Here’s another tip.

If you didn’t know already, you can now combine multiple Hotmail / Live email accounts into a single account (or pretty close to) - which means you only have to log in using one account to check the mail in all of the others.

For someone like me who rarely uses my Hotmail accounts these days, it’s handy to speed up the process by merging my hotmail.co.uk and hotmail.com addresses.

You can do this by:

1. Logging into Hotmail as usual
2. Click on your email address in the top right hand corner of the page (right above the Sign Out text link)
3. From the drop down, select Link other accounts
4. Follow the instructions to tie in your Microsoft Passport/Hotmail/Windows Live Mail

You will be asked to enter your password and email address for the other account, then once the process is complete, you will be able to click on the same menu as in step 2, and change to your other email account inboxes on-the-fly.

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Maybe I’d missed this before, but I’ve just discovered a fantastic little app (that runs on Windows, Mac and ‘Nix) that allows you to watch all the UK channels for free, live.

Zattoo just requires an email address, and the funky little program allows you to watch the following useful and semi-useful channels:

• BBC One
• BBC Two
• BBC Three
• BBC Four
• ITV 1
• Channel 4
• five
• BBC News
• BBC Paliament
• Al Jazeera
• CBBC
• CBebbies

According to the website, it’s completely legal and I’ve been really impressed with the quality so far. It comes with an inbuilt schedule too.

My advice? Go try it.

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If the rain had stayed away I’m sure Sunday would have been drier, but probably not as good as it was.

Even though I’ve been to Silverstone before, I’ve never gone for a Grand Prix, and being that it’s going to be the penultimate one for a little while at least made the opportunity to get in an amongst the action all that more special.

Will, Henry, Alan and myself managed to get ourselves some pretty decent tickets thanks to a contact of ours (to whom we’re really grateful) which meant we got access to the private BRDC car park, clubhouse, marquee, bar and grandstand. We also ended up with pit lane walkabout tickets thanks to Adam and the time in between races making the most of the very good coffee and muffins.

Despite the bad weather (which was inevitable) spirits were high, and by the time the race kicked off and Hamilton raced into first place the atmosphere was buzzing and the crowds were excitable. We had the use of a hill and grandstand with particularly good views (some might say the best on the circuit) and a corner that went from dry to wet to dry to wet during the course of the seventy-odd laps which meant there were plenty of retirements, spins, tussles and overtaking. There wasn’t a dull moment.

Also of note, I’ve never seen so many Aston Martins in my life - the car park was packed with interesting beasts; Ferraris, Lambos, Maseratis and the odd Veyron. On the walkabout we ended up on the right side of the line (also a couple of friends of ours managed to crash a certain Mclaren afterparty), the red arrows were impressive, for the morning races I was standing about six feet away from Tony Hamilton, and despite having to wait about an hour to escape the centre of the track at the end of the day, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Grand Prixes may become a regular feature of my calendar in the future.

Usually I’d just mention the big Grand Prix as the big event of the weekend, but I’ve been packing it in recently, but Saturday had also been busy. We took Aid clay pigeon shooting for his birthday, something I’ve not done for just over ten years, but had a great time doing that too, and surprised myself by being better than I thought I’d be (that’s not hard - I really believed I’d be as abysmal as I was last time).

Overall, a lot of photos and tiredness but above all, a really awesome weekend.

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I’ve been a iPlayer fanatic for a good while now, and I think the popular response it’s seen in the past few months means that a lot of other people think the same way.

So now the new iPlayer Beta is live and after a good play I went back and reread my article about the service when it launched six months ago.

Undoubtedl the big, indeed massive, benefit to me is the rolling together with the BBC’s Radio iPlayer service which is long overdue, and for a audio junkie like myself I am more than delighted with the results. The antiquated RealPlayer has been axed (why do I still need it on my Mac come to think of it?), and has been replaced with a beautiful full-size iPlayer window with a decent sized image - a visual cue that until now has been sorely missing even if I never realised it.

Sticking with radio, they have also cleverly replaced the full-screen option with a more useful ‘pop-out’ player which due to a bit of javascript wizardry makes sure you don’t lose your place when you switch between the two player types. The pop-out also allows you to browse related programmes again without losing the audio.

Even the exceptionally long radio programmes (3 hours for example) are now 100% skippable back and forth - a long time bug bear of mine. The old solution of limiting skipping to only going forwards in 5 and 15 minute intervals only, was highly frustrating, and for a long time I’ve been using Firebug to get the url and just loading up the RealPlayer window option, just like you had the option in the shorter 30 minute programmes. Good riddance to nasty interfaces.

All that said, the streaming interface still uses ASX files, although these do load in Quicktime with the Flip4Mac plugin. I’m unsure if the intention is that this is going to stay this way (I’m not sure of flash’s realtime streaming capabilities) but it is one of the few unpolished edges in the system.

The drill-down category menus, search and enhanced descriptions for radio shows is delectable - I now can get exactly where I want, although there is one really big missing feature (and the same applies to the new TV iPlayer) and that’s the ability to sort all programmes by date (everything is done alphabetically). I try to listen to new comedy almost daily, but it’s hard to find what’s new today across the board.

Switching between media types otherwise is very clear, a three-buttoned TV & Radio, TV or Radio option on every category page making filtering very simple, and the new and big icons work well. Dare I say it I think the radio logos come into their own on their own page - thank god they decided not to leave them all on white backgrounds.

Scheduling (and past days programming) is now built in by default and it’s bliss not to have to leave the pages to get there, and this makes it a lot easier to check the week ahead. A nice touch is that it also already ‘fills-in’ the schedule with repeats that are in the existing library, so you know it’s already there somewhere and available to watch. They’ve also started bundling programmes from the same series into expandable sections within the listings, so you can also backtrack through a series right from the point you find it if the episodes are still available.

The default iPlayer window has been super-sized, and although it’s not immediately obvious if the video size/quality has been altered, if it has I’m sure the UK’s ISPs will all be hopping mad… fantastic :)

The related programme link has also been bundled in with the description, category tagging, a much more discrete title and a very exact expiry date - all in a hide-away box on each programme page which gives a lot more open real estate for that big screen to fill…

Of course, the interface has become very busy with all the new options, cluttered maybe, but I would imagine that if that is the general response they get they could always implement an iGoogle style customisation system where you could pick or choose your version, or more likely what could happen, a ‘simplified’ option or ‘show more’ style interface. That said, as someone who looks at the new homepage and thinks there is nothing they’d want removed, I’d keep the whole lot on there all the time.

My prediction of playlists hasn’t really come to form, but I wonder whether this is down to complexity of interface reasons (e.g. they don’t want to make it anymore complicated). They could have taken the cue from 4radio, so the idea is out there, but clearly is has been dismissed for some reason. I can’t say it troubles me much however, and would only be a bonus if they do ever introduce it.

You may have deduced that I am elated, delighted and brimming with anticipation to really get going with the new iPlayer. Already proved as a very good product anyway, the new version considerably raises the bar for other broadcasters (ITV, C4, and I would imagine, five - like I even know) and this will make this service even more popular; it can’t do anything else.

Well done the Beeb. For all the criticism that could be hurled at you for other reasons, the iPlayer is one place you excel and exceed expectations.

(Now I’ll sit back and wait for Lloydy to complain I wrote this too quickly… ;P )

Being Duff’s birthday last weekend, and that everyone had been complaining they’d not seen me down there in a while, I took myself down to Tooting for the weekend.

Duffy has moved since my last visit to his, yet the place still seemed very Duff like, just with a less impressive view (last time I was down there I watched sunrise over the city from inside my sleeping bag from the balcony).

We met for a few beers and then wandered out into Putney - a German bar where they served really quite ridiculous slabs of beer in huge chunky mugs. Swanny, Day, Ambrose, Jess, James and a few of Duff’s London mates came out, but it wasn’t long before we were all introduced to some new (drinking) games that Day had dreamt up. I won’t go into any of them here, needless to say they are hilarious, but only after a few drinks and in a ‘you had to be there’ kind of way.

We ended up in a place called Fez (anywhere called Fez that Duffy recommends has to be taken with a pinch of salt - I remember the last time he made a similar suggestion) and it was a good night. Jojo and Emma made a sneaky appearance later on, as did one of Jess’ mates and a Bolivian.

All good clean fun, yet once again not quite so cheap as just going to the pub methinks.

Aside from this, Will met Lewis Hamilton this week. I’m really looking forward to the F1 now.

It occurred to me at some point today that I have never shared the following life-critical information.

1. The Bourbon
2. McVities Mint Chocolate Digestive (special occasions only)
3. McVities Dark Chocolate Digestive
4. The Foxes Cream (too sweet for everyday use)
5. The Gingernut
6. The Malted Milk (chew around the cows for most enjoyment)
7. Jammy Dodger
8. The (Controversial) Jaffa Cake
9. Squashed Fly Biscuits
10. Rich Tea (to be eaten with plenty of liquids)

The Hobnob is like eating sandpaper, and creates an uncontrollable mess. It is most certainly not in the top ten biscuits.

These are cold, hard facts and I realise maybe hard for some people to swallow, but you can’t argue with the truth.

The first thing I ever typed into a search engine (as far as I can remember) was Bligh, the name of one half of my family, and an action that had lasting consequences on the following few years when it provided the starting point for some investigative family history.

My mother (who put the real research in) found that a large portion of my ancestors were creative and practical people (printers, jewellers, stone masons, seafarers and coach builders) - and we always knew there was a point in the first quarter of the last century when horse drawn vehicles saw their first real competition, and motor-powered vehicles started to come in.

My great-grandfather had worked at the Austin works around this time, and family stories say he was hand-picked by Lord Austin to manage coach construction on his new motorcars. The family in Ramsgate had been coach builders for a few generations, and now with the modern advances, had turned their skills to the new technology. After all at this stage there still weren’t too many differences between the building techniques used for the two forms of transport.

We discovered in the ensuing research that for a period whilst they we’re still living in Ramsgate, the family had themselves taken to constructing cars under the name of Bligh Brothers. We’d never seen or heard of this minor manufacturer until then, but have since been aware (and optimistic) that potentially one of these rare machines might still be locked away in someone’s collection, or at least their might be some photographic record.

A few months ago a battered and dismembered lantern from a Bligh Brothers car turned up in an eBay auction, but like all these things, was lost to a higher bidder. It was therefore a bit of a surprise to find that American comedian and talk show host Jay Leno was to supply us with an unexpected twist to the Bligh Brothers story.

As a keen collector of vintage cars, Leno recently launched a website where he catalogues his extensive collection of vehicles. During a routine Google for Bligh Brothers related images, this photographic gem surfaced, an image on Leno’s car site with the accompanying note,

So, it’s only by coincidence that Jay Leno happens to be in this photograph standing behind the car. This picture was taken this August at Pebble Beach and the car is a modified 1921 Mercedes Bligh Brothers Tourer. As I learned from Jay at the event, the car was created by England-dwelling, Polish nobleman Count Louis Zborowski who created four high-performance large-engined vehicles all dubbed by him to be “Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang” (words derived from Cockney rhyming slang). This car, number 2 in the series, was built on a Mercedes chassis around an enormous 18.8-liter Benz BZ IV series aircraft engine. Back in the day, this 230 horsepower engine was able to carry the car to speeds reaching 113 mph. Zborowski raced the car only once at Brooklands and later took the car to tour the Sahara Desert.

Author Ian Fleming was inspired by the Count and his cars and adopted the cars’ name for his novel “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” - which in 1968 was made into the successful movie.

It seems so strange to find this. It’s one of those nuggets of interest that lost in the transition from one generation to the next. To rediscover that the car was both a desert tourer and also the inspiration for Fleming’s immensely famous children’s book is really quite special - in fact it was one of four, and now the only surviving one. An 18.8 litre aeroplane engine - that’s insane even by modern standards. Not content to leave it there, another one in the ‘Chitty’ range was fitted with an incredible 450bhp aeroplane engine. Even more extraordinarily, a modified Chitty 4 went on to claim the World Land Speed Record (171.02mph) before killing it’s driver and owner, JG Parry-Thomas on the third attempt when the neck-height drive chain snapped with pretty gruesome consequences.

As it happens quite a few people took photos at the event and there is now a pretty good public record of images, plus one or two other pieces of Bligh Brothers information have come to light in recent days. I seem to recall that there might be another car in the motor museum in Beauleigh - hopefully one day I’ll actually get to see that one, the now-reconstructed Chitty IV, or perhaps even the original Chitty II Tourer.