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 family in Ramsgate had been coach builders for a few generations, and with the technological advances, had turned their skills to the new technology of cars. 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. Hopefully one day I’ll actually get to see that one; the now-reconstructed Chitty IV, or perhaps even the original Chitty II Tourer.

Once in a while I see some truly ingenious thinking, and it’s rare to see a product that is so functionally trend-defying, especially when often concept cars are beautiful, but little else.

The Gina prototypes with fabric ‘skin’ is a really good demonstration of how approaching a problem from a different angle can reap big rewards. I can remember as a kid watching Thunder in Paradise (yes, a truly masterful programme) where Hulk Hogan’s boat could morph shape. Incredibly futuristic, but now here is a real and simple alternative to produce lightweight, flexible, form-altering products.

Of course spaceframe technology has meant this has been possible for years, but I’ve never seen it put into practice. There are inevitably ‘issues’ too - how many times would you return to your posh looking cloth convertible to find someone had slashed it - but it’s not like a new paint job or sidepanel doesn’t cost a lot of money anyway.

Unfortunately, I don’t ever really expect to see a car like this in production, at least not in such a stark and complete form. Clearly cutting down weight and simplifying panel creation would be very desirable for manufacturers (each being expensive in their own way), but metal isn’t likely to be thrown out for fabric in the foreseeable future. However I do think it gives a good platform for moving car design forward and hopefully will stimulate truly beautiful, lightweight solutions to problems that are currently overlooked because their remedies appear ‘essential’.

The first thing I would like to do is thank Red Bull and Double Decker for their continued support this weekend. Had it not been for these two items, this post would most certainly not have been written tonight.

On Friday lunchtime I drove down to Banbury (my first ‘real’ outing in the new car - it’s like driving a eiderdown when compared to the old beast) and met Dan and Dave at Wembley in mid-afternoon. Rumour had it there would be some ‘special guests’ (I thought the support act, Supergrass, would be good enough) but most people were thinking Paul McCartney. Dave suggested he’d heard Led Zeppelin might appear, but it was hard to believe, although I did mention as we passed through Gate M that the Foos do specify on their rider that there are only three bands they would ever be prepared to share a dressing room with, one of those bands is the aforementioned Supergrass, secondly Oasis and finally Led Zep. I didn’t really expect it to happen.

Anyway, the gig was superb. Currin had never been to a proper rock gig before, and neither me or Dave had ever been to one in Wembley Stadium, so there was something new for all of us. It was insanely packed in front of the stage and as the two and a half hour set drew on, we all ended up closer and closer to the front. Eventually we all got separated. Dave told me after he got right on the barrier, whereas I was four rows back where the only way to keep upright was to jump as high as everyone else and the sweat was so thick it was like glue. Yes a lovely image, but it’s hard to express how god damn brilliant it was. And then they announced Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones were coming on and the crowd went even more wild. Of course, the presence of Robert Plant might have been nice too, but I’m not complaining; that’s two for the price of one as far as I’m concerned.

I caught a train back to Banbury, then drove the remainder of the way, arriving in Lower Brailes at about half one. A long day. I stayed with relatives, then woke at seven to get back on the road and over to Silverstone for the Renault World Series.

It took me a little while to figure out that the Renault World Series is not just one super race, it’s the name of the event, and all the various classes of Renault motorsport compete on the same day. Will managed to acquire the team buggy for long parts of the day and we spent a lot of time dishing out promotional material (well, our ‘pitbabes’ did, but it’s hard work watching, taking photos for the website and then restocking the girls with more flyers).

Being as Adam’s Formula Renault races were at opposite ends of the day, there was a lot of time to kill between 9am and 5pm, but after qualifying third in both rounds, he snatched second place in both the morning and afternoon session keeping him firmly at the top of the championship.

I managed to acquire my first sunburn of the year, and was quite relieved to make it home at 8pm - a long, long day. Not much relaxing at all this weekend, but really extra special for all of the above. All I need now is roughly 16 hours of sleep.

I think I knew this day would return, but I had sort of hoped it would happen a bit more slower and obviously than last time, but it didn’t.

On Tuesday Will was using the Macbook for some notes when it suddenly froze up. I shut it down and left it after being unresponsive for over half an hour (really unusual) and when I started it back up the next morning I was faced by the flashing folder of doom.

So I knew it was curtains, but thought I’d better just check, and all the tricks I learnt from the last this happened (a faulty drive going in the first weeks of having the laptop two years ago) just confirmed it for me. Dead drive.

For those curious to know how you can tell whether you’ve got a pretty nasty situation:

• Incredibly long start up wait then the flashing folder of doom (comes complete with question mark)
• Rebooting takes no effect
• Holding down T while booting and linking to another machine via Firewire: if it fails to show a big firewire symbol on the screen/it’s non-mounting as a disk-type device on the other machine
• Booting from DVD setup disks and running Disk Utility demonstrates no reference to the hard disc, only the mounted DVD
• Additional clicking noises are not a good sign (the stylus may have collapsed or similar - potentially scratching the disc face)

If you meet this criteria, you’re probably in for some fun and games.

Luckily, I’ve been using SugarSync for a month, which silently syncs everything up to a big S3 vault, so I’ve lost very little thankfully. That’s damn good timing though - there were some critical files still on there from the last time I remote worked; this time last month I’d have lost it all.

The only other thing affected was my calendar and address book, but luckily I also run a regular automated iSync (using Proximity and an AppleScript) which keeps a complete and up-to-date version of both of these on my phone. Still, it’s a hassle having to transfer it all back into the appropriate multiple calendars. I’m going to start using gCal I think.

Anyway, the new hard drive with five year warranty is in the post. All I’ve got to do now is wait for the fun of installing and configuring every single app again. Hurray.