The decision I made wasn't about something trivial like what to eat for Breakfast - oh no! I decided to drive a 200 mile round trip for some sugar coated rings of heaven.

Yes, Krispy Kreme. For those who have never heard of Krispy Kreme, it is an American and Canadian doughnut chain which has been going for over 70 years. I personally got hooked on the doughnuts when I went to Canada and visited one of the outlets.

Since then, I have been trying to figure out the logistics of sending doughnuts via the postal service with them remaining edible at the end of it.

That was until I discovered that Krispy Kreme had branched out into the UK. TOTAL WIN! Well, actually not quite. Upon checking the UK website, I discovered that though they were in the UK and growing, the majority of outlets were in London and the nearest one to me was Birmingham...

A nice 2 hour drive and several litres of V-Power later, I arrived at the Bull Ring shopping centre in Birmingham city centre (which incidentally is actually quite a funky place to visit). I entered the lower floor of Selfridges where the Krispy Kreme was located and could smell the doughnuts already. Now, this particular outlet was nowhere near as big as the ones I'd been to over in Canada, but still... *drools*

You can actually see the doughnuts being made and when the machine is on, all customers waiting in the queue get a free freshly baked, hot glazed doughnut. Mmmm...

Moving along the conveyor belt being cooked

Coated by a river of thick gooey sugar

And the final product!

Yes, yes I did buy two dozen.

A lot of companies now use what are known as "Non-Geographic" telephone numbers for call centres, support lines etc. The reasons for this are usually because it allows them to use a number which, for the most part, is a lot easier for people to remember and it standardizes the call costs (usually 4p-ish a min to 0870 numbers). All well and good, right?

Well not exactly. If you, like many people use contract mobile phone instead of a land line, or indeed just because it is easier, you will know that non-geographic numbers such as 0870, 0845 etc are very rarely included in your inclusive minutes. In fact, O2 one of the last providers to include these numbers in their inclusive packages recently announced that this was stopping.

Not only are the numbers no longer included, you are often charges a nice premium for dialling non geographic numbers from your mobile - often to the tune of 20p+ per minute.

Now, I was recently pointed towards a website which I found so useful I almost fell over. Almost.

Say No To 0870

Some of you may have already come across this site as it has been advertised on various radio stations and certain tv shows and may be using it at the moment, good on you. Help spread the word.

For those who don't know: What this site allows you to do, is search either by company name or by the non geographic number you have, to find a direct equivalent geographic number. How freaking cool is that. Then you can dial that number, get the same service you would have got from dialling the 0870 number and it's much cheaper (free if you are on a mobile contract!)

As well as using the service to search, you can also submit any equivalent numbers you know of to help expand the database.

Awesome.

...you'd think people would take you seriously right? All dark and brooding and mysterious. Well actually, no. That picture makes me laugh.

You then get things like Darth and the infamous Chicken...

He tries to be all serious and then fails majestically. Speaking of 'FAIL' ...

...And if you don't get that picture, you just aren't cool enough.

Even Family Guy has taken to abusing good ol' Vader...

What has he done to deserve this!

Wiring

The first job was to lay down all the wiring. This included power cable, speaker wire and extension leads for the screen.

In the above diagram, what is not shown, is that both the PC and Amp take their power from a thick power lead, fused, put through a distribution block, and run directly from the battery. Additionally, a switched positive connection is required for the M2-ATX to initiate remote startup and shutdown procedures. The easiest place to run this from, I found, was the existing headunit ISO loom.

The black, red and green connectors running to the screen in the diagram are the power supply and USB/VGA connectors. The power was spliced into a connection from the M2-ATX as the screen is designed to run from regulated 12V DC. These cables were run down the centre of the car.

Finally, as shown on the diagram, the audio connections run from the PC to the AMP via a 3.5mm audio jack adapter --> RCA/Phono connectors (blue), and then from the amp, I wired the speaker outputs to the old headunit ISO loom (purple wire pairs). All the speaker cable in the car was replaced with decent quality, shielded stuff. The picture below shows the cables being laid with the centre of the car bare as a work in progress.

Another note: When running the cables down the car, it is important to physically separate the power and data/speaker lines to prevent inteference which commonly manifests itself as alternator whine coming through the speakers. The easiest way to do this is to run the two sets of cables down either side of the centre console, or run them down either side of the car itself.

The above pic shows the cables running from the car interior, through the ski hatch and into the boot.

The Screen

With all the wiring in place, access to the wiring loom behind the dash was no longer required and so the screen was the next thing to fit. Obviously, prior to the final installation it had been tested for fitment so it was simply a case of refitting the centre console with the screen installed into the dash. The pic below shows what things look like behind the scenes on the dash:

The PC

And finally the PC was secured in the boot using metal mounting brackets beside the subwoofer and the wiring tidied up. All the USB data leads, VGA connection and the power and switched ignition leads were connected to the PC and Amplifier via the M2-ATX. Just to note that at this point, the amplifier being used is quite a basic one which is why it has not been installed 'cleanly'. When I get a proper amp, the boot installation will look a lot tidier and I will gain a bit more boot-space.

You can see the PC beside the subwoofer and it fits snugly in the gap.

The ultimate plan is to create a 'stealth' panel infront of where the PC is currenty fixed and fit the amplifier behind that as well. That should make things look a lot cleaner and give some more room (not that I use the boot a lot anyway).

The Finished Article

With everything done, here are a few pics of how it looks completed and installed:

Loading/resuming Windows XP at bootup:

The main frontend view (this is Centrafuse, but I usually use RoadRunner)

Sat Nav view

Media player currently playing Linkin Park

GPS and WiFi adapters installed out of the boot for better reception. They are hidden behind the seatbelt and secured to the plastic coving.

View from the rear seats.

Overall, the installation looks very OEM (to me at least! and boot excluded obviously lol). There is no evidence of the masses of cabling in the car and having the PC gives me a lot of functionality that I wouldn't get with a regular headunit or even an all in one headunit costing a lot more.

There is also a lot of room for potential upgrades and further features which I can implement at a later date - and I have hinted at a few plans throughout the course of these posts... so this is basically a never ending project!

I hope it has been a good read and things do make sense. If you have any comments or questions, either post away on any of the posts (parts 1- 4) or just get over to the forums for anything a bit more in-depth.

Cheers.

Now that the PC itself was up and running and the screen and mount were completed, it was time to work on the insides of the beast, so to speak: the software - the thing that makes everything work!

The Backend

The PC itself was based on an extremely cut down version of Windows XP SP2. I removed unecessary features, slipstreamed hotfixes and drivers, and pre-installed some tweaks making a totally unattended installation that automatically installed everything I needed. This created a small install footprint and made the OS very quick to boot from cold / resume from hibernation.

I did experiment with using a 4GB compact flash card and CF -> IDE adapter as a boot drive mainly for the speed advantage (and solid state advantage), but due to the limited write cycles on CF cards, installing a standard version of XP (dynamically) would severely reduce the lifetime of the card. There are solutions to this (eg, using XP Embedded from Microsoft), but that involves a lot of hassle, so I opted to go for the old fashioned mechanical hard drive.

The entire system was tested indoors using a regular ATX power supply for ease of troubleshooting any problems - especially with the multitude of USB devices being used. Bluetooth partnerships were created with headsets and phones and COM ports configured for the GPS reciever and FM radio. When the system was found to be stable and with everything fully functional in it's barebones OS state, it was time to install and configure the frontend.

The Frontend

The frontend is essentially what you see when you look at the screen. It is the software that is running and gives the user the functionality required from the PC in the car environment. There are several front ends available for use - some free to use, some not. Which frontend you choose is down to personal preference and before making a decision I tested two of the biggest ones on the system:

RoadRunner

This front end is free to use and is customisable both in terms of plug-ins and skins. It links to other external applications to handle various functions. Eg. Audio playback is controlled by winamp, GPS navigation can be controlled by Freedrive/Mapmonkey (maps are required from "Destinator" but need to be purchased) and DVD playback could be handled by PowerDVD, for example. It has a large userbase, because it is free and does the job very well.

Centrafuse

The other frontend I tested out was Centrafuse. This one is not free to use (there is a trial available), and comes in several different versions - the price of each is determined by it's feature set. Again, very easy to work with - perhaps more so than RoadRunner, and there are a lot of plug ins and a few skins available. Centrafuse handles the majority of functions independently (as far as I can tell) as it doesn't seem to call on other external programs as much as RoadRunner. One point to note is that Centrafuse does seem a little more resource hungry compared to RR.

Each frontend is very easy to set up and get working for basic functionality but things like phone control and GPS are a little more involved.

Now that system is fully operational, all that remained was to transfer some multimedia (audio and video) onto the hard drive so that there would actually be something to play! When doing this, make sure all files have correct ID3 tags otherwise when the frontend reads them, if you try searching for something by listing albums or artists, it will be a mess...

Transferring material to the PC in my case was simply a case of connecting to the wireless network and accessing network shares containing the albums etc that I wanted. This method will also be used when the PC is installed as the wireless link works from the driveway without any issues.

With everything as I wanted it, the final stage was to install the whole lot in the car. See Part 4!

Following on from Part 1, this section is going to detail what I did regarding the most important thing in the project: the screen.

The screen is the one thing that you and everyone else who uses the PC looks at all the time so it needs to be visible - but at the same not distracting to the driver. It also needs to be accessible so the PC can be operated via the touch panel and ideally needs to fit in with the rest of the interior (I prefer things that look OEM and subtle).

What I decided to do was fabricate a mount for the screen into the centre console in place of the existing headunit. Rather than butcher the original console, I picked up another from a car of the same model as my own which was being broken for spare parts.

The Process

That done, I took the screen apart, separating the case from the actual panel and electronics inside, and provisionally secured the casing to the console using small blocks of MDF and screws:

With the main construct in place, it was time to start playing with the fibreglass.

Fibreglass Application

Fibreglass kits consisting of sheets of dry glass fibre, resin and catalyst are readily available at most DIY stores and it is commonly used in automotive applications for repairing/modifying bodywork. The fibreglass was applied in two stages: Firstly, a flexible sheet of dry glass fibre was placed over the area(s) which needed moulding to the console. The desired effect was that the fibreglass would form a solid framework to build on:

To mould the fibreglass to the required shape, the resin, mixed with a small amount of catalyst "hardner" was brushed into the sheet. This was all soaked in and the shape began to emerge:

It was important to remember not to cover the rear of the original screen casing so that the screen could actually be refitted!

A word of warning: The resin and hardner have a VERY strong chemical smell which lingers even when they are drying and this is something that really needs to be done outdoors or you will actually pass out from the fumes...

Filling and Sanding

After leaving the fibreglassed console to dry overnight, I was greeted with a rock solid finish which as you can see from the above picture is quite rough looking. To smooth things out, I used a product called Isopon P38. This is an easy sanding filler, commonly used in car body repairs - which again, comes in two parts - the putty and a hardner. This was spread liberally over pretty much the entire surface of the console which had been fibreglassed in order to fill the cracks and dips where the material had set.

At this point, the finish was irrelavent as when dry, the entire console was sanded down to give a smooth surface. Starting with coarse sandpaper and working through the different grades right down to ultra fine wet and dry paper, the whole thing was sanded blending the filler and fibreglass into the original console plastic. In my case, after the initial sanding, I wasn't 100% happy with the finish and applied a bit more filler to certain areas of the console and re-sanded them.

Another word of warning: As with the fibreglass, the filler/hardner does have a strong chemical smell and when sanding, produces A LOT of extremely fine dust particles. Again, best done outside.

The Finished Article

The only thing remaining at this point for me, was to spray the console black again and fit the screen back into it's casing. I used some standard grey primer on a couple of coats, followed by a few coats of black interspersed with some more wet and dry sanding to give a smooth a finish as possible.

It was then simply a case of popping the gear stick gaiter and screen and associated electronics back in:

The end result is a customised, one-off centre console which is designed perfectly for that screen. I think it looks OEM and sits quite well in the dash. It's also easily accessible - being right infront of the gear stick.

Coming soon, Part 3: where I will talk about software this time....as always leave comments and stay tuned!

After my exams had come to an end, I decided I needed a mini project to keep myself occupied for at least a few weeks, so I decided as any normal, sane and non-geeky person would, to put a PC in my car.

I spent countless hours researching various components and determining what the best route to go down would be. Installing a computer in a harsh environment such as a car needs a bit more thought than your average 'buy-the-components-and-slap-them-together-bob's-your-uncle-fanny's-your-aunt' kinda thought process.

- There are space considerations. The entire computer needs to fit comfortably into a small area without sacrificing functionality.
- There are operating constraints. The computer should be sufficiently cooled to prevent it melting and destroying your car and perhaps most importantly, it needs to be low power so as not to drain the battery when working or when idle.

Specifications

Taking this all into account, the core specifications for the computer were as follows:

- CPU/Motherboard/RAM:

VIA EPIA M10000 'Nehemia' This board is based on the mini-itx form factor (it's really, really tiny), has an integrated 1GHz processor, graphics, sound, USB and LAN. It is extremely low power and as such runs quite cool. The integrated graphics is more than sufficient for in car purposes as are the other onboard components. Coupled with this platform, I chose to fit 512MB of RAM (mainly because that's what I had lying around at the time - yes, I have have RAM lying around, ok?)

- Storage:

I chose to use a 2.5" laptop hard drive as they tend to be a bit more resiliant towards shocks which will be ever present in an automotive environment. Alternatives include booting from a sizeable Compact Flash card and appropiate adapter but due to the limited write cycles as well as other limitations, this method, although fast, requires much more work on the software.

- Power:

To provide the computer with power I used an M2-ATX automotive PSU. Why not take a 12V DC supply straight from the battery I hear you say!? Well, besides from the obvious hassle of having to install a manual switch to turn the computer on and off, running a line direct from an in-car 12V source leaves sensitive PC components open to large voltage fluxuations. For example, the battery voltage can vary from 11-14V depending on the operating status and during engine cranking can jump up to 10's of Volts higher.

The M2-ATX, which is rated at 160W, protects against these surges and also allows remote turn on of the PC via a switched 12V ignition feed. That is, when the key is turned in the ignition, the computer begins to boot.

- External Devices:
Nearly all the periphals connected to the computer are via USB. A mains powered hub was used and modified to work with the M2-ATX. Essentially, the 5V USB standby voltage was isolated within the USB terminal so that rather than drawing power from both the USB port and external power, the hub was exclusively external powered. Accessories included: USB GPS reciever, Bluetooth, FM Radio, Wi-Fi, USB touchscreen.

Stick it all in a well ventilated, home made case (containing custom hard drive mounts made from picture frame hooks!) and you have 1x Car PC.

Part 2 coming soon. That goes into details regarding the software used both behind the scenes and as a front end.

I only ask this because I bought a Muller Corner yoghurt thing the other day - you know - the ones which have two compartments - one big one for the yoghurt and one smaller one for the fruit or the chocolate bits or whatever. I'd not eaten one in a while so I was actually looking forward to it. It was an Orange and Chocolate one, though I can't remember the exact name. All that remained was to peel back the plastic foil lid and I'd be in.

Those who are familiar with yoghurt packaging will be aware that there is usually a slightly larger 'tab' in one corner which you simply pull up and peel back along with the rest of the lid. Simple yet effective method - in theory.

In this case however, the tab was stuck to the yoghurt pot. Curses. Ok, I thought to myself, I can handle this, I'm a mature adult. Sorta. So with some effort, I managed to prise the tab up and whilst removing the lid, I started to drool at the thought of being tasting the delicious snack that awaited me inside the pot.

Only, the lid ripped straight down the middle. &*%$!!!! It's at this point I ask myself the question: Am I just a moron who has suddenly lost the ability to open fruit yoghurt pots? or have the manufacturers done this deliberately in some sort of cost cutting scheme and are at this very moment, laughing as a collective.

They probably go into work every morning and at 9.00am sharp, they all laugh as a collective for a minute before making more useless yoghurt pots.

Seriously though, I never used to have this problem.

Also, why do they have to use stupidly long and unnecessarily complicated model numbers and then laugh at us when we try to remember them?! Not on yoghurt pots, on LCD TV's. Keep up!

One sunny day, he was minding his own business, not doing anything in particular...

...when all of a sudden he was verbally assaulted by none other than Homer J Simpson...

...this made Mr Bunny feel a bit sad.

So after getting over the shock of Mr Simpson's torrent of abuse, Mr Bunny carried on - wondering what to do this fine day. He thought it might be fun to make chocolate moulds of eggs and stuff.

Just as he was about to make a decision, when he was stopped by a one Stewie Griffin. This vile baby spouted yet another torrent of abuse at My Bunny - far worse than Mr Simpson...

...My Bunny had had enough. He couldn't take it anymore. There was only one way to end this all...

...yes, he jumped. He jumped from the nausea inducing heights of the top shelf without a second thought or final word...

...And that was the end of Mr Bunny. Bullying is bad mmmkay?

...

Fin.

First let me start with some background information. Mr Seven Ball was a quiet individual - in fact, he never really spoke at all. He was rather round in appearance, and despite his name and contrary to popular belief, did not have an abnormal number of testicles.

I could beat around the bush and make up all sorts of excuses like: Mr Seven Ball was left out of the game because he was of indeterminate colour and to make it appear that we were not a racist organisation, Mr Eight Ball was used instead.

Alternatively, I could also make up some more garbage like: Mr Seven Ball was on a business trip doing some PR work and Mr Eight Ball stepped in and kindly offered to take his place.

I could make up countless stories write paragraphs of total rubbish that you would never believe, so I shall save us all time and tell the truth. This is the real reason Mr Seven Ball was not present at the game:

He was kidnapped by a terrorist organisation and held to ransom for extortionate sums of money. We refused to give in to their demands to see how far they would go, and it resulted in Mr Seven Ball being packaged into a small wooden crate filled with smoked salmon, shipped off to southern America and put to work as a slave by an international drug baron. He was then tortured and forced to perform unsavoury acts before we were able to locate him and come to his rescue. It was during his absence that the game was played and hence he was unavailable.

I absolutely and positively did not totally forget that the Seven Ball existed and used the eight ball for the game because it looked cooler. Honest. =/