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So I'm not alone! This will be the first time I've ever bothered with Winter tyres mind you. I hope to get out a lot (camera in boot) this Winter. I know that car insurance is void if you have tyres of a lower speed rating than factory fitted, as is the case with Winter tyres. It seemed odd that I could make my car safer in the Winter, but be penalised on my insurance! Anyhoo, it's all sorted and I am a happy bunny about to be £500 skinter! What tyres have you guys used? The Michelin Primacy Alpin seem to get good a good write up, but I was also considering Vredestein. @thefastone: The Michelin is available in pretty mental sizes so you might find the right size for you. Cheers, Steve.

Turns out I've answered my own question! From the 2006 onwards Impreza manual: Winter tyres should be Q, T or H rated and must have equal or greater load index. From Direct Line: They will annotate my policy to state the car has Winter tyres (there is no actual policy regarding Winter tyres ... Yet!). So that's all goody for me and it's a little more information for anyone else considering this option. Surely I'm not the only one around here that enjoys Winter pursuits in remote places? Steve

Hi there, I am hoping to get Winter tyres this year (planning plenty snow-bound adventures!), but am a little concerned about the legalities. I have confirmed my insurance is invalid if I have a tyre rated lower than W, but there are no Winter tyres rated that high - unsurprisingly! Direct Line have told me to check for a manufacturers Winter tyre rating and if that exists they are happy. Does anyone know anything about this? I am about to check my handbook and will phone a Scooby garage tomorrow, but I figured it's worth a question on here too. The SIDC site search reveals nothing, so I guess I'm the first person to ask about this?! Cheers, Steve.

You Suck At Photoshop You Really do Steve.

Violet at Glenshee (car park near the Devils Elbow). And coming back down from Glas Maol yesterday. I love snow Steve.

What do you want to do offshore? No point walking up to a potential employer and asking if they have ANYTHING available. Check around and see what suits you in the oil and gas industry, then concentrate on one area to begin with. I left the RAF to work with ROV's and am still at it 10 years later. I know Subsea7 took on a lot of boys over the last couple of years for ROV work. If that floats your boat then give them a shout. It seems quite a few people have wasted money on various offshore related courses recently. I'd suggest you contact companies, find out if they REQUIRE you to have these courses/quals, and if not then don't bother. In the ROV industry the courses run at Fort William and Windermere are worthless. I can't speak for the courses relating to other parts of the oil and gas industry though. Do you not know someone in the industry who can put in a word for you? It may not seem natural coming from the forces, but it is a good way to get your face recognised. I'm about to pack my bags and head out to sea, tomorrow, for another 4 weeks of dazzling good food, witty banter and great sleep! Best of luck, Steve.

I was stuck in traffic the other day, for too long, behind some prat that kept his foot on the brake pedal when stopped instead of using his handbrake. They were high level brake lights too! You're right that people do seem to think the fog light thing is cool. Weirdos! Steve.

Heh heh! That was well before my time around here, but I doubt much has changed. Probably still the same road surface! The roads around here and up to Forfar were made for Scoobies Stonehaven? Do I smell the oily stench of a job at sea? Steve.

As above, if you're the lad I waved then, then hi! I'm over by the Craigton Coach Inn. Steve.

I could go really random, but lets stick with 2 known quantities; my babies Violet somewhere South of Lochinver and Duffy at Rannoch Moor And for the photographically minded; yes I could have used filters to fix the sky on both photos, but it wasn't really a happening thing at the time! Steve. http://ThisBlueEarth.co.uk

No Doubt I'm a Mac fan-boy Fair point about the 'people exploits'. And you wouldn't bother targeting the smaller market as there's less chance to get your name in lights. The core of OSX is still LESS vulnerable (not in-vulnerable) than XP at least, I can't say the same about Vista though. Real Mac's in real use don't actually crash as often as Windows boxes. I can say that as I have used, and still use, both considerably. But much of that I will concede goes back to people. People will install cracked software, download from dodgy sites and open silly emails. My Windows installs have next to no problems because they sit behind a decent firewall, have a decent virus check on them regularly, have no cracked software and are not used for anything 'iffy'! The thing is that the majority of people don't know enough, or don't care enough to find out, about running a good clean system. And at the end of the day if you have to become a computer wizard just to keep your computer running smoothly I can see why people don't bother. I still point people towards Dell computers now as it happens. I had a very good experience with Dell years back, but Windows just ruins the whole thing for me. There is actually a company now claiming to offer reasonably priced non-Apple hardware running OSX (you can search for it if you're interested, I'll not advertise for them), but it is more for the geeks than the average user as it takes some setting up, apparently. So the outcome so far is really that people are the problem, not Windows itself. Perhaps it would be an idea then to run a 'make your computer safe and well' thread seeing as there is obviously a lot of computer experience on here? I'm off on a tangent now. Still buy a Mac Cal Steve.

I switched to Mac's about 4/5 years ago and can honestly say I will never go back. Even Vista is a backward step once you get used to the niceties of the Mac operating system. I am regularly asked to show people at work - people in your exact situation - what it is that makes Mac's more usable, which I do, and so far a surprising number of guys have just gone straight out and bought a MacBook. I think the key is to see one in use by someone who knows what they are doing. And when you are convinced and have yours on order buy The Missing Manual to get even more out of the OS I am mostly interested in photography and playing about with web programming, but Apple seem to have catered well for people who just need to browse the web and send emails, right through to professional artists of all kinds. A couple of points to note. The vast majority of Mac users are people who have suffered enough frustrations with Windows to make them look elsewhere. Few ever go backwards. The majority of people who would say not to buy a Mac - including people on here - have never used a Mac (or Linux). So do you trust in people who have experience of 2 or 3 operating systems, or people with experience of 1 operating system. Simple maths really. I'd also like to point out that Safari (Apple's web browser) is not crap. It is one of the most standards compliant browsers around, although it may be slightly slower than Firefox (on the Mac), but that's about the only downfall. In the past there have been issues where some secure web-sites would mistake Safari for an old browser incompatible with modern technologies, but Apple have gotten round that now by allowing you select what browser Safari identifies itself as to web-sites. As in if your web-site wants to see IE6 and above, you go to a drop down menu and select IE6, then the web-site is all happy in its ignorance. I would also like to know what files can't be transfered between Mac's and Windows boxes? At the end of the day they're all just data bits. Also OSX can read NTFS formatted disks. Apple iWork is fully compatible with Word, Exel and PowerPoint (and costs about £60!). Not quite sure where this misleading information comes from. - wtf? That's like saying people with Impreza's are 'brand chasers'. What viruses? The only Mac users that have anti-virus software installed are recent Windows converts, who don't have anyone to tell them otherwise (PC World springs to mind again). Remember OSX is based on Unix. Unix is a tad harder to feck with than Windows.I could easily go on, but as I stated earlier it is best to get a look at a Mac in use. For the record I have Win XP installed on my desktop and Vista on my laptop on a Boot Camp partition. I use Windows for Microsoft Flight Simulator and ... nothing else If you are seriously thinking about a Mac and want to know more feel free to give me a shout. I can point you at some articles and web-sites, or you can just browse around switch 101 to get more ideas. It's horses for courses really, so good luck with the choice. I'll sit back and await the onslaught of a thousand clueless Windows fan-boys telling me how incompatible Mac's are, how they are for posers, and they really are expensive. Whatever you can say against Mac's I have already heard it and I still use them, along with millions of other folk world-wide. Steve.

he he Glad to say it stayed in the bottles until this evening. Er, afternoon. Er, lunchtime... Anyway, nice day today! Steve.

As per title, saw stacks of scoobs this morning around 08:00 at Sainsbury. Mostly new-age cars; black saloon in the car park, black saloon driving towards Claypots fiasco--I mean junction!--and a wave from a lady in a green saloon. The only classic was a blue wagon with a few extra body parts and heavily tinted rear windows which drove off toward City Blinds. Not bad when you consider I only went out for bread and beer! Steve.

Keeping my eyes peeled on the other side of the pond. No not the Atlantic, Monikie Steve.