Technology

Part of my New Years resolution is to get fit, so that I can do something I've always dreamed of, walking or cycling long distances and seeing the world. For that I need the right equipment.

The first thing I need is a good watch, after all 6 months walking or cycling is going to be hell on any normal watch, so a rugged timepiece that can handle wet weather and the rigors of sweat and being bashed about is needed, and more importantly I don't want a watch that looks valuable.

Luminox Watches are a good brand used by the US Navy SEALS, and they glow in the dark, they seem like the perfect watch for a rugged trip, and starting at only $138 they're pretty good value, definitely more so than a cheap watch that might need replacing after a few weeks.

Good equipment for long distance walking and cycling isn't much different from the kind of equipment you need for fishing or hunting, and even though I don't do either, I appreciate good quality tools. Setting up a tent in a forest sometimes means having to cut undergrowth, or tie a line for drying clothes.

I've been looking around for tools that I can start buying while I get my body into shape, I hate buying everything at the last minute, and I know I'm going to need a good knife for cutting up meat, maybe an axe for chopping wood, and probably a good sharpening tool to keep the blades sharp.

I quite like when I go hunting around the web and find one shop that carries a decent range of all the stuff I'm likely to need, and I know that Spyderco Knives and Kershaw Knives are excellent brands for what I need.

A simple thing like a camp axe doesn't need to be huge, and I certainly don't need a log splitter, but I will need the ability to chop small branches for cooking. Similarly those multifunction kits with bottle openers, can openers, screwdrivers, a small hammer etc are really useful.

If I bought all the bits I need separately I'd be carrying around a lot of gear so it's worth checking out brands like Spyderco and Kershaw. At least I won't need to worry about the quality of the gear.

For the last couple of weeks my Wi-Fi router hasn't been working very well, in fact it's been very slow and was dropping around 50% of all connections. So I've replaced it with an Apple Airport Express.

I use a lot of Apple gear, my laptop is an Apple, my ipod is an Apple, OK, that isn't much, only two items, but I'm a confirmed Apple user now so when my old router died I decided to give the Apple's Airport Express a whirl.

First of all it's tiny, I think it might actually be smaller than the powerpack for my MacBook Pro, but it looks similar in that they're both small white boxes with rounded corners. The old router must have been three times the size and had three antenna, whilst the new one has none.

How Apple managed to get it working as well as they have puzzles me. If my old router with three antennas and a separate power pack couldn't do the job well, how did Apple manage to get the Airport Express to work.

Configuring the Airport Express is relatively straightforward, though it does require a couple of steps to be completed first. The first step is to attach all the required cables.

My Internet is always on, so I expected to see a green light saying the Airport Express was able to access my ISP. In fact I saw an amber light. Apparently this is normal, and the disk from the package needs to be inserted and the Airport Express Utility program run.

This configures the Apple Airport Express as a network, and gives the network a password. After that you wait for a minute while it authenticates. After that you're connected. It happily works with two laptops, I haven't tried it with more. So far it's proving to be an excellent investment.

A few years ago, um ignore that, it might have been more than a few, I was really into car tuning. I think we're talking the early 90s when I was a bit of a boy racer and thought life didn't get better unless the sound of my exhaust could be appreciated by all my neighbors.

Well I've grown up since then, but now and again I still have moments when I remember studying car magazines, parts catalogs, or just talking to friends about the latest ideas for getting an extra millisecond of acceleration. My little group didn't have much money, so we had to get our hands dirty.

Tuned cars that came out of our garages didn't look special but we were proud to take on the guys whose dads had money and didn't give a second thought to buying body kits and new turbos for their sons.

In my home town there was a diesel mechanic who worked on big rigs, but he was into Audis and had did Audi Tuning on the side, he was a friend so we got to use his workshop for working under our cars, a hoist makes a huge difference when you're changing oil or bleeding brake lines.

Across town there was a specialist Honda Civic Tuning workshop, much cleaner, better tools, and the guys really knew their Japanese cars, except they were more expensive and had their own rally race team. The Honda Civic doesn't sound like much of a rally car, but those guys won a lot of local competitions.

Recently I've been getting annoyed with all the young guys and their loud exhausts. They race around the streets here like it was a race track, I swear lives are in danger, not theirs, the rest of us. Then I remember what I was like, man history repeats itself all the time. Except my generation did it better!