Some cool stuff for Friday

Geeky stuff for the weekend. 

First is some maps/graphs of World population against latitude and longitude. The more you look at them the more fascinating they are. From the excellent Strange Maps blog

 

 And then a rather cool graphic showing how deep all the oceans, lakes and even oil accumulations are. This one from xkcd

First van adventure

Keen to test our camper van, we packed up and headed to Sandend on the Moray Firth coast, about an hour north of Aberdeen. The drive up was fine, Sophie was a bit bemused by all the space she had in the back but once she realised she could see much more than normal she was briefly excited and then fell asleep.

Sandend is a really pretty village with a lovely sandy beach. Complete with dead baby whale! We met up with Jo, Gordon, Freya and Finn and spent the first afternoon playing on the beach. The weather was suprisingly nice considering the rets of the UK was getting lashed with storms.

Once the kids had been packed off to the respective pop-tops the adults sat around and drank several bottles of wine, whilst taking van related stuff.

Next morning Gordon had to rush off to teach a class while the rest of us went back and played on the beach again (well why not).  We had lunch in Portsoy and then headed back to Aberdeen very happy with the way our van had performed. More adventures are already being planned. 

Wow - where did all this space come from?

Off to the beach

Mum, Sophie and the ball - Sophie's toy of the moment

Loving the sand between my toes

I fell asleep in my own private sleeping compartment with bunny...

But I didn't stay there all night, I abandoned bunny and got cosy with mum and dad under the big duvet 

Pretty in Pink - Sophie and Freya 

Van life - not bad for April (but note the duvet jackets) 

Finn even shares his seat and his drink with Sophie 

We have a camper van!

After the shambles of trying to get a van from Carasellecampers I eventually found Complete Campers, a conversion company based in Hull. I spoke to James and he was extremely nice and after a bit of back and fore on the phone I agreed to buy a van that they were just converting.
Last week saw me heading down to Hull on the plane to collect our new toy.

This time I was met at the airport by the guitarist from a Kings of Lyon tribute band and driven to the companies workshop. I was very happy to see that the van was exactly as he said it would be. A very clean, 2008 VW T5 with a brand new camper conversion. I spent a couple of hours being shown how it all worked (this is complicated stuff) and then paid and drove back.

Hull to Aberdeen is a bloody long way but the van was very nice to drive and I got back in about 6 hours. Very happy and very excited.

Friday Humour

So very good musical parodies from the Key of Awesome
Eminem and Rihanna
Some heavy metal and
Gaga 
and the best which is a spoof of a very cool cover version of Goyte's "somebody that I used to know" - nice!

Eastern Europe

This week I am mainly running into references to the former Eastern Bloc.
First there has been a lot of stuff going on to commemorate the 20 years anniversary of the Siege of Sarajevo. I t has always amazed me that while one side of Europe was squabbling about farm subsidies and fishing quotes, the other half was tearing it self to pieces.  I will also never understand how people can live as neighbours for 50 years and then one day start killing each other. Although the Scots hatred of the English that you sometime see up here; or Rangers supporters sending bullets to the Celtic manager, is perhaps an interesting insight into the strength of some peoples misguided ethnic identity and the hatred that it can produce.

Anyway back to the movies. The first was shot by a friend of Katharine's who was an NBC cameraman in Bosnia in the early 90's. Its very moving stuff.

And on a lighter note, it was only a matter of time before someone combined slack-lining and BASE and its no surprise that its those wacky Frenchies (whoops - bit of ethnic pigeon-holing there!)

Oh yes the other reference to the Eastern Block - I have been reading "the Freedom Climbers" by Bernadette MacDonald, the story of Polish high altitude mountaineering in the 1990's - its amazing

Carasellecampers & Midlandcampers2011

The short version - AVOID AT ALL COSTS

The longer version...

There is an old adage that "when something seems too good to be true it probably is".

We have spent several months trying to find the right camper van and I have come across several vans from Carasellecampers and Midlandcampers2011 on ebay and autotrader. These look very nice and are always extremely low mileage compared to the others in the same price range. 

I did think it was odd some of the pictures were obviously not the same van but I contacted the guy (a man called John) and he assured me that they were legit and that they had such a high turn over of vans that they just kept a couple of vans advertised on ebay to pull in the punters. 

I spoke to him several times over a period of about a month and eventually arranged that I would go down to Nottingham and he would collect me from the airport in the van we were going to buy. I bought my ticket (£186) and then texted him the flight details. I heard nothing back until the evening before when he texted to say sorry the van was sold. He then didn't pick up his phone or reply to a text to call me back. We had had a very clear arrangement that if I booked to travel down then he would hold the van. This was re-iterated several times and then he had reneged on it. 

Now he has not broken the law or anything but I do think that was a pretty shitty way to conduct business so I started digging and I found a few things that just don't add up. 

1. Carasellecampers and Midlandcampers2011 do not exist on the internet, anywhere (until now) 

2. It's also odd that the same people trade under two names. 

3. Midland Camper Conversions have a website www.midlandcamperconversions.co.uk  but its just a holding site - no info and I think that is a different company based in Birmingham, but who knows.

4. The guy changed his (mobile) phone number when he texted to say the van was sold. As a general rule avoid buying stuff from people who only use mobiles and change them regularly 

5. They do not have a premises, they seem to work from home. Again not illegal but does raise a flag when the claim to have such a high turn over of vans. 

6. The photos of the vans are never consistent 

7. There is a reference to Midland Camper Conversions on a discussion board which says how great they are, right up to the second page when one of the moderators flags it as suspicious because all the postings are by rookies. This is suspect behaviour.

8. They have an ebay rating of +61 but the comments are not consistent with somebody dealing in vans

All in all none of this is conclusively a scam and if it is I don't understand the point. So while I am not saying that they have done anything wrong, I am suggesting that it's all a bit suspicious and also that they are not nice people to do business with. So given that karmasotra gets a couple of hundred hits per day I thought I would take the opportunity to 1) vent my frustration, 2) give carasellecampers the web presence they seem to be lacking, 3) save someone else from wasting time and money dealing with them.

And if John or anyone else from that company wants to contact me and correct any of the statements above, you have my phone number.

Finally they are currently using the phones 07837068396 and 07939566711 although these will probably change soon. 

_____________________

VW T5, T-5, VW T5 Camper van, low mileage, van to campervan conversions, Midlandcampers2011, carasellecampers, Caraselle Campers,  Nottingham, Derby 

Postscript
They contacted me via ebay about three weeks later and said they had another van if I was interested. No apology, but they did offer to repay the money I had spent on the previous airfare if I bought a van from them. I declined. 

Facebook in the 90's

Have you ever wondered what Facebook would have looked like if it had been invented in the 90's - no me neither, but this video showing what it might have looked like is pretty funny

And google in the 80s' -

Both from http://www.squirrel-monkey.com/