Thoughts from the Shelf

Since its launch in 2006, Land Rover dealers have been inundated with requests to provide a commercial version of the Freelander 2. Customers wanted the practicality of a commercial vehicle, but without losing the luxuries and comfort of their normal SUV. LandRover listened and believe they have found the solution in the form of the Freelander 2 Commercial.

The Freelander 2 Commercial will be available in ‘S’ and ‘XS’ trim. Essentially the models will be exactly the same as a standard Freelander with the modifications being applied to the rear compartment only. The Freelander commercial will come equipped with a floor support frame, floor panel with lashing points, fixed rear side glass, rubber loadspace mat, tail door and side window guards and rear cargo lighting. All this will be separated from the driver’s cabin via a full-height solid bulkhead with an inserted mesh panel. The ‘XS’ model spoils the tradesman even further by offering 17” alloys, climate control, quality ICE system and even part leather trim. The Landrover is fitted with either a 3.2L straight 6 cylinder engine borrowed from its now estranged relative, Volvo, or a 2.2L turbo diesel 4 cylinder engine.

The Freelander Commercial also benefits from the award winning Terrain Response System, making it extremely capable offroad too. This video demonstrates the abilities of the Terrain Response system on a Freelander.

Like so many people my home was in a continuous state of redecorating whilst growing up. Thanks to the the trend of home improvement programs on television you could be assured that at least one room in the house was having a facelift at any one time.

Now I find myself setting up home and the mantle seems to have somewhat been passed onto me in my quest to get the most out of my current one bedroom flat. Unfortunately we have a converted flat from a large old Victorian terrace house. The advantages of the high ceiling and large rooms are great, unfortunately they have added a bathroom where there hadn’t previously been one making it a bit cozy to say the least.

As such the bathroom was my first point of call when redecorating. I found a good website in Trueshopping that proved a good starting point for my bathroom redecoration. With a range of bathroom accessories and Bathroom Suites it was easy to find parts that fitted into an unconventionally shaped bathroom which helped relieve some of the stress of redecorating.

With the bathroom now complete, next up is the kitchen.

As regular readers of The Shelf may have noticed, the first sponsored post appeared on the site late last week. The post was provided by PayPerPost.com, a pay per blog service that provides bloggers with the opportunity to earn extra cash amongst there regular blogs.

Amongst regular posts, payperpost provides the opportunity to take up a selection of sponsored opportunities that provided by a network of advertisers, aimed at developing inbound links to specific products or services. The conditions of each opportunity do vary, but usually require the blogger to write a short unique post with a link to the advertiser with a focused anchor text.

Having posted regularly throughout 2007, I thought I would try to earn a little extra by writing the occasional sponsored post. I created a pay per post account as I wanted to see how easy it was to earn money on an established blog, and how the small amounts paid would add up.

Once your blog is approved it is very easy to start blogging for cash, and with PayPerPost bloggers can easily filter out opportunities that are available to, and best suited to the blogs criteria.

My thoughts were that I already blog on The Shelf daily, so if signing up for a PayPerPost account makes me blog more often, then as well as earning a bit of extra money, the additional fresh content can only help The Shelf mature as a blog.

I plan to travel to the US next year for a friend’s wedding, so I intend to let the extra funds raised sit in the account and go towards that trip. It will be interesting to see how much accumulates.

Being an account holder you can also earn extra money with their referral programme, PayPerPost direct (with advertisers approaching you), or even through sign up forms like the one featured below. This one is for bloggers, but you can also display forms for advertisers who wish to sign up too.

Try PayPerPost out if you are a keen blogger to and want to earn a little extra cash.

I was saddened by the news on Saturday that Colin McRae had died in a helicopter crash along with his 5 year old son and two other people.

In a statement that was released on http://www.colinmcrae.com/ it said of the crash

“We believe that the group were just returning from a visit to the nearby village of Quarter around 1605 hours yesterday, when it appears that the helicopter got into difficulty and crashed within the grounds of Mr McRae’s family home.”

Colin McRae was the first British driver to win the world rallying championship in 1995 in his infamous Subaru. After making his world rally championship debut in 1987 he had a rallying career at the top level until his last rally in 2006.

His series of Colin McRae Rally games for which he provided technical advice for during development were extremely successful. Spanning across six titles the rally racing games have consistently been among top sellers selling over 9 million games, and for many still remain the best motor racing games available.

As with many others Colin McRae had been the single biggest influence in the sport for me, and was one of the main reasons I followed the sport growing up.

On recommendation of Kazza I looked up the Beer Engine on Trusted Places and with the weather being extremely good I decided to check it out this weekend.

It was fairy easily to find, and if you follow the link Trusted Places it actually provide s you with a Google map which is very useful when you only have a vague idea of where you are going. I must say I wasn’t that bothered, after all I certainly wasn’t designated driver.

There is nothing like a spot of lunchtime drinking, and the real ales that were on offer were extremely well received. A day on the ale was indeed long overdue, and made a great change form the monotonous larger selection often adopted on a typical Friday night.

As far as the food goes I was far to intoxicated to eat, but did try a few dishes from others in the group and they were very tasty. The people eating them seemed to enjoy them, and this simply paved the way for an extra couple of hours within the establishment.

A nice venue for a group on an afternoon out with friends or family and I too would defiantly recommend it.

I recently moved into a new flat and along with everything you would expect we discovered that although there was a telephone line within the premises, there was no connection to the main phone grid.

For domestic broadband purposes there was a need to get connected to the main telephone grid. Although there was a £120 connection fee for this service from BT what wasn’t made apparent upon time of order was the fact that as well as this installation fee, a 12 month line rental contract with BT was also required.

As mentioned in a previous post I have been in the process of comparing broadband packages that suited my domestic requirements. The draw back of the contract being tied in with the connection fee, apart from a 12 month financial commitment, was that any call package that was included within a monthly broadband fee was now worthless.

I found out from numerous conversations with customer services departments that even with inclusive calls within a monthly broadband fee, the BT contract meant a third party would not take over the line and thus your free calls could not be provided.

Needless to say that the broadband packages short listed looked very different without inclusive call packages. Some what feeling pushed into the decision; I decided to take on the BT broadband package with free wireless router and cordless phone as we now had a line rental contract with them too.

I did have the option of cancelling the phone connection which would have left no broadband or phone line which was not an option, so somewhat reluctantly we have been goaded into a BT broadband package. I was not impressed with the corner we had been backed into, but unfortunately large companies often have the ability to do so when another alternative cannot be sort.

In hindsight it got me thinking if there was any other local companies that would have been able to connect the phone line to the main grid, and whether anyone else had had a similar experience.

Recently I read about a competition to reclassify the seven wonders of the world. The reclassification was sought as a way of recognising the achievements of societies outside Europe and the Middle East.

The original list was formed 2000 years ago by Greek scholars, and consisted of several long vanished wonders. In fact the only wonder that remained from the original list was the great pyramid of Giza.

Over 100 million people voted in this survey, compiled by a non-profit organisation, and although at one point it struggled the Taj Mahal was included on the final list. Some notable casualties were Stonehenge and the Eiffel Tower.

News of this survey broke a few weeks ago, but it was only today that I stumbled across this seven wonders article that included some panoramic pictures of the chosen locations that I thought were worth passing on. Enjoy!

I recently travelled to Turkey and stayed in Calis near the regional centre of Fethiye. A surprise holiday location for myself really, as it is renowned not so much for the pumping nightlife as it is for its numerous restaurants and bars that sprawl along the beach front.

I choose this destination as I had decided to rent a villa off a family friend, a new build that was purchased as a holiday home within a complex of additional nearby villas. With the exception of the pool which was shared amongst the surrounding villas, it had everything to itself, gardens, balconies, and even a back porch.

In all aspects the villa was pristine, three stories, three balconies spread from front to back, three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a fully fitted kitchen, lounge and dining area and as previously mentioned had full access to a quiet swimming pool. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough!

As for the surrounding area of Calis, it is very much a small market town. Restaurants and bars litter single high street which is not too adept to tourists, so much so that the language barrier if frustrating in places. There are plenty of regional markets to look at and as such we visited the Chalis market on the Sunday and the Fethiye market on the Tuesday, but there are plenty of others available.

We also took part in some slightly more adventurous activities. There were plenty on offer, all of which are fairly priced and include door to door pick up and drop off. We choose paragliding as this area is renowned the world over for its picturesque landscape, and thus is one of the best paragliding spots in the world.

Our paragliding flight started at a little less than 2000ft where we had to run off the side of a mountain and the gradually fly back to earth over the course of a 30 minute flight. Again this is highly recommended if you ever get the chance.

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After recently moving house I was presented with the task of finding an internet service provider to provide all my residential broadband needs. After looking at the usual broadband packages available, and refusing to consider a certain big name provider after a prior sour experience with them, I narrowed it down to a short list of three.

The requirements were a broadband connection, without the limitation of download limits, with a landline phone package included to provide free calls. Each of these boxes are fairly easy to tick with most packages on offer until I realised that not all packages include line rental inclusive of the package price.

Contract length was also a consideration, and with the short listed providers they allowed you to take you contract with you if you were to move for some reason within the minimum 12 month term.

Three of the favourites that I chose were Tiscali, Be unlimited and Orange. I had previously used the Orange Livebox broadband set up and it is very easy and I was impressed with the overall service. Be unlimited offered by far the best internet connection in relation to price and offered a short three month contract, and Tiscali with there range of packages were also favourable.

It turned out that due to there being no inclusive calls I scrapped Be unlimited as it worked out financially inefficient to get two separate contracts. Although my first choice, the Orange package unfortunately did not include line rental, whereas for the same price Tiscali did.

I decided on the Tiscali package for £19.99 a month, and have only just found out that a BT installation fee of £120 is required too