Anyone who knows anything about me and my family knows that we fall in love with our cars, to the extent we'll consider them part of the family. My father, Andrew, who writes for Practical Classics' Blogs has been in to cars since he was young, starting with a 1963 Reliant Regal. Later on when he decided to change cars, he purchased a 1963 MkII Austin A40 Countryman. As with all cars from the "decade of rust" eventually that fell through, with a kingpin being the final piece to bring around a change.

The year was 1979, and my father had met the butcher's daughter, despite the butcher being a ferocious man himself. The butcher's daughter was named Kathy, and she drove a 1972 Viva HC. Later in her life she would give birth to two boys, one being delivered early, the latter taking 48 hours to decide whether he really wanted to greet the man in white, I was never very good at decisions.

One day when driving around, presumably in his A40, my father turned to Kathy and said "I'll own one of those one day" as a Reliant Scimitar GTE SE6a passed by. This was a fibreglass practical estate, with a strong 3.0 litre engine under the bonnet. Later in 1979 dad purchased a 1977 6a and this orange car has still been in the family to this day.

Dad's SE6a

My earliest memory, as many of you hear, is of being called out to the garage to help dad, by holding up a part of his 6a as he bolted it in. I've had a love affair with Reliant since I was extremely young. I've met Tom Karen 4 times, once including dinner with him and Dave Poole who I stayed with often during Scimitar Events. During a Top Gear (before it's current incarnation) I sat inside Ray Wiggin's car to shelter from the cold, as he and Tom were interviewed inside the 6a.

Recently when cornered by me and my father at the NEC Classic Car Show 2008, Tom commented on the rising curve of the 6a, and how it was always intended the opposite way, and how when he'd seen pictures of the original design, he was glad it came out the way it did instead.

My brother has unavoidably gotten the bug, whilst he didn't show much interest till after his first car (a normal 90s Fiesta) he started looking for something that wouldn't rust when that also fell through (slightly more literally this time). He looked at a Triumph Bond Equip GT4s, searching for them for a long time, I ranted why didn't he have a Scimitar SS1, a two seater fibreglass car with a small engine. Dad asked Daniel why he hadn't looked in to them, and soon, he purchased one.

Daniel and his SS1

Like all my family however, he fell in love with the Equip, and has been restoring one with my father for a long time now, currently going through it's paint work.

Daniel's GT4s

Me on the other hand? I was depressed and ill for a long time, and when I could be active, had nothing to do as my friends had long since moved on. Dad brought me a little Vanden Plas Austin Metro, and I started learning how to battle rust because I loved that working class icon till, unfortunately, having hit my goal of it being road legal, I had to sell it to give room for my brother's car. My second car is a 2003 Fiat Punto Active Sport, a boring car, but still a wonderful drive. I'm now on a part time job, and I've had to conclude I don't have the money for the insurance, absurdly a Triumph 13 / 60 convertible is cheaper on insurance, and a avenue I'm investigating, but I don't think I could do the battle on rust again.

Our family, (quite some time ago!)

I'm back in Manchester for a few days and lately I've had issues with my mobile phone, I headed to the large Nokia store here today with Mark Dormand of Sreski to have a look at the N96, I was fairly sold on the idea of a pay as you go handset with a bolt on internet package before I went, and was amazed to find, I didn't like the handset.

Internet browsing is important to me if I'm going to shell out £500 on a phone. The N96 feels like it should have been a touch-screen phone, though, they had done a good job of making it work without, but it still felt awkward and unfinished. Good for developers, but not for the end market.

I decided I wanted to see the Google G1 for myself, this is Google's first phone to work with Android, their new phone operating system. The phone is fantastic, I have to say, the market place works very well with other user reviews underneath. At the time I wrote this there was over a hundred applications in the marketplace, all of which were free. So far I've installed IM+ and ShopSavvy. I was warned at the store that ShopSavvy wasn't ready in the UK yet, but after I brought some things today, and tried it with the barcodes, it seemed to work fine. If I had thought about it, it would have saved me money!

The actual buying of the phone was fairly painless, it was from T-Mobile on Market Street in Manchester City Centre, and although the promoting man was fairly scary in his happiness, to the point I thought he would marry the phone and secretly sought therapy for complete lack of emotions that are not happy to the point of demented.

It comes with a neat little case, and the phone itself is gorgeous, I was expecting something cheap and terrible from all the reviews I saw, and yes, I would like something a bit slimmer but it's not uncomfortable in it's size, and the thickness is worth it for the full keyboard. The trackball is very nice, like that of an Apple mouse.

All in all, I'm happy with it, and think it is definitely the phone for me.

Let me start by saying I have never really delved too far in to the vain and voluptuous land of the video and voice. I've always been worried of taking things past the text format, I think this has something to do with my lack of general good interaction in person.

I first looked in to the web camera side probably over 5 years ago, but back then the technology wasn't all that impressive, they were colourless, undefined, and generally quite ugly things to look at. My last camera was a Creative Labs PD1110, a small camera with no microphone, but upon seeing what this was like compared to modern day equipment when I tried to webcam with a friend, I decided to pass on the idea of saving money, instead preferring to get a new one.

I asked my brother, Daniel, what he used, thinking that he would probably have researched it much more thoroughly than I ever would, and he straight away recommended "anything by Logitech". I had no quarrels with this, as my current mouse, a MX Revolution is from Logitech and I've never really had any trouble with it.

Still, I'm no fool, I research anyway, I probably won't replace a web camera for another 3 to 4 years, so it's worth shelling out a bit more cash for a better product, getting the right balance is tricky.

After much researching, I finally decided the Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 was worth the high-end price tag of around £55.00 from Amazon, after two days it finally arrived! First thing to say, is the packaging is very similar to that of the MX Revolution, an attractive green with a cut away to show the camera in the box. My second thought was how big it was, I'd seen photos of it against laptops and suddenly against my Samsung SyncMaster 245B it looked gigantic and at first quite intrusive, no longer a problem a week on however.

The video quality is fantastic, it picks me up crisply with auto focus and zoom, the software is equally impressive with face recognition, which enables me to appear as a kitten with moving eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth and ears. 

The camera has a built in microphone but I've yet to try it, the reason for this being I decided to install Skype on to my macbook as I'd doubted a laptop's microphone would be any good, surprisingly it can hear a lot, without tinkering it picks up breathing and sighing, as well as my insane little noises that everyone always complains about, in fact, this seems to be infectious on the internet as I have found someone else makes the exact same ones, this scares me a little.

I love Skype as a program, the interface is clean, it works nicely, has all the features you want as well.

I am yet to try doing both at the same time, but looking forward to it nonetheless.