike on rare occasions – so I’m happy attaching it to the bike by using a waterproof case and either using a wired headset, or more likely forgetting the headset and just using it for visual cues.

Here’s my video.

There are only two (AFAIK) bike sat nav holders in the market – the best selling Givi S850 and the newcomer the So Easy Rider V3. I chose the latter because it looked smaller, was slightly cheaper, available now (S850 is often on back-order) and claimed it would fit any bike or scooter. I can’t compare the two personally – but I can confirm that the model I bought does work as promised and is therefore recommended.

Slightly off topic  but I’ll be interested to see how TomTom implement their GPS maps on the iPhone. Bear in mind that the iPhone does bluetooth out of the box. If Tomtom could get it to understand spoken instructions (it’s impossible to operate that screen with gloves on) coupled with a waterproof case it would kill the existing Bike sat nav market over night – or maybe force it to charge more realistic prices.

I recently bought a new BBQ – the Kingsford O-Grill 3000. It cost me £130 online.

Its a portable (or transportable) Gas Barbeque that runs off normal Patio Gas. Rival portable Gas BBQs often run on  expensive and difficult to find specialised canisters. Since I’ll only be transporting this BBQ between my garden and the shed – I don’t mind the need to use bigger gas cylinders. If you did want to carry this BBQ in a car then a 5KG gas cylinder is pretty easy to lug about too.

A 5kg Gas cylinder

The Grill is available in a range of colours and comes with everything you need to get up and running in minutes (excluding the gas).

When looking into what portable Gas BBQ to buy I found very little in the way of reviews or videos to enable me to visualise the size of the cooking area. I’ve therefore made a quick video of the O-Grill which should help those people who like to see a product in use before they decide to drop £130 on it. Here it is…