Moving to WordPress.com

Posted on by Ian C.

I’ve now completed the first phase of a huge website move – I’m transferring both my websites (GBMINI and MargaretAndIan) to a single blog, hosted on WordPress.com!

Combined MargaretAndIan and GBMINI hosting

 

There’s a few reasons for this – but the primary two are (a) that the gallery format is much nicer with Jetpack which is included, and (b) that it’s often hard to decide whether a post belongs to GBMINI or M&I. In the past I’ve sometimes split a post in two, describing car-related things on GBMINI and trip-related on M&I; I won’t have to do that any more.

Once the transfer is complete, I’ll also be paying less and (I believe) having a more reliable service behind the website.

Today, I’ve completed the transfer of EVERY post from GBMINI over to this new site; while doing that, I’ve tidied up all the posts and made the image displays nicer, and I’ve deleted a few – those that were primarily about some other website that no longer exists, for example.

The next phase is to move all my M&I posts over and do the same tidying up – this is going to take a while yet (especially year 2009 with it’s “post every day”!); but I’m very pleased with the overall results so for me it’s worth doing.

I’ve also moved GPMINI over to it’s own WordPress.com hosting, here, for now; that site really needed work as it’s gallery has been broken for a few years! I will be losing the old GP owners forum when I complete that move, but it’s rarely active so an acceptable loss.

 

Clubman’s first service

Posted on by Ian C.

It’s been more than a year now since I bought my Clubman, and it’s been wanting an oil change for a while – much less than 5,000 miles, but due to time:

Clubman wants oil change

There’s also a not very urgent recall; so this afternoon I took it to Orlando MINI; Anthony had arranged a loaner for me – another Clubman, though rather different colors (and an automatic transmission):

Loaner Clubman, creamy white
Loaner Clubman, purple interior!
Loaner Clubman, automatic transmission

It’s a creamy white color, which is ok – but it appears to have purple leather seats! Surely a mistaken order (no idea what the color is officially called, don’t really care because I’d never order it).

The center display is smaller than I’m used to, without navigation, and the head up display is missing, but with an iPhone cable I had no problem playing my music on the way home …

Loaner Clubman, smaller center display
Loaner Clubman

 

I was convinced, driving home, that it must be a Cooper because it seemed to be way down on performance compared to my car – but it is an S, so maybe the automatic transmission has a big effect (perhaps it would be better in sport mode, which I didn’t use).

I took pictures of a few showroom MINIs while I was at the dealership, including this strangely wrapped-with-matte (old model) Countryman, and a nice looking (new model) Convertible:

 

It’s nice to have a loaner available, not something I ever had at MINI Peabody!