Week Thirty-Four In Which Summer is PEAKING!!

It has been a cracker of a year for Ice Hounds! Sadly, we have seen our world exclude the poor and more street level boys and girls as the sheer price of fuel and insurance have stopped lots of youngsters from doing anything but ride the bus. Way back in Spring I could see at the Modified Nationals that the crowd had thinned a bit, with the less well heeled element missing completely. But folks live, drive and strive to get the toys they really love and as you can see, the cars that showed up at the MyMod Summer madness were evidence of some people still having the wherewithal to spend £30k on an engine!
I shall make a minor confession. Regular readers may recall my bragging about getting hold of the Parrot Zikmu speakers, designed by Philippe Starck. He of the famous Alessi juice squeezer, whose shape was ripped off for a spaceship in Men In Black II. Well, they showed up with my man Jonathan, a crucial cog in Parrot UK and I loved them. I got a heavy-duty tech slice of how they do their thing – full review in due course, more techy than they ever had – but while they worked with Jonno’s iPlop phone, they didn’t with my PiffleBerry and had intermittency issues with my iPod Touch. The Parrot website carries full compatibility lists and my Blackberry was one of just three that Zikmu won’t eat. The Asteroid head unit in my car, however, despite being a far cheaper item, will recognise and then stream Bluetooth music from the same Blackberry so fast, it is like it is an attached drive.
But Zikmu is classy and a grand’s worth a pair and owners are vanishingly unlikely to be on a no-frills free handset deal at their phone supplier. And while they asked me to post my iPlop to them to check, I was far too paranoid (Not Parrot-noid) to do that. So after a quick software update for Zikmu, it is reckoned that my iPod shall work with them, when Jonathan comes back. Ooer, there’s some real jeopardy there! My iPod has not been connected to my PC for some time but is on the most up to date software, so we shall see.
There are some cool shows coming up over the next couple of weekends. Not spoilt utterly by yours truly being compere, I hope. I shall run some news snippety bits on the front page&;
Lastly, I appeal to you to follow me on Twitter. I am @TheAdamRayner and while my feed doesn’t feature a picture of my tea every day, it has a bonkers mix of fishing lake tours and carp shows as well as car shows, totty and molten hot metal. Home cinema equipment gets a mention from time to time and I shall be posting more pix of sexy speakers. Thing is – and I know this is going to sound ‘debateable’ – but I don’t quite have enough attention whore in my soul to Tweet properly. I reckon you might be a bit keen on the B&W PV1D subwoofer in my living room right now, or to see the odd mad item I review as it happens. So if a few more folks click the follow button, I reckon I will feel the need more urgently! I promise never to get as bad as my brother tweeting about getting his sandals confused with some one else’s while on holiday! Do be brief…
OK, news to post, equipment to tortureand I think that the blow-up-a-sub test has to be done again, don’t you? I’ll get planning.
Adam Rayner On Line Editor