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When you turn the steering wheel of a car, you expect that the wheels will respond and move the vehicle accordingly – it’s a basic function of a car. This has always been my experience in forty years of driving, until recently that is! I was driving round a roundabout, but as I turned left to exit, the steering jammed and I only just managed to wrestle the car round. The steering continued to be unbelievably stiff until I managed to bring the car to a safe stop. Incidentally, I managed to stop near a post box and I did have some letters to post, so at least it served a useful purpose! Having switched the engine off, locked the car, unlocked the car, and restarted it – the problem disappeared! Unfortunately, as I drove to my destination, I couldn’t get it out of my head. I was thinking it was going to happen again any minute, such was my loss of confidence.

As soon as I had the opportunity I did what everyone does in situations like this – Google it! It soon became clear that it’s a common problem with the Meriva. I also quickly found several friends on Facebook and Twitter who’d had the same experience as me, and a YouTube clip from the BBC programme Watchdog where it was featured. So why did I have a Meriva with this problem? Why hadn’t Vauxhall recalled the unsafe vehicles? What was the Vauxhall dealer going to do about it?

Well, they repaired the car and told me they had fitted modified parts that don’t have the fault. This begs question, why no recall?

So, for me, the main issue is why hasn’t there been a recall when so many Merivas have this potentially dangerous fault? Imagine I was doing 50 mph on a left-hand bend with oncoming traffic when it happened? The Vauxhall garage was excellent, although they’re clearly well-versed in dealing with Meriva customers with the same problem!

If you’re a Gmail and Chrome user, you now have an option (within Gmail settings) for desktop notifications whenever an email arrives! There’s also an option for chat. Just go to settings and change your preferences!

Today’s Google logo is a pastiche of one of Cézanne’s still life paintings, with the objects forming the name of the ubiquitous search engine. It was commissioned because today is the painter’s 172nd birthday! Cézanne is one of my favourite artists, and I especially love his landscapes (example above) and still life paintings.

Wikipedia describes his work in this way: Cézanne’s work demonstrates a mastery of design, colour, tone, composition and draftsmanship. His often repetitive, sensitive and exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable. He used planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields, at once both a direct expression of the sensations of the observing eye and an abstraction from observed nature. The paintings convey Cézanne’s intense study of his subjects, a searching gaze and a dogged struggle to deal with the complexity of human visual perception.

Have you ever been surfing the internet and wanted to make a quick note or copy and paste something? Well there are simple ways to do this and, if you use more than one computer, the notes can be synchronized between them. I regularly use two internet browsers, namely Google Chrome (fast) and Mozilla Firefox (versatile). Well, strictly speaking, I also use Internet Explorer (waste of space) for work emails – but that doesn’t count! On both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox I have add-ons installed to take notes. In Google Chrome it’s simply called Chrome Note (in the photo it’s the icon to the left of the spanner), and in Mozilla Firefox I use QuickFox Notes. Chrome Note is also saved to Google Docs and can be accessed there.

For synchronization across computer to work you need to enable Sync in Chrome or Sync in Firefox (add-on in version 3.xx but built-in to version 4.xx). There are other add-ons for notes in both browsers, feel free to give your ideas and suggestions in the comments for this post.

Note: Since writing this post I have discovered QuietWrite and written about it here.