Gameboy advance SP

Just a quicky to say that I have got my mits of a silver gameboy advance SP from ebay. Not bad at £30 including p&p. This included 5 games, two chargers, two cases and a link cable. The only downside is that it has a sticker of "The pirates of the Caribbean 2" on it. Sounds like a job for anti sticky stuff.

Replacing ipod mini battery

Rather than pay the obscene price of £50 to get the battery replaced on Alice's ipod mini, and lose the inscription in the process, we decided to replace it ourselves. For £10 we managed to get a UniRoss version which apparently will last even longer than the the original. So last night I did the dirty deed, and even though it was fiddly, it was fairly straight forward and was completed in about 15 minutes. The key hint that made it a lot easier was to use a hair dryer to heat the top and bottom of the ipod before trying to leaver off the white plastic bits. This has the effect of semi-melting the glue. I picked up this hint from a comment in someone else's blog, but I cannot remember where now.

The worse bit of the whole procedure was sliding the ipod back into its case which required a combination of wiggling, molding and brute force. It was left to charge over night and initial reports from Alice this morning are that it works splendidly. Marvellous.

New bike

So finally after months of laziness, I have finally ordered and picked up a new bike. It is a specialized globe sport 1997 which is a hybrid bike (mountain bike frame but thinner tires and a few other alterations which make it suitable for road, bike paths, bridal ways etc.). The photos are taken just before I took it out for its first ride, so it was as clean as it ever will be. On the first ride I went around the Epsom and Ashtead common, which was great, but unfortunately I chose a wrong path which was super muddy and so it was completely soiled. At least I won't get sentimental about it and I know that it can take pretty much everything I can throw at it.

I must say it is a super smooth ride and very fast compared to my trusty old bike. I rode to work the first couple of days this week which gave me a great sense of freedom despite the freezing weather. Not too great coming back in the dark but I will get a better forward light at some point. Lost a lot of my fitness but I am sure it will not take too long to get back on track. Unfortunately I have done my back in and so I will take the rest of the week off, probably caused by a combination of me having tweaked it at the weekend and the riding.