Anthony McLaughlin's Blog

What I had learned today 15/04/2011

2011-04-16T08:01:00.002+01:00

Coming back home from work after a long day I found out that one of my children was running a very high temperature, limp and not himself. Adding to that my girlfriend was almost frantic with worry. Instead of rushing him to A&E, as most parents in their right minds would do, and waiting for hours until he had been seen I decided to call his usual Doctor's surgery; on the off chance that someone would answer.

As it was out if hours it was just a gamble, but it had paid off!!

The phone call was transferred to an out of hours call centre and answered by a very calm and knowledgeable lady who took a list of the symptoms that my son had indicated and instructed what we was to look out for. As she was a bit worried about his condition she didn't want to leave it to chance, so she arranged for our son to be seen by a doctor at 8.40pm on the same night, just 1 hour from our call on a Friday.

We were advised to go to the drop-in centre in Selly Oak, Birmingham - as they run an after hours consultancy which was by appointment only.

We got seen by the doctor, more or less straight away, and my son was given a check over and a clean bill of health, diagnosis the cold/flu. From then on my son is getting better (through various amount of Calpol and Ibuprofen) and his temperature is a lot lower then it was earlier and he is slowly getting back to his usual destructive self.

The reason for writing about this is that I wanted to share the fact that if you do find yourself in the same predicament as my girlfriend and myself was with our son, it might pay to try your Doctor's surgery first, chances are that you will get first class advice and access to a Doctor way quicker then you had originally thought.

Please bear in mind that this is only me sharing advice on what I had experienced and depending on the severity of the symptoms that any child is showing A&E may be the first and only option.

What I have learned today 14th April

2011-04-14T18:34:00.003+01:00

As usual, I am always on the hunt for a bargain on the web. Looking around I found two fantastic websites for anyone who likes a bit of retail therapy on the cheap.

http://www.hotukdeals.com and http://www.offeroftheday.do.uk

They are updated very frequently and have some great bargains, found and posted by the general public. I will warn you though, you will probably end up spending more then you realise!

What have I learned today 12/03/2011

2011-04-14T18:34:00.001+01:00

What have I learned today 11/03/2011

2011-03-11T19:10:00.001Z

I have learned that what ever life does throw at you be positive and battle through it as what your problems are, they pale into insignificance when compared to someone else.

The utter natural tradegy in Japan that played out today brought that thought to the forefront.
Watching how the power of nature completely obliterated peoples homes, businesses and more importantly loved ones just shows how we are merely sitting tennants on the planet that we call as our own.

My thoughts and prayers go out to every person directly and indirectly affected by this tradegy and I really do hope that swift global aid will go and help these unfortunate people.

What have I learned today 09/03/11

2011-03-10T21:58:00.001Z

Wild Honey Bees are worringly in decline all over the world. As one of natures biggest pollenators of flowers and crops, bee colonies are collapsing and disappearing - UN scientists have reported today.

What is scary about this find is that of the 100 crop species that provide 90 percent of the world's food, over 70 are pollenated by honey bees.

So my motto is to be friendly to the honey bee ths summer, I know I will bee...(sorry couldn't resist it).

The Seat Arosa - Gone but not forgotten

2009-07-11T23:44:00.009+01:00

It was a sad day two weeks ago, a very grey, rain filled Friday to be exact. I should of been excited as it was the last day at work before I was on holiday for the week, but in the back of my mind I knew there was something wrong - MY SEAT AROSA HAS TO GO!!!

I have had it for sale for about a year. I have advertised it in the Auto Trader, I created a website for it www.seat4sale.co.uk and even bought more domain names that can point to the website to make it more searchable, and dropped it's sale value quite a few times to generate interest - to no avail unfortunately - I had finally sold it to www.webuyanycar.com. A very quick and may I say pleasant to deal with company but I did feel that they had got a bargain.

It is a shame really as it was a great car, it only had a 1.0 litre engine but what it didn't have in the engine department it made up more in the soul department. It was a great car to drive, practical and nippy. Bulletproof reliability and a simplicity that made the car a joy to operate. With its alloy wheels and black metallic paint it really looked a sporty number. Based on the VW Lupo it had shared many of its parts from it's German sister but I believed that it had the better looks out of the two, as the Lupo has more of a Frog eye look in my opinion.

It didn't have a cavernous boot but it did manage to fit in the weeks shopping and being such a small car it was easy to park. The interior space was roomy for such a small car, you could easily get 4 people in the car quite comfortably and still have the boot as small change. The dash had a quality feel about it, no cheap feeling plastics were used here, it had a practicality about the materials used and the seats were a joy to sit in. I particularly like the red lights that illuminated the dashboard at night, very swish.

The best part of the car for me was the actual driving experience! It screamed go kart. Very grippy around corners it felt that this car was to put a very safe smile on your face and the engine even though it was a 1.0 litre MPi it had an urgency about it say that I really can feel like a sporty car. The feedback from the steering wheel was fantastic, you could feel every bump and every driving condition. It even held it's own when we had that week of snow, though it did scare me by skidding very close to one car, but as it didn't have ABS I think that was more driver error then the ability of the car. Finally on the motorway it sat nicely between the 65mph-75mph range, though fuel consumption wasn't the best - returning about 40-45 MPG, it felt like you could do that speed all day and not have any hiccups.

For a car of this type you do get close to it's personality and for me when it was finally sold, it was a loss. I am sure that I will make up for it's loss in the future but for now even though it has gone it definitely will not be forgotten.

The New Renault Megane weekend treat!

2009-04-26T00:28:00.000+01:00

What do you say when you get a free brand new Renault Megane to drive for the weekend?

Most people would ask how did you do that, others would simply ask why a Renault Megane?

Well not the most popular of cars on the road at the minute, I have only seen two in the past two weeks and one of them was the one I was driving. It was a freebie that I caught on a great website called www.hotukdeals.com. A website that I have followed for some time and when I had seen the offer of a free Renault Megane test drive courtesy of AVIS, I jumped at the chance!!

The car turned up Friday morning at work, delivered direct by AVIS themselves. Looking at it through one of the windows at work I have to say it looked an impressive beast. The model I had was a 1.6 110 petrol version with a slightly up rated spec, cruise control, fog lights, alloys etc and was a metallic Gun Metal grey. From the side the car has a great profile, the back looks very sporty but where I believe most of the design time has been spent is on the front, an agressive but handsome look which, I can imagine after all the Research and Development spent, cuts the air very well.

The AVIS representative handed me the key and I have to say it's not a key in the conventional sense, ie a blipper and a metal key you would normally use to start a car. It's more of a block of plastic, like my mobile phone just with less buttons - but with more technology. Other than the usual locking and un-locking of doors, there is a boot unlocking key and a button to turn on the main beam of the car. I can only imagine that this is to help you in the dark where you can get extra illumination when opening your front door. This detail did lead to some fun as I was turning on the lights as people walked passed the car and turning the off as they walked on with a bit of a bemused look, as though the car was flashing at them. All controlled in the comfort of my own home, at least 15 metres away, so it's got good range!!

Interior had an air of quality with various switch gear in easy to reach places. It felt well put together though I haven't really driven Renaults of old so I can only compare it to some of the cars I have driven in the past and the interior does have that German, BMW'ish feel - miles away from the current car I am driving or selling as the case may be (check out www.seat4sale.co.uk a great car).

Firing up the car was unique, slotting the card key in the tailor made hole, felt like I was visiting my Bank's ATM machine, which fired up the electrics and turned off the immobiliser, then de-press the push button START/STOP engine button seems to becoming the norm the these mid-range family cars, drove a BMW 1 series about a year ago which had the same feature.

Engine fired up time for a drive, ah London he we come.

With my son in the back and my partner Vikki next to him making sure that he was entertained all the way down to Wimbledon, it was time to drive off. Vikki commented on how there was a second sunroof in this model, problem was that we couldn’t open it as you would a normal sunroof you could only hide it with its cover and with the sun beating down on her though the journey she had decided to close it, I don’t know all that money spent on developing a second sunroof in a newly designed car and it just gets closed off, stopped her bending my ear about something else for a few minutes though, which was nice.

The steering felt light on original take off and as the car got quicker I could feel more resistance making the steering feel heavier. I didn’t feel that this was a bad point as it added to more of its solidity and quality feel, felt very assuring.

The acceleration was not whites of your teeth, but it was sure footed and you knew that for a 1.6 there was a bit of power in reserve whenever you needed it. It was quiet on acceleration and there was a minimal of fuss to the whole 0 to 60 affair. The gearing felt assured and for a newbie to a French car there was no crunching the gears as the gear layout was instinctive and easy to follow. Never had driven a car with 6 gears, but even in the 6 gear on a b-road there was still some oomph and I didn’t hear the engine struggle trying to supply the 6th gear with power. The one feature of this car which I did find impressive while going through the gears was not on the gear stick but in the instrument panel. There was a white gear symbol on the rev counter which threw me a first as there would be a momentarily up arrow next to it and then a down arrow later, later I found that (after reading the instructions – well I am a typical bloke) this was the car indicating to me with the arrows that following the up arrow to go up a gear and down arrow to gear down you get the best fuel economy. Which I found that became more of a game and started to rule my driving habit. Loved the idea of it but I found that I was looking out for the arrows more than the road. Soon ignored it for my own safety!!

On the motorway, to London, the car felt safe, solid and cruised with no problems. The fuel computer was telling me that I was averaging 38.4 mpg, so not to bad in the economy stakes, but where the car shone for me was the cruise control.

Never have driven a car with cruise control before, it was a revelation! Easy to set up and was great to use, was even doing a Irish jig to show my partner the benefits of it. It had made the whole trip a doddle, even on the M25 where the speeds were a more pedestrian 50mph as it was a busy Saturday early afternoon. The other benefit of cruise control was that I didn’t have the usual pain in my right foot from constantly balancing the accelerator to keep up the speed on the Motorway, a nice change from my usual long distances that I have embarked on in other cars.

Once in Greater London and on the A3 I could see that there was speed restrictions and cameras governing that fact which gave me the opportunity to engage the speed limiter feature of the car. Set to 50mph and turned on for the whole of the A3 experience I found that with its use I wasn’t constantly staring at the speedo or looking out for that dreaded double flash of the GATSO. I loved this feature alone, it took the worry out of worrying about speed cameras and allowed me to concentrate on the madcap traffic that was happening before me. Both cruise control and speed limiting features are definitely on my wish list for my next car!!

Arriving at my destination, 120 miles away from home, I didn’t feel tired, my joints didn’t ache and my partner had fell asleep in the back – so my ears didn’t ache. I was impressed with the journey and after a couple of hours in Wimbledon, was looking forward to the drive back and especially in those nicely moulded, big stitched, sporty like seats I know it would be a coach like drive back.

My overall impression of the car was a very positive one. It’s not a car I would of considered for my next purchase at first but it would be a serious contender and I am sure that as Renault are a member of the UK Scrappage scheme with the government backed price reductions it would be a very tempting decision indeed.

Through it’s solidity and great build quality I would definitely say that it’s not a car that shakes it ass but more importantly parks it’s ass nicely on the road and gets on with the job with no fuss or worry.

Pictures supplied by www.netcarshow.com

My first Blog

2009-04-06T22:03:00.000+01:00

As a blog virgin I have been thinking what do I write about? Will it be funny? Will it be informative? Will it be interesting? Will it be read!!

I thought I would just put a few random thoughts down as the CD in my Mac whirrs away putting another CD album onto iTunes to go onto an iPod that is already filled to the rafters with music, music that I haven't really heard for a while to say the least, or will ever listen to - the iPod abyss.

I am sitting here tapping away thinking about what I have learned so far this year...

Learned how to create some simple websites, using Apple iWeb at the moment but will be moving onto Dreamweaver soon, for my Dad www.littlejimmy.co.uk and for my girlfriend's car which she has up for sale at www.seatforsale.co.uk

Learned a little about the black art of Search Engine Optimization, and from what I have read it does work, my dad's website is currently 3rd at the moment in google.co.uk, gotta be worth something, to my dad at least. Thank you SEO for Dummies for making me less of a Dummy.

Learned how to use Twitter and tweet.

Learned how to buy domains and park them with the prospect of making a small amount of money from adverts and links put on them www.irishentertainer for example.

Learned how to put up shelves, without which I would not be typing this blog.

Learning how to blog, which strangely I am finding therapeutic - who needs a shrink!!

and finally...

Learned that when my partner is away up north (Newcastle to be exact) I can get a lot more done then usual (love ya really Vikki ;) like writing this blog.

Look out for more updates soon.

Ant out...