Personal – Page 9 – John Leach

Patinternet

My Dad has breached the electronic frontier and now has an e-mail address: <psleach@gmail.com>. Feel free to e-mail him and say hello. Tell him who you are and why you’re e-mailing him. I doubt he’ll care who you are and why it is that you’re e-mailing him, but you never know. Be nice, as he’s tough and will kick your Dad’s ass.

I’ve told him that once I’ve posted this on my blog he’ll receive rich and interesting e-mail from diverse correspondents around the globe. Though I expect mostly he’ll just get spam.

17/7/2005 Add Comment

London bombs

Over 50 people died in the explosions in London last week. I don’t think it’s right to surrender freedoms to fight terrorism when that many people die every week in road accidents. I should have to surrender my car before I surrender my privacy and my freedom.

This terrorist act is being used, as 9/11 was, to push through privacy-busting legislation that the government has been gagging to implement. The mouth of the home secratery must have been watering in anticipation.

Within hours, both Tony Blair and George W. Bush were using news of these attacks as vindication for their own illegal and considerably more brutal attacks on Iraq. Knowing the opposite to be true, as the Joint Intelligence Committee did before the war even began, this is sickening.

15/7/2005 Add Comment

Saddam behind 9/11

Tony Blair is joining in the latest spate of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) and helping blur the connection between the illegal occupation of Iraq and the attack on the World Trade Center buildings in September 2001.

In a BBC article entitled “Troops must stay in Iraq – Blair”, the government funded news corporation quotes Blair’s free word association experiment:

“Mr Blair argued the 11 September 2001 atrocities in the US upset the balance”

“Defeating “insurgents and terrorists” there would lead to the destruction of terrorism across the globe, he said”

“He said that 11 September 2001 changed his perspective on the world.”

“I took the view that if these people ever got hold of nuclear, chemical or biological capability, they would probably use it.”

This boils down to: “September 11, Iraq, Global Terrorism, September 11, Terrorism, WMD, Terrorism.”

We know there was no link between Iraq and the WTC attacks. Bush and Blair know this too, as they admitted clearly and publicly in January 2003. So why are they still telling us there was a link?

30/6/2005 1 Comment

we are paying to be lied to

March 2002

Downing Street memos: “I said [to Condoleezza Rice] you [Blair] would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States.”

“On Iraq I opened by sticking very closely to the script that you used with Condi Rice last week. We backed regime change, but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option.”

November 2002

Tony Blair, in a public interview: “So far as our objective, it is disarmament, not regime change – that is our objective.”

February 2003

Tony Blair, in the House of Commons: “we are offering Saddam the prospect of voluntary disarmament through the UN. I detest his regime – I hope most people do – but even now, he could save it by complying with the UN’s demand. Even now, we are prepared to go the extra step to achieve disarmament peacefully.”

Poor old Mr. Blair having to “manage” the press, Parliment and a public opinion. Manage: (Verb) “achieve something by means of trickery or devious methods”.

28/6/2005 Add Comment

Volkswagen Corrado VR6

I was the owner of a metallic black 1995 VW Corrado VR6. Here you’ll find notes about my experiences with it: what broke, how I fixed it, how much it cost, what mileage I get, how fast it goes (on private road of course) etc.etc. I hope it’s useful to somebody out there on the Interweb.

I am in no way well experienced in the ways of petrol engines, or automobiles in general, so the information here may be a little patchy, or even downright wrong. I’m learning small chunks here and there, and documenting what I can. If you spot something wrong, or just have any comments, e-mail me.

Sold

June 2005: I’ve sold my Corrado now, to my Brother. It’s still on my road but it’ll be moving to his drive soon. He’ll be driving it while he sorts a few things out on his other Corrado (another VR6). When he’s done he’ll be selling one of them, so watch this space!

Hardware Details

2861cc displacement, 6-cylinders in a 15 degrees V, 5-speed manual, front wheel drive, ABS, 2 valves per cylinder, 190bhp (140kW) at 5800 rpm, 181lb ft (245Nm) at 4200 rpm, 66bhp/litre. Read more

My own car is standard except the alarm, the stereo and the suspension, which seems to have been lowered about 35mm (before I purchased it).

Change Log

I’ve been keeping a kind of diary of running my Corrado for a while now. I’ll start elaborating further on this page from now on too.

Immobilizer

My Corrado came factory fitted with an immobilizer. It’s enabled using an square black inductor keyfob, with an LED indicator next to the ignition point.

I’d been experiencing random starting problems and everybody was pointing at the immobilizer, but I wasn’t convinced. The reason being that I each time the problem occurred it seemed to be rectified with a top up of oil. This made me suspect the hydraulic tappits not functioning correctly without enough oil.

Well, eventually the car stopped and wouldn’t start at all. The local VW garage found a fault with the immobilizer coil, which was replaced for around £120 parts and labour. All starting problems have now ceased.

The problems I had with my car being broken into whilst at the VW dealers are a different story (Coming Soon).

Coil Pack

The coil pack does what the distributor did on older ignition systems, it supplies the spark to the spark plugs at the right time and in the right order. Rather than a rotating arm touching electric contacts, it works electronically. Rather more high brow.

Apparently, electronic failures with coil packs are rare. You’re far more likely to run into a mechanical fault, such as burnt terminals or damaged connectors. Some people thinks all pre-1998 VR6 coil packs just suck. A £300 repair job every 30,000 miles.

If it’s cracked, water gets in it and grounds the spark to the engine block, causing mis-fires. You can find details of the process of using epoxy resin to fix the cracks here. It works out marginally cheaper than replacement (£2 vs £300).

My problem

In my case, the engine idles fine, but suffers jerkyness and loss of power up to 3000rpm during acceleration. The coil pack was finger-pointed as a possible culprit, but I’m going to check out the spark plugs first. It’s far more likely they are coked up or something (at least I hope).

Some Audi S4 specific information regarding the ignition system.

Update: The guys at my garage took a look into this whilst it was being serviced. They found nothing wrong with the coil pack, but found 3 duff HT leads. A full replacement set cost £60 if I remember correctly.

Whilst this improved the situation, I now feel there is a loss of power before 2000rpm. After further discussion with the garage, they suggested I take it to an official VW stealers to have all the sensors checked. I’ve not done this yet but plan on doing soon. It’s going to cost me around £ 65, just to get it plugged in to their computer, bleh. Should invest in my own cable and software.

Ventilation system

My airflow system hasn’t worked correctly since I brute force turned the direction adjuster and snapped something. With the recent heat waves (May 2003) this became a priority as my air-conditioned air was being wasted. I took it all to pieces to figure out what was going on.

How it works

The direction dial adjusts where the air comes out from (e.g:the footwell or the windscreen vents) by adjusting two flaps. Two little arms moved by the dial operate two cables that are connected to the flaps. Taking off all the knobs and facure, unscrewing four screws and pulling the dial control box forward reveals the magic behind, including the cables. The top cable controls the footwell/windscreen flap and the bottom cable controls the flow to the dashboard vents.

In my case, the dashboard vent flap had jumped a cog restricting the movement of the cable, which in turn had restricted the movement of the dial, until I turned it too hard and broke a little bit of plastic. Luckily, once I’d fixed the movement of the cable, this missing plastic (from a track in one of the cogs in the dial that controlled the movement of the cable arm) wasn’t necessary.

The cables controlled by the dial lead further down and back behind the centre console where the air flow is controlled. The flaps are inside a moulded plastic casing and are difficult to reach. The dash vent flap is control by three cogs. One directly connected to the flap axis, one which I assume is just a gear, and another which has an arm to which the cable is connected. Here a cog had jumped, restricting the movement of the cable. I popped out the gear cog, adjusted the flap and cable to fully closed and replaced it (this was tricky).

I then reseated the arm at the other end of the cable (the dial end) into the spiral track in the cog. This cog is controlled by the dial cog seated at 90 degrees to it. You can remove the dial cog by pushing in all the tags and removing the centre part, which is the front “handle” for the dial.

It’s still a bit still to operate, but it works now.

The fan control

My fan control didn’t work when set to level 2 or 4. The dial on this just controls a copper arm with a twisted copper end. The end connects two tracks together as the arm turns. After dismantling this I found the end was bent and the end didn’t connect the two (upper and lower) tracks at certain settings. I removed the arm, cleaned and re-twisted it, and now it works fine.

27/6/2005 Add Comment

buying music online

I got an illegal copy of some Half Man Half Biscuit from a friend a few months ago. I really enjoyed it so I decided to buy some. I don’t care for inlay sleeves, or for any physical aspect of music other than the actual audio waves so I thought I’d try pay for a legal download. This proved impossible.

I firstly realised that my own specification on getting this music in either a lossless format, or an open format (such as OGG vorbis) were hilarious in the current online music climate, so settled for, well, basically *any* format. The iTunes download software isn’t supported on my GNU/Linux OS, and Apple are far too big and evil for me to give them any more money anyway. MP3.com looked promising until I realised they seem to just be a front for other online music stores, none of which had any Half Man Half Biscuit available anyway (and were just as big and evil sounding).

I gave up. I went to bloody HMV and bought an album there. And when I listened to the album when I got home, it I didn’t even like it much.

I’ve sinced downloaded more Half Man Half Biscuit and really, really enjoyed it. I think I’m just going to send a cheque direct to the band.

I once met El Hefe from the punk band NOFX. I told him I’d downloaded their latest album for free off the Internet. “Oh, then we don’t get paid” he jokily explained. I offered him a tenner directly as payment, and he turned it down. “So I can listen for free?”. “Sure” he said.

The music industry needs to change. But we already knew that.

25/6/2005 1 Comment

drink me

The nearest kitchen to my office here at work is shared by a number of different departments. We all supply our own milk and there is an informal arrangement where anybody uses any milk they find on the assumption they’ll eventually buy milk themselves for others to share. I’m sure what results is a small number of people always buy milk and other people drink it. I try to buy some once in a while, though I use very little.

2 weeks ago I bought a 2 pint carton of milk and put it in the fridge. It was gone in less than 2 days. This didn’t bother me as this is, of course, the point. This week I bought a 4 pint carton but this time clearly wrote “drink me” on the side of it with a marker pen as an experiment. This milk hasn’t been touched since Tuesday and there is no other milk in the fridge now.

I’ve inadvertently stumbled across some kind of advanced milk protection system. I’ve filed a patent.

UPDATE: The milk remains untouched but someone has added the words “go on, please” on the carton.

9/6/2005 2 Comments

Adblock bad, advertising good!

quote: “I do not sympathize with the distaste of standard banner advertisements that pay for all the free content we currently enjoy. … Since day one, I’ve understood the back end reason for banner ads. They are a necessity of free content. … Adblock effectively robs these free sites of their revenue.”– poptech

Advertising is a hugely inefficient method of paying for content. The site creates content which attracts visitors. Advertising agents add a fee and charge advertisers per visitor click. Advertisers (for this example, online shops) sell products to some people, take a cut, and with a proportion of the money, pay the advertising agents. The rest of the money goes to the manufacturer (well, via various others).

So random people are spending money on random products, which slowly (and in tiny, tiny proportion) filters down the chain to the web site creating the content.
(more…)

1/6/2005 1 Comment

cool dude and productivenessness

A guy at work has turned up this morning wearing blue mirrored sun glasses. He’s wearing them at his desk at the moment. Everybody is whispering about him.

I’ve managed to do a couple more strips of “Everybody Loves Eric Raymond” on time now (each Tuesday). Although it’s hard work coming up with something topical and (hopefully) funny, and then putting it altogether each week, it’s getting easier each time. I’m building up a little library of heads, bodies and backgrounds now, have got a good system for making speech bubbles and perfected my font usage. I’m enjoying it. I wonder how long I can keep it up on my own.

Me and the New World Odour team are working on reviving that project too, so I’ve been a busy and productive chap. Especially since I broke my new radio control car and have been awaiting the delivery of a replacement part (Another new expensive hobby I’ll write about another time).

25/5/2005 Add Comment

Everybody loves Eric Raymond

I’ve started a web comic of my own. After literally a *couple of weeks* in the planning, I unveil Everybody loves Eric Raymond.

You’ll only get it if you’re a Linux geek and it’s very high brow. Except for the geek wrestling.

In case my non-geek readers are interested, Eric Raymond is an “open source” advocate. He’s wheeled out by various big companies once in a while to legitimize their forays into open source software. He’s also a gun nut. In fact, just a bit of a nut in general.

Richard Stallman is the creator of the Free Software movement. His emphasis is very much on software freedom which he thinks is very important. He is described as rather eccentric in real life.

Both Raymond and Stallman (or esr and rms, as they are known) are basically fighting the same battle, but they differ on the freedom issue (and probably the gun stuff).

Linus Torvalds is the guy who first created the Linux kernel (now developed by thousands of geeks worldwide). I think he tries to keep out of the politics of it all.

I’ve put them all in a house together without their wives/girlfriends/whatever. Drawing takes me way too long so I’ve done some very subtle and clever photo manipulation, which involves sticking their heads on my friend’s bodies. I’m also lazy so this isn’t done very well. Anyway, enjoy it or don’t.

13/5/2005 Add Comment

authority

Google seems to think I’m the Internet authority on various subjects. I’m in the top 10 for the following Google searches (with my place number in brackets):

corrado vr6 (1)
armley leeds (2)
raid benchmarks (8)
powerbook g4 (8)
linux powerbook (1)
linux pix (4)
xbox kernel (3)
john leach (3)
ntl hell (7)
redhat advanced server (3)

Either Google needs fixing or the Internet is a lame source of information.

11/5/2005 Add Comment

Murders in the rue terrace

The corpse of the young bird was difficult to identify. That fact that it had been torn apart and partly consumed would sufficiently account for this. A single wrinkly leg protuded from in amongst the scattered feathers. A smooth slab of unidentifiable bright red flesh was discovered upon the rug near the sofa. In the opinion of Mr. Leach, Mademoiselle Pigeon had been throttled to death by some person or felines unknown.

The corpse of the field mouse was horribly mutilated. All the bones of every appendage were more or less torn clear off. Whole body dreadfully bruised and discolored. The intestines spilled over the Apple Powerbook, the green grass stomach contents open to the air. It was not possible to say how the injuries had been inflicted. Long sharp teeth or claws would have produced such results, if wielded by the hands of a very powerful fissiped. The head of the deceased was entirely separated from the body and missing.

Louisa Parry, homeowner, was called to view the bodies. Corroborated the testimony, and the opinions of Mr. Leach. Though she elected not to be involved in the cleaning up, she did make some nice waffles that were consumed outside in the sun.

See photos of the grisly scene (rather graphic).

9/5/2005 Add Comment