I often look at the yellow UK speed traps website run by Steve Warren which is an excellent source of information on speed cameras, speed traps and police laser guns, I’ve been aware of the site since about 2000 and although it does appear a bit muddled (visually at least) it contains lots of great technical information and pictures and I’ve recommended it to friends that have been paranoid about being caught by a camera that flashed.

I was browsing the web recently when I came across another site that I haven’t seen before called clearlicence.co.uk. Much like UK Speed traps Clearlicence seems to have lots of information on all of the different types speed cameras (some which I didn’t even know existed!), but unlike the yellow site seems extremely well laid out. What’s great about this site is that it also has information on things that aren’t really speed cameras. I often hear rumours about the cameras on traffic information signs being used to catch speeders on the M4 and clearlicence demystifies this quite a bit! The site also has information on the process if you are caught speeding and when and where the new speed awareness courses are offered in place of points on your driving licence.

I’ve just upgraded the hard disk in my 2.2ghz MacBook Pro using the hard disk from a Western Digital 320gb Pocket Drive. The USB pocket drive is fitted with a 2.5″ 320gb WD Scorpio Hard Drive (WD3200BEVT).

The idea is to plug the pocket drive into the macbook pro, clone the existing hard disk to the attached usb disk, verify the usb disk by booting off of it and finally physically install the Scorpio Hard disk into the laptop. This takes all of the data and the operating system from your old hard drive, and puts it all on to a new bigger drive. Buying the WD3200BEVT as part of the WD Pocket drive is about £20 more than buying the disk alone, but it gives you an easy method of transferring your system to a new disk without reinstalling everything.

First Step: Make sure you repartition the Pocket drive first so that it has one partition and the GUID option is chosen (under options). Using disk utility I performed a restore of my current hard disk to the attached pocket drive. This clones the internal hdd to the external usb drive. The process took about two hours. I then booted off of the USB drive (system preferences -> startup disk) to check that the drive was working and held all of my data. Next I disconnected and disassembled the pocket drive, removed the WD3200BEVT hard disk and began taking apart my macbook pro with the help of the ifix-it guide and some YouTube videos.

I found it useful to print out the ifix-it guide and whilst following the step-by-step instructions I taped the screws to corresponding section (in the instructions) using masking tape. Using this method I was able to make sure that none of the screws were muddled up or lost, and I knew where to fit them during reassembly, simply by following the instructions in reverse.

The hard disk upgrade has been completely successful and I also took the opportunity to install 4gb of RAM.

I had my old Telewest TV Drive (now called V+ box) replaced recently. Unfortunately the HDMI port had become faulty and this was causing interference / picture cut outs. I understand that there is a known fault with the HDMI port on TV Drives which can cause the solder joint to fail. The new box is painted matt black (instead of silver) and seems fine.