h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Matey,

I took the liberty of riding to work today, for the first time in ages. I'm glad I did, coz that means I've got my bike jacket to wear in the building, as the air con is set way too low.... I saw some brass monkeys earlier, all pointing and laughing at me!!

I've been chatting with Pan recently, she said you'd asked after me - so here I am, returning the call as it were.

We're coming up to our biggest gig of the year the weekend after next and I've gone and hurt a finger on my left hand. I was round having a band type meeting, come wine tasting session (with extra tasting thrown in for good measure - I wasn't driving for once), when I leant against a kitchen cupboard and slipped. My finger went behind a drawer handle and got a good levering in the process.

How was that - not very I can tell you.

I've gotta fly, as I'm on my lunch break, so TTFN, I'll look forward to catching up some more later. I think there are some downloads on the band's site now if you care to mosey on over.



Bassman

Howzit Bassman!
I've not heard from you for yonks!
I've quit the band - it stopped being fun - and taken a year long break (so far) from music and concentrated on riding my Beemer.
I've also been elected President of BMW Clubs Africa for 2005/6 - I get an overseas trip to Munich in September for my trouble.

Pan tells me you're going over the pond to the US of A and may visit her. If you do, give her a great hug from me!
I wish I was visiting...

Dude,

I'm keeping my fingers crossed about the trip across the pond, but haven't heard that it's been confirmed yet. Maybe they'll let me know at the last minute!! That'll be nice NOT!

Shame about the band, what went wrong?

We've had a bit of a hard time recently, some of the new stuff we started doing wasn't going down with the punters, so we had to revert to old material. I've been working away from home all week since the end of January, which has meant us playing the same old because I couldn't get along to rehearse. We've had a good old head scratch recently and come up with some ideas for new material, I can hardly wait.

We just played the BMF Memba Rally last weekend, the biggest gig of our year, what a blast. About 4500 damp and soggy bikers in a huge markee. The weather was less than kind, brilliant sunshine one minute, hail and thunder the next - indespersed with torrential rain. There was one point where I was chatting to the sound man, while one of the other acts sound checked and the sound of the rain on the canvas pushed his dB meter about 3 times further up the scale than the band had. I know he didn't have the PA well cranked up, but it wasn't quiet. I had to shout just to be heard by a guy stood next to me!

If you get a chance to take some time off and attach it to your trip to Munich, jump on a plane to our "East Midlands Airport", it's only a dozen or so miles up the road from my house, I'd love for you to come and stay a few days. Think about it....

May I join you in perpetuating the propagation of a painful pervasive pox on the person who poo-poo'd the smiley! Too right!



Bassman

Why thank you sir! I'd love to visit a few people in UK...
I have a godson living in Dublin as well and his parents live in Caterham (south of London). My cousin's daughter lives Poole at the moment, and more... Let's see how it pans out, eh?

The band thing just got tedious. Owen, the lead guitarist was the main mover in getting gigs etc. and started to book more and more gigs for more and more money and when I couldn't make engagements due to trips away, he got downright unpleasant. But when PJ(his mate the lead singer)would go away to the Far East for a month, that was OK and we would take no gigs. When I sent Owen an Email with advance notice of my trips away six months ahead, I got a snide reply about bothering to come to practice if it wasn´t too much trouble considering my time away...so I walked away from it. Never felt better!`

I´ve just had my laptop converted from Windows 2000 to XP and there are many bugs to iron out. The keyboard types symbols that differ from the key mostly the shift keys plus 1 to 0 (I cant type the plus sign for example) These IT Types!!!

I´ll mail you again when this ´puter settles down!

You should be able to sort your 'puter reasonably easily. Go into "Control Panel" and select the "Regional and Languages" icon. That will bring up a new window split into two parts. The top part is "Standards and Formats" and the lower part is "Location". Just use the drop-down menus to select the correct area for where you work. I select "English United Kingdom" in both.

Don't forget to click the "Apply" button before exiting.

Check that the time zone is correctly set as well.

Sorry to hear about the band. I have the problem where somebody has taken on so much responsibility for getting things done, and they don't have the time to do any of it!! I've always tried to keep out of band politics as far as possible, but have been dragged into one or two uncomfortable situations recently. Despite my best intentions, I only seem to stir things up, I just can't win!

I had to be part of sacking the guitarist in an old band, he'd started courting and was less and less inclined to show up for rehearsals, so we let him go. We all knew it had to be done, but none of us actually wanted to do it, when it came to choosing new material, it made things much easier, as there was one less opinion to win over.



Bassman

I done all that already! We can select English (South Africa) but it still says ja-no-well-fine is misspelled!

I'll have to change something else.

In South Africa we use Afrikaans quite a bit and there are letters that do not appear in English (such as in reen, except that the second e is supposed to have two little dots above it).

Using Windows 2000, one could set the keyboard to US-international and you typed " followed by e and got the correct letter. Using Windows XP, the Help file says to use CTRL+SHIFT+: followed by the letter 'e', but if I do that here, I just get e.

I tried using the 'US- International' setting, but it totally confusmalised the keyboard and all the shift+number buttons were scrambled - the @ and ^ keys did nothing, the ( key typed ) and the ) typed " !!

To type the Euro symbol, you must type 20AC and ALT+X. Let's try - 20AC....nope! I can't use ANSI either as the number has to be typed in using the NUMERIC keypad and a laptop doesn't have one!

So far, I'm not impressed with XP

I quess that I'll end up creating a document with all the funnies symbols in them and shortcut from the desktop - them just copy from there.....

Happy days!

And there was me thinking I'd done my Boy Scout good deed for the day

Other than what I suggested, my knowledge of XP is pretty poor, I've only been using it a few months and tend to use it pretty much like Win 98. It does have some nice features, but now I come to think about it - I can't mention one

I think that's down to me being an air-head though



Bassman

I did as I said and created a document with it all there...
How's this:
à è ì ò ù À È Ì Ò Ù
á é í ó ú Á É Í Ó Ú
â ê î ô û Â Ê Î Ô Û

Much, much faster, eh?

I had a great day yesterday! I finally persuaded a very reclusive friend and fellow BMW rider to come to a refresher training day at the Zwartkop track. We got the cobwebs out of his mind and the rubber hairs off the edges of his tyres...

Talking of "Rubber Hairs", I've got a brand spanking BT020 sat in my garage just crying out to be fitted to my back wheel. I'll have to do another track day, just to wear my "Chicken Strips" to an acceptable level! I'm just not that happy going sufficiently fast on the open road, to achive the angles of dangle necessary to get that close to the edges of the rubber

I don't believe that makes me a big girlie, just more considerate towards other road users.... (well that's my story and I'm sticking to it.)



Bassman

I've persauded the better half not to divorce me for buying a mint condition 1981 BMW R100S with only 29 000k's on the clock...so I should have a 'newer' bike tomorrow! I don't know what I'd pay for it in UK, but it's going to cost me the equivalent of 1 500 pounds, complete with fitted panniers.

I don't know what you'd pay for it over here either, but if it's worth it to you, that's all that matters. I saw a similar machine in passing at the BMF show in Peterborough the other week while I was looking for the tyre stand! I always like the colour of the ones that faded from silver through yellowy orange to brown. I suppose it's almost the same colour scheme that you'd find on a guitar!!



Bassman

I got it! In one morning I bought a motorcycle and negotiated a deal to swap my present one for a good spec computer for my family. Everybody's going to get something they want!

That's

You'll have to send me a pic. Hope the family get as much fun out of the 'puter



Bassman

Why do you want a pic of the computer???




I'm getting the R100S on Saturday - I will take a pic asap.
Did you see my pix of the BMW R80 Kalahari? View at:

http://www.bmbikes.co.uk/photopages/photosr80gsbasic.htm

There were only about 32 made to this spec for the South African market. I can buy the one in the photo for R55 000 - about 4200 pounds - but the budget just won't s-t-r-e-t-c-h THAT far...!

Nice clean looking bike.



Bassman