Cars cars cars, yes, dear reader, a geek is still writing these articles. Once the car is in our possession, I’ll continue the regular output of geekery and humour.

But wait. Here’s one.

On Apple’s new MacOS 10.5, there’s a feature ripped from iTunes called “cover flow”. You can flip through previews and (enormous) icons of your files. Also in 10.5 are super-mega-wowie-high-res icons of all Apple-provided programs. For example, you can actually read the text on the TextEdit icon. The Address Book icon has a lovely faux-leather texture to it. Very classy. But here’s the best bit. The icons that represent networked Windows machines are beige monitors displaying the Blue Screen Of Death. Hah!

(Windows Vista SP1 will counter by displaying networked Macs as spinning beachballs…)

(Pending approved credit…)

Volkswagen Golf Mark V 1.9L Turbo Diesel Comfortline. In grey, to match every other bloody Golf on the roads today. I would have rather had a bright colour, but this is an ex-demo, and it comes in any colour I wanted, as long as it was grey.

I took it for a spin this afternoon, absolutely fantastic. When I got in, the trip computer told me that I was to expect about 500km of travel on this half-tank of diesel fuel. Golly. If it wasn’t for the slightly pokey starts, I wouldn’t know this was a diesel. None of that small-truck noise, smooth as anything to drive, and an astonishing amount of power. Coming from an old Honda, where if we wanted to go up a hill we’d have to turn off the air conditioning, having that much torque in such a small car was fantastic. I wanted to find a broken tram someplace and pull it up a hill.

It’s nice to be in a Volkswagen again. We’ll be picking it up on Tuesday or Wednesday. Hurrah!

I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with these morons anymore. I used to be up to my neck in FileMaker, as my old company hosted FileMaker databases for various clients. I grew to really, really dislike their software.

So anyway, there’s a notice on their website about Apple’s forthcoming OS release, commonly called “Leopard”. Apparently, they’re not recommending people use FileMaker with Leopard, because it won’t work very well. Ummm, guys, it’s not like this Leopard thing was such a surprise. Apple – your parent company – has been talking about it for quite a while now. It’s even been delayed a while, giving you some extra time to get things working. Perhaps you’re not ADC members? Maybe give the people at Mozilla a ring – they managed to release a Leopard compatibility update the other day. They might be able to send you over a copy of the developer tools DVD. Just a thought.

PS The headline is taken from the funniest slogan ever. For a brief while, FileMaker Inc’s slogan was “What’s your problem. FileMaker”. I loved that, because at the time, FileMaker was my problem. (“What’s your problem?” “FileMaker!”) But, as I’m sure you can see, gentle reader, the slogan can be punctuated in all kinds of different and interesting ways.

This weekend has been a horrible one, transportation-wise. Everything from a broken car to a non-operational travelator-rampy thing.

Mica had to go down to Koonwarra to teach a couple of chocolate classes – it’s a 2-hour drive. We got up early Saturday morning, and she left in good time.

Then the phone rang. It was Mica. The car made a bad ticking noise, then, just after she pulled off the road, lots and lots of thick black smoke started pouring out of the hood. She wisely decided to get out of the car and ring me and the RACV.

The RACV showed up, brought Mica and the car to Koo Wee Rup, and one of the cooking school people came along to pick her up and take her the rest of the way to the school. She was 45 minutes late, but everyone was understanding.

So, our car is about an hour’s drive away, in a town with a silly name, and with a blown gasket. Mica’s two hours away in another town with another silly name, with no car. I had to somehow get to Koonwarra and pick up Mica. Then we had to do something about the car. Luckily, Mica had been planning to be there overnight anyway, so I didn’t have to run down there at night and get her.

The RACV arranged for a hire car, and all I had to do was go to St Kilda and pick it up. One of the tram lines that goes near the house wasn’t working well (overhead wire work) and the schedule was shot to hell. I missed three trams on three other lines. Finally, I got a tram to take me to the right place.

The Europcar person was very nice, and gave me a horrible car. But at least it runs, and has air conditioning. Did I mention it’s 33c today? Maybe I skipped that bit.

Unfortunately, I left my credit card there. Whoops. I only discovered this later on in the day when I went to pay for something. I had to ring the bank and have them cancel the card, just in case.

The trip to Koonwarra and back was rather uneventful. Thank goodness.

Back home, we had to go to Safeway. Our local Safeway is in Malvern Central, a shopping centre with parking in the basement. To get to Safeway, we have to go up two levels of moving sidewalk rampy things called “travelators”. They’ve been working on the shopping centre lately, adding more floor space – they’re nearing completion, and making one heck of a mess. Unfortunately, the mess is currently all over the travelators, and they’re not working this evening. At least the elevator’s running.

The situation now? We’re all home, we have groceries, a crappy rental car, and a lonely Honda Civic sitting in Koo Wee Rup with a blown gasket. The ball is in our court, but I don’t really want to leave the house.

Moo Brew, from the Moorilla Estate winery, produces a very decent range of beers. Their pale ale is really quite nice – a bit more bitter than many pales, but refreshing nevertheless. I’m looking forward to the warmer months when pale ales really come into their own as good refreshing backyard beers.

Their beers are good, right… but their beer mats are bloody brilliant:

Welcome to my life.

Check this breaking news from Australia Customs. It seems that a certain Mr Potato Head was caught smuggling Ecstasy into the country in his back storage compartment.

“Mr Potato Head appeared inconsistent on the x-ray – looked rather blotchy – and that caused us to look at that further,” said David Laffan (yes, his real name) from the Customs service.

I managed to get in touch with Mr Head, in his jail cell, where he gave me a statement: “I’ve been set up, man! Look at me! I can’t even reach my back compartment. Someone slipped the pills in there while I was sleeping on the plane. It’s not mine!”

When asked about the “blotchy” quote, he muttered something about a skin condition and hung up on jurgen dot ca.

I ask you though, gentle reader: look at this guy. Does he look like he’s on E?

Um… Okay, well, maybe it’s a bad angle.

In case you haven’t already figured this out, gentle reader, I’m a great fan of the writing of the reporters at The Register. They’ve outdone themselves this time with an article about some Kiwis that have discovered that alcohol makes you smart. Here’s a sample paragraph:

It seems the rats were separated into three groups. One was put on a fairly hefty booze intake equivalent to five or six beers a day; another lot got a ration “equivalent to a level of consumption that does not exceed [the] legal driving limit” – though disappointingly they still were not allowed to drive cars. The third, luckless group of rodents were put on a temperance regime.

I love the bit about rats driving cars.

Now, speaking of cars and New Zealand, when we were over there a few months ago, we discovered something amusing about the Kiwi automobile industry: they don’t have one. At all. Some years ago, it was decided that pursuing that line of business was not sustainable, so they lowered the import duty on used cars.

Coincidentally, Japan’s tax laws are structured in such a way that it becomes very disadvantageous to own a car that’s more than about 3 years old – to stimulate their own automobile industry. So some very clever alcohol-drinking rats decided to load huge freighter boats up with three-year-old Japanese cars and float it over to New Zealand. As a happy result, one can buy relatively new cars in New Zealand for very very very low prices. A friend of ours has a three year old Subaru, for which she paid only NZ$3000. Cheap cheap!

The Japanese win because they have a place to sell their old cars. The Kiwis win, because they can buy very cheap newish cars. The only losers (aside from that pesky environment – but better three year old cars than 30 year old ones) are the cars themselves. Poor things – they had a relatively relaxed life tootling around Japanese cities. Suddenly, they’re thrown on a boat and taken to New Zealand – quite a rural place, with lots of hills and a good amount of snow in the south. At one point, we were driving up a dirt road in the snow, chains on the tyres, engine freaking out, heater on full blast, with five people inside. Poor little car. In the stress of the whole situation, it detached its rear-view mirror, like a lizard with its tail. I hope it’s okay – at least it won’t be driven by a rat. Which I think is my point here.