Monthly Archives: January 2004

Lotus Elise 111R Launched in the UK

Lotus launched the UK version of it’s brand new Toyota engined Elise on Monday! The model is called the Lotus Elise 111R, and although there’s no details on the official Lotus Site right now, Stratton Motor Company has details of the specs. The new model is available to order NOW, and the cars will probably be delivered reasonably quickly before Lotus ramps up production of the Federal Elise for it’s release in the US at the beginning of May.

Read on for the specs and prices of the Elise 111R:Base Model: GBP27,995

190PS VVTL-I Toyota Engine
6-speed Manual Gearbox
8-Spoke Lightweight Wheels
Servo Assisted Brakes with ABS
Cross-Drilled Brake Discs
Body Coloured Door Mirrors
Protection Tape – Clear
Front Mud Flaps
Central Locking
Gear Knob – Polished Aluminium
Handbrake Grip – Polished Aluminium
Interior in Half Leather
Floor – Black Carpet Mats
Lightweight Footwell Divider
Sunvisors
Blaupunkt 4 Speaker Radio Fitting Kit
Blaupunkt Lausanne Radio CD Head Unit
Category 1 Alarm/Immobiliser
Soft Top – Black

Touring Pack: GBP1795
Includes: Auxiliary Driving Lamps, Carpet Set with Aluminium Passenger Footrest, Full Leather or Alcantara Interior, Electric Windows, Interior Stowage Net, Noise Reduction and Thermal Insulation Kit, Blaupunkt Woodstock DAB Radio & MP3 Player

Other optional extras:

Metallic Paint Finish – GBP595
Teflon Paint Protection – GBP325
Twin Racing Stripes – GBP895
Air Conditioning – GBP1295
Body Coloured Hard Top – GBP1295
Black Wheel Finish – GBP150
Tracker – 24 hour Monitor – GBP495
Tracker – Horizon – GBP895

Birmingham, Baywatch, Babes!

OK, so although this site has a bit of Nooo Yawwwk branding on it, I think it’s about time I gave some much deserved support to my home city back in the good old UK…..

California might have golden beaches, glorious sunshine and Holywood, but what they are really missing out on, is the famous fountain that is The Floozie In The Jaccuzi. She is so special, that she has her own dedicated team of professionals watching over her and the public, day and night. So, check out an episode of BAYWATCH Brummie Style. (Link c/o stonefox.net/Created by Rick Otter (rock_otter@hotmail.com).

So, what do people in Birmingham sound like? Well, Bearwood Ted (Bearwood is only 5 mins away from where I grew up by the way!) has a great lil’ old sing song to help you get into the Brumwichum dialog. My fave part of that track is “There’s the Villa and the Blues, the Curry houses and the booze, the Chinese and chippies, well it’s very hard to choose!”. Watch out for the MR Egg restaurant too!! Check it out and sing along here. (Those photos are fairly recent by the way!).

Still not convinced?? Listen to a local telling you how Bostin’ it is HERE.

I can tell you are hooked by all these songs. I guess I should share some history with you now, and show you how Central Birmingham’s icon, The Bull Ring, used to look. Here’s The Bull Ring Thing – nice huh? The Bull Ring has been updated a bit since then. In fact now even NEW YORK RAVES ABOUT BIRMINGHAM!!

So, what else should you check out whilst in Brum? Well, there’s Spagetti Beach and our famous Balti Restaurants.

As for famous babes from Brum, don’t forget the luurvly Cat Deeley. (Actually, I’m having a job to think of other Brummie Babes, so if you are one, send me your pic 😉

The other day I was in my supermarket in Brooklyn doing my own thing and this bloke comes up to me and starts rapping at me over and over again, telling me he’s got “Lawyers watching lawyers”. Now, at first, I have to admit I thought he was a nutter. But maybe he was just talking some hardcore street slang at me. I really wish I’d got this BOOK OF BRUMMIE PHRASES with me, ‘cos then I could have told him “Owamya Bin Keepin lard ‘ed? Morkins! Yo cor be canting like that! Yous gunnyarta shut your Cake hole. You acting all doolally. Seems to me you Waggin it, Irrint? Best put yerat on yed n’ gerroff on the buzz me old cocka. Don’t wanna get the gaffer on a loin now, does ya? See yam later. Trarabit!” (That woulda shut him up, I’m sure).

Anyway, for more exciting Brum stuff, visit Birmingham: It’s Not Sh1t

Linux World Expo New York

So this week, Richii went to The Linux World Expo in NYC to see what was happening in the world of his fellow techies and to get some fresh ideas for some new projects! Although it was the first time I’d ever been to a conference like this, I was really impressed! Anyway, here’s some links to some of the cooler stuff I saw:

MySQL Administrator was formally announced and I saw a saw demo of this app, which will run on Windows, Linux and (in the future) Mac OS X. Looks good! (Richii.com uses a MySQL database, so this will be great feature to have!).

Sybase announced the release of Sybase 12.5 on Linux – good news for those in the Enterprise environment.

KDE were showing their latest desktop – good news is that 3.2 of KDE will be out soon – offering a much improved startup time and new features! (Richii is using KDE as he writes this!)

SuSE Linux had a big display showing off their server and desktop offerings. This is my personal fave Linux distro, so they didn’t have to sell me on this. I also got myself a SuSE Geeko (he rocks!). Things are looking good for SuSE now that they’ve been bought by Novell.

Sun Microsystems were showing their Linux-based Java Virtual Desktop as replacement for the Windows desktop. They had some great server and desktop hardware on display, as well as development tools and Star Office.Tadpole were also displaying some very nice SPARC-based Laptops which could run Solaris or Linux – very impressive!

Red Hat Linux were showing off their new desktop and server offerings and giving out free copies of Fedora. They are also launching a new techie magazine called Wide Open.

Ximian were touting their Red Carpet Enterprise and Ximian Desktop products – good products to help the Sys Admin manage Linux on the desktop!

The Linux Professional Insitute were offering advice on Linux Certification. A certication through them shows you can manage multiple distributions of Linux, rahter then just Red Hat or SuSE. As to whether certification is worth the money….. ?

Gentoo Linux were showing their distro. I didn’t know too much about it, but basically it’s a version of Linux that’s optimized for speed. Will have to try that out later…

Mandrake, Debian and Morphix are other distros which I’ve not tried, but will give them a role when I get some time!

Didn’t make it to Linux Expo? Don’t worry – Linux World UK takes place at Olympia on 6-7 October! See you there 😉

US Lotus Elise launched at the LA Motor Show

The US Lotus Elise (aka the Federal Elise) has at long last been officially launched at the LA Auto Show. Since there’s still no sign of MG selling cars directly in the US, this is as much as we’ll see of Brit sports cars this side of the pond for the time being. So it’s something to shout about. Just think – you can head down to the one of the lucky dealerships chosen to sell this car and order this puppy right now! NICE!

The car seems to have appeared in the press a lot, even before last weeks launch, and after it’s success in Europe, it should be a breath of fresh air from all those SUV’s and petrol guzzling monsters I see so much of here!

So what’s different about this Elise than it’s Brit cousin? First off is the specially tuned Toyota 2ZZ-GE 1.8L 4cyl 16-valve w/VVTL-i engine. Reviews of this engine when it first appeared in the Celica and Corolla are pretty dire, but Lotus have tuned this baby up, and with the lightweight body of the Elise, it should make for a more exciting ride than with the old K-Series VVC Engine. Lotus promises increased low end torque for greater acceleration from low engine speeds, before unleashing the full 190hp at the higher end of the rev range. It also has a different gearbox, namely the all-aluminum Toyota C64 six-speed manual gearbox. Brakes will include AP Racing twin-piston aluminum front brake calipers on the front, and Brembo single-piston brake calipers on the rear. ABS, Air Conditioning, Climate Control and Twin airbags are also available.And also a very a cool “START” button for the Engine (photo) 🙂

So, what does it look like? Here’s some photos from the launch:

Photos from Dan Medina at EliseTalk.com
Photos from PistonHeads.com
Photos from Golden Gate Lotus Club

First odd thing are those reflectors in front of the front wheel and behind the rear wheel – I guess that is something that the US insists upon. Just look at them in this pic. Yuk 🙁 It’s a bit Max Power methinks, and looks like a bit of an afterthought add-on.

But do check out the very nice alloy wheel included in the Sports Pack Now that looks smart!

The interior of the car looks pretty nice – and I like the way they’ve put the climate control and stereo unit together in the center (as opposed to the sides in the UK version).

So how much is it, and what are the options? The base model comes in at $39,985. Given that the exchange rate is currently $1.84 to the British Pound, that puts it as GBP21,703.98 Wow! That’s a saving of around GBP4,000 over the UK Elise S – which don’t forget doesn’t have the uprated engine, ABS, A/C, etc. Very nice indeed!

There are going to be 3 different versions to chose from – Base, Touring and Sport. Here’s the info:

Base car: $39,985

175/55R16, 225/45R17 Yokohama Advan Neova AD07 LTS tires (designed specifically for the Elise)
Bilstein monotube gas shock absorbers
AP Racing twin-piston aluminum front brake calipers
Brembo single-piston rear brake calipers
ABS

Touring package: + $1,350

Full leather seating
Electric windows and full carpets
Upgraded Blaupunkt stereo w/MP3 player
Interior stowage net and additional sound deadening
Double insulated (thermal & sound) soft top

Sport package: + $2,490

7 spoke forged wheels (lightest available – 1 inch wider fronts)
Yokohama A048LTS tires. The softer Yokohama tires should improve 0-60 times by 0.2 seconds.
Adjustable dampers and springs with adjustable ride height

Other options include Hardtop: $1,475 (body color). All cars come with a 3-yr/36,000 mile warranty.

Performance is nice – 0-60 mph in 4.9 seconds, Top speed approximately 150 mph, Estimated fuel mileage: 30 mpg.

All in all, it looks to be a very nice car and with only 2000 of these cars going to hit the US each year, you’d better head out early to catch one! In Manhattan, you can get one from Manhattan Motorcars according to this NY Post article.

In the absence of any MG imports at this time, and if you’re after a distinctively different sports car, go test drive the Federal Elise today!

January 2004 Dance Chart

Another year is upon us, and as usual we’ve got lots of brand new choons to get us started!

First up on the January 2004 dance chart is an energetic vocal dance/euro track by The Force – Paradise & Dreams. I don’t know too much about the people behind this track, but I think it’s the AATW crowd who brought us the likes of Flip n’ Fill and Ultrabeat. If you like them, you’ll like this. A very close second is Matt Darey with an awesome track called “Voice Of Angel”. Marcella Woods provides the haunting lyrics accompanied by top class production. Gets a UK release on Monday 12 January.

Take a great U2 track – “With Or Without You”, sample it, drop an awesome dance beat over it, add a sample from Whitney Houston’s “How Will I Know?” and what do you get? A surefire hit! “Take Me To The Clouds Above” by LMC vs U2 is at number 3 on our chart. Although the sample from U2 is original, the lyrics on the track are actually sung by Rachel MacFarlane – but it doesn’t matter – this song rocks! It’s out at the end of January in the UK.

At number 4 is a very radio friendly track which is just taking off in Europe right now. Dr Kucho Feat Jodie – It’s All About You (Bob Sinclair Edit) comes from the Bruce Elliott Smith stable and features mixes from Bob Sinclair. The video for this track is currently being made in London – we’ll try and grab the link just as soon as it’s out!

Back to more uplifting vocal trance next – Pascal Feat. Karen Parry – This Will Be (The Best Days Of Our Lives)(Voodoo & Serano Mix) is another catchy track which will again please fans who like their Euro. It features at number 5, closely followed by the new Flip n’ Fill track – Irish Blue. Other awesome tracks to check out include great remixes of Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Rachel Stevens, Louise & The Sugababes. What a great way to start 2004!

The full January 2004 dance chart can be found here

January 2004 New Dance Music Videos!

OK, it’s January, Christmas and New Years are over, the weather is grim and you’re back at work. Kinda bad, huh? Well, as usual richii.com has gotten hold of some fresh, chewy music videos to help you soak up those January blues.

First up is an absolute CHOON! If you haven’t heard this, then where have you been? It was first featured in my August 2003 dance chart but was blessed with a UK release this week on Positiva Records and will be out on Ultra Records in the US very shortly. Motorcyle – As The Rush Comes – is an ANTHEM! Motorcycle are Dave Dresden, Josh Gabriel and Jes. You’ve probably seen Dave and Josh’s mixes on my charts in the shape of “Gabriel and Dresden”. Anyway, enough messing about – check out the video for it here.

Next up is an interesting video from Engima. It features a girl who puts this device in her ear and then starts moving all stop-start kinda crazy (woah – that sounds a lot like me on the dancefloor! Spooky!). Anyway, after a drink in a bar, she heads to a party where everyone else is moving in the same way. Then there’s some, errr, action with this other girl, then she heads home. Typical night out kinda stuff really 🙂 Oh yeah, just before she gets home, she takes out this earpiece device and starts moving normally again. Check out the video Voyager here.

ATB has a fairly funky video for Long Way Home featuring clips from his recent US tour. Deepest Blue are back with their follow-up to their first single (also called Deepest Blue). Although not as instantly hit-sounding, it does grow on you and should do fairly well. I think the video is about a guy who heads to a cafe after a night of clubbing and he keeps thinking back to this gal he met on the dancefloor. We’ve all been there, done that, got the T Shirt – so I think you’ll apreciate the vid. Check out Give It Away here.

Black Eyed Peas, Boogie Pimps and Kelis are also in featured in the new video chart, so check them all out here.

December 2003 Dance Chart

OK, the December 2003 Dance Chart has finally been posted!

At the top of the chart we have Ultrabeat – Feelin’ Fine. This is their follow-up to Pretty Green Eyes and it’s a very uplifting, bouncey dance track that was I was hearing everywhere whilst I was in the UK. For more info on Ultrabeat, check out this page. In at number two is Michelle Branch with The Passengerz Tuff Club Mix of Breathe. Yes, I wouldn’t normally associate Mish with dance, but this a pretty funky, hypnotic, dark mix. Also check out some cool Mish pix in this month’s Maxim(US Edition). But anyway, back to the music (focus Richii, focus!)

I’ve raved about Room 5’s Music & You enough, and it’s still sounding good. It’s in at number 3 – check out the video here. Next up is a great uplifting trancer – The Mystery – Feel 4 You (Vocal Radio Edit). It’s a choon – full of energy! Play it in the morning and move yer feet! It just makes ya smile! Or better still put it through your (head)phones on the NYC subway when you’re slammed up against 1000 dog breath Nooo Yawkers on the 2/3 line (you can still nod your head, even if you can’t move yer feet). CHOON!

OK, so Britney’s new album features a fairly good dancey track in the shape of “Breathe On Me”. She kind of sounds like Kylie in it – it’s in at number 6 on the chart, worth giving this track a listen methinks.

For the rest of the chart – it’s the usual goodies – NYC-sounding dance tracks in the shape of Becky Baeling – If You Love Me, Tina Ann – Too Late and Cooler Kids – Morning Star (Thunderpuss Club Mix). Trancey fans will like Ozone – Ionize, Armin Van Buuren – Precious (check out Armin’s new album BTW) and Pulser – My Religion (Lange Remix).

The January 2004 dance chart is ready to go and will be posted up later this week, so stay CHOONED!

The full December 2003 Dance Chart can be found here.

End of year dance chart – 2003 – DJ Lummpy

We’ve had another submission for the Dance Chart 2003 list! Here’s the Top 40 Dance Tracks of 2003 according to DJ Lummpy:

1. Motorcycle – As the Rush Comes (Gabriel and Dresden Mix)
2. Plummet – Damaged (Antillas Mix)
3. Conjure One – Sleep (Ian Van Dahl Mix)
4. 4 Strings – Let it Rain
5. Jessy – Look at Me Now (CJ Stone Mix)
6. Delerium – After All (Svenson and Gielen Mix)
7. Beck Baeling – Getaway (Mike Rizzo Global Club Mix)
8. Amuka – Appreciate Me (Peter Rauhofer Mix)
9. Halo – Say You Will (Pulsedriver Mix)
10. Paul Van Dyk – Nothing But You (PVD Club Mix)

Read on for 11-40:11. Young Parisians – U Write the Rules (Solar Stone Mix)
12. Madelyne – Beautiful Child (Hiver and Hammer Mix)
13. Roc Project – Never here.

End of year dance chart – 2003 – Jed

Here’s another 2003 Dance Chart – this time compiled by JED.

1. Motorcycle-As the Rush Comes (Original/Gabriel & Dresden/Sweeping Strings Remix)
2. Weekend Players-Walk Into the Sun (Original/Riva/Static Revenger Remix)
3. Benny Benassi presents The Biz-Satisfaction, Tomcraft-Loneliness
4. Paul Van Dyk-Nothing But You (PVD Club Mix/Vandit mix), Paul Van Dyk-Time of our Lives
5. Kurtis Mantronik presents Charmonix-77 strings
6. Shakedown-Drowsy with Hope (K-Klass Ultra Vocal Mix), Tim Deluxe-Less Talk More Action
7. Jason Nevins feat. Holly-I’m in Heaven
8. The Roc Project feat. Tina Arena-Never (Radio/Dj Tiesto remix)
9. iio- At the End (Johnny Vicious/Scumfrog Remix)
10. Cassius-The Sound of Violence (Narcotic Thrust Remix)

Read on for the those honorable mentions that nearly made it:Honorable Mention:
Sandy Rivera-Changes
Amuka feat. Sheila Brody-Appreciate Me (NYC Roxy mix)
Andrea Doria-Bucci Bag (Peter Rauhofer Reconstruction Remix)
Lee-Cabrera-Shake It
Junior Jack- E Samba
Coldplay-Clocks (Cosmos/Royksopp’s Trembling Heart Remix)
Room 5-Make Luv
Svenson & Gielen feat. Jan Johnston-Beachbreeze
Jan Johnston- Calling our your Name
Johnny Vicious feat. Aubrey-I’m Waiting

What were you fave tracks of 2003? Submit them here.