As a 17-year-old male with just (well, soon to be) a newly acquired driver’s license under my belt, I have the privilege of ridiculous car insurance quotes. For a little Volkswagen Golf (1.4 litre), my cheapest quote lies in at £5,000 a year with a slew of more expensive quotes following it (the most expensive being £15,000) – despite the car only being worth £3,000.

If I was to own the car for 4 years, say, it would cost me somewhere in the region of £23,000 excluding tax and petrol. I could either buy the insurance or drive around uninsured in a fleet of 7 VW Golfs – one for every day of the week. Which one would you choose?

Having spent the day muxing video, converting it from one format to another and compressing it, I don’t intend to do it again any time soon. There’s just so much you have to take into consideration and even a simple task can become extremely difficult. Because some of the common tasks I had to do were so difficult, I’ll be writing several tutorials to aid anyone else who finds them coerced into the world of video.

My Dell Dimension 9200, I felt, was getting a little too warm. It wasn’t anything particularly dangerous, it’s just I felt it could do with a little more cooling. I occasionally clean it out every few months but the heatsink and its fan are hidden away under heavily screwed down plastic so I can’t get to them and dust was clogging them up. Until a few hours ago, I had never even seen them.

I ordered a new heatsink (Akasa AK-965) and today I attempted to install it. Of course, uninstalling the old one was difficult and there’s always that little niggle that makes you think you’re doing it wrong. I continued, though, and managed to vacuum the incredible amount of dust that had amounted over the 2 years.

I was in the final throes of completion, I only had to place the new heatsink into its place, pop the screws and plug the fan in. Of course, in the final stages, something has to go wrong and for this little endeavour, everything did. First, I found that the heatsink didn’t line up the motherboard’s holes. Secondly, I found that the motherboard didn’t have a connection for the heatsink’s fan (rather, a different connection to what the new heatsink needed). Thirdly, I’d already taken all the old thermal paste off the processor at this point and it looked like I’d need to buy some more. And finally, no matter how hard I tried to be careful, I managed to get thermal paste all over my fingers. Sending back the heatsink will cost £5 – for a £10 product. To finish off, as I’ve had to dismantle half my computer, I’ve now got two screws and I don’t know where they went.

It’s not all bad though: I’ve managed to scrape some of the new thermal paste onto the old heatsink (and temperatures have fallen dramatically), I’ve been able to clean the fan and heatsink and I have a spare heatsink for a computer I hope to be building this autumn.

I’ve always wanted to see the Google Street View car ever since it was spotted first in England but thought it would be a while before it photographed Leeds. Having just got out the shower and drying my hair, the black Vauxhall Astra with it’s cameras cruised passed the house. And because my hair was wet, I didn’t have a shirt on – from the car’s point of view, I look naked. Nice.

At least the Jag was in the drive, though.