October 2006 Archives

Well I finally did it, I’ve finally ordered my new play thing the Lotus Elise R.

Last Sunday I woke up very nervous knowing I had booked to goto the dealer and finally make that decision between the Elise and the Exige. After countless bits of advise from everyone saying "if your living in Australia I have got to go for the convertible!" and that all starting to make sense I ordered the Elise R.

The car itself I specced during the week after going all over the net looking at photos and advice on the options for the car and in the end I have specced it with Polar Blue paint, Black wheels with Black rear under tray, Touring Pack and Sports Pack with the LSD. The light colour of the Polar Blue paint I thought looked really contrasting compared to the other darker colours when paired with the darker black wheels and Black rear under tray. It was this picture from a US spec Lotus Elise in Polar Blue that really stood out and made me realise it was the colour I wanted to go for:

As for the other options, well the Touring pack, add's a better Stereo, full leather interior, electric windows and other more plush and soft to the touch friendly interior items.
The sports pack, well seeing as this is a race spec of the Elise hence the 'R' in its model name so has the Lotus tuned Toyota engine with variable lift and timing its designed to go on the track which of course I will be doing ;) The sports pack, gives stiffer race suspension, an in-built rollover hoop, and the correct internal struts to mount a race legal 4 or 6 point harness.
Lastly the LSD (Electrically controlled Limited Slip Differential), well if you own a 4WD and you take it off road you'll know exactly the benefits of a LSD, if you don’t, it's a advanced traction device as part of the rear differential that maximises power to the road during hard cornering and is found in all race cars and serous off road 4x4's. If you want to know more on how a LSD works here's a good site on the topic http://auto.howstuffworks.com/differential.htm

So the long wait starts here! It takes approx 3 weeks for them to hand build the car to my chosen spec then 2 months to ship it from the midlands of England where the Lotus factory is to me here in sunny Sydney, Australia.

Oh the weeks will drag on, so I have decided to try my best to forget all about putting my order in until closer to the time it arrives, Yeah Right!

I was bored at work again today, randomly going off to websites for a couple of minutes of time like you do in an excuse to get any from the highly interesting work focused thing your supposed to be doing at that time and I came across the Internet Archive.

It’s basically a site which stores snapshots in time of websites around the world if you’re lucky enough that your website gets archived by the service. Well a few of my old websites did! My old music site, my personal site e.t.c they got deleted many many years ago. I found it really interesting to see what I wrote about my life from those years ago.

Unfortunately the Internet Archive doesn’t archive the pictures or links to the files on the site but you can fill in the blanks and imagine what’s there :)

My Photo website - 2003

This was my last site I did before I started this blog up. It was bascally a colletion of all my photos on one website, took ages to write and update, hence im onto a much easier blog now.
http://web.archive.org/web/20040926141134/http://www.mbedford.f9.co.uk/

My old Music website - 2001

This was all about the songs I made and DJ'ing back in the days. All my old music I made, wow this really took me back! I was so proud of all the music I made and then it was all lost when my computer crashed, this made me start backing up my computers finally :( A small section on when I played on the Radio both via the Net and on FM radio up in Redhill London was on there. Lastly all the hellos to my old friends from the Internet I used to talk to for hours, this brought back some memories alright. Click on the menu bar in the top left to goto the differnt pages.
http://web.archive.org/web/20011221075507/www.kickas.f9.co.uk/frames.htm

My old Personal website - 1999

This was I think the 2nd website I ever made and I really went to town on it, well on hours spent makign the thing at least :) Back in 98 when I started the site, the net was a much much unknown and complicated

http://web.archive.org/web/20010405222207/http://www.mbedford.f9.co.uk/

Here are some of my favourite images I have taken over the past 2 years. They are of various places I have been to around the world and all have ended up as my wallpaper at some point in time. All the photos were taken on my Olympus digital compact set to manual mode using a variety of focus's, exposures & colour balances e.t.c.

I love to try and get a natural feel of plants, tree's and landscapes through photos and sometimes they come out, I think really great, hope you enjoy the following examples.

Myall Lakes, Australia

Myall Lakes, Australia

Sydney, Australia

Mt Perisher, Australia

Mt Perisher, Australia

Sydney, Australia

Barnham, England

Barnham, England

Clymping, England

Clymping, England

Lake Wanaka, New Zealand

Lake Wanaka, New Zealand

Sydney, Australia

Sydney, Australia

Sydney, Australia

Sydney, Australia

Sydney, Australia

Sydney, Australia

Jervis Bay, Australia

Jervis Bay, Australia

Currarong, Australia

Blue Gum Forest (Blue Mountains), Australia

Sydney, Australia

Whitsunday Islands, Australia

The New Forest, England

Canberra, Australia