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Yes, that's always been an attractive feature of Apple products. The straight-out-of-the-box facilities for playing with pictures, music and online communications have always been ahead of what you get with PCs. They've also put a lot of effort into their screens and even their packaging.

Jeff Bezos has just been to the door and dropped me off a new keyboard . I thought I might as well get a new one to match all my other new stuff seeing as the letters and numbers are wearing off my old one so typing is a tittle hit and miss.

Xylia's the Apple enthusiast in our household. Her little workstation in the front room is decorated with iPads, iPhones and a massive all-in-one affair with retina screen. I've never got on well with Apple devices myself. I'm incapable of intuiting the intuitive interface and making them do...

I've just renewed a lot of my stuff over the last few days. It started with a desire for a new monitor. I had been using a cheap flat screen TV for the last couple of years, because I got it to replace a broken one and I needed something that was big, cheap and available via next day delivery...

I generally like to spend Christmas underneath the Land Rover, but I haven't really got any jobs to do on it just now. I took the transfer box apart for a gear and bearing check and new seals a few weeks ago, prior to its MOT, so that should be OK for a while now. I have bought a new bush kit...

Well, if you're going to have to modify the space where the radiator goes to suit a TD5's radiator and intercooler sooner or later, you might as well do it now. Christmas is the ideal time for extended Land Rover repairs or modifications - dull days and freezing rain. Who could resist the...

Yes, I got an extended sump when I was running the overdrive unit, as that tends to warm the oil up a good deal. Indeed, I'd made myself an oil cooler with a separate radiator and a thermostatically switched pump, which kept the temperatures down to something sensible for long motorway runs in...

a quick update - I seem to have cured the transfer box oil leak. I did around 300 miles over the weekend; over to Wales, plus a few errands whilst there, and back to the East Midlands and the oil level hasn't gone down. No drips on the underside. That should be OK for a few more years now I hope.

For several years I have been saying that now that Cummins engines in Land Rovers have become somewhat passé, the next frontier is a JCB engine conversion. Well, this man has done it: It's a slightly more recent engine than I had in mind but he's got it to fit. Incidentally, have I been...

Is that you providing the entertainment? A man of many talents. I've got plenty of squirrels of my own already. Back home in Leicester Xylia's been putting nuts outside the back door for a squirrel that comes in our yard. The trouble is I tend to tread on them as I go in and out.

I met a new friend today. A little brown and white fellow jumped out of a bag of tree saplings in my wheelbarrow. It landed on the ground and hopped about on its back legs like a tiny kangaroo and executed a semi circle around me before disappearing into a hedge. I wondered what it was. Jerboas...

Yes, we had a neighbour who got one of those rather lightly-built sheds that look like a bargain when you see them advertised online, but they are almost as good as children's trampolines when it comes to getting airborne in high winds. His ended up about three gardens away, leaving a trail of...

The temptation was too much for me. The opportunity to go out and do a bit of recreational chainsawing got the better of me and I got the chainsaw started. Once the saw fired up, I got carried away and forgot to take any pictures of what it was like before. However if you imagine the stump on...

I'm having a blustery weekend in Wales planting trees. Nothing has blown over on my property yet, but I can see a tree down across the track that links me to the nearest road. I'll wait a bit before going to clear it because its neighbours are waving about a good deal and I don't want them...

As well as all the speed restrictions on the signage, it's hard to drive fast in most of the UK because of all the traffic. Going from Leicester to my place in Wales in the average day takes me ages, but going at 4 o'clock in the morning I can complete the trip in just over two hours, and that's...

Done a bit of snagging on my transfer box rebuild. I put it all back together and back in a couple of weekends ago and got an MOT on it, but I did a long run yesterday and it is still leaking oil. It's not coming out of the drive flange seals or from around the centre shaft, and the only things...

Yes, the newer the components are the more sensitive it gets. Don't forget, it doesn't matter which end the shims are - taking them out brings the centre cones of the roller bearings closer together and takes up slack and adds preload. On earlier models - up to about 1993 I believe - there was...

Also it's worth checking the resistance of fuses as well as whether electricity will flow through them at all. I had one suddenly decide it wanted to be 70 ohms, so my indicators didn't work.

Yes, they're very expensive. Some rodents ate mine. I remember being disturbed at the price when I last replaced it about four years ago. No doubt they've gone up since.

Sometimes if the steering's very good you can get a lot of bump steer - more than when it's in need of overhaul. I remember about ten years ago when I replaced my steering swivel bearings and ball joints (the bushes had been done a few months earlier) there was a lot more bump steer than before...