There is a guy round the corner doing up a Mini. He’s been at it for a while now, I’ve seen glimpses of it under the tarpaulin as I’ve passed by. It used to be a Mini 25, but he’s stripped it back to the shell, taken all the rust out and put a bodykit on it. It still looks a bit of a mess at the moment, because it’s unpainted, but it’s looking more structurally sound now.

I was passing by this morning and thought I’d say hello, as I hadn’t yet spoken to the guy about it. So we started chatting about what he was doing to the car, his plans for it, and I happened to mention that I needed to get my wheel arches sorted at some point. And then he offered to trim them back for me. Before I knew it I’d taken him up on the offer, and this afternoon I went round with Neddy and he and his Dad set about fixing my wheels-too-big-for-the-body problem. The plastic wheel arch trims were removed, and after some thinking and drawing on the car, John’s Dad set about my car with an angle grinder. That was a scary moment, as I stood there holding the protective cloth in place while looking away, but feeling every vibration as the grinder tore a strip out of the bodywork. I was so tense! When it was finished it did look good though, and after a little hammerite (he only had bright red, but actually it goes rather well) painted onto the bare metal we put the arch trims back on. These had to be flexed slightly so that they came forward further, but they work a treat. The arches are only held on with self-tapping screws for now, until I can get the hammerite covered with paint, at which point we’ll get some pop rivets in there. John also sold me a bumper he no longer needed, since mine was rather bent and the bolts had sheared off while we were taking it off, so I’ve now got a nice stainless bumper on the front too.

So now I can turn my wheels at long last. I took Neddy for a quick spin round the block, just to check there was no rubbing, and thankfully there were no nasty scrubbing noises. For the first time in a long time I can actually turn full lock, it’s amazing! This means I won’t have to change the wheels to get the car through the MOT, which Neddy will be booked in for as soon as the new air filter arrives. So a pretty productive afternoon, by all accounts, although I have to admit I did the standing-around-watching part of the work, rather than the actually-doing-something part…

Today I have been looking at Logic Express, the music creation software by Apple that is a slimmed down version of Logic Pro. If you know me, you’ll know that music is a pretty important part of my life, and just recently I’ve really missed not having some useful tools to hand. Yes, I do have MusicTime Deluxe installed on my PC, but I rarely use that computer any more, and MusicTime is showing its age too. However, I shall need to be writing music at some point in the reasonably near future – Ellie has already asked me to write some music for the play she’s doing next year, and of course there’s my band too and all the songs I’ve been writing. But today I found a possible solution to all my problems, in Logic Express.

From what I’ve read, Logic Express is a effectively two programs in one. On the one hand it’s a music writing program, where you can write music either manually or record it in using a MIDI device. That music can then be tweaked, arranged, played back and printed to your heart’s content. In that respect it’s much like MusicTime Deluxe, just with far more control over what you’re doing. However, on the other hand it’s also an audio recording program, allowing you to take inputs from microphones or instruments and record them straight into the computer. Given the right hardware you can even do multi-track recording, allowing you to record from more than one source at a time (for instance, recording guitar, piano, bass and vocals all at the same time on separate tracks). There are even a load of effects and filters you can apply to your sounds, so that you can transform a fairly boring sounding guitar into a Van Halen style solo at the click of a button, or make your cello sound as if it was being played in a cathedral rather than a living room. Not only this, but you can combine audio recordings with MIDI tracks, making it a pretty awesome package. There are even a load of built-in software instruments, which recreates the sound of the instrument via software rather than using a hardware MIDI synth. Pretty powerful, by all accounts.

I have to say, I’ve been very impressed by what I’ve read and seen so far. Logic Express really does look like something I could make very good use of, something that would do me nicely for several years to come. I could use it to notate and arrange my songs so that other people could play them, I could write music for various other things, I could arrange pieces of music, I could record the Rooted album on my computer… the list is endless, and this is only taking into account what I do at the moment!

The only thing holding me back at the moment is the price. Although it’s certainly worth the money, I’m not sure I’m really in a position to be forking out another £160-200 at the moment. Unless I go for a bootlegged copy from eBay for £20, but I don’t think I’ll be going down that road! I was tempted for a moment, but I felt guilty just thinking about it! So it looks like I shall just have to continue saving up the pennies for now and see if I can hold off indulging myself for a few more months…

I thought it was about time I bored the world again with a long drawn-out list of my favourite software for the Mac. You can find it here, and if you want to leave comments about anything in it, leave it at the bottom of this page. Enjoy.

Well, I’m back at home now after a three week absence. First there was a busy week on a Ventures camp, followed by just over a week visiting my family in Paignton, and then a week with my darling Ellie in Gloucester. This past week has been spent working out details for the wedding, which has been fairly busy but lots of fun. We’ve found a photographer we like (and one we didn’t), and we’ve had a chat with the vicar’s wife about catering, so we’ve made a lot of progress! Ellie and I were very impressed with Tim Aston (photographer), he seemed very professional and has shown us that he’ll do exactly what we want, rather than what he thinks we ought to have. The other guy we went to see said he’d give us all the photos he took, but they weren’t anything special and it sounded like he wanted to dictate the timings of the day to suit him, which didn’t really agree with us. One of the problems with choosing a photographer is that they need to be good enough that I can never look at the photos afterwards and think “I could have done better”. Ellie has already banned me from doing my own wedding photos, so I need to make sure what we get are top quality!

Ellie and I were also flicking through the Argos catalogue and starting to make a wedding present list. All very exciting! I don’t think we’ve got enough on the list yet, so we’ll have to scratch our heads some more and think of other things to put on…

Right, well I’m probably going to have a pretty busy day tomorrow, catching up on three weeks worth of work, so I’ll stop writing now and hopefully get a relatively early night!

Having got Neddy back on the road yesterday, I was all set to drive off to Gloucester to see Ellie this afternoon. I was playing bass at Upton Vale Baptist Church this morning, which was great! After the service I had a good chat with several folks whom I’d not seen in a while, and then drove back home for lunch via a petrol station. Unfortunately the petrol pump nozzle wasn’t working properly and it didn’t detect when my tank was full, so it all overflowed out of the filler pipe onto the floor!

Anyway, after lunch and a cup of tea I packed up my stuff and began to pack the Mini. Then, as I lifted the driver’s seat forward to put stuff on the back seats, there was a crack, and I found my windscreen fractured. GRRRR!!!! I think it was probably over-enthusiasm on my part, eager to pack the car and drive off to see my darling Ellie. I just didn’t expect the headrest to crack the windscreen like that.

Needless to say, I am not driving to Gloucester today now. I’ve rung my insurance people and they’re getting someone to fit a new windscreen for me tomorrow (the only Mini windscreen they had was in Manchester), after which I shall promptly zoom off to my beloved. Frustratingly it’ll probably affect my no claims bonus, and there’ll be an excess to pay too. This is particularly frustrating because I have a feeling a friend of mine in the Colchester Mini Club has a windscreen knocking around in his garage that I could probably have used, and he probably would have fitted it for me too. But he’s in Essex, and I’m not, so I’ll just have to bear the brunt of the cost of replacing it.

Neddy obviously likes being in Torquay too much. First there was the broken fan and the stubborn bolts that threatened to leave the Mini stranded here while I go to Gloucester by other means, and then once we sorted that out there’s something else to get in the way! Either that, or God’s making it clear that he doesn’t want me on the road this evening… I guess he knows best!

After a bit of a set-back earlier in the week with Neddy, my new cooling fan arrived in the post this morning. Dad and I duly set about taking the engine apart to fit it, but unfortunately hit on more problems than we had expected.

Replacing the fan *should* have been relatively straightforward. The first job is draining the water from the radiator by removing the hose at the bottom; we’d done that earlier in the week so we knew we could do that. Next we had to remove two hoses from the top of the radiator, one being where the water came in and the other being the overflow pipe. Then there is a bracket at the top and one long bolt at the bottom holding the cowling, to which the radiator is attached by another couple of bolts. The top bracket came off nicely, but at that point it all started getting silly. The two bolts holding the radiator to the cowling turned but didn’t come out, and the same happened with the long bolt at the bottom.

Dad and I have tried all sorts to try to get the bolts out, but to no avail. We think we know why we’re having problems, but they’re not things we can do much about, unfortunately. The two short bolts screw into a nut that’s welded to the casing of the radiator, and it appears that the weld has come undone, so the nut is just going round with the bolt and not undoing. The long bolt at the bottom has unscrewed from it’s nut (which is also welded to the other end of the bottom bracket), but is refusing to come out. In this case we think the bolt must have got corroded and has got itself stuck inside the shaft, so although it’s not screwed into anything it’s still gripping onto something and refusing to come out of the hole. We’ve pulled and pushed and turned and bashed and squirted with easing oil, but it’s still being stubborn.

So we’ve had to admit defeat on this one, which is highly frustrating. It’s too late to do anything this week, so I shall have to leave it to Dad to get it to a garage next week to see if someone with more resources can do something with it! Unfortunately the local Mini centre (which is a fantastic place) is on its annual holiday and won’t be back until Thursday of next week. We’ll get something sorted I’m sure, but I don’t know how soon it will be! It’s frustrating, because I was going to be driving to Gloucester next week, and back to Wivenhoe the following week, not to mention going to Mini In The Park on the way! Now I’m not sure what’s going to happen, or when it will happen, so I’m just going to have to keep praying that God lends a hand at some point!! Oh yes, and the MOT runs out at the end of this month. At this rate I’ll be late. Not great.

Yes, for those observant blog-obsessors, I have been away from my desk for a while now. Last week I was a leader on a Ventures camp at Stanbridge Earls, just outside Southampton. It was a Christian youth camp for 14-18 year olds, and it was absolutely fantastic! We all had a lot of fun, leaders and members alike. I arrived there last Friday, after a long 6 hour drive from Colchester (3 and a half of which were trying to get round the M25, grrr), and the kids arrived on the Saturday afternoon. It was a fun-filled, action-packed, non-stop week of worship, seminars, talks, activities, games, fun, eating, running around, getting wet, late nights and early mornings!

My duties during the week were fairly broad, as were all the leaders on the camp. I was a dorm leader, a band member, a worship leader, a seminar giver, and generally a helper in whatever was around that needed doing! It was very exhausting. The band was good fun, and we all gelled together very well from the word go, producing a very positive and tight sound, which was fantastic. Unfortunately the drummer busted his ankle on the second day, so I ended up playing drums a couple of times – it was a lot of fun actually, and I think I did rather well considering I’ve never really played publically before!

The site itself was brilliant. It’s a day and boarding school for children with learning difficulties, so we slept in reasonably comfortable beds all week and had full reign of all the facilities on site, including a large sports hall, an indoor swimming pool, a theatre, a dining room and kitchen, plenty of teaching rooms, and a large field too. The weather was very kind to us too.

The only down side to the week was that I went deaf. One of our large activities involved swimming from one end of the pool to the other, picking up a hoop from the bottom and swimming back. Not too difficult, I thought. But when I resurfaced I found myself almost completely unable to hear, and I didn’t manage to clear it for quite some time. It was actually quite frustrating, not being able to hear, as I tend to rely on hearing quite a lot, as I guess do most people. Thankfully one ear cleared just before our evening meeting, so I was able to hear what was going on – I was dreading missing all the music!

Now I’m in Torquay visiting my parents. I think I’ve caught up on most of my sleep now, and I’m enjoying being around my family and having a relaxing holiday. Sunday afternoon we all went on the beach – that was sooooo nice! I’ve missed the beach, and I’ve missed my lovely rolling hills too! I’ve also been taking the opportunity to service my Mini, as its MOT is due at the end of this month when I get back to Colchester. Having bought all the parts yesterday, this afternoon Dad and I set to work. We drained all the old oil, changed the oil filter, and filled the oil back up again, thankfully with no leaks to be seen. Then we drained the water from the system, flushed the radiator with clean water and filled it up again with 1:3 mixture of antifreeze and water, again with no leaks. Then we replaced the rocker cover gasket, which had been leaking slightly. Then came the moment of truth – I turned the key, there was a nasty clanking noise, and I turned the engine back off again… we’d moved a pipe to gain access to a clamp earlier, and forgotten to put it back, so the blades of the cooling fan had snagged on the pipe and broken off!! Ooops!! And it was all going so well, too. So I’ve now ordered a replacement fan from Mini Spares, and as soon as that arrives I shall have to get the radiator out and replace the fan. Not something I was planning on doing, but at least it’s possible to do in a day, so I shall still be able to drive to Gloucester next week to see Ellie!

Right, that had better be all from me for now. I’m aiming to be back in Colchester by the 21st August, should anyone be interested…