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This is a Jason Goodall related announcement... I just need to take a few moments to talk about my best friend of over 10 years. What can I say about Jason? Well, first and foremost he's a perv - everyone at school thought so and in fact whilst we were at school one pupil likened him to being a cross between Hugh Grant and Rik Mayall, imagine that if you will!

He's a loyal friend and has always been willing to help me; of course the only reason I'm writing this blog posting about him is because he's been nagging me to say something about him for the past three months. Perhaps what I've just said isn't enough to sum him up, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so with this in mind here's a photo of my bestest pal in the whole wide world.

By the way I should mention that he's a fanny obsessed nymphomaniac who partakes in far too much self love (you know the sort) and really ought to be sectioned.

You can [view his blog] here...

It was with a certain sense of disappointment and worry last Friday that I heard the news that there had been a serious accident at the Transrapid testing facility in Germany. With a death toll of 32 and several casualties, my worst fears about the highly sophisticated maglev technology developed by Siemens and ThyssenKrupp were realised. Since seeing the revolutionary train system in action, some years back on the Discovery channel, I found myself fascinated by it's ingenious design.

Siemens and ThyssenKrupp have managed to develop a truly original magnetic levitation train system after years of painstaking research spanning back to the 1930's when a german physicist patented a theoretical method of friction free movement; something that was not be be proved until years later. The system makes use of incredibly powerful electro-magnets which keep the train floating above it's guideway while motion is provided by a linear motor that is built into the guideway itself. The fact that forward motion is controlled by the track and not the train also means that it's impossible for two trains to be traveling towards each other on the same length of track, making derailments highly unlikely.

My only concern was if this system is so safe, the only thing that could cause an accident is if something was on the guideway itself - something I had hoped Transrapid would have spent considerable time working on so this could also become highly unlikely. I'm quite disappointed that my concern was founded; I still believe in the technology but serious questions need to be asked about why a maintenance vehicle on the guideway when a live test was in progress and why weren't there proper safety precautions taken?

Transrapid 08 has been in service for some years now and I cannot understand, that in all that time, it seems that no in-depth work has been carried out to investigate how safety can further be improved. I've often wondered what extra safety systems had been developed for the Transrapid such as: Do the trains have radar to monitor guideway conditions ahead? Does the guideway have a system installed which detects if something is in the path of an oncoming train? Or perhaps is CCTV used throughout the track? Whilst I understand that the last two of these questions could be prohibitively expensive if installed on a long distance line, I have to ask why such systems weren't installed or being tested at the TVE facility in Emsland?

I only hope that this tragic accident is not the end of this revolutionary technology and my thoughts are with the families of the victims of Friday's events. If nothing else, I hope Siemens and ThyssenKrupp will investigate what can be done in future to keep these kind of accidents to a minimum as I'm still looking forward to visiting the TVE once it's been reopened to the public and travelling on Transrapid myself.

Well it certainly has been a long time since I last posted. There appears to be a common theme amongst all bloggers when it comes to blogging throughout the year. I find more people update their blogs in the colder months of the year than during summer; I don't have any scientific proof to back up such a claim and I may be completely wrong, but it just seems that it's a common occurrence.

Well I'm still here in Bedford, trying to make ends meet and not really succeeding either. It's strange, as anyone would expect me to have plenty more cash now that I'm not paying any rent or forking out half as much as I needed to for the monthly bills, but I find myself with very little cash coming in and hoping things will begin to improve; of course the worst part is that I seem to have more work to do than ever and have been squirreling away on my Mac most days trying to fulfill deadlines and keep clients happy, not an easy task of late.

The good thing that I can take out of out current situation is we've given ourselves some time to sit back and weight up the pros and cons of our next step, do we move to London again or do we stay in Bedford for a while to see how business pans out? I'm tempted to plump for the latter as it's much easier and less costly in the short term and means that I won't wind up spending another five years of my life recovering from my last major failed decision; not that I'm bitter of course, just older and wiser. I know that Neil is after us moving back to London sooner rather than later but it's with a certain sense of trepidation that I entertain that possibility as the cost of living in the smoke is so high. Perhaps it's not the best plan to write about this at 04:34 in the morning, but it's just one of the myriad of things that are buzzing around my head that I've not yet resolved. All I know for certain is my eye lids feel like they have lead weights attached to them and I'm going to need one hell of a long holiday at some point to recover from the past few year's hard work.

Nighty night, I'll blog again tomorrow as there is something else I want to talk about that's just occurred to me... so, until tomorrow.