Week Twenty- Four In Which I Upgrade A Van, Eventually

You know what? Downstairs, tucked inside a glass cabinet in my living room there is a little lump of plate glass. It stands upon a small plinth, also made of glass and upon it is engraved the legend, ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’. Looking at that and knowing it was from the mobile electronics trades association, you might think that I know my stuff. But that would be bollocks! At the moment, I am getting some work done at my house. A re-laid patio, necessary due to root action and proper steps instead of the concrete lumps we had. My handy geezer is called Adam, (the finest name ever given to a human male child of course) and his works van is a Ford Transit connect, which he loves with a passion. So much so, as he was actually slightly dubious about the prospect of my ripping out his Ford 6000 cassette radio and replacing it with an all singing, all dancing double DIN JVC DVD receiver! Like any true motor brand enthusiast, he was kinda keen on leaving it stock.
However, I popped in on Team Impulse (the new branding for Impulse Car Radio, my closest by and most venerable shop, run by a gentleman who could be termed as car audio aristocracy.) Where the redoubtable Bob Griffiths happily lent me the magical bag from Autoleads. This has the radio removal keys for every single kind of radio that exists, in one handy multi pouch pack. It is almost the definition of ‘˜going equipped’. I don’t think Adam’s Transit radio had ever been removed from the Connect’s dashboard and I blunted the removal keys yanking with a total lack of expertise. But I got the old radio out without causing any damage somehow.
In utterly unconscious yet pompous arrogance, I was convinced that the Ford 6000 radio/cassette would have standard DIN plug holes on the back. Of course once it was pulled out, I discovered it did not. I did think that the power cables were on standard socket and that just the speaker one was on the special Ford plughole. Yet when I asked David on the counter in the shop, he reached the inevitable conclusion but I was in fact talking piffle and HAD to be plain wrong. At which point, I chuckled and said, ‘That’s why I came into the shop, I clearly need the genuine expertise!’
OK, so I have big sexy JVC to install, a big assed Swiss Army knife, a Leatherman wave and a lot of attitude. I am going in, wish me luck. Poor sod, I intend to exploit the hell out of him by shooting yet another video clip. The only real installation issue I pray, will be correct fitment of his Bluetooth microphone. I’ll pop the story up with the video embedded later on today with a bit of luck.
Apologies for not publishing more last week and a huge public thank you to Propper Droppers Nederlands for their awesome video content. On the subject of which, any subscribers to my Presenterbloke channel on YouTube may have seen a video come and then go recently. This was happily supplied to me by Huets The InCar Specialists and had Chris Bennett and Chris Huet discussing a JL Audio bass box. I had been sent a dropbox link to the file and had simply uploaded to my channel. For some reason, somebody on the YouTube team decided I may not have commercial rights to use this video. Since I had clicked monetisation, this started a whole query process which rapidly became so onerous and insulting because of the appallingly low rates of literacy of the United States of America, that I just ended up feeling bloody stupid. OK, I was thrilled to get money for being YouTuber, however little. After all I ain’t no Steve Meade. But the correspondence with the YouTube support team was like fighting with an elephantine pillow. They do not engage, they do not look at the rest of your video content, they do not read your email responses. You get standard emails, with bits in shouty bold, in case you’re too stupid. And frankly it really pissed me off. Don’t get me wrong, I adore YouTube, it may be the single most important thing on the Internet. I love that is free to use and genuinely appreciate the service. Of course it is their show and you play by their rules. But I genuinely understand copyright and I feel I have been treated with mindless disdain.
All of which means no more adverts in your face on my videos, which may just be an improvement in any case. Yep, I spent an hour or two going through all 450 videos and clicked demonetise on the whole bloody lot.
Adam Rayner On Line Editor!