For the past few months I have been using a nice 32″ LCD TV in my bedroom, hooked up to my Vista Media Center PC. Unfortunately, it belonged to my parents, and it was basically being “stored” in my room until they got it installed on the veranda out back. Alas, the day came last weekend when they took it away, and I was back to using my little computer LCD for my TV watching needs.

I decided I should go out and buy my own, since it’s something I used quite often (perhaps a tad too often :P), and therefore worth the outlay. Being a student and only working part time, I had a limited budget to purchase a TV that I would be happy with for a while.

I’ll say it now, I am not a fan of plasmas. They have great black levels, but they have never looked as good to me as an LCD TV, so much selection was narrowed quite a bit. Plasmas are quite cheap now at 42″ sizes, but often have pathetic 852×480 or 1024×1024 non-square pixel resolutions which look terrible, especially up close. Since it was going in my bedroom, it was always going to be close.

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Here’s a little known fact about me - I don’t only like gadgets, I also like cars…a lot. I’m not going to give the full list of every car, SUV or truck that I have ever owned - sufficed to say that it would be lengthy and on some levels it would explain my propensity for having a lead foot. In any case, I will say that one of my recent favorites was the 2002 Mini Cooper S - which we later traded for a Corvette Z06, but that is another story.

The Mini was like a little go cart - utterly tight and fun to drive; I would have loved to have taken it to a track and seen what it could do, but I never took the opportunity.

That’s why when my new friend G-A told me that he goes to the track once a week to test drive cars for his site Nihon Car, I had to take a look.

Side note: G -A also happens to a fellow Mobian and is the mastermind behind Akihabara News and GeekStuff4U.

G-A recently purchased a very pricey high definition digital movie camera for the harrowing rides that he takes when testing the latest Japanese cars, and the Mitsubishi Colt Ralliart Version-R is his latest subject. He doesn’t just drive the cars around the track - he romps on them while talking about it! Ooooh, I want his job!

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