S60D5
Saturday 25th March 2006, 15:18
Last week research found that only 5% of the countless recipes shown on television each week are ever copied at home by viewers. This is not surprising. You could give me the same ingredients that Gordon Ramsay uses and put me in the same kitchen with the same equipment, and even though we have exactly the same number of hands, fingers and noses I can absolutely guarantee that I’d end up with a plate full of over-salted, inedible mush.
Cooking is like painting. I have a brush and some eyes but everything I try to transpose onto canvas ends up looking like a dog. And it’s the same story with DIY. My toolbox is littered with every conceivable gadget, but if I put something up it’s not straight for a moment, and then it’s on the floor all broken.
Ambition is no substitute for talent. A point I have been proving all week with my new photographic printer.
Being a man, I did not wish to consult those who know about such things. I simply got in the car and drove to PC World, where I bought the most expensive. It’s an Epson Photo RX620 and it doesn’t work.
I selected a picture on the computer, hit print and it came out sideways on an upright piece of paper. So I turned the paper round and tried again. And then again. And then again. This was annoying since a piece of top quality A4 premium glossy photo paper costs more, pound for pound, than gold.
Eventually, though, out came a lovely picture of the family taken by a passer-by on our visit to the Geysir in Iceland last year. Except that’s not right. It looks like a lovely picture on the camera. It looks like a lovely picture on the computer screen. But what came out of my new printer was not lovely at all. It looks like we’ve all been boiled.
I selected a picture on the computer, hit print and it came out sideways on an upright piece of paper. So I turned the paper round and tried again. And then again. And then again. This was annoying since a piece of top quality A4 premium glossy photo paper costs more, pound for pound, than gold
Now I know you can adjust this sort of thing using your mouse and a bit of software. So I bought something called the Corel Paint Shop Pro X version 10. It cost just shy of £60, and it doesn’t work either.
All attempts to correct the redness of our faces resulted in more and more vivid hues until eventually my wife came and read the instruction manual.
It turns out the procedure is simple. You tell the printer what sort of paper you’re using and how big it is. Then you give the information to the computer. Then you say whether you want “landscape” or “portrait”, then you choose the quality level you’re after, then you fix the red eyes, remove the blemishes, have a look at the preview and then, after just 55 minutes or so, out pops the finished product. Which is still crap.
Really and truly, I’m not a bad photographer. I understand about stop and depth of field. I know about composition and fill-in flash. Some of the pictures I’ve got back from Boots over the years have not been bad at all. But the stuff that’s poured from my printer this past week looks like it was taken by someone who was being deliberately stupid, or who was Stevie Wonder.
And there you have it. I have the tools. I have the basic ability. But I lack that certain something, which means I cannot produce the sort of top quality digital pictures that you get from a professional.
And this brings me nicely to the door of the Volvo C70 T5 SE Lux. Possibly the most disappointing car in the history of the universe.
Like so many new cars these days, the Volvo C70 has a hard metal roof that slides electrically into the boot. That sounds great but there is a problem: the boot has to be at least as long as the roof, and because of that no car maker has managed to make a car of this type look right.
Peugeot, Renault and Nissan have made a complete monkey’s breakfast of it, and even Mercedes hasn’t got it quite right with either the SL or the SLK. Both are just too J-Lo chunky at the back.
Jaguar experimented with the idea of a folding hard top for the new XK but resorted to canvas in the end because they simply couldn’t make the styling work.
Volvo, however, has cracked it because the C70 has a roof that folds in half. Swedish flat-pack furniture. And now, a Swedish flat-pack roof. Mind you, it is pretty complicated.
Certainly you should never operate this roof in public because it will cause those in passing cars to lose concentration and crash. And pedestrians to think you’re showing off. But whatever, it means the car looks sensational with the roof up and, dare I say it, even better when it’s down.
Inside, there is plenty of space in the back for adults, although I really can’t recommend putting children back there when the roof’s moving about. They could be sucked into the machinery and never seen again.
In the front, it’s even better. Lots of space. Lots of light. Some genuinely stylish touches and quite the most impressive sound system since Jerry Garcia stopped being grateful and started being dead. It churns out 910 watts. This means you can still hear Whispering Bob Harris even if you’re tooling along, roof down, at 150mph.
This, then, is a car with a sky-high want-one factor. And with prices starting at £26,200 it’s not that expensive either. Even though they charge an extra £25 for a switch to turn the passenger airbag off. How can a switch cost £25 when it isn’t part of a nuclear missile or a space rocket? Whatever, on paper at least, the Volvo looks like a safer, more stylish, more practical and generally better convertible than anything at this level from BMW, Audi or Mercedes. I honestly thought I’d stumbled on a bit of a hidden jewel here.
But I couldn’t help noticing that it had come from Volvo with my own desert island discs in the CD autochanger. Why do that? Could it be a distraction? A musical blanket to shroud some technical problem? Well if it was, it didn’t work because this car felt so weird to drive that after just 200 yards I pulled over to see if I had a puncture.
The steering is absolutely lifeless when you’re going in a straight line and horrid when you’re accelerating, braking or going round a corner. Powerful front-wheel-drive T5 Volvos have always had torque steer but this is something else. This is diabolical.
You can hold onto the wheel if you like, but frankly you may as well hold onto your knees or your passenger for all the good it’ll do.
Eventually I got used to it, in the same way that eventually you can get used to a headache. But I never had the confidence to open up the C70, to see what those 220 brake horse powers could do.
This was properly annoying because Volvo plainly has the ability to make this car work. They have the stylists and the engineers. But they built this car using parts from other, lesser Volvos. You can therefore think of it as supper made by Gordon Ramsay using only ingredients he could get from the 24-hour petrol station.
Volvo is owned by Ford these days and I can’t help imagining what this car would have been like if they’d accessed their daddy’s parts bin. It could have had rear-wheel drive from a Mustang or a Jag. A V8 engine. Some Aston Martin steering. It could have been wonderful.
But it isn’t. Volvo, plainly, has watched a television recipe for making a convertible. And then tried to copy it without going to the shops. Ingenuity got them to the table with something well priced that looks great. But I doubt you’ll want to dig in.
Cooking is like painting. I have a brush and some eyes but everything I try to transpose onto canvas ends up looking like a dog. And it’s the same story with DIY. My toolbox is littered with every conceivable gadget, but if I put something up it’s not straight for a moment, and then it’s on the floor all broken.
Ambition is no substitute for talent. A point I have been proving all week with my new photographic printer.
Being a man, I did not wish to consult those who know about such things. I simply got in the car and drove to PC World, where I bought the most expensive. It’s an Epson Photo RX620 and it doesn’t work.
I selected a picture on the computer, hit print and it came out sideways on an upright piece of paper. So I turned the paper round and tried again. And then again. And then again. This was annoying since a piece of top quality A4 premium glossy photo paper costs more, pound for pound, than gold.
Eventually, though, out came a lovely picture of the family taken by a passer-by on our visit to the Geysir in Iceland last year. Except that’s not right. It looks like a lovely picture on the camera. It looks like a lovely picture on the computer screen. But what came out of my new printer was not lovely at all. It looks like we’ve all been boiled.
I selected a picture on the computer, hit print and it came out sideways on an upright piece of paper. So I turned the paper round and tried again. And then again. And then again. This was annoying since a piece of top quality A4 premium glossy photo paper costs more, pound for pound, than gold
Now I know you can adjust this sort of thing using your mouse and a bit of software. So I bought something called the Corel Paint Shop Pro X version 10. It cost just shy of £60, and it doesn’t work either.
All attempts to correct the redness of our faces resulted in more and more vivid hues until eventually my wife came and read the instruction manual.
It turns out the procedure is simple. You tell the printer what sort of paper you’re using and how big it is. Then you give the information to the computer. Then you say whether you want “landscape” or “portrait”, then you choose the quality level you’re after, then you fix the red eyes, remove the blemishes, have a look at the preview and then, after just 55 minutes or so, out pops the finished product. Which is still crap.
Really and truly, I’m not a bad photographer. I understand about stop and depth of field. I know about composition and fill-in flash. Some of the pictures I’ve got back from Boots over the years have not been bad at all. But the stuff that’s poured from my printer this past week looks like it was taken by someone who was being deliberately stupid, or who was Stevie Wonder.
And there you have it. I have the tools. I have the basic ability. But I lack that certain something, which means I cannot produce the sort of top quality digital pictures that you get from a professional.
And this brings me nicely to the door of the Volvo C70 T5 SE Lux. Possibly the most disappointing car in the history of the universe.
Like so many new cars these days, the Volvo C70 has a hard metal roof that slides electrically into the boot. That sounds great but there is a problem: the boot has to be at least as long as the roof, and because of that no car maker has managed to make a car of this type look right.
Peugeot, Renault and Nissan have made a complete monkey’s breakfast of it, and even Mercedes hasn’t got it quite right with either the SL or the SLK. Both are just too J-Lo chunky at the back.
Jaguar experimented with the idea of a folding hard top for the new XK but resorted to canvas in the end because they simply couldn’t make the styling work.
Volvo, however, has cracked it because the C70 has a roof that folds in half. Swedish flat-pack furniture. And now, a Swedish flat-pack roof. Mind you, it is pretty complicated.
Certainly you should never operate this roof in public because it will cause those in passing cars to lose concentration and crash. And pedestrians to think you’re showing off. But whatever, it means the car looks sensational with the roof up and, dare I say it, even better when it’s down.
Inside, there is plenty of space in the back for adults, although I really can’t recommend putting children back there when the roof’s moving about. They could be sucked into the machinery and never seen again.
In the front, it’s even better. Lots of space. Lots of light. Some genuinely stylish touches and quite the most impressive sound system since Jerry Garcia stopped being grateful and started being dead. It churns out 910 watts. This means you can still hear Whispering Bob Harris even if you’re tooling along, roof down, at 150mph.
This, then, is a car with a sky-high want-one factor. And with prices starting at £26,200 it’s not that expensive either. Even though they charge an extra £25 for a switch to turn the passenger airbag off. How can a switch cost £25 when it isn’t part of a nuclear missile or a space rocket? Whatever, on paper at least, the Volvo looks like a safer, more stylish, more practical and generally better convertible than anything at this level from BMW, Audi or Mercedes. I honestly thought I’d stumbled on a bit of a hidden jewel here.
But I couldn’t help noticing that it had come from Volvo with my own desert island discs in the CD autochanger. Why do that? Could it be a distraction? A musical blanket to shroud some technical problem? Well if it was, it didn’t work because this car felt so weird to drive that after just 200 yards I pulled over to see if I had a puncture.
The steering is absolutely lifeless when you’re going in a straight line and horrid when you’re accelerating, braking or going round a corner. Powerful front-wheel-drive T5 Volvos have always had torque steer but this is something else. This is diabolical.
You can hold onto the wheel if you like, but frankly you may as well hold onto your knees or your passenger for all the good it’ll do.
Eventually I got used to it, in the same way that eventually you can get used to a headache. But I never had the confidence to open up the C70, to see what those 220 brake horse powers could do.
This was properly annoying because Volvo plainly has the ability to make this car work. They have the stylists and the engineers. But they built this car using parts from other, lesser Volvos. You can therefore think of it as supper made by Gordon Ramsay using only ingredients he could get from the 24-hour petrol station.
Volvo is owned by Ford these days and I can’t help imagining what this car would have been like if they’d accessed their daddy’s parts bin. It could have had rear-wheel drive from a Mustang or a Jag. A V8 engine. Some Aston Martin steering. It could have been wonderful.
But it isn’t. Volvo, plainly, has watched a television recipe for making a convertible. And then tried to copy it without going to the shops. Ingenuity got them to the table with something well priced that looks great. But I doubt you’ll want to dig in.