Welcome to markpayne.net home page of Mark Payne, Chartered Land & Hydrographic Surveyor and Petroleum Exploration Consultant. 

Whilst waiting for delivery of the Giulietta, found this jem hiding at a dealership up north, pre-registered with a whopping discount..  seen here at Miracle Detail. As well as a paintwork inspection and detail, we had a 3M film applied to the bonnet, wings and mirrors.  Next mod was the retro-fit of an R8 rear reversing camera, installed by Hazzy Dayz which was well worth the money... especially when backing into the garage!

Just put my order in for a Alfa Romeo Giulietta Quadrifoglio Verde (Cloverleaf)..... more to come!!

I couldn't resist the idea of a new phone when I found out about the T-Mobile contract with free data at £10 a month (has now dissapeared from the T-Mobile web site..)

I had been waiting for over a year for the new HTC phones. I was initially going for a HD2, but then decided against the Winmo 6.5 OS. Then with the announcement of the Nexus One I was hopeful it would be good, but still to be released in the UK... I toyed with the idea of waiting for Windows Phone 7, but that would be later in the year so when the Desire come out to rave reviews I had to have it!

On start up you get prompted to sync gmail and facebook, and to set up other email accounts. Little did I know it syncs all your facebook and gmail contacts as phone contacts.. so when you go to make a phone call or text message you are faced with hundreds of contacts. And rather than presenting them as contacts which you can click and select mobile/work/home, you get all variants in the same list..! You can delete the facebook link, but not so for gmail unless you do a master reset of the phone... so as a workaround I have removed the facebook sync and installed the SyncMyPix app.

This seems a common complaint, the only workaround at the moment is to create a 'People' shortcut on the desktop which will only show your actually phone contacts (unless you choose to add the others).

Must have apps to install:

AppsInstaller
Barcode Scanner
Task Manager

OK, so I left home on Saturday night and stayed at the Hilton at Heathrow as I had an early flight the next day... before I had even gone to bed had a text to say the flight to Paris was cancelled! Next day find myself on some crappy old turbo prop, but didn't even get off the ground! Due to the weather in Paris the flight was cancelled and I had to make my way back through the airport, spending another four hours trying to get my bags back and rebooking the flight..

One more night in Heathrow, then when I try to check in find out I'm bumped off the flight and now on an Astraeus Airlines flight with Icelandic crew! This by the way was five hours late, but ironically landing earlier in Paris than the flight I should have been on! Get told at the Air France desk that there are no seats on the flight to Abidjan in the morning.. at this point we reiterate that its taken two days to get to Paris, and waiting another two days is not an option... luckly they agree to give us seats, but I guess some poor soul got bumped off...

The next day we get the flight to Abidjan without incident.... but when we arrive our bags are missing. To be honest at this point we were not really surprised... all in all another quality experience flying through Paris with Air France! Next day out to the boat by chopper with no luggage...