With all the news about Walliams, it reminded me to chuck out my “Rock Profile” DVD, because it’s so intrinsically linked with him that something I previously enjoyed now feels irredeemably tarnished. See how easy it is? Why can’t you Harry Potter fans do it? I’ve had to do this for years!

The screensaver at work keeps advertising a leasing scheme with “say hello to your new car” illustrated with a battleship grey Kia CUV and I think “no”.

Figured out that due to how the Crown AVC-LAN system works it is entirely possible to daisy chain further options into the original system so I’d be able to have my standard tape and in-dash 6CD changer, then in the boot a further 6CD changer, a 6MD changer, and a 6DVD changer. Let’s do this.

Check out my spooky Halloween feast of two terrifyingly strange potatoes.

Bored of hearing about the Binance news story now, it’s basically just a marginally less funny “all my apes gone”.

Need to change the blend door actuator on my 156 as I have only had cold air for months, was dreading it as it is apparently very fiddly. Except mine is an RHD car so it is apparently a 20 minute job. Nice that it works that way for once!

The interesting part about buying a marginally newer car than I’m used to is finding out exciting news that everyone else figured out about 25 years ago, like that HID headlight bulbs can be replaced. I probably got them mixed up with LEDs or something. Oh well!

I finally got the minor promotion I was due, despite me having to escalate it to a level where I had a grievance typed out and ready to go.

Sometimes when I get the train to Mirfield to pick up my car from the mechanic because I couldn’t get a lift back to it, I wonder if Patrick Stewart ever walked down the same roads and also thought “walking is shit”.

Car insurance is so stupid, renewal went from £267 to £350. Within 5 minutes I had the same cover from a different company for £162. Now got to ring the existing one and say I don’t need to renew as I’m moving to North Korea. Every year I go through this same pointless routine.

Sounds like because my Crown is a really late one, it has the TV tuner with the reversing camera architecture included, so I can plug a Toyota 6V camera into it and it’ll auto-switch the camera output onto the screen. I’ve never had a reversing camera but I might as well if that’s all it takes.

Managed to retrieve slightly less bad photos of my car from the Japanese auction system, so there’s that. It’ll be another two months before I get new ones.

The first year where clocks have gone back and I haven’t seen that “hilarious” guide to changing your clocks where it ends with “don’t change the clock in the car because it’s too complicated lol!!!”. If you’re too fucking thick to reset the clock in a car, do us all a favour and drive into a wall.

This was a somewhat unexpected thing to find in a shop in town on my lunch break.

Bought the most hyper-local diecast vehicle I could probably buy, a Leeds-based coach distributed by an importer based 5 minutes from my house.

Dropped a trouser size, which if anything is slightly annoying as it means I’ve got about 20 pairs of trousers to get rid of.

Figured out the proprietary cable required to connect a phone to the Crown so I can bring up the handset menu, look at my phone book and make/receive calls to absolutely nobody as it’s a long discontinued network in another country. It’s my absolute dream, a phone where nobody can contact me.

STEREO CASSETTE PLAYER

Figured out the Crown has voice commands via the steering, which isn’t comprehensive but the specific option to toggle golf courses on/off the map is included because of course it is. I’m surprised it wasn’t a specific button on the dash with a little tee icon on it. Anyway it’s on a ship now.

I’ve received an alert that the ro-ro ship is within a few hundred miles of Japan, so all being well the Crown is getting loaded on it and it’ll be here before Christmas. Here’s a blurry shot from the 360 degree auction camera revealing the owner left the instruction sticker on the CD changer.

The funny thing about the Roadster jump thing is I’ll probably never see it, because despite having an enormous and very wide interest in cars, I just couldn’t give a fuck about it or anything the entire company does. I never saw any of their videos, I just hear about them afterwards.

I really couldn’t give a shit what the PR stunt car can do.

HOT STUFF (1979)

As somebody who loves toy cars, this image (and similar ones) is absolute shit. Here’s the underside of a 1980 Hot Wheels Citation X-11.

Matt 'Wib' Ward@wib.bsky.social · 3w ago

So I just saw this posted by some random engagement farming account and want to use it as an example of a certain kind of post because they piss me off. This image is just a lie. These are not Hot Wheels. You can tell since they have no branding on the bottom.

Found a Japanese video where I can finally get a look at the special “Premium” box where you put your key because why not I suppose.

Found out all the parts numbers so I can install a Monet-compatible phone in my armrest and call all my corporate business pals, admittedly I’d have to drive it back to Japan and pass through a time portal that takes me back to no longer than 2012. The wiring is modular though, just clips in.

Did a tray bake.

Update on this - I’ve thoroughly figured out how I can do this including scheduled programming and all sorts of other nonsense.

แซนด์วิชโบราณ@sandwichboran.bsky.social · 4w ago

As I have months to wait until Crown arrival, I’ve been figuring out how I can homebrew a small boot-enclosed broadcast transmitter network into showing me eight entirely different video feeds of my choice so I can see them all like this. It is actually pretty feasible, just very stupid.

Got to keep my hand in with these Thai-exclusive Majorettes, even though I’ve got a 1:1 scale car in the post as well.

Big shout out to the random MK1 Transit camper van at the Yokohama docks ro-ro parking area on Google Streetview.