I seem to be one of those rare people that actually figured out how pointless it is to blow all your money on booze, act like a dick, make a fool of yourself, throw it all up again and waste your weekends being hungover, although I certainly spent a fair share of my younger days doing this, before I learned my lesson. Being a family man now I do have much more important things to do with my time than prop up a bar so I don't really go to pubs, but still I do like to have the occasional drink, especially after the kids have gone to bed and you finally get some peace and quiet :-) and the pub still is the only social place to go most of the time when you meet up with people.

I actually went off beer some years ago and since then the only thing I drink is cider (or snakebite and black which has always been my favorite since I was a teenager), and even then only very specific ciders. I can't stand the usual pub fare of Strongbow or Woodpecker etc, the only ones I can stomach in the pub are Magners or Bulmers, or when drinking at home my preferred tipple was Frome Valley Sweet cider which is a real cut above the rest, so you really should give it a try if you are a cider drinker, especially the sweet one if you don't like dry, they sell it in Tesco. 

Then I discovered pear cider and it was an instant love affair. The first (and by far the best) one I ever laid eyes on was Koppaburg pear cider which is very refreshing, especially over ice, easy on the pallet and hails from Sweden. There is even a non-alcoholic version which tastes almost exactly the same. The great thing with Koppaberg is that you can happily drink it all day long, which is perhaps a bad thing also :-)

Since I started drinking Kopparburg it seems to have become quite popular and other brands have started to appear in the supermarket and I am even told that some pubs have even started to stock it now. I have tried most of the other brands, and I have to say at time of writing they really do not hold a candle to Kopparburg, which has a unique taste of its own. I recently introduced a friend of mine (Johnny the hat) to Kopparburg, and it is now the only thing he drinks at home, which is quite something considering he did does not normally like nor drink cider.

So if you haven't already tried it, give it a try, I would imagine it is kind of like marmite, you either love it or hate it.

Here also is a quick run down of the others I have tried

Brothers Pear Cider

http://www.brotherscider.co.uk/

The absolute worst one of the bunch, tastes nothing like either pears or cider as far as I can tell, its the cheap lager of pear ciders. I will never buy this one again.

Bulmers Pear Cider

http://www.bulmers.ie/

I quite like Bulmers ciders in general, and the pear cider is not half bad in its own right, as it is a totally different taste. It it quite fruity and refreshing but not as distinctively different from regular cider as the others. If it was the only one you had tried then you would probably be quite happy with it, but after trying the others then Bulmers will probably be resigned to you "only if nothing else is available" option.

Gaymers Pear Cider

This one feels like a cheap copy and when compared to Kopparburg it really doesn't stand up well. But like the Bulmers it doesn't make a bad drink in its own right although there is nothing special or distinctive about it and you probably wouldn't associate it with pears if you didn't know what you were drinking and you certainly wouldn't buy it if any of the others are available.

Maguires Pear Cider

http://www.halewood-int.com/maguires.php

This has been the cheapest option I have found so far and bizarrely is actually my second favorite so far. It does have the distinctive refreshing pear flavor and even when compared against Koppaburg it fares pretty damn well. So if your looking for a cheaper alternative to Kopparburg or simply need an alternative when Koppaburg is not available then this may be your best bet, you may even find you like it as much as or more than Koppaberg.

St Helier Pear Cider

I have only just recently tried this one and I was pleasantly surprised. St Helier comes very close to being as good as Koppaberg for me, I certainly have no qualms about choosing one over the other. The main difference is that St Hellier has a stronger flavour, it tastes more alchoholic than Koppaberg, so I would imagine for a lot of people this would make it the preferred choice.

Oakleys Pear cider

Not tried it yet

Part of being a contractor means taking risks, you don't know how long you may be without work between contracts, you do not know how long the contracts will last, you do not know if your clients will pay you in a timely fashion, and you don't know what they are going to be like to work for.

In general there is nothing you can do about most of these things, unless you know someone who has worked at that company before, in which case you can at least answer some of those questions and choose whether or not you want to work for that company.

So just as companies give references for their ex-employees, it is only fair for us to do the same and give references for our ex-clients/employers. So if you are thinking of working for any of the companies listed below, feel free to email me for a reference.

Please note: This is not intended to be malicious, and I am not implying that the below companies are bad, simply that I have worked for them and thus am able to provide a reference.

• ICLP
• Trinity Mirror
• The Economist
• Fire Chaser
• The Berkeley Group

Now when I say ColdFusion, I do not mean Adobe ColdFusion Server, I actually mean CFML the language, but most people tend to associate this with ColdFusion. So just to enlighten those of you that do not know the language is called CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language), but there are a number of ways you can deploy CFML, the most well known being Adobe ColdFusion Server and the lesser known BlueDragon Server, and more recently Railo, all of which have a price tag.

Well if you have been living under a rock for the last few months (like me) you probably wont know that New Atlanta released an open source (free) version of their BlueDragon product called Open BlueDragon. This is great news for the CFML community as it means we now have a totally free way to learn, develop and deploy CFML applications, and we can now finally and proudly stick up our fingers to the PHP, Ruby, etc community and blow raspberrys.

This will also add a great boost to the popularity of CFML as a language and will undoubtably grow the community exponentially and open up more jobs for CFML developers.

Additional detail can be found here: BlueDragon Open-Source F.A.Q.

Here are some other useful related links

• Interview with Alan Williamson, the original creator of BlueDragon.
• The official Open BlueDragon web site
• Open BlueDragon Google group
• VMWare Open BlueDragon image
• Open BlueDragon Amazon image

For those of you coming to CFDevCon this year, there will be some sessions on BlueDragon.

If you are interested in BlueDragon.net then don't forget that you can try this for FREE over at www.cfdeveloper.co.uk along with ColdFusion 8.

I know many of you have been eagerly awaiting the next CFDevCon ColdFusion conference, well you will be happy to hear the new 2008 web site is now live as of yesterday and registrations are now open.

The survey results in 2006 were quite clear, most delegates wanted a better venue, a better conference hotel, better food, more tracks, more days and more bells and whistles and were happy to pay more for the tickets, so as this is a community driven event by developers for developers, that is what we have done, and we think we have still managed to keep the price quite reasonable too.

This year is a 2 day event with multiple tracks and an array of well known speakers presenting on popular topics. We have also opted for the seaside town of Brighton as the location this year, which is only 45 minutes direct from London Victoria on the train, so not only do you get to attend a great conference, but you can also then have a nice weekend break by the sea if you so wish. Much better than being stuck in rip-off London we think, with its outlandish prices, crowded/smelly streets and tube stations, unreliable public transport, and having to rush to catch the last tube back to your hotel every night.

So what are you waiting for, mosey on over to www.cfdevcon.com and register already.

 In general I have been very happy with the performance of the stock V Star 1300, but having been riding it for a while now and getting used to all its little nuances I did decide it could do with a little boost in the low end as I felt I was having to exert a little too much clutch control a little to early and too often when slowing down and when in traffic and a bit of extra torque and rumble wouldn't go amiss either. So I decided it was time for a set of after market exhausts which would give me what I wanted and would also give me that sweeter Harley like exhaust note. My first thought was Vance and Hines as they have probably the best reputation and I have had them before on my V Star 1100 and was happy with them, plus they are easier to get here in the UK. However V&H only do a 2into1 for the 1300 and I am not overly keen on that look and wanted to replace my stock 2into1 with a 2into2.

The next most popular seems to be Cobra , and they have a good choice of exhausts for the 1300 and the sound seemed to be what I wanted. I did initially want the Slashdowns but these proved very elusive and no-one had any as they are very popular it seems, one of my suppliers Eastern Cruisers  told me he could get a set of speedster longs, so I went with that. Unfortunately after they had been fitted it turned out they had had got me the shorts, but I decided to suck it down after all the hassle getting them, I will get a set of slashcut tips to achieve the look I want.

In addition I also got the FI2000 digital fuel processor, which is supposed to provide better throttle response, no backfiring and smoother cruising and you need one of these with after market exhausts.

Anyway, the result of these exhausts + FI2000, I have no idea how the exhausts perform without the F2000 or how the FI2000 performs with the stock exhaust.

PROS

They sound great, much better than stock and are LOUD if that is what you like, at least to the human ear they sound very loud. I have recorded the exhaust note which you can hear in the video below, but it really doesn't sound anywhere near as loud in the video and it doesn't do them justice, you need to hear them in the flesh.

Performance wise there is a definite improvement in the low end, exactly what I wanted in fact. More torque and less clutch control required. You can go faster in lower gears (easily 30mph in 1st, 60mph in 2nd), slower in higher gears, so you no longer feel like you are going to stall if you don't get down to first gear quick enough or when doing a hill start.

CONS

While I do love the sound in general and it is useful for "being heard" and tearing up the neighbourhood, I do find it an annoyance on the motorway which is where you appreciate the much quieter note of the stock exhaust, especially on long journeys where you just want to chill out. After an hour or more riding I am usually half deaf. It would be nice to be able to switch between quiet and loud whenever you wanted, like the peacemaker pipes from national cycle, but I wasn't brave enough to buy those :-)

In the high end (70mph+) I have lost some torque and performance. Previously I have had this baby at 100mph with more to go. With the cobra exhausts and FI2000 I was at full throttle by the time I got to 100mph. I will be giving the FI2000 pots a tweak to see if I can fix this, I will report back when I have done it, but in general the low end performance improvements are more important to me as I spend more time driving at 30-40mph than I do at 100mph and I have used to it by now anyway :-)

There is also increased vibrations. My mirrors now vibrate, even at low speeds, they did not do this before. I also cannot ride so long without a break now, but I am more sensitive to the vibrations than most, so others may not notice this.

If you want to hear how they sound, check out my video on youtube.