Originally running ‘Ultimate Bulletin Board’ by InfoPop (anyone else remember that?), Ste got me involved to help out on the ‘technical side’ of the forums, the first step was to port over to vBulletin, THE forum software of the time, so powerful and advanced compared to what we were accustomed to! – What an effort, the importer didn’t work properly so none of the threads came over, just the members, so a team of us re-entered as many of the threads deemed useful as possible.

I’ve just looked on the way back machine, some serious nostalgia there! – Anyway, we carried down the path, installing the bigger and better versions of vB as it evolved and our site grew, right up until November 2011.

One of the things we always tried to do with the forum software was try and be early adopters, give our users something new to look at, new features to use and play with and ultimately try and be first amongst our fellow car enthusiasts… this ultimately led to us upgrading to vBulletin 4 (we even upgraded our live site at beta stage). This was the first time we’d experienced grief from our users, ‘it’s too cartoony’, ‘looks horrible’, ‘I won’t be coming back’ etc… we shrugged it off, you can’t please everyone all the time etc.. everything was ticking along for a while, I’d even managed to make a retro style theme for those that craved the look of days gone.

The problem started to happen the bigger we got, the more users / threads / posts seriously ground the forum speed down, we had to move hosts and upgrade server to cope with the load, even the well established host we were with was surprised by the server load generated by a (fairly big) forum, the better deal we’d got with our hosting soon ended up costing us more for the extra memory needed to cope with vB4. the extra RAM kept the site running fairly well.

Tim from Nimbus Hosting told me about a new forum software company called XenForo, it was a company made up of some of the ex-vbulletin dev’s who worked on vBulletin 3, names I recognised back from the days of getting support. I found the website and promptly bookmarked it (wasn’t available to see at the time) and kept checking in. As soon as the software was up for grabs we purchased it, setup a test server and started playing with it. After a lengthy test upgrade (left it going overnight in the end) I was blown away, the simple but elegant styling, the excellent use of AJAX, the simplicity of the thing! We all agreed that we must move the forum over to XenForo as soon as possible, but we would have to wait for a few key features.

Version 1 went stable, we did another test upgrade, still excellent, but we had to wait for 1.1 to get Thread Prefixes as these had been heavily used on our forums (used within the car help forums, the prefix is the model – very useful).

1.1 got released! I tried some importers, but the prefixes wouldn’t import over! – Thanks to a wonderful person on the XF forums, a 1.1 importer that worked was made. 2 test upgrades later and we were good to go.

Saturday the 27th of November, I got up at 7:30am, closed the vB forum down and started the daunting task of a forum import containing over 2 million posts (250k threads)! – Suffice to say it took a while, but it got there in the end, for anyone interested, or even contemplating it, here’s the import stats:

We re-opened the forums and awaited the grief we got when we moved to vB4, surprisingly on the first day (there’s always a few moaners ) all we had was praise, mainly about how quick it is! – Compared to vBulletin, XenForo absolutely flys! We are using approximately half the memory too!

So, am I happy? Do I miss vBulletin? Would I ever go back?

Yes, extremely, the software works fantastically well, so so fast, and such a pleasure to use.

No! – I would like a couple of features we used in there ported over, but this is XenForo 1.1, that was v4, we are only just getting started

No! – Internet Brands have turned a fast popular product into something bloaty, vBulletin 4 seems to me like Windows Vista, they were too keen to show off a revamped look and extra features and chucked it out of the door (that made me dump Windows, now a very happy Mac user)

I’d like to finish this blog entry off by thanking Tim from Nimbus Hosting (excellent hosts of both vBulletin and XenForo) and XenForo and it’s community, everyone is so keen to help, I’ve had replies to help threads within seconds! (normally by the amazingly helpful Brogan – If there’s a user of the year award, he should get it) – Go check them both out.

Dave.

Prior to the 330ci, I had an Audi A3 Quattro Sport 1.9TD, it was a 2002 car, one of the earlier shapes. It was the car I’d owned longer than any others, it was a great middle ground car, it was pretty economical, ‘nippy’ and it felt like a sturdy little thing, helped in a big way by being a Quattro. A couple of years back when we had that big lot of snow fall in a very short space of time, it was only the fact I was in that car that I made it home that night, albeit 6 hours after leaving work. During that epic drive home I even ended up having to pass abandoned land rovers and the like (I suspect more down to driver error than anything!) going home through the country lanes (the police had shut the A505 due to sheet ice).

I sold the previous Audi as at 150k miles it was starting to feel a bit tired, nothing actually wrong with it, but it felt like the right time for a change.

However, 6 months down the line, having spent way too much (new tyres and a clutch!), and having to spend more time getting things replaced than I’d hoped (a lot of it under warranty fortunately) I decided to start looking for a Quattro again. The selection is fairly limited when you go on Autotrader, mainly TT’s and I’m not having a mid-life crisis just yet (although being bald, I’m perfectly suited to driving a convertible it seems – what is it with bald guys and cabrio’s?). After a bit of scouring, I went to look at an A4 1.8T (soon left after the salesmen acted like a couple of idiots) and then up to Middlesex to view an A3 2.0T FSI Quattro Sport.

I ended up doing a deal with the guy there and then after pretty much pre-arranging the deal with the salesman on the phone, the car is in Dolphin Grey, has Xenons, full leather interior and is in generally excellent condition (not ‘perfect’ – if such a thing exists in a second hand car). No proof of the cam belt was evident (it was overdue by age, not millage) so I got that done the day I got the car (once you’ve had a cam belt go, you get a bit paranoid!) and it’s booked in for a full service very soon at Audi.

The car might not be as ‘fancy’ as the BMW, but at the same time it doesn’t feel as delicate, I’m less ‘worried’ about it overall.

This is my 3rd Audi Quattro now, not that I’m planning on changing cars again any time soon (again), but the next one will also need Xenons and Quattro

Here’s a very boring picture of it, that doesn’t even really represent the colour very well, it’s miserable out there and I’m not going to be cleaning it again any time soon.

Dave.

There is no real reason for me to feel as numb as I do about this, I’ve never had the fortune of meeting the man, I’m even a fairly late comer to the world of Apple. But the sheer vision he had really struck a chord with me, how can one person have done so much, have influenced so much about how we use technology, the more I learnt, the more fascinated. Sure there are stories about how he was a no nonsense person, he was this and he was that, but the vision, the vision is what drove him, nothing should distract from this, if you didn’t meet that level perfection you might have met his uncompromising side. I don’t think anyone believes he was a saint, but he was a game changer, a leader and a genius.

I’ve read some amazing tributes today from Barrack Obama to Stephen Fry and all in-between, Steve has touched so many people, changed many lives and ultimately helped to sculpt the way we work today, the way we listen to music today the direction of new technology today.

Put aside your preference to Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and whatever else, Steve Jobs was a pioneer whom without things would not be as advanced with today, the messages of love and support from his ‘opposition’ tell you all you need to know about how Steve Jobs was regarded.

If you haven’t yet seen Steve doing his Stanford speech, please take the time to watch and be inspired.

Also, the perfect tribute, Steve’s unaired version of the ‘Think Different’ advert with him narrating.

R.I.P Steve Jobs – You will be missed.

Dave.

I’d held off buying a 3D TV for quite a while, I loved the effect of it, but felt like I’d played about 3 hours worth of guitar hero after watching approximately 10 minutes of 3D content whilst getting a demo in a Sony store!

For my sins, I got roped into going to watch the final (thank jebus!) Harry Potter film, I was looking forward to seeing the 3D element of the film though having never seen any 3D films before.

I really didn’t know much about how it would work, I can’t actually watch 3D through the old style red/blue glasses, not sure why, but could have something to do with my astigmatism. I just can’t really see the effect, everything just seems to come out in different colours!

For those that haven’t yet seen any 3D content in the cinema, it uses ‘Passive’ technology, you have to buy (or take your own) polarised glasses. The good news was that not only could I see and enjoy the 3D, when I left the cinema I had no adverse effects!

So when we got home, I started to Google for ‘Real-D’ (the 3D company used in the cinemas) televisions, I found that this is a project in development, but LG and Toshiba have started to offer passive 3D tv’s! This is essentially the same kind of system as used in the cinema, so I could get 3D without the brain strain!

Most manufactures offer what is known as ‘Active’ 3D, this requires some expensive ‘active shutter’ glasses that basically open and close the left and right shutter of the glasses to let you see the 3D image. This does work really very well, and actually offers higher resolution than passive can currently deliver, the down side is it also seems to bring more ‘ghosting’ type effects.

I started wading through the reviews of the 3D LG and Toshiba sets and decided that I really wanted to check out the LG LW550T 47″ set. A trip to Curry’s later and I was very impressed with the set, but had changed my mind to the 47LW650T, the main difference between the two sets is that the 650 offers 200hz and a much higher contrast ratio (blacker blacks etc..)

So after a lot of haggling, I ended up with the LG LW650T set. Very happy with the TV, as much as I loved my previous Panasonic Plasma (had that for approx 5 years) the picture is so much clearer and the 3D effect is fantastic.

If you’re in the market for a new TV, I urge you to check out the passive 3D sets, yes the resolution is lower for 3D, but it’s barely noticeable, the glasses cost less than £1 each (instead of £99 for active!) you get minimal (I’ve seen none yet) ghosting AND you don’t get a headache!

Dave.

This went on for about 4/5 days on and off as I couldn’t work out initially how they’d got in, but with the help of Tim from Nimbus Hosting (the hosting company that looks after VxON) he found an exploit within one of our plugins! We removed the plugin and eradicated all the security holes. Here’s some tips how to do the same.

Make sure your copy of vbulletin is up-to-date with the version and latest patches – Hackers will look for known exploits, don’t make it any easier for your site to be compromised.

Update your plugin’s and hacks for vbulletin – this is ultimately how we were hacked, we had an older version of VBSEO, this was then exploited and various backdoors installed.

Ensure your passwords are secure – It’s very easy to think that ‘no one will guess my password’, I was probably naive enough to think so too as I’d got a couple of words not often used together with some numbers, that is still brute-forceable.

A tip the IT guy at my work gave me was to perhaps think of a centance or combination of words, then use the first two or three letters of those interjected with some numbers and special characters. This was it’s easier to remember, but still nice and secure (I.e. My Dog Has a Brown Nose could be MDoHaABrNo*53).

Get the admin / mod team to do the same, and check that your MySQL password is also secure.

Password protect  your admincp directory – Use .htaccess to add another layer of security, there are plenty of guides available on how to do this, you might even have the option built into your hosting control panel (with Nimbus we use Plesk that lets you simply ‘Password Protect’ directories). Make sure this password is different to your vbulletin login.

Rename the folders for your Admincp and Modcp for vbulletin – You can call these what you like, so long as you then rename the paths within the config.php file

Comment if you’ve got any questions!

Dave.

I asked Rob if he would be OK with lending me his car rig and a bit of his time to go through the basics with me so I can have a go on my own car and perhaps a few friends I knew wouldn’t pay for such photos, but wouldn’t mind some all the same.

We set off for the Butterfield industrial estate in Luton as I knew it would be fairly quiet, and hopefully we wouldn’t be ejected by security as we wouldn’t be doing much more than 10mph (think it was less than that in the end) to get the motion required for the rig shots.

Equipment wise, the rig consisted of various clamps, two heavy duty suction pads with a clamp each to hold the pole, 3 lengths of aluminium tubing and various connections to ensure the camera was held on safely via a Manfrotto tripod mount. I used my Canon 5D classic with my Canon 17-40 F4 L lens (the wide angle when mounted on the 5D can make for some interesting shots) a 0.9 ND filter and a remote trigger.

We started of with a shot of the rear of the car, one suction cup on the rear screen, one on the drivers side window, once everything was attached we set a suitable shutter speed and Rob operated the camera with the remote trigger whilst I drove as smoothly as possible between 5 and 10 mph.

We then moved on to do the above the wheel shot (one pad on the rear screen one on the passenger side window) then a shot to show the car driving forward from the front left (one pad on windscreen, one on the front passenger side of the bonnet) the same steps to get the shots were repeated as above, but with me trying different combos of moving the wheels etc..

That was then that! The hard part was then yet to come… the editing, I’d like to think I was pretty handy with Photoshop, but this was a real challenge for me, basically adding in parts of the car that just Werner there! I got a few tips on how Rob has done this in the past and persevered. The results can be seen below. I plan to do some more in the next couple of weeks with my Brothers MX-5 (he’s a hairdresser, you can let him off) and my friend Marc’s BMW M3 Convertible, I’ll update this post once that happens!

For now, enjoy the photos I took, feel free to leave any comments or ask any questions.

Dave.

So, in the safety of my own home and garden, I’ve been messing about with the macro mode. I don’t own any kind of macro lens for my Canon 5D mk2 or 5D classic so it’s been good fun to mess about with this feature.

First thing to do is set the camera in A (Aperture) mode, then press down on the menu wheel and click through to the focus option, to get really close in use macro s mode (picture of the macro flower with an s next to it.

I went out to the garden, set the aperture to F1.8 and took a couple of snaps. A nail in the felt on the roof of my shed, a knot in the wood of the shed, a poppy pod and another flower (my wife planted all this stuff, no idea sorry!). I didn’t quite hit the focus I planned for on the nail, but very happy with the other two!

I then went indoors and decided to have a go at a couple of close up photos of a pound coin, was really impressed with the performance straight away, the only thing I did was prop the camera up to reduce shake and used a torch to get a bit more light on the coin to stop the image underexposing (could have adjusted the ISO I guess, but thought this would be better).

You can see these images in the gallery below (click to enlarge), on the coin shots I added a 100% crop from the original image just to give you an idea on the detail this excellent little camera can pick up (the coin shots were at F5, ISO 200).

Still very glad I chose this camera, I’ll post up some more picture samples, reviews etc.. once I’ve used it some more.

Dave.

I’m so glad I did, the IQ (Image Quality) difference between the 50D and the 5D mk2 was night and day, the full frame sensor handles noise with ease, no longer am I scared to push the ISO beyond 800, the sharpness, the colours, how much nicer it is to use my Canon 50mm F1.4 lens on a full frame, I was (and still am) smitten.

I’d been putting it off replacing my 50D out of sheer laziness to be quite honest, I’d asked my friend Stuart at Digital Depot to keep any eye out for an original 5D for me, almost to force me into sorting things out, well last weekend he did exactly that. He’d had a 5D ‘Classic’ traded in so gave me a shout.

The camera was what can only be described as ‘mint’ condition, on the original 5D, the hot shoe is black and has a tendency to wear down to the silver (of course there is nothing wrong with that), but this didn’t even have any wear on that! Even the strap had never been used and was supplied in it’s wrapper.

It was the push I needed, my Canon 50D went up for sale on the Talk Photography forums and had interest almost straight away, a day later I’d agreed a price with the new owner, he’d bank transferred the money to me and I was at the Post Office the next day sending the camera special delivery!

That was that!. I now have two Canon 5D’s, 1x Classic, 1x Mk2, my lens ‘collection’ is pretty much complete for day to day stuff too:

Canon EF 17-40 mm f/4.0 L USM
Canon EF 50 mm f/1.4 USM
Canon EF 24-70 mm f/2.8 L USM
Canon EF 70-200 mm f/4.0 L IS USM

Even though I don’t want to do much photography at the moment, it’s nice to know that for the job’s I’ve got booked up, I’ve got the full frame backup or the option to just keep the 17-40L  on the 5D classic to take in some of the wide shots!

The other cheeky bonus to this camera replacement is that I now qualify for Canon’s CPS Gold membership instead of the silver I had previously

Dave.

I emailed my friend Stuart at Digital Depot to ask if I could try out a couple of cameras with the view to buying the one that suited me. I ended up borrowing 3 for one week each, here’s how I got on.

Sony NEX-5

The Sony Nex-5 seemed like a fantastic idea, basically a mini DSLR.

First thoughts were what a sturdy camera, although very small in my hands it felt like what you’d expect from a £500+ camera. To access the basic menus was very straight forward, you basically get a digital version of the top dial of an SLR camera, for me though thats where the intuitiveness ended. I noticed in certain modes I seemed to be stuck taking HDR photos with no obvious way of turning this off (I did eventually find this option, but still it *should* be straight forward).

After playing with the camera for a week, I decided this wasn’t for me. I was underwhelmed with the results. The focus seemed completely hit and miss, the colour saturation left a lot to be desired (I couldn’t help but feel the images came out very flat), using the camera indoors resulted in very noisy images and the sharpness of the images did not live up to my expectations. The only feature I’ll miss from the camera was the sweep panorama. A lot of the issues mentioned above could be corrected in photoshop or similar, but I want most of it right in the camera!

From what I understand, there have been a few firmware updates to the camera which do improve some functions and add some new features, maybe this would have helped?

Canon G12

It feels like it’s made out of old tanks! A rock solid ‘little’ camera. The first thing I liked about the G12 was the dials on the top, unlike the Sony this had the physical controls that I’m used to using, with the added bonus of the exposure and ISO settings available on the top of the camera in the same dial format.

The other menu options were very straight forward to use, I purposely haven’t read the manuals on any of these cameras but didn’t have any issues here.

The images the camera took outside were great, the colour and saturation was exactly what I was used to from the Canon DSLR’s I own and use, also very sharp in camera. Inside however the story is fairly similar to the NEX-5 unless you want to use flash, which if I can, I avoid.

The reason I gave this camera back in the end came down to the lack of flexibility around Depth of Field. Although the canon would offer F2.8 when not zoomed in, I was hard pushed to tell the difference between F2.8 and the minimum F8 that was available, the level of detail was very similar at both ends!

If however DOF effects aren’t an issue to you and you have no problem using the flash indoors then I would still recommend this camera, it’s a great addition if you’re a DSLR user, although a little bulky I could forgive that for how solid it felt.

Olympus XZ-1

I’d never really considered buying an Olympus camera before, I know they used to be big in the SLR market, but I hadn’t really heard much about them lately, but after reading some reviews on this little camera I had to have a go!

The reason I was so keen to get my hands on this camera initially was because of it’s maximum aperture value of F1.8, this is what I was missing with the Canon G12 (you could produce some fairly decent DOF with the Sony at f2.8). F1.8 on this camera has not left me disappointed!

The camera looks fantastic in white (I am a bit of a sucker for white things, including my Alpine White Les Paul Custom, yumm!) with it’s top panel and buttons in black, feels very solid to use and a good size, if not a tiny bit bulky with the protruding lens.

So, how is it to use? Well, you have the PASM menu options, Art functions, Auto etc.. in physical dial format so very easy to get started. The first thing I did was jump to aperture mode, the ring on the front which doubles up as the lens housing is used as the selector, and I dialled straight up to F1.8.

The first thing I noticed when using A mode, was unlike the Canon and Sony, on auto ISO it actually kept the value very low! Using all three in my front room the most it went to on the Olympus was ISO 200! The others leapt way above that, with the Sony even hitting over 1600 at one point! The fast glass obviously helps with this, but even at F2.8 it beat the other two on keeping the ISO down.

For me, it’s low light performance is the reason I’m going to give my bank account some pain. As mentioned above, I always try and avoid using flash if possible, people look a lot more natural when not frozen in time and a lot better without the harsh shadows (don’t get me wrong, flash has it’s place but if I can avoid it for people / animal shots I will). It’s colour saturation is a lot like the Canon, it’s as sharp as the G12 and even it’s macro performance is impressive!

Conclusion

For me, the Olympus ended up being the clear winner, the Sony just didn’t live up to my expectations, I don’t mind editing the shots I take with the DSLR, I want a more portable camera to be a bit of fun, something to take some interesting shots with without the hassle of needing to deal with RAW images etc.. The Canon was very good, but all I could really do with it was take nice ‘snapshots’ because the DOF just didn’t seem to alter no matter what aperture it was set at! The Olympus does what the Canon did, just better, F1.8 in a camera this size is fantastic and works wonderfully.

Some examples from the Olympus

Shot of the dog showing how nice and sharp a shot can be indoors without the flash, Macro (with 100% crop of detail included) and F1.8 at work with a shot of my fingers!

I’ve made the leap, it took me long enough to get the valve bug (I thought before owning a valve amp it was just gear snobs going on about how expensive their amp’s were…) and after being convinced on valves, I’ve now I’ve abandoned the warmth for the cold solid state digital world of amplification and modelling!

I previously had a 100w Marshall Valve amp combo, it sounded fantastic, two major problems with it though; 1) it was so loud you couldn’t play it above 2 in any venues, 2) It weighed a huge amount, being a combo I had no choice but to try and get it all out of the car in one hit!

So after talking to a guy at work who’d just bought a Line6 POD HD500, doing some extensive googling / youtube viewing I was hooked! The big ol’ valve amp was put on eBay, all the BOSS pedals and my Digitech whammy I had were also sold on and the POD HD was purchased! The next step was how do I get anyone else to hear it!

Cue the Tech 21 Power Engine. A 60w solid state amp (made by the same guys that make the SansAmp pedal and many others) that is designed to use with modellers, it add’s no colour to the sound and compared to my old amp, barely weighs anything!

I need to spend a lot more time perfecting the models I plan to use, but so far I’m very happy with it, I genuinely believe with the vintage look of the Power Engine and the very realistic tones from the POD HD500 people are not going to be able to tell that the valve amp they just heard is a phoney! Can’t wait!

Now to get practicing, as after over a year out I’m very rusty! …. In the mean time, here’s the planned live rig: