When I used to watch TV, I had a DVR that automatically detected and skipped adverts - it does it by scanning the video stream for channel ident logos and if it finds two short clips near to each other, say a minute apart, it flags it as an advert slot. It also gives an option of manual or automatic skipping. Worked great apart from Channel 4 (UK) where their logo are blended in everyday objects such as cranes strategically positioned together to make a "4".

My 6 month old A++ rated fridge has LED bulbs and they work fantastic, the interior of the fridge is much more brighter, and as the company put in 6 LED bulbs widely spaced out so the fridge is much better lit - if this makes sense - so one little box doesn't block out the light to the rest of the items inside. I suspect they *had* to use LED bulbs to get the A++ rating as a CFL wouldn't work and incandescents use too much electricity? This is my guess though, this could very well be a gimmick from the company.

In the UK postcodes cover a small range of houses - my postcode only covers 25 houses, so nearly every web form in the UK, you enter the postcode first, then the webpage shows a list of house numbers or names it identified from the PAF (Postcode Address File) for you to select. Taking my own postcode example, the house numbers covered by my postcode are 310-350 (even only) so it shows a list of 310-350 (even only) and I select my house number and then the page autofills everything else. The PAF isn't 100% accurate so web pages always offer the option of editing addresses.

What's annoying though is that postal counties has been abolished by Royal Mail over a decade ago, internally Royal Mail never ever use this aspect of the address - only the postcode and city (I know this because I work for them), yet a large number of website insists on you entering the postal county and pops an error if you ignore this. I don't even know my postal county as the PAF never contains this info for any address so I just make them up.

That has probably partly to do with ease of loading shopping into the boot (trunk)? I always reverse into a parking spot for fuel saving reasons but I didn't know about this safety point of view of children running around in car parks - a very good point. I have always forward parked when going to supermarkets for ease of access to the boot and my car engine stays warm for a very long time. Now that I know your point, I now will reverse park in supermarket car parks from now on, especially that my car has extremely poor rear-view visibility exactly as you described (Opel Astra 98-04 model year) so tick me off as educated.

Strange as my Samsung TV controls my Philips Blu-Ray player perfectly well - I only use the TV remote for everything - the TV remote can control the Blu-Ray player, and even when I turn off the TV, the blu-ray player turns itself off as well. I found this out by accident, and was pleased with this as I needed to stick everything into a cupboard leaving only the TV visible, and thus did not need an IR repeater, and one remote controls everything. Works well.

This system apparently is called Anynet+.

Forgot to mention, the engine in both my Astras was designed in the 1980s! Source here - see "1988–present Isuzu Circle L"

Mid 40s? Seriously??? I used to have a Vauxhall Astra ECO4 (Vauxhall's an GM subsidiary) that got me a real world average of 62mpg (US) with 70mpg on the motorway. The car cost me $3000 and was built in 2001. 800 miles to the tank, which is about 13 US gallons. I now have a standard Astra built in 2004 which gets me a real world average of 58mpg (US) and gets me about 700 miles to the tank, again, 13 gallons.

I got a second hand Color LaserJet 4500 5 years ago, it was built Feb 1999 - it's fantastic, the image quality is incredible. It had been abused - I received the duplexer bent in half - but still works great. The downside is that it's similar size to a tank - I wasn't aware of this when I brought it. It does take ages to warm up too. I moved house recently and my friend convinced me to dump it and get a smaller Samsung colour laser printer as I rarely print anything these days, and the output from computer nowadays are so large which mean the printer sometimes take 5 minutes to process print jobs before actually printing. However, a few days ago when I wanted to put it on eBay, I decided to print a test page to show on eBay, the quality convinced me to change my mind and keep it. Just as well, the toner cartridges are $15 each, as opposed to the Samsung printer where a replacement set would cost more than the printer itself.

My point is that not everything after the 4100 is junk, I did think the 4500 was the colour sibling of the 4050. Anyway, the 4500 is older than the 4100?

The UK Govt recently admitted that they were programming traffic lights to increase fuel consumption to make more money through fuel tax. I can't find the exact article but here's another one with "Previously the Department for Transport (DfT) had discouraged the systems which reduce fuel use, resulting in less tax being paid to the Treasury." Certainly, in the city where I live, on a major dual carriageway with a 30mph limit from/to the north to the centre, if you drive at 30mph, you will hit every red light. Conversely, if you drive at 15mph or 45mph, you will get a green light. I don't do speeding, so I do 15-20mph average on this dual carriageway. This same dual carriageway has 37 sets of traffic lights over a 2 mile stretch - really, why this much?

Why not remove traffic lights? An experiment at Portishead has shown that traffic has reduced when they switched off a set of traffic lights in the town centre. Recently a roundabout I use often has new traffic lights and I find I waste so much time sitting there waiting for the red to turn green while there is not a single car on the roundabout - I sometimes wait up to 2 minutes. They do have their place, but I'm starting to feel a lot of them are a waste of space & money

You Americans have had OBDII since 1996, and us EUians have had EOBD2 since 2001 (2004 for diesels) a standardised data port. You can buy a cheap code reader, plug it in the OBD socket and it'll pop up the code on the reader, and it works on any car that has OBDII or EOBD2.

I've got a ScangaugeE which goes further and shows me a wealth of information from my car's computer - and yes it works in any car with OBDII or EOBD2.

Hey, look! You can buy an OBDII reader for $23 inc postage.

So this is expensive?