kickingtyres

Account: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Campaign: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
This campaign met its daily budget of GBP £250.00 on 15 of the last 15
days. Increasing the budget to GBP £250.00 would allow the ads to show
more often and get approximately 400% more clicks per month.

This is after we’ve had a multitude of problems in getting funds transferred into a Google Adwords account, even when Google created the account themselves, and were unable to transfer funds into it.

Has anyone else found the AdWords platform to be as broken as this?

Capstone Turbine are débuting  their CMT-380 hybrid car at the Los Angeles Auto Show this week.  It uses their 30 Kw C30 Microturbine as a generator to recharge Lithium ioin batteries when they run out of power, and houses the whole lot in the not-unattractive GTM Supercar from FactoryFive, which is normally sold as a kit.  The combination of electric motor, batteries and turbine gives the car a total range of 500 miles (between battery and bio-diesel), and some pretty respectable performance figures to boot: 0-60 mph in 3.9 seconds, 150 mph top speed not to mention the incredibly low emissions.

Unfortunately, while the CMT-380 is an attractive package, Capstone have no plans to build it.   If they did, however, I think it would be a far more attractive proposition than a Tesla Roadster or a Toyota Prius.

Capstone CMT-380: http://www.capstoneturbine.com/news/story.asp?id=536
FactoryFive GTM kit: http://www.factoryfive.com/gtmhome.html

Hopefully, with everything going according to plan, I’ll be there this year…

March 27th & 28th Croft

May 2nd & 3rd Cadwell Park

May 15th & 16th Snetterton

June 5th & 6th Anglesey

July 3rd 4th Cadwell Park

July 17th Oulton Park

August 21st 22nd Anglesey

September 18th 19th Cadwell Park

Donington TBA

Up at 6am as normal.
ended up, late, running out the door just after 7am rather than 6:55.
Was pissing rain all the way to the station.
Managed to catch the train which then sat in the station for 20 minutes, being rebooted several times before it moved off.
Underground was a sardine-special, and I was standing for the entire journey, which also took 10 minutes longer than normal.
Was still pissing rain as I got off the underground and walked to the office.

My friend, lives around the corner from me.
Walked to the station in the pissing rain.
His train was stopped when someone pulled the emergency cord.
Eventually got into London to find the underground station he normally gets off at was shut due to a combination of flooding and someone taking ill.

My advice for today. Stay in bed!

Amazing what you can get done when you get up early at the weekend.

Saturday, we made a fair bit of progress on getting Gayle’s workroom sorted, with a new cutting table fitting over the sofabed.  Nice large panel of Spruce plywood should give ample space, and easily be strong enough.  Still have to work out a way of attaching it to the wall in a way that can allow it to be easily removed, but it’s getting there.  Also sorted out some shelves and a bit more hanging space.  I still need to clear out the “office” a bit more, as it’s more like a large cupboard right now, and it should allow storage for far more boxes of fabric and materials than it currently allows, and I might even manage to get a chair in at the desk.

Spent Sunday getting the lathe sorted and generally organising the workshop a bit more.  The lathe wasn’t running, and I couldn’t work out why, but tracked it down to a microswitch that was working opposite to how I was expecting.  Tracking this down wasn’t helped by a multimeter that had a near-flat battery, so when the good connection was sensed, it wasn’t going “beep”.  DOH!  Final task is to drill a hole in the coolant tray and fit the coolant drain pipe, then it’ll be good to go.  Other workshop related tasks were two sets of new strip-lights so I can see what I’m doing, and installing the new TIG welder in it’s home.  Just have to find a decent, local, Argon supplier now.

Modified the exhaust hanger to accept the slightly higher positioning of the can, due to the new exhaust, and the existing, complete bike is good to go again (and sounds awesome).  However, the end-can I’ve got on there sounds a little too loud.  I think it needs repacking.  Just as well I’ve recently added a compressor driven riveter to the tool box.

Shuffled the other bikes around on the drive to give me access to the “spare” bike on which much of the work is going to be done.  Frustratingly I found I had two chains on it, not just the one I knew about, and I can’t find the key for it anywhere.  Not to worry, the chain goes through the backwheel and over the seat, and since one of the first tasks is to remove the subframe, that’s not a big deal.

Got to work on the spare bike to get as much done as possible in the fading light, and removed the subframe, disconnected much of the wiring and coolant system.  Disconnected and removed the footpegs and gear linkage, and started on the engine mountings.  The plan is to get this down to a rolling frame and move it into the workshop where I can get to work on it, rather than relying on a few snatched minutes of fading light on the driveway.  Looks like the carbs are a bit knackered, since there was absolutely no movement on them, but I’m not too worried as I have a spare set on the shelf in good working order, lacking only a small spring that goes between bodies, and I’m intending on changing the carbs in the future anyway.