I’m guessing something similar like this exists as an application, but I’ve not yet seen an online version of this. At some point I’ll have to put one together.

If anyone knows of this already, please comment and link :-p.

Cheers,
Chris

First impressions are good; The bike’s been stood for nearly 2 years so I think it needs a little running it – it could also do with new plugs and oil just to be sure – I also think the chain could do with adjusting but apart from the niggly bits it runs and sounds fantastic.

I’m a little dissapointed with the speedo. It ranges up to 180mph which is probably quite fun but very illigal here in the UK. 0-60 takes up just under a third of the clock and considering I’ll be spending most of my time here (*ahem*, *smile*) it’s going to be a little difficult telling what speed I’m doing.

Second thing I noticed was that it needs quite a bit of revvs. I’ve never ridden a sports bike before so I’m used to evenly spread power with a little sweet spot at about 6-7,000 rpm. The CBR is a little different, with a nice even power delivery down below 7 for smooth riding and then lots (and lots!) of power above. It seems to really like sitting on the 7k mark and up and above if you require more.

Steering is really nice on this bike, I was worried that the turning circle would be horrible – as with all other sports bike i’d tried but I didn’t really notice any difference. I took the bike down to a local supermarket car park and managed to get full lock turning in circles at what felt very similar to my CB; On the road, we did a couple of U-turns looking for petrol and again it was accomplished with no difficulty at all.

My CB had quite poor breaks so when I first got on the CBR I was a little scared that I’d end up throwing myself off. The brakes are very sharp but quite easy to get used to and within a couple of minutes I had no difficulty slowing down smoothly.

Overall, I’m extremely impressed with the CBR600 and can’t wait until the summer! I dont think I’ll be upgrading bikes any time soon now and she’ll probably be mine for the remainder of her life. I’m planning on keeping the CB for the meantime as a winter hack – depending on how much space I can get when I get my own place will depend on whether it stays or not but for now they’re both safe and warm in the garage, awwww… lol.

Chris

Yay.

As some of you may know, I’ve decided to wait until after january for the MBP – maybe they’ll drop the price or introduce some new features – who knows. But until then, I’ve decided that I’m going to try and save towards it.

I really want it! Now!!, lol.

Okay… I’m done now.

I was quite suprised at how easy it was to create the app, listen for events, setup the timings and draw to the screen. I didn’t get so far as to put anything meaningful on there but after reading some performance reviews was confident that it was going to be better than SDL (due to the OpenGL backend).

I’ll post more on SFML as I continue to use it, but for now, its got the thumbs up!

Links

• SFML – Simple and Fast Multimedia Library 

Its a film createed and directed by a guy who worked on the animation in one of the matrix films… I didn’t care too much about the waffle, except the bits where he keeps mentioning he’s maxed out his credit cards and he’s done nothing else for the last 4 years but put his blood and soul into this film… yeah, right… that’s smart.

Okay, maybe I envy him – but still I think its kinda dumb. Anyway, you should check out the trailer as it’s quite funny and very professionally done. I think the sounds and voices could be better – but I say that about hollywood films.

Chris

Got out of work, my nice cold bike decided that it didn’t want to start again (It hadn’t started first time this morning). I reach down under the tank, held in the choke and voila – we’re off. About 2 roads up, it starts to judder and I can tell its about to cut out alltogether. I get it to the top of the hill – just – and pull over to the side of the road. There’s a girly sounding splutter and then it cuts out.

I figured I’d probably not filled up as much petrol as I thought and that it’d just ran out; Flicked in into reserve – tried it again, nothing. Uhmmm… Maybe i’d flooded it with the choke in, nope… tried for a while, and then the battery died.

Grrrr… guess what, I took my phone in to be repaired today – so i’m stuck at the side of the road with a broken bike and no phone. I figured I could get it going – it was working 10 minutes ago, and there weren’t any clunking noises – so something must have just got clogged or fell off. I decided to try bumping it a couple times to see if it would go, but it just kept missing.

On the 3rd try (by this point I was absolutely nakered) I noticed there was something blowing against my hand when I had it down near the engine… doh! a hose’d come off. And oh, its the one that dictates weather fuel should be sent to the carbs, bugga!

Fitted it on, bumped it again and it fired up first time. All I can think is that I slightly knocked the hose when I was fiddling with the choke and it eventually came off as I was riding.

Ah well, it was a fun ride back… 30 minutes with my sweat turning into ice, brrrrr.

Winter sux, but I love bikes :-p

Chris

I checked out a couple of other stores and found I could get a similar 200gb 7200rpm drive for around £110 (one thing i did note is that reviews of the drive i found stated that it needed special cooling requirements and a certain part of the drive to be kept uncovered – which wouldn’t be possible inside the MBP). However, if I want this model I’m going to have to buy it new and wont be able to get one of the cheaper refurbished models – so total cost bumps up to £1,479.

I guess like I said before, its all going to come down to how much I can spend at the time I buy – I still want to hold off until after january – maybe they’ll do some deals for the new year! I can only hope.

I had a look around dell and some other sites, alienware, hp, etc. and fonud I can build a very similar spec machine with all similar hardware upgrades for under the thousand pound mark. I know you can’t compare them to the apple machines but I think I still need to commit to making the leap to apple before paying for it.

I went in the apple store again last night and played with the MBP some more – I’m really starting to like this over the standard MB now and the keys feel a lot more sturdy than I remembered. The system feels quite fast, but I’m sure it’ll feel even smoother with the faster hard drive.

Ah well,
Chris

You can definately tell the Pro has a better graphics card as simultaneous movies play a lot smoother and the screen transitions feel that bit more seamless – however – everything else feels very similar (apart from the smaller screen!) – but I can’t come to terms with not being able to update the hard drive on the pro – damn warranties! (I also dont want to pay extortionate apple prices to get a better drive)

I’ve decided that I need 4gb of ram – so whichever machine I get, I’m goin to ditch the memory anyway – I also wanted a faster 7200rpm drive, so again, whichever machine I get – I’m going to have to ditch the drive. So at the minute, I’m really leaning towards the black macbook (I probably should be aiming for the low end one but I really dont like the white!) – but again, I just can’t come to terms with the slower graphics card.

If they released a version of the macbook with the geforce graphics card – it would be perfect! however – it doesn’t exist (yet), so unfortunately I’m going to have to pick one… but first, I think I’ll wait until after january and mac world – and see what gets thrown out there.

I continue to explore other machine and the cloest I’ve found is the alienware range that looks any good – I also checked dell out, but just can’t come to terms with getting another dell.

Here’s to waiting…