Just a very quick note to all TBNI.Blog visitors to wish you a very happy, safe and prosperous new year, may 2019 shine gracefully upon you!
And whilst we take the time to wish each other a Happy New Year please keep a little place in your heart to remember those who never made to 2019. Rest in peace.
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Just wanted to wish all you guys and girls a very Merry Christmas 2017
If you happen to be on your own this Christmas have a look at Twitter and the hashtag #joinin and have some banter and craic over there!
Hope Santa was good to you all, if not not and you were on the naughty list and got some coal, never worry there is always next year.
Rather than do an unboxing video or solo gallery of the new iPhone X I have decided to combine a gallery with my initial thoughts and a very short term review.
I have had the iPhone X a week, having been lucky enough to get one on release day (3rd November 2017), and I’ll be straight up – I am impressed.
I’ll also be honest – it is damned expensive! A 256 GB model will set you back £1149 and if you want AppleCare it’s another £199 – so thats £1348 for a phone with 2 years piece of mind! If you dont want piece of mind just throw your eyes over this repair price list – it may (or may not) sway your decision on AppleCare. Personally I get AppleCare on all my Apple devices – (something I have never actually had reason to use) whether you do or not is obviously a personal choice however at these prices some sort of insurance seems like a no-brainer.
Full details on AppleCare – what it covers, and what it doesn’t and how much you pay can be found here : https://support.apple.com/en-gb/iphone/repair/service/pricing
I have reviewed a few pens on this site and pens are one of my frequent searches on crowd funding sites. So when you couple a pen with Titanium, I am instantly interested.
This was however an eBay find, but I believe it started its life on Kickstarter as a Titanium pen that accepts 35 refills without any modification. A plug and play pen : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/klinkokids/ti-ballpoint-pen-stylus-refill-friendly-titanium-p
It was well funded back in 2014 – looking $10,000 and ending up with over $38,500.
If you got in early enough you could have picked up the early bird at $59. They currently sell for about $75 on their website.
I picked mine up for an absolute bargain price of £15 – brand new and unused on eBay! Result!
We are moving!
Why? To bring you more! More content and a better TBNI.Blog experience.
The new host will enable us to bring much more customisation, which will bring a better user experience for everyone!
So please bare with us as this move happens, hopefully it will be done seamlessly over the next few days then the changes can start.
See you on the other side!
Disclosure : I purchased this case direct from the Apple Store for £59.95 (GBP), the review is my own as are my thoughts on the product.
With that said let me say I am a huge fan of Tech21 and the gear they put out. I have a Tech21 case on both my iPad Mini (2nd Gen) and my iPhone 7 Plus – both are still in perfect condition and their Tech21 cases have kept them looking effectively unused. It was then a no brainer for me that I would use a Tech21 case for my iPad Pro 10.5.
Off I trotted to the Apple Store in Belfast and picked up the Tech 21 Impact Clear (Rear) Case – costing a whopping £59.95 (GBP).
Prior to this I was using a : MoKo Case for iPad Pro 10.5 : http://amzn.eu/3umECES (NOT AN AFFILIATE LINK).
The Moko Case was great – a bargain in fact, however it wasn’t Smart Keyboard compatible. I had purchased a Smart Keyboard so needed a case that would work with it.
So along came the Tech21 Impact Clear (Rear) Case :
For full and detailed qualifying times check out :
Wednesday 9th August 2017 Practice and Qualifying Sessions :
Thursday 10th August 2017 Practice and Qualifying Sessions :
Thos previous 2 days of qualifying have brought us to the 2017 Ulster Grand Prix Saturday Race Day and here’s how that panned out.
The schedule was as follows :
It really was an epic day’s racing the highlights for me were two fold. Firstly – Bruce Anstey taking a Superbike win and secondly – Davy Morgan taking the lightweight win on his 250 Honda! Epic. Make sure to check out my galleries from every qualifying session and each race! Lat year I was disappointed in the Ulster Grand Prix for many reasons, however that is all in the past, the 2017 UGP Saturday Race Day was – simply – outstanding.
Bruce Anstey wanted his overlap record back and he got it with a 3.18:249 lap – that’s an average speed of 134.396 mph. However that record only sttod for a lap then Dean Harrison came in with a blingingly quick 134.614 mph lap that took 3.17:928 minutes complete and also took the overall lap record.
Another absolutely noteworthy rider is Peter Hickman – his first outing on the roads and already a Superbike win (and a couple of others) already under his belt
Check out my Facebook Page for a few videos – every race is featured :
But without further ado here are the results for each race :
The internet has went crazy today reporting on Guy Martin retiring from Road Racing. As a Guy Martin fan, that is of course devastating news, and I honestly believe that most pure fans of road racing will also agree that Guy was / is good for the sport and its profile. However following an ‘exclusive interview’ with MCN it looks like his road racing days are over…
With huge publicity surrounding the partnership of John McGuiness and Guy Martin on the new Honda FireBlade things looked perfect for the 2017 season.
Then it all started to unwind. A poor Tandragee 100 started the season with Guy crashing out on his first lap, followed by an uneventful Cookstown 100 and North West 200 (at the same time as losing team mate John McGuinness to a horrific crash) which led us to the Isle of Man. After the ‘box of neutrals’ incident Honda withdrew from the rest of the event. Guy went onto a second place in the TTZero with Team Mugen, his team mate Bruce Anstey taking the win in that event.
Then the press release came that Honda and Guy would not be participating in the Ulster Grand Prix, a circuit that has brought Guy great success as well as proving almost deadly in 2015.
At this point I think most of us thought the writing on the wall was now here.
Guy Martin’s Road Racing days are over.
Explaining his decision to call it a day in an exclusive interview with MCN’s Matt Wildee, Guy said: “Racing’s been good to me, but I’m bored of it. You spend the early part of the year preparing for the season – testing, racing, talking about it, and then doing it all over again. It’s like Groundhog Day. It’s time to stop.”
Or are they?