50+ and proud of it.

My two-word summary for this race is " Much better ". It was going to be " Somewhat better " up to point where Vetell's Red Bull brakes failed. Not that I don't like Vettell, not at all, but it did allow Jenson to win... Most interested part? Hamilton getting done by the Melbourne Police for doing wheelies in the car park. I admit to being on the edge of my seat at one point, but this was only as I was trying to get up to make a cup of tea.

We went to Paris over the weekend and I got conned into visiting the Musée de l’Orangerie to see the "really nice paintings" in there, when all I wanted to do was to sit in a nice warm Parisian bar with a bottle of red. The entrance had an airport-style scanner manned by a rather large guard. Presumably in the past they had problems with people smuggling in "really nice paintings". Predictably it went 'beep'. "Emptee yur pokeets please" "Ok, certainly" 'beep' "'Av you got a belt?" "Yup, I have" 'beep' "Put yur camera ovur there" "Ok" 'beep' "Take off yur jackeet" "Hmpf" 'beep' I was now nearly down to socks, shoes and underwear. The queue behind me started to mutter somewhat. " Mon Dieu, les fou Anglais ". The security man furiously glared at me. " What 'av you got that makes eet go 'beep'? " " I do nit kn...

I thought I'd try and come up with a two-word précis for each Grand Prix of this season - in the same sort of way that the Hitchhikers Guide described the Earth. Sadly, I could only come up with " Disappointing Anti-climax " for the much-anticipated opener. The most entertaining part of the BBC's coverage was watching the tumbleweed and listening to the wind whistling gently while Martin Brundle waited to catch Alonso's eye on the grid. Assuming I haven't died of boredom in two weeks after the Melbourne race, I'll give it another shot.

This took me ages to find a solution to this one. If you get: Load report failed when trying to load a Crystal Report into a viewer using VB.NET something like this: .CrystalReportViewer1.ReportSource = ReportName .CrystalReportViewer1.ShowFirstPage() ' Blows up here then you should try the following: In Solution Explorer, right-click the project (NOT the solution), Add / Existing Item / "file of type" .RPT / Navigate to, and add the report to the project. Then, in the properties of the (new) report change "Copy to output directory" to "Copy Always". Also, it was suggested that you try using the full pathname in "ReportName". Don't bother thanking me, no one else does... ;-)

I'm only writing this in case someone else has a problem upgrading their PSUS4 Printer Server firmware. If you get the error message: access to the target is in failure when trying to upgrade the firmware using the "BiAdmin Management Utility" program found in your start menu, then use the browser based utility instead (Default IP Address 192.168.1.93). Works for me using Firefox. Download the ".bin" from the Linksys website and extract it to (say) C:\Temp. Run the utility via the browser, browse to the file and job done. It is suggested that you temporarily disable anti-virus software during the upgrade.

I'd just like to point out that Warwickshire Police use an unmarked dark blue/black BMW 750i that they're rather quite good at driving - especially where the M6 joins the M1 southbound. The conversation at the Watford Gap Services last Saturday went along the lines of: "In a hurry sir?" "Um, not really, why?" "We clocked you at 95, but we're not going to take it any further, 'cos everyone else was doing the same." "Err, thank you" "I'm now going to ask you to provide a specimen of you breath, you do not have to say anything...." "...yeah, yeah, I know all about the "legal" speech bit, I've watched Police Camera Action y'know." "That's where I get all of my training from sir, good night." "It's a fair cop, good night".