Jun 29, 2008 5 min read

I got an interesting selection of e-mails last week. Among them was one from my friend, Charlie, who has a foreign-car repair business in Tampa, Fla., specializing in British vehicles.

I’ve known him since we both lived in England, and we often discuss things via e-mail like rising gas prices and the economy. He also often steers me to interesting Web sites in the UK.

In his latest e-mail, Charlie told me things have been bad in the repair business in his area for about eight months now. As he repairs a lot of very expensive cars — like Range Rover, Bentley, Rolls Royce, MG and Triumph — I was very surprised, since I thought those owners would be exempt from gas-price worries.

I guess not.

He also said that homes are just not selling down there.

It was interesting to hear his point of view on gas prices and I advised him to start thinking about servicing Japanese cars, since he has a very large garage and, no doubt, an equally large monthly overhead.

Charlie, like most business owners nowadays, has a presence on the Internet at a href=”http://www.charliesbritishcars.net/ http://www.charliesbritishcars.net/ end

and e-mail is a great way for me to keep in touch with him.

Also among my daily messages was one from Doren, telling me the sad news about comedian George Carlin passing away and directing me to a link with info about him. Although I’d seen him on TV many times, I guess it didn’t have as much significance and impact on me as if I’d have grown up here.

He had definitely become a part of the culture, and he’s left an amazing legacy and a lot of it’s on the Internet.

I do understand how people feel about him and other figures who are almost part of our lives as we grow up. Most of my own nostalgic memories are UK-based, so the Internet provides me with a 24-hour-a-day “fix” of news and nostalgia.

One of my favorite sites is at a href=”http://www.whirligig-tv.co.uk/ http://www.whirligig-tv.co.uk/ end

, which is not only packed with all the TV series that I grew up watching, but also has a depressing little section called “news,” where you can read about all famous people who have passed away in the United Kingdom and the United States. I’m sure George Carlin’s name will appear there very soon.

In happier thoughts, I also received an e-mail from YouTube.com from someone commenting on a short clip from our H.I.T.S. show. I had put it on YouTube as an experiment, using a Pinnacle Systems USB device and a program called Elgato TV to capture a small bit of footage from our current show. Then, using the iMovie program that comes bundled with any Apple computer, I converted the short clip into a format and size that was compatible with You Tube. Don’t be too impressed — all I did was push a few buttons and iMovie did the rest.

All that was left to do was to register at the YouTube site and I quickly uploaded the clip. In about a week, it’s had over 200 views, at the time of this writing. This is probably due to the clip’s title, “Frankenstrat,” which is the name of legendary rock guitar player Eddie Van Halen’s distinctively striped Stratocaster-style guitar.

Thanks to the Internet, people from all over the world can now see both Doren and I on H.I.T.S. I did disable comments on the page to avoid the inevitable, “Who’s the silly old British dude?” or possibly something even ruder.

I’ve since experimented with a couple more assorted videos on YouTube. Don’t forget to check out both a href=”http://www.elgato.com http://www.elgato.com end

and of course, a href=”http://www.pinnaclesys.com http://www.pinnaclesys.com end

.

In our next show, you’ll see another great Pinnacle video device!

Speaking of our new show, Doren was gushing about July 11, the release date of the new iPhone, and how he can’t wait to get one. I just wish you could buy any phone you wanted and use it with any carrier. Although I understand that the companies want to attract you to them with certain phones, surely it would be fairer if you could buy any phone unlocked.

And not for incredibly high prices.

The iPhone is actually far cheaper than anything decent I’ve looked at online recently, and it appears that the first-time new customer gets the best phone deal.

It’s scary how many cell phones there are in the world; it seems everyone I know has one. I’m still up in the air about what to buy to replace my aging (by cell phone standards) Razr V3, but I’m overcome (as usual) by the “Goldilocks” syndrome: Everything I look at is just not exactly what I want.

I was all set to buy a phone on the T-Mobile site and my finger was literally poised to push “buy now!,” but I did a quick search and was crushed to see that although everything written was glowing, the only downside was too little volume on the speaker phone, which killed the deal. I guess I’ll go locally and look at a few phones up close. My wife reminded me how I ended up a few years back with a Nokia phone that she described as “a kid’s phone,” with her customary eye roll.

I’m going to continue my search for the perfect replacement. In the meanwhile, happy surfing.