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As promised, pictures and mini-review of the Getat Panerai homage.  This was my prize for wining the Chinese GP, it took a while to arrive from Hong Kong but I can’t fault the service or the watch.  I was a little unsure of the styling and the size on the wrist, hence buying the homage before the real thing.

I have to say I really like it, so much that I now want a proper Panerai.  It’s a solid watch and very well made.  It has an asian manual wind movement that so far is keeping excellent time.  We went for the 44mm titanium case and sandwich dial with green numerals.  It wears bigger than 44mm due to the crown guard but not uncomfortably so.

So, SWMBO won the Bahrain GP and chose the monster easter egg (see below).  We drew at the Australian GP and all of a sudden the rules changed and neither of us could choose a prize!

I won the Malaysian GP and so my turn for a prize.  We collect watches, one of the watches on the grail list is a Panerai but they are large watches with a love it/hate it styling.  At the RRP it will be an expensive mistake to make so I’ve been on the hunt for an ‘homage’.  Long story short, my prize for the Malaysian GP is a Panerai homage from Getat Watches.  It’s due in a couple of weeks so I’ll post up a mini review.

Extravagant?  Us?  Possibly………

Each year we have a little competition between us surrounding Forumla 1.  We each pick a driver and a team for the season and whichever of us beats the other in terms of points accumulated at each race gets to choose a prize.  I lost the first race in Bahrain a couple of weeks ago and so SWMBO got to pick the prize.

Easter is upon us and we haven’t had an easter egg for a long time so the better half picked the dark Ostrich Easter Egg from Hotel Chocolat.  We’ve had a long term love affair with their dark chocolate, in particular the chilli and choc concoctions which are highly recommended!

Now, the ostrich egg is some 20cm tall and the shell is as thick as my thumb and together with the box of chocolates included there is 1.4kg, yes KG, of chocolate.  Pictures are worth a thousand words they say so here you go…….

Oh, for the record, I picked Seb Vettel and McLaren and SWMBO picked Freddie Alonso and Mercedes GP.  Come on Seb, don’t let me down again……….. I’ve a long list of prizes lined up.

For a while I’ve been using XBMC on an old xbox to stream media. The trials of installing and configuring I’ll save for another day but I had it setup to output 720p and all was hunky-dory.

But……the fan noise is really starting to get on my nerves and the lack of true HD is preventing the streaming of HD material so I started looking for an alternative. Hours spent browsing AVForums threw up some likely candidates and I eventually settled on the AC Ryan PlayOnHD Mini. Daft name but a great little box of tricks!

It has no hard drive so no fan, therefore it runs completely silent and cool……bliss! It was up and running in under 5 minutes and happily streamed everything I threw at it. All my media is on a HP MediaSmart Windows Home Server and the only niggle with the PlayOn so far is the slightly naff interface and the clunky way it deals with network shortcuts to access media.

YAMJ is due soon and this will transform the user experience so fingers crossed. I’ve also got my Logitech Harmony controlling it so happy days all round.

For a few weeks we’ve been considering replacing our Volvo S60 as our requirements have changed somewhat.  Looks like we’ve done it!  We’re picking up the replacement on Saturday all being well.  We’ve gone for a Mini Cooper convertible, not quite the BMW Z4 3.0 I wanted but SWMBO is very happy. Pictures to follow……

We’re just back from a nostalgic trip to Paderborn-Sennelager. This is where we lived for a while whilst working in Germany.

Half-term we’re off to Paderborn for a few days.  The first time back for several years and we plan to visit all the old haunts (assuming they are still there!); Maurizio’s, Akropolis, Deutsches Haus, Finke, Klingenthal, Kump, Bad Lippspringe, Sennelager, Schloss Neuhaus, Padersee etc etc.  Looking forward to a Zigeuner Schnitzel too.  We will be staying at the Ibis on the Paderwall, cheap and cheerful but handy for walking into the town centre.

Lodge Neuhaus (my mother Lodge) isn’t meeting when we are there which is a shame as I haven’t attended a meeting of the Lodge since 2000.

Photos coming on our return!

Just back from a couple of weeks in the USA.  Flew to Boston with American Airlines for a few days, then on to Las Vegas with US Airways then back to Boston.  American Airlines were a big disappointment, very poor in-flight entertainment (1 film) and not even seat back screens!  The food was ok but we’ll defnitely be using BA in the future, the price difference is woth it.  US Airways were ok, food and baggage were extras – think a slightly up-market Ryan Air and you’ll be close.

Boston was hot and humid for the first few days, we stayed in the Bostonian Millennium which is in a fantastic location just across from Quincy Market and Fanueil Hall.  We booked a whale watching cruise with Boston Harbor (sic) Cruises which took us out to the Stellwagen Bank off the north-eastern tip of Cape Cod.  We were lucky with the whale spotting – a multitude of humpbacks, fin and minke whales.

Las Vegas was very hot, between 102 and 107 during the day but a nice dry heat.  We stayed in Paris-Las Vegas which was fine.  Nothing to really shout about but all you need is a bed and the room was large, clean and comfortable.  It is 8 years since we were last in Vegas and the development in that time is tremendous.  Several new hotels have gone up and there is a huge development in the centre of the ‘Strip’ which just beggars belief.

We were lucky enough to see the Lion King at Mandalay Bay, Le Reve at the Wynn and the Bodies exhibition at Luxor.  The show ‘Le Reve’ at the Wynn was superb, you can’t describe it, you just have to see it if you are in Vegas.  The whole production is based around an amazing morphing swimming pool with mind-blowing acrobatics.  I thought the Bodies exhibiton might be a bit gruesome but it was fascinating and very well presented.

Returning to Boston we took in the Museum of Fine Art, the Science Museum and lots of shopping.  This time we stayed in the Back bay area in the Westin Copley Place which overlooks Copley Square and the Public Library.  The Westin wasn’t quite as nice as the Millennium but still of a good standard.

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Picked up the iQ2 last night from Inchcape Toyota of Basingstoke.  So far so good, the automatic gearbox is light years ahead of that in the Aygo or the smarts we owned.  Updates to follow……

Was digging through some photos recently and found one of my first car.

It was a 1978 Mercedes 230 in ‘English Red’.  A lovely car and built when Mercedes over-engineered everything on their cars.  I haven’t come across any other car that was as solid as this one.  I ran it for a couple of years and sold it on at a small profit.  This was followed by a 1984 Mercedes 190E which was just as good.  Unfortunately the 190 was written off in 1999 when I was rear-ended at 50mph by a Hyundai.