Week Forty-Three I Have Been a Busy Bee

Since last week I have been out with Pioneer to see their new BRZ demo car and very lovely it is too. One slightly daft thing was that we committed the classic silly error of sitting playing on the battery too long. As soon as it was time to leave and Mike turned the key, it went, ‘mumph mummm..’. And wouldn’t do the compression part of the turnover via the starter motor, so little juice had we left.
Thus, while I mused that I had left jump leads in the car at Pioneer HQ (under the flight path of the RAF Northolt aerodrome, used by royalty and private jets) we might have to get someone come fetch me from the Denham Country park, where the video clippery was made. Thankfully, after a suitable pause for the chemistry in the battery to have a little re-combine, there was JUST enough juice for one last wibble and of course the BRZ started in a trice. It has a cute flappy paddle gearbox, a two litre engine with no turbo and yet is a right little scuttlebutt from launch, making little takeoff scrunchy tyre on tarmac sounds as it departs. I reckon it’ll eat tyres!
I have done odd bits of radio. Monday morning at a quarter past seven, I wake up, blearily to the phone ringing by arrangement – and I am talking about the M6 toll on radio West Midlands, like as if I have been properly up for an hour or two. After imparting such stuff as that the road is ‘˜zoomy’ and that the services on it are ‘˜posh’, I am clear and promptly go ‘pow’ off to sleep again for the next twenty minutes before it’s my go in the bathroom. Talk about glam media..
But oddly, I DID experience a bit of glam media attention, in the shape of the CES Unveiled event at London’s famous Groucho club for media and the arts people. The ‘˜unclubbable creatives’ whom adhere to that Groucho Marx adage, so beloved of our very own publisher. It was two-and-a-half-floors up in a private bit with three tables set. We had lunch and three pairs of presentations from CES start-ups and cool types. One was a secure wristband kid-tracker that you could rent at a theme park or huge mall or buy to use anywhere, using GPS, GSM SIM and WiFi all at once. One was a teddy bear that in fact had medical sensors to monitor ill children patients. One was a daft-but-delightful flappy number display that can be a few lines long and mount in your business, be it bar or fishing megastore, that has a net-interface to count likes, or tweets, or views, or comment numbers. This makes your social maelstrom turn into a coolio retro flappy clappy thing. Another was a transponder and accelerometer-equipped delegate’s name badge that when ‘˜bumped’ with another person’s, transfers your hello data!
I horrified Mr. Shapiro, the boss of the CEA, who’s good lady wife I was sat next to and whom kinda got both barrels of full enthused Adam, throughout. (In a serious shirt, as well, mind, that takes up FAR too much of any nearby person’s field of view, like IMAX.) I launched into poor James Talbot of Damson Audio for NOT becoming a Talk Audio site associate. They do the fabulous Bluetooth speaker devices that excite the panel they are put on to make sound. Their latest is bone-conduction headphones. Seriously cool and they allow the outside world to be heard as well.
It was all in fun, though and because I have seen the chap at two of these events, three gadget shows and also in Las Vegas as well, if I am not wrong, from when I went in January as a scholarship journalist. He grinned and demoed his amazing prototype.
Hilariously, I gather that I hold the record for sheer output from that CES show scholarship alumni. I was delighted.
Lastly, I am LOVING This Lego themed install. Seen on FB. The sub box is filled with Lego dudes
Adam Rayner On Line Editor