Bitterly succumbing to peer pressure of my friends and business acquaintances in the 21st century, I finally bought a smart phone. I wasn't surprised that my old large SIM card was not compatible with the iPhone 6 and it's nano tray. So how can I transfer all my contacts? Oh the local phone shop will have some sort of card reader - not. Oh you can cut it down - except the nano cards metal circuit-board is smaller than that of the older type and is not going to take kindly to being guillotined. And I can't email them to the new phone as the crappy old LG A100 is a t-e-l-e-p-h-o-n-e only. No internet, No Camera, No nothing else. The speaker is such bad quality you can better hear what someone is saying with two cans and a bit of string. And the contract was terminated before I had the idea of texting them across (which would have probably meant one by one anyway). Shoit. Brainwave.
1) Crank up the LG transfer all the contacts from the original SIM card to limited phone memory.
2) Remove the SIM from behind the battery and mark carefully where the six tiny brass studs are that make electrical contact with the various sections of the etched gold circuit-board. I used a TipEx pen.
3) Insert the new nano SIM into the old phones card carrier - its going to be a loose fit, but the stud position, and your careful marking mean you can manoeuvre it into the precise position. I used a small piece of Sellotape to stop it sliding about - fearing a short-circuiting of the wrong studs touching the wrong parts of the circuit-board.
4) Replace the battery. Crank up the old phone and transfer contacts on to the new nano SIM.
5) Take out the nano SIM and insert it into your new phone....Bobs your uncle, Fanny's your aunt. BP
.....and now I'm an instagram addict.
As predicted, it's as moreish as crack cocaine.
@partdirection

Socks will still function with a few holes (and I'm not much of a darner), Computers not so well. I wrung the last KB of memory out of my old G5 Apple Mac, just managing a final re-boot to salvage my iTunes, before it completely blacked out two years ago. An up-grade to my wife's hand-me-down MiniMac was welcome, but after a new hard-drive transplant didn't exactly put a spring back in its step, I went back to the trendy Apple Store and was told by a yoof it was "vintage" and they wouldn't touch it - 2006 vintage!?Desperately gasping for the last 4GB of breathing space to finish off producing SB#16, was akin to the Staw Wars Garbage Compactor 3263827 scene, but even with constant re-starting even C3PO wasn't going to be able to save me and it kept crashing. So I've bought a new MiniMac.
Even the basic model has warehouse spacious 500GB. As Western Computers where I bought it, offers a to dispose of space junk I took them the weighty G5 that was gathering dust under the stairs, but concerned with personal security I asked if they could somehow zap it sterile, just incase the NSA could still read the dead hard-drive, otherwise I would take it home and hit it with a sledge hammer. "We can do that, and give you the hard-drive as proof" They informed me. I presumed they meant zapping, so I was surprised when I heard a WHACK-WHACK-THUD from the back room and they reappeared with a dented metal box. When I got home I gave it a few extra, most satisfying, sadistic blows. BP

Thanks to Bob at The Telephone File I just rewired this 1970 GPO 706F telephone I bought at Brick Lane market 20 years ago. It now runs happily in parallel with my regular digital home phone so I have both the pleasantly homey "DRrrrring-DRrrrring" of in-coming calls, and I can still call annoying automated 'service providers' who have labyrinth touch-tone only switchboards. When my index finger is looking out of shape, I can exercise it on the original radial dial which still works fine too.
Oh what joy simple technology brings. BP
And you thought you were following a motorcycle blog.

Down with the kids we've now got a Pinterest pinboard on the go too. Flick the button on the sidebar to the right. BP

GI fires off a few rounds on the the F-Track 450i Pursang in Kiddo. BP

SB#9 is a call-to-arms to make in metal what Piers of derestricted.com and fellow designers, make with pixels. BP

Where A is water, B is where you stick your ground coffee and C is where the thick, dark stuff of life dribbles into. An irregular heartbeat in three simple stages. Thanks to Asbestos for the diagram. MP

Spotted by Tim White at Barber a few weeks ago. Any more info anyone? BP

Computer woes are the modern day equivalent of God testing Job, and in this techno dependent age, I receive those lightning bolts fairly frequently. My G5 Mac has been living on borrowed Sunday school time since SB#3 so it was Godsend that it lasted just until SB#6 was completed - crashing daily even when only one program was being used at a time. But then I realized apart from vital commercial photo work and Sideburn stuff that was backed-up on Lacie external hard drives, I had 75.59 Gigabytes of music = 14,795 songs (half of which was irreplaceable), some important emails, and assorted files which were not. Oh Damnation. So I did a few quick Hail Marys and went to the überhip down town Apple store. Miraculously they managed not only to give the spent piece of used jet trash a jolt of Frankenstein life, but keep it powered up just long enough for me to download the left-overs on to a second Lacie external hard drive. Praise be to the Lord!