BMW Log - Control Arms

One of my to do items for the BMW was to change the control arms, as the wear in the bushes/ball joints was becoming very apparent.

The symptoms are basically wobbling / vibrating of the front end of the car, not just through the steering wheel but you could feel the whole car shaking from side to side. It started at just certain speeds on the motorway, about 50 - 60 mph, which then progressed into bad vibration under braking.

It all came to a head finally at the most inconvenient time (of course) when setting off to drive home for Christmas to visit family. It just started vibrating & wobbling at nearly all speeds and felt very unsafe. So had to limp home and use the Audi, I unfortunately, but fortunately, still have.

Creating a Simple Subversion Server on Ubuntu

For a while I have been trying to learn some programming skills. It is something I would like to do purely for fun and if I can get to a stage where I have decent programming capabilties then I can enjoy writing applications and perhaps start giving something useful back to the Linux community.

To start with the best intentions, I decided to set up a simple Subversion version control system on my server to allow me to keep control of my programming progress in an orderly manner. This blog entry just simply describes how I went about setting it up.

Subversion is a version control system which one can use to keep track of a project and have the ability to 'check out' stuff to work on then 'check in' the changes, keeping old revisions of work in case you need to revert back to an earlier version. This is great, especially when learning, as you don't need to keep saving new copies of your program as it develops every time you want to try something new in case you mess it up and need to revert back to your previous version.

2012 Panic Article

A small article from a newspaper (not sure which) that my father sent me highlighting how people can easily get themselves worried about mythological events with no evidence to back them up, yet fail to bat an eyelid at 'real' problems happening around them. i.e. crime, global warming, nuclear war etc...

BMW Log - New Wheels

The original alloys that came with the car, although I like them a lot as they have the original style and feel of the original car, are actually very annoying in as far a they are metric. This means tyres are a problem.

New Wheels

BMW Log - Things To Do

160,000 miles currently, and there is a list of things that need doing:

Hugin Photo Stitching

Something I discovered a while back was stitching photos together to form panoramas. I have been trying out a few examples, which are shown in the hugin gallery.

I have been using software called hugin, which is an open source program, which I believe is available for multiple platforms. I am using it on Ubuntu. I am using this in conjuncture with autopanog, another open source program that comes pre-installed with Ubuntu.

Panoramic Photo Stitching with Hugin

Something I discovered a while back was stitching photos together to form panoramas. I have been trying out a few examples, which are shown in the hugin gallery.

I have been using software called hugin, which is an open source program, which I believe is available for multiple platforms. I am using it on Ubuntu. I am using this in conjuncture with autopanog, another open source program that comes pre-installed with Ubuntu.

Interests

An area where I will write about interests I have.

Please see the links in the navigation menu for now...

Cars

Rusty Old Disc

I bought an Audi A4 1.9 TDI almost 2 years ago to replace a thirsty Toyota Hilux 2.4TD, which replaced a dead Mitsubishi Pajero (head gasket went 4 days after buying it)...which replaced a Peugeot 405 GLTD with a dead gearbox ad infinitum.

Replacing Audi A4 (B5) Rear Discs and Pads

At time of writing, I am preparing to sell my 1998 Audi A4 (B5) 1.9 TDI. This article is simply to document, for the benefit of others, the process of replacing the rear brake discs.