Archive for the ‘Diary’ Category
Monday, January 26th, 2009
Today was not my best lesson so far, generally my driving was quite poor, I seem to have forgotten some fairly important things like using the hand break and putting the clutch down. I did change my driving position within the car as I was in quite a tense position which dosn’t give me the best view in the world, not sure if that affected it but it may have done.
I am still having problems reversing round corners, despite spending some time today reading back my old notes I couldn’t really do it today either, it is a bit to analog for my digital brain. Kev had another way which might help, and was certainly a way of getting the job done.
Start reversing back, slightly further than you would do if you were making small incremental changes.- Make one full turn of the wheel to the left.
- Wait until the kerb moves past the center line in the left mirror.
- Straighten up
- Wait until the kerb moves past the other side of the center line
- Repeat from 2 – 5 until round the corner
It is by no means the ideal way to get the job done, however it is passable and it might lead on to me being able to reverse round a corner without major problems. I hope to be able to get another 10 more lessons in before my test, which I can confirm is on the 24th February. Which is four weeks tomorrow, half term is before the test so that should give me some extra opportunity to practice.
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Monday, January 19th, 2009
Moving towards my 60th hour of driving, and I am still enjoying it. Made a couple of silly mistakes today, the first (not the first mistake just the first silly one) was not taking a right turn where I should of. It was down to my perception of how the road went, I hadn’t anticipated that the road itself went straight on, I thought it went off to the left. Kev asked me to take the next right, and I missed it and went straight on.
Second mistake was not stopping at a give way line, someone came round a sort of blind corner, had I crept further forward I would have seen them. This was bad because they had to slow down, on the off chance they are reading this, sorry! Lesson learnt though.
Kev has said he is happy for me to book my test, so I did. I am not going to post it on here until I have it confirmed with Kev. It is against by better judgement to post it at all, as I am likely to end up with twitters, texts and e-mails soon before the test which might make me nervous. We will see.
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Monday, January 12th, 2009
Today was a new skill, parking in a shopping center car park. Or at least an adaption of existing skills.
- Get yourself parallel to the line kerb equivalent, roughly a doors width from the bounding line of the parking space.
- Reverse until the near side bounding line of the parking space is about half way through rear window.
- Once at this position steer full lock to the left.
- Keep reversing, making corrections by straightening up then moving back to full lock.
- As you finally come round to parallel to the left and right bounding lines straighten up.
- Reverse until the front bounding line is level with the mirrors.
That’s roughly it, I think. Hopefuly I will get to practice it again next week and draw you all a diagram. This week I was less hesitant than I had been in the past, I still made mistakes and got confused by the trafic but I was more decicivie. Felt conftable and confident in the car, if a little weary of being asked to do emergency stops again.
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Monday, January 5th, 2009
Today was a day for gear changes and roundabouts, some dual carriageways and national speed limit single carriageways in the pitch black freezing cold. Kev was trying to get me more confident and less slightly dangerous on roundabouts which is good as I find them shockingly confusing, particularly if I need to do a gear change coming up to them.
Lifehack has an article on making decisions under preasure, which I think probably covers the broad techniques I should be using to make sure I am better at roundabouts than I am at the moment.
Specifically – know the situation, know the outcomes and commit to the task at hand.
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Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
This is just a quick post to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I have been wanting to post some statistics gathered through Google Analytics for some time now so here we go. The following data covers 1st January 2008 until the post time 31st December 2008, all data excludes administrator visits and search engine crawlers.
Visit Statistics
- Visits: 3,066
- Visitors: 2,708
- Page Views: 4,935
- Bounce Rate: 74.72%
Top Visit Origins
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Canada
- Germany
- France
Most Popular Posts
- Lakeland Revival
- Center Parcs Longleat
- Google Chrome
- EasyWorship
Top Search Terms
- lakeland revival
- richard slater
- easy worship
- breaking distances
- easy worship
Browsers
- Internet Explorer (56.23%)
- Firefox (37.18%)
- Safari (3.59%)
- Google Chrome (0.95%)
- Opera (0.27%)
Operating Systems
- Windows (89.11%)
- Macintosh (7.47%)
- Linux (2.67%)
The main thing that I get from looking at those statistics is I would like to get the bounce rate down, the average time on site is only 51 seconds, which I would like to increase. The only way I can go about that is by creating more useful content and the only way to do that is to keep plugging at it.
See you all in 2009!
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Thursday, December 25th, 2008
It’s that Christmas time of year again, I am fortunate to be able to spend time with friends and family this Christmas. I hope my readers get to spend Christmas with those that you love too.
Merry Christmas!
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Monday, December 22nd, 2008
First lesson in two weeks, for that matter I don’t get another lesson for two weeks either. I feel a little stuck with the driving to be honest, each lesson seems similar to the previous lesson, it is possibly a mix of the law of diminishing returns and fustration at doing the same thing over and over again.
Took a look at the Burgess Hill Test Center the website still says no information available, and I can’t seem to select any times or dates on the “book a test” page on direct.gov. Never mind, hopefuly will be able to book a test at some point in 2009!
Anyway, as I said no more lessons for two weeks because of Christmas, will update again then for sure.
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Monday, December 8th, 2008
So today was the 48th hour of driving a car, we didn’t do anything new one emergency stop at the end after being chased round by a 4×4 for a bit, should have guessed that was going to happen after Kev had said he wanted me to do an emergency stop.
Trying to perfect manoeuvres on difficult roads (read steep), was quite interesting trying to do a three point turn on a large hill. One thing that is slightly concerning me is reversing into parking spaces in supermarkets and the such. I am not sure why I would want to reverse into a parking space when I could just go in forwards and then put the shopping in the boot, it just seems like something that might be useful at some point.
Anyway, no lesson next week Kev is going Christmas shopping.
Posted in Diary, Driving | 2 Comments »
Monday, December 1st, 2008
Emergency Stops…
…DON’T LIKE
My head is buzzing after doing my first four emergency stops, it isn’t the emergency stops that I don’t like it is being in charge of a car after doing one, also having your mate shout “STOP” in your left ear, has a somewhat negative Pavlovian conditioning effect on the enjoyment of driving.
So as with my earlier posts I am going to try and write down the procedure for doing an emergency stop, as with previous posts this is my memory of what to do, not official. Please take advise of a qualified driving instructor (like Kev) before trying this.
- Instructor/Examiner shouts STOP in your left ear
.
- Press down the brake, then the clutch (this is for an ABS car).
- As you are doing to try and lock out your arms and push yourself into the chair to avoid being thrown forward.
- In the event of rear wheels drifting out, steer into the same direction as the the drift. f.ex. if you drift right, steer right.
- Put on the hand break.
- Change to first gear.
- Look over both shoulders (left and right…).
- Move off slowly and carefully.
Chances are if you are anything like me your head will be buzzing, this would probably be a good time to pull over and compose yourself.
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Monday, November 24th, 2008
Today was another chance to go through my driver record, Kev got to tick off a few more of the boxes which is always a nice feeling. I am definitely suffering from a case of diminishing returns when it comes to driving, Kev and I had a discussion at the end of the lesson about trying to get more polish on my driving rather than learning any new skills.
My driver record now looks like this:
Independent
Cockpit Checks, Safety Checks, Controls & Instruments, Safe Positioning, Mirrors – Vision & Use, Signals and Pedestrian Crossings. (7 in total)
Seldom Prompted
Moving Away & Stopping, Anticipation and Planning, Use of Speed, Other Traffic, Junctions, Roundabouts, Turning the Vehicle Around, Reversing, Parking, Darkness, Weather Conditions. (11 in total)
Prompted
Dual Carriageways, Legal Responsibilities, Environmental Issues, Security (4 in total)
Not Covered / Not Known
Passengers & Carrying Loads, Emergency Stops (2)
I agree with all of that, Emergency Stops have not been covered at all yet, and we haven’t spent enough time on Dual Carriageways to make any really judgment. The little box on the bottom right is a little hard to gauge as they are all covered in the theory test (not sure why they are on the drivers record really).
Annoyingly enough the Brighton and Hove test centers are closing on the 8th of January and don’t appear to have any free slots to book a test so it looks like I am going to be booking my test in Burgess Hill in February. Gives me plenty more time to practice!
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