I’m testing a few new designs for the blog..

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I was checking today the stats for the RC NUT website, and man was I happy, according to the chart we keep on growing the number of visitors that visit per day (uniques) .. thats great news, as it means more and more people are aware of the site, we opened in September.

the Graphs really says it all ..

Technorati Tags: RC NUT

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At my last count, I now have about 170 movies and over 300 TV episodes saved on my iTunes.

This of course means, I need space, lots of it .. I was using 2 external 500gb’s HD (1TB) for my iTunes library, but because it’s 2 separate drives, it created a bit of a problem for iTunes, I had to keep movies on one, and shows/music on the other, this made (for some reason) AppleTV very slow to load up, also I was always afraid, if one of the drives failed, I lost ether my movies or my shows .. either way, a huge loss.

I looked into some RAID solutions, but the problem was, I use a Mac Mini to stream to the AppleTV, the mini does not have slots for me to use a RAID card, I did found some self raid enclosures, and was about to buy one when I found out about drobo

What sold me on drobo was the ability to use different Hard Drives, and still you are on a raid 5 type of system where you have failover, if one of the drives dies, no big deal, jut replace it, your data is safe

Anyway, I am not a journalist, people can find about drobo on http://www.drobo.com

I have ordered 2 x 750GB drives, and will use one of the 500GB I have, this will give me about 1.1GB of safe data, as a single volume .. nice

Here are the pics of it .. I’ll post more about it as I set it up.

Technorati Tags: drobo

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Got my iPhone today !!

I am genuinely impressed by how good it is, I was a bit weary that it would be a big gimmicky and the novelty would wear off within 5 minutes, but instead I am please and impressed by how good it functions, and how great it will work for my needs.

First thing I did was to setup my Exchange work mail, and it works like a dream, I love the ability to zoom in to get a closer look at the text, but I must say, the screen resolution is so good, that there really isnt much need to zoom.

The phone is set to check my main 3 email accounts every 30 minutes (I can set it for much shorter times), I set all my accounts to IMAP (and exchange) so not to get a false “new mail” on the phone if I have already got it on my laptop.

The wifi works like a threat .. it automatically uses the wifi when available instead of the gprs/edge connection.

I pay around with google maps, it’s not a GPS system, but it does come in handy, besides, I had the N95 a month or so back, and found it’s GPS system worthless, better leave it to TOMTOM

I still have lots to play around and discover on it, have not yet had the chance to check visual voicemail .. guess I better just leave a few messages to myself to check that part
I’m not a reviewer of hardware, and not trying to make this post into one, I am just so stocked at how great this thing works

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A few weeks back I was browsing Maxbashing and I saw this for sale

It’s part of a Mini-LST project, basically a bunch of after market parts put together to build a whole truck from the ground up .. but never finished it seems

So I bought it, it’s now my winter project, I will continue with the theme of using all after market parts (hop-ups) and build a BLING brushless truck
more pics will follow as I build it up

Technorati Tags: MLST, RC, RC Nut, Team Losi

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I just returned from a trip to the SWsoft office in Germany.

PSoft was sold to SWsoft not long ago, so I went over for some training on the SWsoft products, it was very pleasant, on my last day there we also had the office XMAS party, so that was a bonus

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Today I took a 2 Hour drive to visit The Hobby Co .. the distributors of Tamiya, Italeri, Carson, and a few others, they invited us over for a little bit of relations mending .. to show they are a “nice company” and the bad experience we had with the rep should not put us off … O-K

Paul (Racing buddy) came along with me, we where quite excited to check out the distributor’s place and see what great toys they might have, and of course, what products I should consider for the shop.

I must say, their building was quite nice, but not a single indication that it’s them, no signs, no name at the door, nothing .. I guess they dont want people knocking at the door and asking for repairs

Overall it was a pleasant experience, I was trilled to check the Tamiya 1/14th Big Rig trucks, they where quite impressive, and there where a few other bits and bops that looked “nice” .. but in general, I was not trilled… there was really nothing new, neither there was any one product I felt the need to pull the credit card out for.

So .. we will of course stock the Tamiya plastic models and paints, and some of their on road electric cars, not sure if we will bother with any of the Carson RC line, they also sell Ninco slot cars .. it looked interesting, perhaps something to consider in the future .. but for now, it’s Just Tamiya and Italeri.

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A few weeks back, we opened the RC NUT shop in Sandbach

Ever since, it’s been quite an experience, especially when it comes to dealing with Agents.

Today got the cake, I got an email from the Agent for “The Hobby Company” that really upset me, I had asked him to put a list of plastic models and paint for me, as he knows better than myself what is selling, worth about £500 plus another £280 or so worth of paint (hey, it’s an £800 order for him visiting me for 20 minutes, and these are very cheap products too, so it’s a nice size order).

I got the list this morning, and I was quite happy with it, so I sent him an email back saying “looks good, will buy in a few weeks (just got done paying a large order to Ripmax)”

And the guy goes mental, sends me an email all pissed off that I told him I would buy it in October (I still might) and that he came over because I said i was going to put an order etc etc etc .. all bitchy and acting as if I had done something wrong or wasted his time, I meet the man ONCE, have since sent him one email (that I NEVER got a reply to), thats it ….

Who the F*** does this guy thinks he is ? I am the customer, not him, he needs to kiss my ass to gain my business, not act as if it’s my privilege to be able to buy from his company, Models Shops go out of business in this country by the dozen per year, so we are very careful, we have a proper business plan, and buy all stock cash, so we dont get into loans and a big overhead .. makes sense .. no ?.

But that seems to be a common problem, like another rep called me a few days back saying “Hi, I am from company X, I am in the vicinity .. mind if I pop in and show you our products ?” now, bare in mind, I never called these people, so I said yes, he came in about 2 hours later, after his presentation, I told him thanks, and informed him I would reviewed his catalogs and if i decided to buy something I’d call

He was all surprised by this, the man actually EXPECTED an order .. now, I dont know him, or his products, I need to research .. do these Agents actually think peer pressure will make you buy ? .. well, it seems YES .. so what is this ? .. are the other Model Shop owners all sucked into buying anything every time these guys some by ?

To be honest, I dont even need them to come by, once the account is set, I do my own orders, I dont need some fancy suit to come in and tell me they think I should buy this months overstock special .. the one that did not sold before and now they trying to flog .. nor I need somebody pressuring me to buy more than I need … yes, I know it’s their job, and they get paid on commission, but sorry .. I got no patience for such behavior.

It’s just, that once again, doing business in the UK continues to surprise me…

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For the past few months, I have been working on the side on a new venture, a RC / Hobby shop.

It was allot of work, and sure was allot of money, but yesterday we finally opened it
The shop will be mostly run by my wife, I’ll be there on Saturday’s ..

The name of the company is “RC NUT” .. I was even able to buy the .com (rcnut.com) from a chap in the US for $150.00 USD .. a bargain if you ask me.

The website can be seen here and below are a few pictures of it.

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A few weeks back I mentioned I was moving to BT .. and was anxious to see the speed difference .. well, there is it

According to my router, I am connected at 6Mps+ .. but BT says they cap 2 of those for the VISION (on demand TV) that we have .. and sure enough .. I am getting now around 4Mps

And here is the OLD one

Not bad

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